The Comedy Cellar: Live from the Table - Maintaining Mental Acuity with Philosopher Peter Boghossian

Episode Date: September 13, 2024

Peter Boghossian is an American philosopher, professor and co-author of the book, How to Have Impossible Conversations. His work has been featured in The New York Times, Time Magazine, The Wall Street Journal and many other publications.

🎵 This is Live from the Table, the official podcast of the world-famous comedy cellar coming at you on Sirius XM 99 Raw Comedy. Available also as a podcast, available on YouTube for those who want that multimedia experience. Those who want to see us, our beautiful faces, some more beautiful than others. This is Dan Natterman. I'm here with Noam Dorman, the owner of the Comedy Cellar, who I just saw in Las Vegas,

a special treat, came out to visit me in Vegas, also had some business to take care of, the nature of which I am unaware of, but I think the club is still in business. Still there. We're still there, Dan. Perrie Lashenbrand is here.

She's back from where she was. South Carolina, was it? Yeah. And she's going to Paris next week. Well, she's a real lobetrotter. Yes, she is. And we have with us Boston's favorite son, Peter Boghossian, a philosopher, author of a manual for creating atheists and how to have impossible conversations. A very practical guide. And that sounds like something we could really use right now.

Indeed. Given the state of division in our country. Max Marcus is working the soundboards as always. So I assume, Noam, you wanted Peter back for a particular reason? He's one of our favorite guests that we've ever had and we

hit it off and we're going to have dinner later. Are you ordering El Molino? Or you guys are going? Needs to know basis. We're going to No basis. Okay. And, no, we're going to Nobu. Okay,

well, I guess I'll just have the Comedy Cellar fair. We have, you can eat in the employee dining room. Oh, we saw the employee

dining room in Vegas. Anyway, so, but, as we were just saying, when you came on, of all the things that really

piqued the interest of our listeners, it was when I lamented that as I've gotten a little bit older, I feel some slight cognitive decline. And by the way, let me say as an aside, if you watched Trump last night, he kept referring to people by their positions rather than their names.

The governor of Virginia. Now, I know what this is, because the names are not popping into his head like they used to. And he's describing them by their positions and if you see anybody ever older during an interview and they say well the ambassador from france very very often you can see the names not coming to them or they're not a hundred percent confident they have no one refers to his wife as that woman i live with so anyway so i complained about and p said, he's better than ever.

Yeah. And I got emails, can you please tell me his regimen? So go ahead. I just could not. Turn him up, Max. Turn him up. Good. I simply couldn't believe the number of emails I received.

I was just shocked by it. He said it was like thousands. Turn him up, Max. Hello? Hello, Max? Max, testing, testing. No, I couldn't. Am I sounding okay now?

I didn't hear any difference, but go ahead. Okay, well, that's all right. Here's what it is. No, I was really stunned by how many emails I got, so I'm more than happy. And then basically I don't tell anybody what I do because no one's going to do it, so there's like totally no point.

But so just to be clear, I don't understand any of the mechanisms for this, but I've read the literature. I follow the Huberman protocols. So like today, for example, so I'll give you a few things and then I'll tell you the real kicker that's helped me more than anything, and it's going to sound completely insane.

So I don't have caffeine until 90 minutes after I wake up. That's been a huge deal. I intermittent fast. Caffeine is good. Let's zoom in. What is the rationale for waiting 90 minutes before you have caffeine? So to be clear, I don't know any of the mechanisms. I just know what the rationale for waiting 90 minutes before you have? Okay. So to be clear, I don't know any of the mechanisms. I just know what the experts say you should do. And then I

look for commonalities in those and then I pursue those. But what I do is, so this isn't a peer reviewed study. It doesn't have to be. I'm the only one in the study who matters. And if it makes a difference to me, I do it. If it improves the quality of my life, I do it. So I've been making these little micro adjustments. So I intermittent fast. I took dairy out of my life, which was a huge. Let's go slow. Could be really just intermittent fast meaning. So I don't eat from noon.

Sometimes like yesterday, I really didn't eat at all, but I don't eat from, I start eating at noon and I stop eating at eight. So for tonight, when we're going to go out, if the meal ends, if we keep eating at 1030, I'll just tack on those hours to the rest of the day. Okay. So I won't eat until two or 230 or whatever. So it's 16, eight?

Yeah, I do 16, eight, but I try to sneak in an extra hour or two here or there. So 15, nine-ish. Something like that. So I try to fast for at least 17 hours. Drink a lot of water, caffeine. I took dairy out. But I will tell you the number one thing, and again, I'm completely cognizant of the fact

that I'm going to tell you this and it's going to sound truly insane. The number one thing I have done that has not only improved my cognitive functioning, but improved my life radically, is that I do not tap out from exhaustion. My coach, Matt Thornton, the author of The Gift of Violence, taught me this. So I do jujitsu pretty seriously. In fact, I just did it here. On Perrielle. Yeah.

Do you do jujitsu? No, I said you did it on Perrielle. Yeah. Do you do jiu-jitsu? No, I said you did it on Perrielle. No, no, no. I don't. That's post-dinner. Just kidding. Just kidding. Now, see, in the back of my head, I'll go, it's sexual harassment.

I can't make any jokes about that. No, no. But the idea is basically no matter how tired you are, you don't quit. You just keep going. And you do so, you can't do really, you don't quit. You just keep going. And you do so, you can't do really, you can't get the same thing from a treadmill. You can't really do it from weights.

It has to be long-term over an hour. So I'll basically wrestle with guys half my age and I'll tap out if they get me, if they, what have you, but I will not tap if I'm tired. I simply will not do it. And I think that that has built a kind of muscle in my, again, I know it sounds crazy,

but in my being that I don't quit when I'm tired. I just am utterly relentless. How often do you do jujitsu? As much as I can. Okay, but that's like... Oh, it depends when I travel, like three, four days a week. Okay, so like regularly. Very regularly, yeah.

And I'm 58 now, but there is something about, three, four days a week. Okay, so like regularly. Very regularly, yeah. And I'm 58 now, but there is something about you just want to die. Like you have someone on you that's choking you. You can't breathe. Do you drink alcohol? Yeah, I do.

Chianti. Yeah, very good. Yeah, so I try to eliminate or reduce sugars. So Chianti is a very dry wine. But again, from the humerine protocols and elsewhere. And then you see some stuff in the Blue Zone diets where they've looked at diets from people in certain parts of the world

that correlate with longevity. So I always stop at two. You know, you said you feel like you're dying, but you still don't tab out. I mean, I would imagine that reduces your quality of life to feel like you're dying every day. Or don't tap out. I mean, I would imagine that reduces your quality of life to feel like you're dying every day, or do you enjoy it in some perverse way? No, it increases your quality of life,

because over time when you do it, you develop a capacity to not quit. But is the actual process painful, the process of not tapping out when you're completely exhausted? It's soul-crushingly excruciating. So that... So you would probably... So that, in and of itself, decreases your quality of life,

that you have to do this soul-crushing, excruciating thing every day. No, because it's a scale. And on one side, you get the benefits of it, and the other side, you get the short-term punishment from it. So a lot of people,

I'm trying to find it, but a lot of people swear by jujitsu. Yeah. And there's this, and I, and I've wondered about, because there's this whole kind of macho, forgive me,

side to a lot of politics that's going on now where things are being measured in terms of liberals have low T and more clear thinking people have higher T. And then there's this just wonderful interview on NPR going around with Ira Glass and these guys. And they started comparing their T levels and they were all, they didn't all have low T. It was like barely above female levels of testosterone. And they are a bunch of, forgive me, like beta-ish males, you know, and they're, and

then Daryl Cooper of Hitler and Churchill denial of fame, you know, the last year. Yeah, yeah. One of the things he swears by is jujitsu. He says, if you do jujitsu, it changes your life. A hundred percent. Wow. Universally.

Yes. Without exception. And do you think it changes your take on truth, the take on the world? Yeah, that's a really, really good question. So I've thought about that a lot. So two things. I think that we all need a corrective mechanism

for when we think about things. We need a way to correct our cognition so they align with reality. And jujitsu, you can't fake it. Like it's not, I mean, we could put Perrielle in a black belt and put her on the mat and she will instantly learn what would happen to her. So it can't be faked. And there's something, there's a built-in humility to it. I want to throw out a curve ball, if I may. I also think that

there's a moral component to it that nobody talks about. And that moral component is that if you're placed in a situation over and over again, where you can hurt someone and you don't, even when you're frustrated, when you're tired, and you just stop when they tap on you, that develops something very profound in you. Specifically for males, I think it develops something very profound. Could it develop into a disrespect for an army that's killing civilians? In other words, an army that you think is overzealous. They're being overzealous because I know what it's like to have that kind of superiority of strength,

and I know how important it is to forbear, and they're not forbearing. Fuck those guys. They're creeps. Yeah, it's interesting. I'm trying to think if I should reveal this. Reveal, reveal. I've been talking to someone to do a TV show

where I would go in the prisons. This is what I did my dissertation on. I'll kick off my shoes. And to help inmates reason through problems, to help them reason morally. And I was watching in preparation for this interview that I did. I was watching these videos of that this company. I'll tell you the name of the company. It was Lucky 8.

Maybe I shouldn't have said that. But you said reveal, the name of the company it was lucky eight maybe i shouldn't say that i don't know but uh you said reveal reveal sorry we can cut it out if you need so no that's okay so but i was really struck by one of the scenes in this where this guy for whatever reason doesn't like i don't know why i'm pointing to you but hughes does no no no he doesn't like the way that this guy is eating so he just walks over to this guy and punches him in the head and they get in a fight and i was just so i mean that was incredibly profound to me it's like has this guy not had any any there are some people when they are on top of you it is a kind of soul-searing agony so like my coach when he's on me my wife knows all about that

i just met her today uh so like when you breathe in every time you exhale they'll just take a tenth of an inch of space and they'll just do that until you suffocate so i have a friend of mine i will not mention his name but somebody punched his pregnant girlfriend and uh he he tapped he got behind this guy got him in a rear naked choke you know what that is no come here real quick oh god and he he he knocked him out and every time the guy came to consciousness again he kept knocking him out again and he did that for hours because he punched his pregnant girlfriend. Now, there's no virtue in being the victim

on the receiving end to that because you have to have a mechanism that allows you, when you say stop, to stop, right? So that's just something that happens to you as opposed to willing. Willing is probably the best way to think about it. But anyway, I'm a big believer, but it's interesting.

So I do think it cultivates a certain disposition in people. I do think it's like a moral muscle. So to tell you a quick story, I have a buddy of mine. I do jujitsu with both of these guys. I've been doing it for like, I don't know, 15 years. And one of the guys was the prosecuting attorney and the other guy was on a jury. And you know that process of, I think it's called voir dire,

where you that you pick the jury yeah yeah the the people come in and so uh you have to disclose legally you have to disclose if you know anybody on the jury and so my buddy disclosed that he works out with this other guy he does jiu-jitsu with this guy and the judge asked the defendant the the defense attorney if that's okay and the guy's like, yeah, sure, no problem. Okay, that guy does not do jujitsu. I can tell you with unshakable certainty, no sane person would ever allow that

because you're constantly in this position where you have to trust somebody. And that cultivates a kind of real relationship. A bond, a bond, right? Yeah, in a way that I don't think, not only get 500 emails from people who like you know do model trains but in a way that that you know putting together model trains with someone in a club doesn't do that there's something about it because it's a it's an activity that both engages reality and you have to have trust in someone it's like those

furries and my little pony you know not exactly you know about that no whatever well i know about the furries trust that the that that your sparring partner won't inflict harm on you is that is that well he's gonna well you know that they'll they'll stop when you say that they'll stop that they won't break anything that they'll uh but anyway but my point about the cognitive so so that's a big thing for me is that um now can i go back to something you said because i want to make sure anything so somebody exhales and and then the person who's fighting him takes up the space is that what it is i can show you on any of you guys uh maybe period it's just okay so so i'm laying on top of you usually on side but not always and every time you exhale

i just relax into you just a little bit. I create some negative space and then you're able to fill it. But, but it's like, I'm, so this is the key thing. It's like, I'm a wet blanket on top of you. So every time you exit, so you don't have to punch anybody. You just, every time they exhale, you slowly asphyxiate them. You slowly suffocate them. And there's just nothing you can do about it. And if you, I mean, it really is like having a superpower and it's a kind of it's a kind of that's what was so striking to me about the guy in prison i mean he doesn't know what this guy what this guy knows i mean you get some of these guys on top of you they could literally break every bone in your body like the whole thing

and so it was just so striking to feel i do think there is, I'm going to say this, and again, this is like 5,000 comments, but I do think that there's something about having someone on top of you who knows what they're doing and tormenting you. That is one of, I mean, people don't understand. Violence is serious shit, right? I mean, and to perpetrate violence like that. And there is something, I think that there was a deterrent.

I have no evidence for this. It's sheer speculation, but to have somebody on top of you who is basically torturing you. Can I ask if like you said, go ahead. You said that, uh, you know,

you have to trust the person will stop when you tap out. Well, why wouldn't the person will stop when you tap out. Well, why wouldn't the person stop? You've tapped out. He wins. He has nothing more to prove. Why would he continue? A lot of reasons. One, he's just angry, so he can't control his anger impulse.

Or he just makes a mistake. You have to also trust them that they won't make a mistake. What kind of mistake? I mean, for those who don't know jujitsu, like me, you could just mistakenly harm somebody? Well, yeah. Yeah, actually. So I'd go to do an arm bar, or I wouldn't feel your tap

because it's in the heat of the moment, what have you. Or someone else bumps into me, and I lost my attention. So do you find yourself angry at the sparring partner? No, never. No, I think it does. my attention. So do you find yourself angry at the sparring partner? No, never. No, I think it does. I genuinely believe it builds in a kind of humility because there's always someone better than you. Unless you're Gordon Ryan or, you know, Harger Gracie,

there's always someone better than you, always. So would you guess that somebody who knows jiu-jitsu would be more or less tolerant of, for instance, violent criminals? Would you likely expect them to be punished? I don't know the answer to that question. I do think that the people who take it tend to have a certain disposition. They tend to be slightly more small-c conservative. They tend to be...

Slightly more what? Small-c conservative. Like more... They tend to be... Small-c. Yeah conservative. They tend to be... Small C. Yeah. I think it's like Schmaltzy. Oh, no, no. Small C conservative. I think they tend to have somewhat of a reality bias. They tend to not go by

lived experience, to put it in contemporary. But back to the question, I think that that's one of the reasons that's greatly contributed to my mental acuity. One in a suite of things that's helped me tremendously. But you can do jujitsu and still tap from exhaustion. So that lesson of not quitting

unless someone's going to break something or you're going to fall unconscious, that's the lesson that you can only get from, as far as I know, from that one skill. And also, there's an aerobic fitness to it, right? And that, I know know is known to be uh correlated to mental acuity yeah is is keeping your and i think as you get older it's very difficult for you to like oh you know run that extra mile or lift that extra weight you really

need some kind of resisting some kind of active resisting opponent on you. And then you take a whole host of supplements. I do. Creatine, D, Imegadose, vitamin C. Rapamycin or metformin? Everybody takes, everybody who's looked into this even a little bit takes metformin. It's one of the most studied substances in history. It's pretty easy to get

a prescription for if you have... It's a diabetes med? Yeah, High A1Cs or even medium high as you, as we get older, our A1Cs tend to go up specifically. It's generally correlated to weight type two diabetes, but yeah, metformin is a great supplement. Now, how do you tease out with so many moving parts? What is actually working for you? It's taken me years. It's taken me years. So look me years so look you know i it's like it's like rogan when he had covid it's like i'm better it's ivermectin yeah but you're in super shape you do this you do that and you took ivermectin why would you think it's the ivermectin yeah

that's great so i guess teasing out over the years it's funny it's like you know i have gray hair and all these people ask me for advice that they never it's weird i always tell people the same thing it's like a triangle you know diet sleep exercise are you sleeping what are you doing how much sleep are you getting you know are you snoring because if you're snoring when you're sleeping you could have sleep apnea i've heard do you have blackout curtains do you look at screens before you go oh that's the thing every time i wake up i can't do it here because of the where i live but um i try to first thing no no phones i try to look at the sunlight first

thing in the morning. So how's your sleeping? How's that going? And then what's your diet? What are you eating? How many carbs are you eating? What are your sugars? And you can see it when people, you know, they're just, when they're overweight, they're just, their face is bloated. And it's usually, not always, but it's usually sugars. And then what's your exercise routine? You know, what are you doing? So even the exercise routine, it's like a nested triangle. So I try to stretch. So yoga is great for that, but I just don't have the facility to do that.

You need resistance training, especially as you get older for your ligaments. And then you need cardiovascular. I mean, these things are not complicated. I mean, there's an overwhelming body of literature and all this stuff. Now you do acknowledge that some people, when it comes to their weight,

have, you know, some people are just dispositionally overweight and and they i don't know they really struggle oh that that's that's true i don't do you mean dispositionally like like i have three kids and they eat the same dinner and one of them gains more weight than the other it's just and the other one can't no matter how much she eats she doesn't put on any weight and they're just different metabolisms. Okay. Well, there are two things people consistently lie about when you do studies. They lie about their sex life and they lie about their diet.

So if you look at calories in and micronutrients, there's going to be very little. I'm not an exercise physiologist, but there's going to be very little difference in the outcomes, the weight outcomes of people who eat the same diet and participate in the same level of physical activity or they have something neurologically that compels them highly unlikely well i mean if you have identical twins separated at birth yes and one is overweight usually the other one's overweight as i understand it they know they but that's propensity to eat that's not controlling the variables of what causes them to gain weight yeah maybe you didn't that's what i said variables of what causes them to gain weight. Yeah, maybe you didn't. That's what I said.

Either their metabolism is different or neurologically they're compelled to eat in a way that's more compelling than... I can eat a third of my dinner, put it on, like I'm done. And I have a friend who looks at me and says, are you crazy? How do you do that? I don't know.

So I had Johan Hari who wrote a book on Ozempic recently, and I'm amazedan Hari who wrote a book on Ozempic recently, and I'm amazed how many people are taking that. So, I mean, that would be, again, that's the scale thing. If you have to make a decision, would you rather suffer from the consequences of being overweight or the unknown consequences of Ozempic or another weight loss drug?

I don't know. Or the pain of not eating till you're satiated. Why would that be a pain? Well, it's generally uncomfortable not to eat as much as you want. Only initially. Only initially. Your body will get accustomed to that. I guess maybe there's, if you have a neurological disorder in extreme circumstances, but...

Look, I definitely agree with you, but I generally agree with you but i generally agree with you but one thing you know alcohol yeah my whole life after i've had a certain moderate amount of alcohol i didn't want anymore yeah take it i'm the same i really want it but i know people it's never enough right and that i think is genetic and if. And if I was cursed with that, it's hard for me to judge those people, and I feel the same way about eating. It's not about a judgment, though. No, no, okay.

It's certainly not a moral judgment. I don't need moral judgment. I mean, just to determine what's going on. It's just an interesting thing. I feel that relationship to food and hunger and all that stuff is so i think that you're fortunate you have this great body as perriel told me you're walking in front of her but uh i'm kidding no you're sorry i'm so sorry as as we get older we really begin to see

some people our age i'm a little bit older than you they stay pretty fit and they look pretty good you know and other people they just they just blow up i don't think i could blow up like these people blow up i'd have to really work at it, you know? You know what I'd love to do? Yeah. I tell you this from the bottom of my heart. If I lived here, I would love to commandeer two hours of your time a day. I'm going to be back in April. I don't think I'll be in the whole month of April. I'd love to get a commitment from you to hang out with me for a month. Totally. Two hours a day, no. That's a lot of time. Yeah, but we'd write

down what you'd eat. You'd go work out with me. We'd walk around everywhere. You need to commit to me because I really would love to do that. Well, I'm going to be back in April. I'm totally... You want to try that in April as an experiment? We'll do a pre and a post. We'll come on the show. But listen, if we do this,

one of the things you have to do... A month be long enough but i don't know about your you know financial status or very good his very good so you should if you did that what you would want to do is you'd want to turn the tools of science on it like just get your blood measured oh yeah like get it you'd get everything measured and we do a pre and a post. Deal. My doctor will... I can get quick appointments for that kind of stuff. Yeah. By the way, just as an aside, I took a grail test. You know what this is?

No. For the cardiac? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So I had, in the last couple weeks, knowledge of three different health scares. All of them turned out okay. One of them was a very young person. Another one was my age.

One person found – she went in for a calcium test, which is like a heart test. To see if your arteries are clogged. I guess it's a level of calcium in the heart in some way. I don't know. But anyway, in that test, they found a spot on her lung. Not even the test that's the level of calcium in the in the in the heart in some way i don't know but anyway in that test they found a spot on her lung not even the test that's looking for it and it was the earliest stages of cancer they removed it she's going to be fine so i've been very paranoid about this my father died of cancer lung cancer my grandfather's anyway i went to the doctor i said what can i do to get ahead of this because too many people

are having these health scares and just by accident they're discovering them yeah and he said there's this new test called a grail test g-r-a-i-l it's an acronym and it tests for well you know like like 200 different cancers yeah and it tests and it can apparently detect the cancer so early even before a test for the cancer like through a scan or number, would even be able to see it. It looks for just a little extra DNA waste associated with a particular organ. And I'm waiting to get the results. That scares the shit out of me.

Are there any cancers that even detected at that precocious stage are incurable? Or they can all be anything that they might find is treatable? I don't know the answer to that. That's what I would have asked before I got there. I think it's inevitable. I mean, Spinoza says the freer the man, the less he thinks about his own death. So I think as you

get older, it's almost inevitable that you start thinking about this shit. Although everything I've read, as I've mentioned to you, but Noam, you disagree, that's at 60 and you and I aren't there yet, Peter, but Noam is that people start to think about, well, we're not too far away, start to think about death less.

They're less scared of it. The fear of dying is a young man's game. That's what I've read. It's idiotic. How can you think about it less as you get closer to it? Because the brain does what it does. The brain is not a logical organ necessarily. Okay. I mean, everything's on a curve. Sometimes the brain thinks

and does things that are not so obvious. So let me just say, and we'll get back to Peter. I think my particular life because I'm living a young man's life at an older age because I have young children. The rational factors just cause me, every time I look at my young kid and

I'm thinking about, you know, high school graduation, it brings to my mind, well, how old will I be at the high school graduation? Oh, I'm getting closer to death. So maybe if I wasn't living, maybe if my kids were out, if I was an empty nester and I had grandkids, maybe what you're saying would be true. And I'd just be kind of writing it out. But I really have things to live for now. And it's an intense desire for me to stay not just alive, but vital and robust and mentally healthy so I can run around. We just got back from two weeks in Japan. Have you been to Japan, by the way? Yes, your wife was telling me that. You loved it. Amazing. I heard it's super cheap now too. Yeah, it was cheap and just amazing. And I was very happy that at 62, I was the most robust one out there. I was the only one not complaining about the heat.

I was running up the stairs. I mean, I was really, I could still do it, you know? And I want to be able to do that at 70. So that's why it's on my mind. So you could be right. I have a very important question. Do you meditate? I do.

Okay. I'm an amateur meditator though, just to be clear. Okay. But like every day, because I have found that when I meditate every day, even if it's for five minutes, I have noticed a really big difference.

Why are you laughing? For any number of reasons. By the way, we were supposed to, you're committing. Her mic is way loud you you're committing to this uh two months if i can do it if i can do it i'm out of the country for six months and then i'm off for a year but i will be back in april you we were supposed to go take a meditation

thing together why are you doing that you don't think meditation works either? Actually, I'm convinced it does. The studies show it does. The people who take it or not, who say, who swear by it are not flaky people, in my opinion. A hundred percent. I have no doubt that it works. You just don't think it works for me. I just, I just can't imagine what you're detecting in terms of the up and down of your life. what is it what is periel without the meditation and what is she with the meditation it's i can't even i hold on we'll talk

about it in time okay but i wouldn't want to know the okay go ahead go ahead yeah go ahead i find that i'm a lot less anxious when when i met when i meditate um i wouldn't necessarily be able to detect that so i'm gonna accept that um but but it really like it's i'm much more measured kind of in like my reactions to things like i think that it really um i think i'm more focused like in my work and writing and just like. She's written two books, by the way. Yeah. In dealing with you, like I don't get just enraged immediately.

I just like take a moment. I think it makes a really huge difference. And I'm not talking about like people like Howard Stern and Jerry Seinfeld meditate for like 40 minutes a day, 20 minutes every morning, 20 minutes every evening. I'm talking even like five to 10 minutes a day. Um, well, as I said, I have no doubt that it works.

So Max, do you have that video queued up? Do you send me a video? That means no. I sent you, I sent you a YouTube, uh, link.

Let me pull it up now. Is it? So it, Peter has, Peter has his ongoing series. Now, what's the title of it where the people stand on? Oh, Spectrum Street Epistemology. Yeah. So I wanted to show the teaser to your latest episode about Gaza. I sent it to Max.

Do you have it, Max? Street Epistemology. And then tell us about it. The ad needs to play real quick. Yeah. So we go. Max, get an account, please. Please ad needs to play real quick. Max, get an account, please. Please get an account. We go all around the world and we do this and we ask people questions. Actually, last night we asked people questions about the morality of eating cats and dogs

and whether or not we can make judgments about moral communities because we're not having these conversations in our academies, right? We're not having these. We're not teaching people how to think, and we're not even worse than not teaching them how to think. We're teaching them that they shouldn't talk to people with whom they disagree. Make sure it starts from the beginning, Max, and then let's show it. The teaser is very good.

Everybody has the right to aggress back when unjustly aggressed upon. Max, Max. That's going to be. Just stop for a second. Rewind it all the way to aggress back when unjustly aggressed upon. Max, Max. That's going to be. Just stop for a second. Self-defense. Rewind it all the way to the beginning. That's 34 minutes. OK, this is the.

The intro. So, by the way, moments after this, the. So I think that everybody has the right to aggress back when unjustly aggressed upon. That's going to be. And then they. Max. Max. Max is. has the right to aggress back when unjustly aggressed upon. That's going to be unions. And then they... Max. Max is a little stoned. So I think that everybody has the right to aggress back when unjustly aggressed upon.

That's going to encompass your right to self-defense, your right to self-determination. If somebody unjustly aggresses you, you should be allowed to defend yourself. I think that also applies to governing entities like the Israeli government. I think that because they were unjustly aggressed upon on October 7th and countless times prior to that, they should have the right to defend themselves against that aggression that seems to be pretty unending. Ah, guy took a step to his left. Oh, you moved to slightly agree. Okay. What caused you to move to slightly agree? Clarification on terms?

Yeah. Okay. So they stand on those. They stand on those, Matt, strongly agree, agree, slightly agree. We go all around the world and we do this. We're out of the country for almost two straight years. And I just want to be absolutely 100% clear with you. They were pro-Hamas, not pro-Palestinian.

There were pro-Hamas demonstrators at UCLA. Yeah, at UCLA when we were there, we invited them over. They did not come. So this is not like we cherry-picked people. I don't know any of these people. I knew the guy, the other guy on the line. But that was the first time I met that guy. We go to parks.

We go to – we're going to be doing this in school systems here in New York City, actually. High school kids? Yeah. I probably shouldn't mention the name of the place yet, but all minority high school kids. And it's just a way to reason more clearly, to kind of calibrate the reasons that you have for your strength of your belief. So did you see how that guy moved? He moved one line because he heard something that persuaded him. And so usually, the thing that I found from researching this and going all over the world is that one of the reasons people don't change their mind is because they want to belong to a community, and they'll feel excommunicated or exiled from the community. And so you have to kind of take that away through this.

That's why Mormons send people to the door in twos, right? So one of the things that we do is we try to make it a virtue for people to consider different ideas and change their mind. But the fact of the matter is that there are some people, like the pro-Hamas people, they simply refused to speak to us. And even then, when they protested, they were all covered up anyway. Now, two questions. First of all, do you think it's easier for somebody to take a step to the left

than to say it out loud that you've moved me? I do. I think I do. I think there's something about the physical behavior that it doesn't have the kind of valence that the verbal behavior does because people will tag them verbally. They can make things stick with them. And so it's – the reason that this – one of the reasons this is fascinating is you can see the manifestation of belief change in real time physically. Like you can physically see people change their beliefs. Now, how many, uh, how many pro-Israeli people move towards the, the Palestinian side or the, well, we, let's see. I'm trying to think how many times,

I think we've done this three times, man. We had some bangers of people doing it. I'm trying to think, uh, I don't think I have a big enough sample size to answer that question. Would you have an experience or a guess as to what argument would be the most powerful argument to get an Israeli advocate to move towards the Palestinian side? Okay, that's a great question. So that's one of the things that we do. Once they go on the line, I will say to people, what would it take to change your mind? What would it take not for you to move all the way over, but to move one mat from agree to slightly agree? And then I'll ask them. So that's way better than me telling you. So I'll ask, okay, so what would it take to change your mind?

You can ask Noam. No, go ahead, go ahead, go ahead. Well, no, that's what I do. I just say, well, what would it take to change your mind no matter where someone is on the spectrum? And then I'll ask the other person, is that reasonable? Can you provide that evidence or reason? And then they'll have- Can we do that here, though? Can we ask somebody here to experiment with changing Noam's mind? But we're not walking around, so it's-

He needs to do it verbally. But I get emails. I'm considered to be a Zionist. Of course I am, but I'm a pro-Israel guy. But I get emails for some regularity from Jewish people who tell me that I've moved them to be more understanding of the Palestinian side. And I'm very happy when I get those emails.

I take pride in that because in some way it validates to me that I'm in some way – Even-handed-ish? Yeah, more even-handed than most people they're listening to anyway. I'm sure somebody could perceive me as not being even-handed at all. And it's usually because I've forced them to see the Palestinians as human beings, like in a way that they were somehow avoiding or they just couldn't do it. And yeah, no, he's right. You know, they're dying.

It seems like it's such a small, almost obvious thing that people would understand. But in the midst of all this horrible bloodshed and war, they do miss that sometimes, you know? That a child dying is a child dying, whatever it is. I feel like, in a certain way, it sounds like I'm trying to virtue signal. I'm not. I'm just saying I do get those emails, and that's what made me think of the question to you.

And I wondered if that would be what had made certain Israelis move. Yeah, I don't have a large enough sample size. I will say that we did it in Washington Square Park, actually, last time I was here, and two of the people, you know, one who had his face entirely covered, they stood there for hours afterward to the side,

and they talked about it, and that's one of the things. So I believe that truth exists. I believe there's a solution to that problem. I have no idea what it is, but I'll tell you one thing. The more you're not honest with your problem, the more honest, okay, let me frame it this way. Unless we're honest about our problems, they will not be solved. Problems are not just not going to solve themselves. And one of the ways that we have to

be honest about it is that we have to start having these conversations. I suggested to the university where I used to teach the dean at the university years ago that we have to start having these conversations. I suggested to the university where I used to teach, the dean at the university years ago, that we should have a conversation between someone who teaches police tactics and someone in the BLM. And the dean looked at me like I was truly out of my fucking mind. Like that, but, so we're not having those conversations in our universities.

We're not teaching people how to communicate across the lines. We're not teaching people how to kind of- Why did the, that is, that is so almost self-evidently a worthwhile conversation. I can tell you exactly why. Because the universities have become ideology mills, and the goal is to replicate the ideology. And so they start with the assumption... It's not a truth-seeking institution. I don't know if you went to college or... But when we went to college, it's not about seeking truth. It's about alleviating oppression. It's not a truth-seeking institution. I don't know if you went to college or not, but when we went to college, it's not about seeking truth. It's about alleviating oppression.

It's from the Brazilian educator Paulo Freire. I think I might have mentioned that last time I was here. But it's about disrupting and dismantling what they see as oppressive power structures, which we can talk about querying in a second because I think it's important, that there are certain entrenched norms in society, certain things are normative.

Heteronormativity, you've probably heard that, that heterosexuality is the norm. White power, male power, cis power. And so the universities want to disrupt and dismantle that, and there are entire lines of literature with really extensive pedigrees about that. How do we queer something? That's why I'm going to give a talk at Genspec in like a week or so, but it's the Genspec in Portugal. Oh, by the way, speaking of which, so every year at Genspec, Stella O'Malley is this wonderful woman who runs it. She's Irish. The WPATH, which is the

trans activist organization, Genspec always has their conferences at the same time. I think it's literally right across the street from it. And I don't want to say it's an imposing organization, but that would be fairly accurate. I think my pin tweet up until recently was, we invited the people from WPATH to have a conversation. I invited them to come on stage. The conference organizer invited them to come on stage to have a conversation. I invited them to come on stage. The conference organizer invited them to come on stage

and have a conversation. These are really important conversations, and they were having none of it. And I think one of the things that's important to understand is, this is so important to understand. If you get nothing else out of this podcast, besides don't tap from exhaustion, get this, is that the people who are in the orbit of the ideology,

they believe that the tools that we have used to construct society are themselves perpetuators of racism, sexism, misogyny, et cetera. So one of the tools, Aubrey Lord, the black lesbian feminist writes about this, the master's tools cannot disable or dismantle the master's house. Well, what are the master's tools? Reason, rationality, dialogue. They believe that dialogue is the thing that got us in this problem. So they're not going to use, they don't want to

have a conversation with you because they believe that that's perpetuating, that privilege seeks to preserve itself. It's called privilege preserving epistemic pushback. So that the powerful will never give up, the powerful will never give up, the privileged will never give up their privilege. So therefore, you have to kind of destroy. So back to your question. So the universities seek to disrupt and dismantle what they consider to be existing power structures.

List those master's tools again. PEPEM. Well, you know, reason, rationality, dialogue, discourse, epistemic adequacy. Reason, rationality, logic. Correct. If we ever find life on another planet, those are the only things we can count on will be a universal language.

That's correct. The only thing that we can count on that another species can't, will have to understand is logic. And reason. I'll throw one out. I gave a talk at the Ramsey Center in Australia a couple of years ago that I believe that the, and this is obviously rampant speculation, I have absolutely no evidence whatsoever for this, but I believe that any society that's capable of spacefaring, like high-level, sophisticated societies,

the way that those beings would communicate with each other would be through a form of Socratic dialogue. Like they'd have better questions that they'd ask themselves. So that it's not that, you know, they'd be like, I don't know if you watch Star Trek, like Klingons where they have, you know, 100 names for war. It's a myth that the Eskimos have, you know, many names for snow, but many words for snow. But

I think that there's something at very sophisticated or high levels of advanced society that has to have a kind of Socratic method. I could trace that out to you. It's like something begins in wonder, you formulate a hypothesis, you question or reject that, you question that hypothesis, and then you accept or reject a hypothesis. You question or reject that. You question that hypothesis, and then you accept or reject the hypothesis. Sounds like a sci-fi novel in there waiting to be born, if you're interested in writing it. Well, I think that's how demigods and gods,

if they were demigods, I think that's how they'd communicate with each other. All right, let's get to, just because we have to talk about it. The debate? The debate last night. I only saw pieces of it. We were doing the spectrum street epistemology. Well, what'd you think?

I only saw pieces of it. Anybody watching? But if you can lay out what you saw, we can comment on it. Well, I thought Trump got his ass kicked. That's from what I saw. That's what I saw too. It reminded me of Kim Jong-un had said, we're seeing the dotage of the dotard.

Remember, he said it's a taunt to Trump. I mean, Trump was just awful. I thought on abortion, the little clip I saw on abortion, he was on solid ground. He said it's up to the state. Harris said, well, you you stuff the Supreme Court in such a way that Roe v. Wade was overturned. And now there are states where it's illegal to have an abortion, even in cases of rape or incest. He said, you know, I think he said, I don't agree with that, but it's up to the states where it belongs. I think he was on solid ground there. Well, it depends how you want to judge it. If you if you want to judge it in the in the only way that really matters, which is the likelihood of winning a small number of persuadable swing voters in a small number of states, maybe literally 100,000 people in the entire country that matter here.

Yeah. He did terribly. In full disclosure, from what I saw, I thought Harris, I think, to be very blunt, I think Harris is an ignoramus. I thought she did. Absolutely. She had wonderful handlers whoever put it together moved her toward the center her policy proposals which she oddly enough just put out i thought they moved toward the center there was no intersectionality critical

social justice called you know woke ism nonsense in it i thought and you know you have to give credit where credit is due she did a good job it's not about a partisan thing you have to say she did a good job i thought she she she even the way she must have practiced that look like the way she kept looking at him i thought was really good but i mean she clearly from what i saw she clearly got his ass handed to him what did i speak for millions of people by saying the following the only way i could stomach trump is if i could just count on him being normal, just being measured and normal. His policy gut, I have no huge problem.

I don't want to see all the illegal immigrants rounded up and chased out, but I don't actually think he's going to do that. But in general, I just want to know that he can be normal. And with her, I want to know that she's not a left-wing lunatic. Well, she is a left-wing lunatic, and I don't think he can be normal. Right.

She did a good job of not looking like a left-wing lunatic. Well, she is a left-wing lunatic, and I don't think he can be normal. She did a good job of not looking like a left-wing lunatic. I completely agree. And he did a terrible job of looking normal. And that was the whole ballgame. So if a generic Democrat has a slight advantage over a generic Republican or over Trump in this election, she did a very good job of meeting the bar of a generic Democrat. And he did a terrible job.

Well, what did he say in particular that gave you pause in terms of his ability to be normal? He didn't respond to the questions. He got baited on things. He wasn't lucid in his thinking. He didn't question some of the questions that came in to him. He just wasn't a thoughtful person. First of all, it's

a tribute to how great this country is, that in a certain way empirically we have evidence that it actually doesn't matter very much that these leaders they sit on top of the country and the country is what's great. And unless the shit really hits the fan, they don't really—they say, we created 20 million jobs.

No, no. I create jobs, right? Look around. I create jobs. They don't do all that much. But the shit has hit the fan. Right. And it can again.

But I'm just saying, like, it's just interesting that you could say—you could see these two idiots are running to be president. Truly. And the natural thing is, what kind of country is this? interesting that you could say you could see these two idiots are running to be president. Truly. And the natural thing to say, what kind of country is this? But in a certain way, it also brings to relief just how amazing this country is. You can't say the same thing about North Korea. You might be able to say the

same thing about England or France. I don't know how much their leaders influence things. I heard she didn't say anything about anti-Semitism. Listen, know that you know how much their leaders i don't know you know influence things but but um i heard she didn't say anything about anti-semitism now listen like i said so what i was getting to is that in the old days not that long ago i remember obama versus hillary they were having a pretty intelligent debate about the minimum wage about the purposes of taxation is it should it be to to equalize should it be to equalize?

Should it be to raise money? I remember they asked Obama, what if raising the tax rate actually brings in less revenue? He says, I'm still for it because just on principle, I remember we used to have a high-level debate. There was not actually a single back and forth about any policy matter whatsoever. Not one.

And in my opinion, you guys are certainly free to push back on this if you want. The most important issue wasn't talked about at all from what I saw. And I looked online, the deficit. I want to know, I would have asked, I would have started with that question.

What, how much is the deficit? Give me a specific plan to get us out of the deficit. If I were going to interview those guys on the show, I think I'll put a tweet about this. I'd put a blank world map on the table and I'd tell them to get us out of the deficit. If I were going to interview those guys on the show, I think I'd put a tweet about this. I'd put a blank world map on the table, and I'd tell them to fill it out. Hilarious.

And a blank map of the U.S., and I'd tell them to fill it out. I've had the same fantasy. Give them a basic test. Give them a high school reading exam. There is no way they would be able to do that. And that's who we've elected as. I don't think that, Do all economists generally agree that the deficit is

currently... Most economists would go and say it depends, but the fact that it wasn't addressed at all is insane. Yeah. It's insane, actually. I mean, I've been tweeting about it. I mean, a few people, Musk and Peter Thiel and others are concerned about it, but nobody seems to. They're more interested in Taylor Swift's endorsement

or some other silliness. Now, much has been made about the bias of the moderators. I don't know if you saw, and it's absolutely true. The ABC moderators, they should be fired. Like, they're debating Trump. They're correcting him. That's her job. Yeah, but, well, I'm going to push back on you.

He should have said something. Well, I actually think this hurt Kamala. Like, to me, it was so obvious to anybody that they were on her side. She was doing so well. I'd be like, if I were her, I'd be like, shut up. I don't need your help. You're undermining me by giving them an argument. I'm tossing him around the ring without your dumbness.

If the election were held tomorrow, who wins? Oh, tomorrow would be Kamala. I think tomorrow. Peter Boghossian. There's a half-life on these things. You know, that's the thing. It changes. But that's the answer.

The answer is Kamala. That's the answer to your question. What didn't Trump do? Like, what did you, like, he should have pushed back on the moderator. And I mean, that's. Well, her first answer when she was nervous, which is human, and they asked her, you know, what's your plan, basically? And she had no answer. And he didn't

even have the, in the moment, where does it say, did you just hear her answer? She doesn't have an answer. The only answer she has is something she put on her website that they cut and paste from Joe Biden. He could have destroyed her. Any one of us,

or 75% of us, could have. Well, I didn't know he was talking about you. He could have been talking about me. No, he looked at me. Without preparation. Yeah, I completely agree. Could have driven her into the ground. See, I actually had the same thought,

but I didn't want to say it because I didn't want to, I don't know. But I actually had the same thought that I was, you know, when you go around the world, it's very embarrassing to see, you know, people. It's very embarrassing. But I will say, I think that two things. I think you're correct.

It is a testament to the strength. I mean, who is the leader, the commander in chief? Where's Biden? I haven't heard any. I know he's in New York last night, wasn't he? 16 day vacation. I think he's in New York today for the 9-11. Yesterday he was in New York, yeah.

Okay. Well, we haven't heard much from him. I mean, he's the definition of a lame duck president. But it's an embarrassment. And if you'd said, okay, of the existing candidates, who would you like to have seen in the runoff? Personally, my personal opinion is I would have liked to have seen the vague versus RFK.

Let me just tell you why. Yeah, go ahead. It's not that one has to agree with them. It's not that one has to disagree. But these are smart, very, very smart, very sharp people. I genuinely believe that they have a love of country. They have very different visions for how they would want to see the like the deep state or the governance of the US. I think it would have been a more interesting election.

I think they would have had what you talked about, Noam, when you go back and specific policy. I think they would have had wonderful debates, and we would have been proud as a people again. You travel a lot, and you're going to be leaving the country soon. Do you feel embarrassed to be American? I do.

I was with a buddy of mine, Lawrence Fox, and we were in Parliament Building, and a woman I never saw before in my whole life. Where was with a buddy of mine, Lawrence Fox, and we were in Parliament building and a woman I never saw before in my whole life. Where was that? England. Oh, okay. She walked up to me.

She was a parliamentarian and she said, I literally had never seen this woman in my whole life. She said, I was with my buddy Reed who's not here today,

but she said, he was here last time and I had the chair over there. She said, there was a time when an American president's word meant something. No more. And she walked away.

Yeah. Well, I have three, but I just have three letters for anybody that thinks being American is shameful. G.P.S. That's us, baby. We invented. We invented. Lock, stock and barrel. The whole thing uh no i mean the the machine of

american entrepreneurship is strong the spirit of america is strong but we we have a sickness in the country right now we have ideological capture of our our main institutions we have a deeply polarized electorate i mean i i could go on. We have deficits that no one's talking about. We have problems that no one's talking about in general. I am deeply concerned about our main institutions being captured. Legacy Media is captured, as you saw last night. Scientific American, ACLU, SBC, they're all ideologically captured.

And the reason that people don't trust their... The only people, survey after survey, they trust is their own physicians. The reason people don't trust the institutions are because the institution is not worth trusting. So that's what the postmodernists get wrong about things. They think that the power of the brand comes from the brand, but that's not true. The power of the brand, like Harvard, comes from the fact that they produce quality students. It's the brand, it doesn't self-perpetuate. So we have no trust in our main institutions anymore.

And on top of it, we have a distrust of expertise. I mean, we need experts to function. The society needs some kind of expertise, medical expertise, economics. So forgive me for looking before I was trying to find something, but this is my beef with RFK. I've tried to look up some of the smack that I've heard him talking about on the Rogan show, whatever it is, and it just can't be found. The guy makes stuff up or exaggerates stuff to a degree which I think is disqualifying and shouldn't be tolerated. And one of my beefs with what's going on, and this is also related to Jewish issues,

is there's just too many conspiracy theories out there. Tucker, Alex Jones, they go on Rogan, Brett Weinstein, Kennedy, and you know, some are better, some are worse, but they never turn on each other.

And they're all somehow, I used it last week, they're becoming innocent by association. And I think this is very damaging, very damaging to Jews as well. But I was on this song before October 7th, before the Jewish thing was really front and center for me. Okay, so let's talk about that because I think it's important. And actually, can I say one other thing before we – Yeah, yeah. Just put – let's come right back to that. In arguments, very often, I always look for the exhaust chute in the Death Star. Usually, in a good argument, very often with a good debater, there's a small pellet to a very small – that can blow up the whole Death Star, you know? And Trump didn't find any of them yesterday. I completely agree.

But I want to give one of them, which I think is really not being used. I couldn't find the exact quote, but it's there. Do you know that when they were pulling out of Afghanistan, Antony Blinken said that the Taliban has assured us that they're going to have more female representation in their governance. And if they are concerned with being welcome in the community of nations, as I'm sure they are, they will do this. And so public partnerships to have more women. And of course, more recently, the headline that women are being prosecuted for speaking out loud. The fact that this guy, that this government,

that the people with this worldview could be so fucking obviously stupid as to think for a second that the Taliban was going to start respecting women because they want international credibility. This is disqualifying. And that's almost all you need to say. Vote for her.

You should have advised Trump. Yeah, you should have if you can accept that trump yeah you should have advised trump on that right like there's nothing else you you can tell me anything else you want you're gonna have to explain to me how yeah you can have a guy like that in charge so but but if you feel that that's the death star then you're you're voting for trump well i i would vote for trump in a heartbeat if I didn't worry about his psychological impetuousness. And I'm afraid the guy shoots from the hip. And I like the idea of Nixon and Kissinger carefully gaming things out. I don't like Trump shooting from the hip.

Even if I do acknowledge that his hip, that's pretty high. Trump's hip is not a ridiculous gut. What about the fact that he's still prattling? But every time his gut instinct turns out correct, he gets more and more enamored with himself. And sooner or later, that number is going to come up and it could be calamitous. That's my only word. What about the fact that he still won't admit he lost in 2020? I mean, is that disqualifying? That's despicable. And in a primary contest, I would give that a whole lot Qualifying the No matter what their own guy did, they will rationalize it. This January 6th thing, all of it, as terrible as it is, it only really works on someone who can tolerate the policies of the other side. And that tends to be people who live above the fray, wealthy people.

You know, there's a whole group of people out there who, if you ask them this question, tell me a time your life has ever been impacted by any government decision. They can't think of anything. Like journalists, when has a journalist ever been personally affected by any government decision? Never. But an Asian mom, an Asian mom who wants to send their kids to college

and Trump is the guy who got rid of these preferences, but he did January 6th. But now their kid will be treated as a human rather than as an Asian when they're working their butts off trying to get to school. No, no, vote, vote, vote. It's tough for them because they love their kids.

And they say, well, I'm not going to sacrifice. If he can do this for me and my family, I'm going to hold my nose and vote for him. And I respect that. And you can spin that out if you believe that NAFTA or whatever it is, whatever the various issues regarding manufacturing and all that. But if you think my family is going to lose their job

under these policies and you're going to vote for the guy you think is going to keep the job for your family. So that's how I answer that. I give a lot of latitude. I don't like people say, that's disqualifying. I think that's almost always a bullshit answer. You can come up with a realistic scenario, a realistic

hypothetical, where that same person would admit, alright, it's not disqualifying. So the blanket is not disqualifying. The fact that Blinken said what he said about the Taliban is also not disqualifying. No, again, Trump is trying to prove that this group is not a certain does not

have a serious world view yeah he's talking about a rhetorical strategy for the debate yeah yeah so getting i mean you said a lot there we're on to something right off and i put a pause oh about rfk yeah i want i want to say so let's say that he said some things that are unsubstantiated. Wouldn't the best way to do that be to have him debate somebody who knows? Like, for example, on Rogan, you remember that guy, Peter Hotez? Yeah, the COVID guy? Yeah, they offered some crazy amount of money for him to debate, and he said, no, no, he's not going to do it.

He's too smart for that. Well, here's the thing. So he was already on Rogan, so he already moved in the public space it wasn't like he was a scientist who wanted his anonymity he already moved in the public space but the best way again it all comes back to enlightenment values dialogue discourse logic reason you know the the best way to to expose someone if if they're saying things that are false is through a debate. I personally like a conversation better than a debate. But you need someone who's sharp and with the analytical tool. That's why I said I thought it would be, if I were given my draw those of the existing candidates, I would say RFK and Vivek would be spirited, to say the least.

I think it's interesting what you said about conversations being preferable to a debate because nobody's doing that. Well, here's the thing. I believe that we have to nudge society to help, especially young people, think that changing your mind is a virtue. And right now

we think there are all these things in society, oh, he's a man of conviction. Every time I hear he's a man of conviction, I think to myself, oh, there's a man who won't change his mind in the face of evidence. So if you change, so when you debate that, you know, you want to win, you want to get your point across. But when you have a conversation, you can, you know, if you say something, but if I'm debating you, I'm going to stick to my point because winning is my goal.

Truth wouldn't be my goal. It'd be subsumed in that. The problem is, is so many people are invested. Their brand is invested in their position. They've written a book about it, for example, that they're trying to sell. So, you know, they're not going to change their mind. They have a book that they're trying to. Yeah, but what looks better? I'm thinking of Naomi Wolf. What looks better when you're in a conversation, you have a book and someone brings something up and you say, you know what? That's great. And especially if it's in real time, I actually wrote about this in my book, changing your mind in real time, people will respect you more if you change your mind in the

face of incoming evidence than if you, but they may not buy the book, but, but you, but reputationally you will gain far more because you will be someone who... And the reason what people don't understand about books is that your agent gets 15% of the book. You only get about maybe 90 cents on a dollar. Only 1% of books sell more than 5,000 copies. You don't make money from books. You make money from the speaking engagements. That's what people don't make money from books. You make money from the speaking engagements. That's what people don't understand.

So reputationally, you would be far better if you cultivated a reputation of somebody who's humble and sincere and willing to change their mind in the face of incoming evidence. But we do not have that as a social value right now. We are not teaching that in our institutions. Our academies have failed our children. You couldn't be more right, and it couldn't be more obvious,

because we all know whenever we do see someone who says, oh, yeah, that's a good point, we all say, oh, good for him. We never, ever look down on anybody. We always admire someone who seems to be ready to integrate a point into their— You and Peter— Humanly, it's very hard to do that. You and Peter think more highly of the individual, but I don't know that everybody else does. Everybody does.

I believe... I mean, not everybody. I believe in a debate, if Trump or either of them had the opportunity to say, you know what, you might have a point there. I'm thinking about that. Their approval, not the person who they conceded to,

their approval would go up. It's like, oh, that's the kind of person I want in charge. She made a good point he hadn't thought of. He oh you know maybe you're right yeah it's kind of reminds me of uh right after the biden trump debate uh the democrats put out a thing she could pull this up but he's probably getting stoned back there uh he he you know joe biden sunglasses like biden the clear winner of the debate or something. And I just remember myself like, wow, like no integrity, like no integrity whatsoever. And then I guess we'll close with this. So I'm heavily implicated or involved in this Daryl Cooper,

Martyr Made thing because I. The Churchill thing. The Churchill thing. I struck up a friendship with Martyr Made since October 7th. And I never met him in person, but I communicated with him a lot and I came to like him. I never agreed with any of his conclusions. He was very anti-Israel. But I found my conversations with him very worthwhile.

And he would stick to the facts. And he would acknowledge when i was right about something and he would make points that i found interesting and i hadn't heard anywhere else and i felt were enriching yeah so i kept my relationship with him and i defended him i didn't see this whole softness on hitler's side coming softness on hitler softness on hitler and i should be the title of the episode, Softest on Hitler. And I can't really defend him, although I think I have a more complex understanding of him. I think there's much more of a religious overlay

to what he's about than people are realizing, if you really read his tweets. Also, I've written some stuff about him, and he's answered me in certain ways, but he's never refuted my accusation that he sees the hand of god somehow that god is just not a bystander in jewish history in some way the jews are being uh having consequences for their dismissal of jesus anyway so so that that would speak to dan's point and that the best way to engage him would not be to call him a Nazi. The best way to engage him would be in conversation.

Absolutely. Right. That's how you change the moral mind. That's how you reach people. And I would totally defend you speak to him. He's, he's an interesting, very talented guy. However, he did duck a debate with this guy, Andrew Roberts, this the most eminent Churchill expert who did a Piers Morgan interview and really just seemed to just destroy

Daryl's arguments. I mean, it seemed that way. And then Daryl refused to debate him. And for the first time, I actually lost a different aspect of respect for him. I suppose Daryl could, in lieu of debating him,

simply point by point address all of the points that Roberts made. And I'll even go as far as saying I know that Daryl is actually sincerely shy, sincerely has anxiety. He's not... Oh, well then that would have been the perfect solution then. They could write it out.

Why are you making excuses for this Nazi sympathist? Okay, I have a sickness in me. I don't, like, it's so infuriating. Not your sympathist is a word, but okay. No, I have- I mean, like, I tell you I have anxiety and you're like, oh my God, be quiet.

You're being insane. This fucking literal Nazi is shy. Oh my God, poor thing. I'm saying that I had in the past asked him to debate certain things and I know that he's always reluctant to get into debate. Who

gives a shit? How are you allowed? Peter, can I weigh in on this? By all means. Do you know who Daryl Davis is? No. Okay. He is a guy you should have on your show. No question at all. Daryl Davis is? No. He is a guy you should have on your show. No question at all. So Daryl Davis is a black guy.

We do need diversity on the show. Well, I'm going to tell you this and you're probably going to think I'm BSing you. I'm not BSing you. And he's a musician by trade, but his passion is befriending members of the Ku Klux Klan. Oh, I do know this guy. Yeah.

So he has, I don't know, like a closet of 100 abnegated, like, I mean, robes of clans when he's become friends with them. The way, thank Jesus, the way to reach people, I mean, if you look at the older data of people who are more likely to accept homosexuality, for example, it's if they had a friend who was homosexual. If you really it depends what your goal is. Is your goal to understand the position and attempt to sway them to your position? If that's the case, then calling him a Nazi and just not talking to him is only going to entrench him in his beliefs. You have to talk to these people.

I mean, there's just simply no other way. But you will. But for sure, you will risk one thing. All of the people, you'll then be contaminated because people will freak out at you and your own tribe or side say, you shouldn't talk to him. You're bad.

No, no, no. It's fine to talk to them. Yeah, yeah. It is fine. But let's not make excuses and be softer on them. You're explaining why Daryl is not debating. I don't buy that. I think that's bullshit.

You think that Daryl's not debating? I didn't actually say whether it was or wasn't. I just think that it would be— I am so allergic to seeing journalists leave out relevant facts in stories, meaning a fact which if somebody, a reader said, if a reader heard it somewhere else, say, well, you didn't tell me that as well.

Like, I'll give you a perfect example. Everybody thinks that Trump saying go peaceful and patriotic is bullshit. He didn't mean it. Fine. It's very likely he didn't mean it. But you don't get to leave it out of the news report. Right, okay.

I'm with you. You know what I'm saying? Because it's not, you're gilding the lily. You're leave it out of the news report. Right. Okay. I'm with you. You know what I'm saying? Like it's because it's not, you're, you're, you're gilding the lily. You're, you're leaving it out. You're no longer reporting. You're actually leading me by the nose to the conclusion that you want. So I don't want to lead you by the nose to the conclusion that Daryl's afraid to debate. It seems like he didn't want to debate it, but if I know. Conveniently.

Yeah. But if I know that he has a history of of not wanting to debate in general and i don't disclose that it's dishonest in a way on my part that's all i think what's interesting is is that you can you had a debate or a discussion with daryl because daryl didn't want to um um what's the word i'm looking for? Repudiate? Whatever. Reject a friend because the friend has Nazi ideas that made him a mug. And you say, well, I

don't want to reject Daryl as a friend because he has these ideas. Okay, I have a question for you. Yeah. By the way, even if he is shy, he's in the ring now. That's what I'm saying. It's gotten even to the president.

He needs to debate this guy. Daryl is wrong here. Okay, that was all I'm saying. Jiu-Jitsu and you can debate. I mean, it's like the only person you suddenly get shy about and don't want to debate is Andrew Roberts. No, that's the opposite.

That's not the only person. You see how you did that? Okay, go ahead. Yeah, you're a trooper. You're a trooper. You're a trooper. Thanks. I'm going to ask you somewhat of a personal question. Has he ever had any animus or have you ever gotten

any bad vibes? You're like, oh, dude's Jewish. Have you ever gotten anything like that from him? On a personal basis? He's never met him in person. No, but I've never gotten the feeling

that he doesn't like a particular person because they're Jewish. What I get the feeling is that he's conflicted. I think that I could be totally wrong here. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That as a Christian, he believes in brotherly love. He believes in forgiveness. He believes they know not what they do. So he's charitable towards any Jew. That's one of my favorite lines. Ali aliyah ma sabachthani

for God forgive them for what they have done. I love that. But my point to you on that was there is something, and I know people make fun of it, like, oh, I have a black friend. But that is something. Of course. So there is something of course like it so there is something and i think you know some people just give you the heebie-jeebies and some people

they just like totally cool with like i was saying with your wife like i just liked you guys when you walk in some people you just don't click with some people you click with but there is something that if he's communicating with you you never got the heebie-jeebies and he's been cool to you too bad you don't know him in real life because you'd be better situated to make this decision. There's a there there. There's something there. Do you think Candace Owens could be accorded the same?

No. She is a fraud because she traffics in untruths. She denies. She obfuscates. Do you think she's capable of disliking someone because they're a Jew? Of course. I'm amazed by her popularity.

I'm amazed by her popularity. Amazed. We got to wrap it up. So the perfect example, Dave Smith, who's a famous comedian libertarian, he's a friend of the club, he's a smart guy, he's Jewish, he's not an anti-Semite.

He will not say a bad word about Candace Owens. Why? Because they're friends? I guess because they're friends. And I'm like, listen, you're breaking the back of your credibility. Okay, but real quick. So there's a difference between saying a bad word about Candace Owens and, to use your word, repudiating something that she said that you think is untrue repudiate any of her ideas okay well I read

I mean I'd ask him why again but that's the way you'd that's how you'd get to that you'd say in conversation oh why don't you repudiate her ideas I mean it's just I mean it's all going on about the Jews being pedophiles and Michael Jackson I mean she is full-blown she's a lunatic so much so that

Daryl Mart Martyr Maid, has referred to someone else as going, no, no, that guy's got nuts. He's gone the full Candace. Meaning he's saying she's too far for me. And he's not shy. He's also reputed, I think, Jake Shields. I thought you said he was shy.

But he will repudiate people that he regards as anti-Semites. Un-fucking-believable. It's such a blob. I'm just waiting to see how this all rises to the top when it hits the more widely respected podcasts like The Rogan Show and whatever the other shows are. Conversation with Peter Boghossian. Because Dave is a friend of Joe's and Marta May is a friend of Dave and Cand Dave is a friend of Joe's, and Marta Mae is a friend of Dave, and Candice is a friend of Dave.

And I want somebody to pop this bubble already. And you really did hit on it, and I tried to make this point, which is that you can be kind and like somebody personally, but still not have to hold your tongue about their vile views. You could try to persuade them that they're wrong. I want to add one thing to that, if I may. So if I ever disagree with people who, and increasingly all my friends move in the public space at this point, but I will always contact them privately first, rather than going on a rampage on Twitter or X or YouTube. Yeah, I'll always say, hey, man, I just want to make sure I have your argument right.

Am I missing something? Am I getting something? And I think that there's something that also maintains the integrity of the friendship while letting you hash out some differences. Or don't get in the ring. Oh, don't get in the ring. And that's the thing.

These people, they're not just private citizens. Like, I'm going to become a public intellectual. I'm going to make a living out of judging everybody and calling everybody out and calling you out when you're lying and when you're a hypocrite and when you're a liar and you do other things. But then you look like an idiot when you can't do it.

You have to be able to do that or you're in the wrong profession. And I don't think it's that hard, actually. I think they overestimate how hard it is. You can get away with it. And it keeps your friends more honest. They'll respect you more. Yeah.

And they also start self-editing. Like, we all do this, you know, like when we know the people who are going to be reading what we say and write. And I think of myself, well, what would Moynihan say about that? I begin to like channel their particular points of view. And then. What would Perriel say? And then actually it's not catering to them. Then that process actually causes you to find flaws in your own thinking.

For sure. That's the corrective mechanism that we talked about in the beginning again. They say that by the way you ask, if you ask chat GPT to approach something from a particular point of view, it will give you a different answer. And I've learned that myself too. One of the things, if you ask me how to get to 57th and 7th by car,

I will very likely give you the wrong answer. But if you ask me how to get to 57th and 7th by car, I will very likely give you the wrong answer. But if you ask me, can you figure out how to get to 57th and 7th by car, I will channel a different thinking process. I'll start thinking about the directions of the streets. It's very interesting, and I will more likely and more quickly get to the right solution. And I'm sure you can think of other examples like that. It's like asking me to figure it out, to use a different part of my brain than just the kind of gut response. Yeah, yeah.

So if I asked you- My gut response gets worse and worse as I get older. Yes. So if I asked you, why do you have this incessant need to surround yourself with raging anti-Semites, you would say? You do?

No, but there is something else. I know it's interesting. Okay. Interesting to, like, there's part of, not part, 95% of what I do in my life, the same way we talked about this last time here, is to enjoy myself. And I can't help it.

I find the experience with these people, like Daryl, very interesting and entertaining. I don't mean in a flippant way, like to be belittling it. I mean, it's a good way to spend my time. I like it. Yeah, I'll piggyback off of that. If all of your friends believe as you do,

you need to get a new set of friends because you just deepen your convictions. We talked about convictions. You just deepen your convictions and your beliefs. So it's good to have I know it's the thing, but ideological diversity. It's good to have people who believe different things.

Is there any limiting principle at all? I've got to get to that reservation. You're coming at 7.30. Oh, that's right. We'll wrap it up. Feel free to talk off mic. Or you could come now and wait. No, no, I'm good. That's right. Well, we'll wrap it up because you're late. Feel free to talk off mic. Or you could come now and wait. No, no, I'm good.

I'm good. I'm good. Is it close to here? Yeah, it's like a five-minute camera. Okay, well, why don't we wrap it up then? No, no, it's good. Well, is there any limiting principle to that notion of having friends that disagree with you? Well, look, so everybody has their red line, right?

Everybody has their... If I meet someone who... Violence is my red line. So if I meet someone who is a murderer or wants to kill me because my grandparents are... What about if they were a murderer but they served their time in prison and then came out? Yeah, I mean, it would depend. They served their time in prison and then came out yeah i mean it would

depend it depend on the time in prison and then came out as gay hilarious that would be rather odd uh it would just depend i mean you know it's an unsatisfying answer but it's a truthful answer is there genuine contrition what were the con what's the context what's the situation like horrible bludgeoning yeah i mean are. Were they on drugs at the time? Were they out of their mind? I mean, it just depends. So it is a forgivable sin under a certain... And what is your

red line? My personal red line? I have a lot of red lines. I think that a lot of... Micropain is a service. Only in the dating realm. I mean, a lot of people said, I'm asking this because I think a lot of people said that after October 7th,

they really lost a lot of friends or got rid of a lot of people in their lives. And so... Yeah, I think, well well as a general rule I think kind of that Pareto distribution is good you should spend more time with the 20% of the people in your life to develop and nurture those

closer bonds and closer friendships I mean like I'm not going to be friends with somebody who's homophobic for example oh I could really that's interesting could you be friends with someone who didn't like blacks no could you be friends with someone who didn't like blacks? No. Could you be friends with someone who didn't like Jews? I think that somebody who didn't like Jews probably couldn't be friends with me. Well, let's say they could. No. Okay. Could you be friends with someone who didn't like little

people? You know, midgets? No, that's horrible. Could you be friends with someone who didn't like obese people? No. you have so you're like these are all but these are all the same person like this is like a nat like a person who has like some like narrow view of the world of well what do you want to get what's the what do you get out of your friendship why are you friends with somebody i mean what's the point of a friendship for you i like to i like to be friends with people who are um kind and funny and smart and interesting and have good taste and like noam was saying that one of he seemed to be implying anyway that friendship was for entertainment purposes at least in part that he enjoyed conversations and debates and sparring

with people that he disagrees with right but that's different than being like a homophobe or a racist like what what who what kind of a person doesn't like black people or gay people or jews i mean this is like somebody who has some kind of like fucking sickness. What if they're amazing, but they happen to be like a pedophile? Okay, so for you, it's not the fact that they don't like blacks or obese people or whatever. It's that you think that that is-

Indicative. Yeah, there's something deeper, some deeper moral or character flaw there. So that's why you couldn't be friends with them. Well, I mean, the thing itself and what it's indicative of like i'm not sure be friends with a pathological liar no would you be friends with someone who cheated on their taxes interesting um that feels a little bit less um of course you could you know i mean it depends what do you mean by cheat like every

not everybody but yeah not me but many people might uh you know uh not declare something that they some earnings that they yeah i don't friends with a kleptomaniac kleptomaniac no come on that's like crazy like that's again that's like indicative of some like deep. So I'll tell you what Aristotle says. Tell me what Aristotle says. Aristotle writes that there are levels of friendship. Yeah. And at the base level of friendship is like, you know, someone's your cousin.

And then you have a tier up, like somebody likes to bowl. He likes to bowl. I like to bowl. So you have a common interest and then the the tear up from that is good conversations you like conversations he likes conversations this took me a long time to think about and figure out the truth of this in my own life the highest form of friendship is between two virtuous people i mean you've got to let that detonate because that's quite profound.

If you want, base people can never, there's a long history, you know, the Romans have this, Seneca says this, a lot of people, I'm interested in friendship, but, and I was writing a book on friendship until my agent rejected it. But base people cannot be friends. only virtuous people this all seems like very self-evident okay so would you want your friends to tell you the truth even if it hurt your family of course so would you want your if you were in a monogamous relationship would you rather your partner be i don't know if you're straight or whatever but would you rather your partner be, I don't know if you're straight or whatever, but would you rather your partner be honest with you or faithful to you?

Are those mutually exclusive choices? Yeah. Honest. By the way, just to get back to your previous question, she is in a straight relationship, but is not averse to a lesbian encounter. Go ahead. Thank you, Dan.

Thank you for adding that. It's really wonderful. That's a tremendous clarity on the conversation. That's great. So for you, I don't even know what to make of that. That was awesome. It was both awesome and demented at the same time.

But so, so, so for you, you, you, you value the truth. You value honesty. You value, I assume, integrity.

And you feel that if somebody doesn't like a person for an immutable characteristic or semi-immutable characteristic, like weight, you could never be friends with them. Yes. That's your limiting principle. Okay. I mean, I'm asking. I mean, I think that you've summed it up. But is there something wrong with that limiting principle? In your estimation? Well, I was just going to ask her if she thinks that's what her limiting principle should be.

I think that you've summed up my position. Yeah. I mean, I'm not saying that there aren't other things also, but I think that all of that is true. Yeah. Am I missing something? no I'm just trying to tease out what's important to you in your relationships

well I told you what's important to me in my relationships but sometimes when people tell you something it's just verbal behavior right that's fair enough so I guess the reason you're not friends with them is because morally you think being their friend is an immoral act or because being friends with somebody like that would detract i mean you wouldn't have a kind of quality of friendship really yeah i mean i'm i'm very

not interested in um like surface level conversations and like small talk we have every time we're hanging out who you and i or you guys hang out all the time okay no but i mean like in general like making small talk is something that i find really you have a painful no no it's fine i is really painful to me because it feels like a real waste of my time um yeah, I can see that. I don't give a shit what the weather is like or to get some bullshit answer when I say, hi, how are you? And you're like, fine, how are you? How was your summer vacation?

Would you be friends with someone who was stupid? Probably not. I could be friendly to somebody who was stupid. Could you be friends with someone who's significantly smarter than you are? Yes. Is it important to you that you're smarter than your friends? Or not as smart as your friends?

If you had a choice, would you rather be smarter than all your friends or not as smart as your friends? Not as smart as your friends. What's that expression that if you're the smartest person in the room, you're in the wrong room? Could you be friends with someone

who was unkind to waitstaff? No. Even if everything else was in place? No. It's gross. I don't know if that's like a friend thing, but like that's totally unacceptable behavior. Like if you're like dating, that's like a Sex and the City episode. What you just... But like, no.

Never watch the show. Well, it's pretty good. So could you be friends with the people that you've just uh listed uh you have to be more specific well say there's somebody that's terrible to wait staff and everything else was in place uh probably yeah i think i think my i mean it depends what you mean by friends but would you be mortified if you were sitting there with somebody and they were treating i mean it being terrible to wait staff is indicative of a much... Well, I mean, yeah, I would actually say, what's up, man?

And they would say, I'm insecure or like, I feel like shit about myself. So then it's like something to work on. You can at least... No, but that's a question. Like, would you be friends with somebody who is so insecure that making other people feel badly about themselves the very fact that they said they're insecure and they gave a reason for it means that there's hope that they can ameliorate that behavior right so so but they wouldn't say that

i'm saying oh well i mean well then i have a conversation with them like why are you being a dick to the way i mean i wouldn't say it like that but why why did you do that or and they would be like what i didn't do anything but you could say she didn't get my fucking drink and then and then i would say well you know there's a lot of people here and so it doesn't cost you anything to be kind to somebody and but did you see what i just did at the end i just waited i paused and i didn't fill in that little verbal lacuna like i just so i I do think that those are opportunities to reflect with people. But if you just a priori write them out and say, I'm not going to be friends with somebody, you're kind of denying that.

You're really, in a sense, trapping that person in a form of life, in a kind of behavior. I think the other important part of this is, are these people that you've been friends with for a long time or are these like new people? Some people get grandfathered in and you can't get rid of it. It's like, well, it's too late now. I didn't know he was a racist. Now it's kind of too late. He's already the godfather of my child.

I think that it is important to make allowances for imperfection and character flaws. And none of us are, you know, I'm not trying to be like the moral police here either. But I mean, do you have any friends that like you suddenly found out were like complete racists? I have friends that I found out are just psychologically manipulative in relationships. Okay, well, that's a person to end a friendship with. Like, that's fucked up. Yeah, well... It would depend on the kind of friendship you had with them.

Well, I mean, I think the word friendship in and of itself implies... What does it imply it implies loyalty and kindness and understanding and generosity of spirit and um in exchange of so i mean you know you want it to be somewhat balanced huh i guess i just i guess and fun funny yeah i guess i don't look at it like that it's it depends you know the other thing is it depends on where you are in your life too yeah that's fair so how do you see a friendship is just in terms of the if you can get good conversation out of it then that's good that could be good enough even if they have well i would like to think that my my best friends uh they're all virtue friendships.

I'm thinking of specific people in my life who I have, like the guy I mentioned, Matt Thornton. I think I have a virtue friendship with him. But is there anybody— But you're saying that there could be other levels of friendship where, okay, this is just a guy. We have some laughs, and I'm not going to look too deeply into his— Sure, like Aristotle's, you know, like he likes to have conversations. Maybe he's mean to wait staff but man he can talk about churchill or what have you or that we love to do bowling once a week yeah

i'm not talking about those kinds of you're talking about people who you text each other frequently and you uh so let me i spend like a large portions of time with would you consider as a litmus test for a friend that you'd be willing to lose their left hand so that they could live? Maybe a kidney is a better example. No, your left hand. Okay.

Is she your right hand? Well, no, but the reason that I use that example as opposed to, I don't know, anything else would be, that would be a pretty good indicator that someone was a friend. If they would give you their left hand? No, if some lunatic came in here. So if a lunatic comes in and he puts a gun to Dan's head and he throws a chainsaw on the table,

he's like, if you chop off your left hand, I won't shoot Dan in the head. Would you do it? Of course. Do you consider him a friend? I do. Okay. But I can almost guarantee you wouldn't do that for me i'm not sure we'll see how this conversation ends noam keeps calling me hold on one second what is he saying to you i don't know well then um she might because you

know to an extent you could argue that that she's killing you by you by holding on to her left hand. Only the people killing me are actually killing me. But yeah. Right, well. What is he, uh-oh. He just wanted to make sure that you know where you're going. What was the question that I missed?

Would I cut my hand off for you? I have a hand up to save Peter Boghossian. I mean, there's people that risk their life to save strangers, you know. They jump in a frozen river. I mean, to save dogs, people do that. Yeah. Are you a dog person?

Not particularly. You're a cat person? No. I'm more of a dog person than a cat person. Do you have any pets? No. Do you have any pets? I don't, no.

Nor do I want any pets. I did dogs at a dachshund for a couple of weeks. And I found myself feeling things I hadn't felt before. What's her name? I forgot her. Princess. Princess Jasmine. Jasmine, Jasmine.

Gilbert Gottfried's dachshund. Of course, I would. Of course. Now I look at dachshunds in a totally different way. Is he still around, Gilbert Gottfried? No, he died. A couple of years ago. Of course, I would let somebody cut off my hand to save your life.

That's very kind of you. Well, I don't actually have to do it. So what did you say? Just verbal behavior? Yeah, yeah. But yeah, I think it's true. People jump in front of moving cars to save people. Look at what happened on October 7th.

I think there's a difference there in that they made some kind of quick calculus as to the odds and thought they could make it. And thought that, but this is like definitive. You think that on October 7th, people- Well, I mean, because Perryrielle's, you know, I don't know what, she doesn't use her left hand all that much. How do you know what I do with my left hand?

I'm saying it's not like you're a pianist, you know. Maybe in my later years in life, I'll, you know, have some dream of becoming one. I guess the point is, like, to what degree would you be willing to sacrifice to a friend that you wouldn't sacrifice to an acquaintance that's why i think a kidney is a better example yeah why because there are like i have to my closest friends i really would at least serious can seriously consider donating a kidney to an acquaintance, I think I'd be much less likely

to do that. You have kids? I do. How many kids do you have? I have one. How old is your kid? Okay. Do you have kids?

I do. I have two. How old are they? I can't say on air because I don't want anybody to track them down. Well, how come you made me say on air? Well, because no one's out to get you. How do you know? Do you have people out to get you?

Do you know how much fucking anti-Semitic hate mail I get on a regular basis? How much do you get? A lot. What do they say to you? I mean, who cares? I barely read it. But bleep that out, will you, Max? Yeah. Max is on it.

He's getting stoned over there. Yeah. Probably not as much as you do, though. You probably get a lot more hate mail than I do. No, just because I think you're more... Well, I try to, like yourself, I try to ignore it. But, you know, I was literally physically run out of Portland by gangs of maniacs twice. I mean, from what I've understood portland has become just like insane so

i don't know if that says well now that i've moved i i i really from the bottom of my heart i want them to run the experiment of completely defunding the police now that i've moved uh i i hope it becomes a mecca a mecca for homelessness and gangs and drugs and violence. And I think that the people have to live by the, you know, they did, in all fairness, though, they did vote out Mike Schmidt. You know, it's interesting, real quick, in Portland, the Portland State University, these lunatics took over the library for Gaza, destroyed the Portland State University library, over $800,000 worth of damage, no accountability. They weren't't arrested this is my understanding of the story maybe subsequently but i don't think so uh and the president of portland state university

no problem she it's not her money what does she give a shit you know so there's no so the funny thing is that we lack any kind of institutional, like holding people genuinely accountable. The number of traffic fatalities has soared because every reason to believe this is directly causal. Ted Wheeler did away with the gun reduction task force. They're not killing guys like me, middle class white dudes. They're young black men killing other young black men. Nobody wants to talk about that. Every time you talk about that, you're racist. Okay, so call me racist, but then

the consequence of that is you have more young dead black men in our cities. So, you know, I think people don't draw a line, and I wish no one were here for this, because this is piggybacking off of what he was saying. They don't draw a line, and I wish no one were here for this, because this is piggybacking off of what he was saying. They don't draw a line between the people they elect and the policies that those people enact and how that affects their lives. And so, yeah, so I mean, I really, really, now that I've moved out of work, and I really hope they defund the police. I hope the whole place runs a large experiment, and we'll see how it works for them. And you hope that because of revenge or because you think that a lesson will be learned

that will then... No, no. Here's why a lesson will never be learned. Never. It's impossible to learn the lesson. Literally, there's something cognitively in our brains that prevent us from learning the lesson. So when the Stop Asian Hate, you know, who was it

who was assaulting Asian people? And we're told that this is white supremacy. No, people won't learn their lesson because they won't associate their voting decisions and the public policies we enact with the consequences of those policies. There's always going to be a boogeyman in the background. Like Douglas Murray says, there's not enough Nazis, so we invent them. So why do you want Portland to fall into the abyss? Just because you feel...

No, I mean, I think that the people have spoken and they've spoken clearly and they've defunded the police. They've defunded the traffic police. I think we should carry through that experiment and see how it goes. When I know when I lived there, I didn't want that at all because I was positive that that would lead to chaos and anarchy. I have a buddy of mine I play Dungeons & Dragons with. He was telling me he does maintenance in a lot of buildings downtown.

He was telling me that a lot of the buildings cannot get insurance permits, so they're going out of business. They can't function. They can't get insurance because of the vandalism. Okay, well, you know. I mean, I've heard repeatedly, oh, the reason that there's still problems, you know, they believe there are white supremacists running around.

They believe that the police haven't been sufficiently defunded, and if they were sufficiently defunded, people would then be forced to collectively organize and protect their communities. Okay. Well, you know, we test that hypothesis. I mean, I'm gone. I don't give a shit what you do.

Great. You want to test it? You want to eliminate the whole police department? Let's run the experiment. It's insane. Let's run the experiment. Now that I don't live there, that's great. I think that's a terrific idea.

But there'll be people that will be hurt by that. So why do you want this experiment to take place? To what end? Well, let's say that they don't do that. If they don't do that, who are they going to blame? I mean, 44% of the people in the last election voted for Mike Schmidt, the former DA. That's astonishing. Like, 44% of the people want to keep things as normal.

That should blow anybody's mind. Truly mind-blowing. So do you think those people connect the public policies, the decisions of their elected leaders? No, I mean, of course not. So again, okay, look, there has to be some system in a democracy. The citizenry have to be accountable for their voting decisions. They have to be. And if you don't like it, then you're talking about some kind of totalitarian system, right?

You're talking about something else. So I don't know. I'm, I'm, I'm, I am, I will say I'm not, I don't think it's possible that then people would associate with, even after the carnage and the chaos. I mean, look, they already haven't, the number of pedestrian, I wish you could pull this up, but the number of pedestrian deaths in Portland has rocketed up since the traffic bureau,

the police, you know, traffic patrol has decreased. I'd love to have a conversation with those people about why that is, but they don't talk to you. They don't believe in conversation. I mean, it's the same thing over and over again, but how else are you going to, what you tell me another way to convince people that they have to take the responsibility of living in a democracy and being a citizen and making informed decisions when they vote, what other way is there to do that other than making them accountable for the consequences? So you think that they will learn a lesson?

No, I don't. I think that they'll, bowling alone, he writes about this, I think what happens is that they'll move to other areas in which there are low civic participation. Oh, there you go. This is Portland. Traffic deaths and injuries to pedestrians 2011 to 2023. Let's see. Yeah, it's definitely higher.

This is Portland? Yeah. Yeah, let's see. Looking at these numbers, it looks like you pulled up Maine by mistake, you idiot. No, I don't know. I'm kidding. So let's see. Traffic deaths and injuries to pedestrians 2020.

Let's see. Yeah, 2021 2021 i think that's when they so it went up it went up from 18 so there there was 15 if you go back to 18 15 16 18 uh deaths and then when they defunded the traffic police it went to 27 and 28. And I guess that's part of 2023. So those numbers. And then if you Google gang reduction task force, you can look at those numbers when they remove the police who are responsible for taking guns away from people, because they found that it was racist, because there was a disproportionate number of African-Americans kids who were arrested. But again, as my buddy says, as Matt says, why don't people say that the police are harboring an animus against men? Men are overwhelmingly

responsible and incarcerated, the police are, but nobody says that they're harboring an animus against men. But again, it's just that there's a failure to reason honestly about these issues. And part of that is that people are terrified, terrified of being called a bigot. Like that is the worst conceivable thing to them. It's more worse than the number of young dead black men. And I read Glenn Lowry's book. You should have Glenn Lowry.

Yeah, I think he has been. I know he's a friend of Noam's. Yeah, that book is phenomenal. It's an incredible life story and glenn speaks very oh yeah i saw an excerpt he talking about being a crack addict or something yeah and he was his show yeah and his show is fantastic and like there's a guy who speaks with such gravitas and such wealth of experience but anyway i guess just my point is that we need to start being honest about our problems. We need to start teaching kids

how to think clearly about issues and not have, you know, Paul Graham on Twitter says, if it's difficult for you to think clearly about anything that relates to your identity, then you should really make sure that as few things become part of your identity as is humanly possible. All right, here you go. Thank you. Portland's homicide rate jumped 200%, 270% from January 2019 through June 2021, the largest increase compared to 560. And if you look up, if you keep going on that, we know that we

know exactly why that's correlated. Yeah. So you can read that article. You can post that article. Again, the victims we're talking about, you know, you need to break down and get more granular about who the victims are. But anyway, I think that was OregonLive.com. These problems are soluble. We just need to be honest about them and we need to ask ourselves, we need to have the tools to start talking to people again. Anyway, that's it. I'm going to go to dinner.

Okay, thank you, Peter Boghossian, for joining us once again. Enjoy dinner at Nobu, one of our finest Japanese restaurants here in New York City. Perrielle, thank you. And Maxwell, thank you. Thank you. That's it. Bye-bye. Thank you.