The Dan Bongino Show - Greg Gutfeld on Cancel Culture, Social Media, and his New Book (Ep 1311)

Episode Date: August 1, 2020

In this wide-ranging interview with Fox News’ host Greg Gutfeld, we discuss his new book “The Plus,” the pernicious effects of cancel culture, the future influence of social media on the country, and more. Copyright Bongino Inc All Rights Reserved. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

get ready to hear the truth about america on a show that's not immune to the facts with your host dan bongino welcome to dan bongino show this is another edition in the interview series you all know my next guest you've seen him host of the greg gutfeld show conveniently named greg gutfeld also a uh panelist on the five just about every day. We all love Greg. I'm going to get right to it. I always do these after I do the show. We get into a lot on this. Cancel culture. Mutually assured destruction when it comes to cancel culture.

Is social media a good or bad thing? All questions we get to in the interview, you're not going to want to miss it. Make sure to stay tuned for the whole thing. It ends in a bang, too. So let's get right to it. Today's show brought to you by our friends at Bravo Company Manufacturing. Bravo Company, or BCM for short, was started in a garage by a Marine veteran more than two decades ago.

They build professional grade products, BCM. They believe the same level of protection should be provided to every American, regardless if you're a private citizen or a professional. Now, what is BCM not? Well, they are not a sporting arms company. There are a lot of sporting arms companies out there. They make terrific rifles for hunting. That's not what BCM builds. They build rifles, hand assemble them, test them in America to a life-saving standard. This is life-saving equipment. They're the finest rifles on the

market right now. I can personally vouch for them. I have two. They have never failed me. Always on target every single time. BCM puts people before their products. They build their products because they feel it's their moral responsibility as an American company building life-saving products to provide tools that will not fail the end user. God forbid it's not just a paper target one day, but someone to do harm, coming to do harm to you or your family. BCM makes reliable, life-saving equipment, ladies and gentlemen. If you want to check them out, check out their YouTube channel, youtube.com slash bravocompanyusa. If you want to hear more about special offers, products they have, and see the finest rifles in the business right now, life-saving equipment, go to bravocompanymfg.com.

Discover more about special offers and upcoming news. That's bravocompanymfg..com and check out their YouTube channel as well. Bravo Company Manufacturing, also known as BCM. Go to YouTube.com slash Bravo Company USA. Check them out today. If you're in the market for a rifle, this is the one for you. BravoCompanyMFG.com. All right. Without further ado, a good friend, good friend, excuse me, Greg Gutfeld. All right, folks, listen. You know I'm not a huge fan of interviews because it's hard to find so many interesting people. I'm lucky to have today a good friend.

He makes fun of me on Fox and The Five because he thinks I laugh at everything, which I do. The great Greg Gutfeld from The Greg Gutfeld Show, The Five, and everything else. Greg, thanks for coming on the show. We appreciate it. gotfeld from the greg gotfeld show the five and everything else greg thanks for coming on the show we appreciate it i just wish everybody could have heard our conversation before this started they don't understand how much you hate doing interviews and what's interesting is i am totally with you 100 i when i was doing red eye i did everything i could to get out of interviewing people the way we should come up with a list with the worst people to interview generally actors are When I was doing Red Eye, I did everything I could to get out of interviewing people.

We should come up with a list with the worst people to interview. Generally, actors are the worst, right? Because they really want to talk about themselves and not about the project. So they're completely miserable, vacuous people. Then you have musicians who have absolutely no wisdom in the world. And all they're looking for is pots, which is fine with me. And then and then you have then your politicians who are phonies no no they're the worst and then they're the worst they're the worst then you have your talk show host friends with books who are basically you have to do it as a favor which is what like dan was like going like i don't ever want to do

this crap again but then you dm me i gotta do you and hannity now and it's it's but it's so funny because like it's the same i have the same problem we need a mutually assured destruction clause like i promise not to ask you to interview i promise not to bother you you don't bother me we just buy each other's book this is the greatest promo ever for an interview show. It's the greatest promo ever. I have to take that back. The worst people to interview are authors about books. And that's why when people ask me, what's it like to be an author? I go, I have no idea.

I'm just the guy who writes books. Don't even ask. This is seriously the greatest promo ever. But this is, honest to God, why I have you on. Because I think what, listen, your show is obviously, I'm not greasing you, it's been a runaway success. I mean, I think one of the secrets of the Greg Gutfeld show that people don't know is that you actually have a more substantial audience than a lot of these liberal talk show hosts, but it's almost never talked about outside of the trade magazines. Your audience is huge. And having been a guest on your show and knowing you now for a while now

behind the scenes, you really are like one of these guys who breaks the fourth wall down. Like there's almost no secrets on your show. And we do this. And Greg's not kidding. That's exactly what we were talking about before the show, how it's so hard to find interesting people in an interview, you know? So you know what I learned? And it's a good point that you're bringing up. So the reason why the Gigi show is good is because none of those none of we don't have quote celebrities yet everybody there is more interesting tyrus is way more interesting than

anybody jimmy kimmel has cats funnier than anybody jimmy fallon has and all the guests that we cycle through whether it is you know you or it's joe mackie or joe's hilarious whoever man he was hot the last time he was on. But just great. But it ends up being smarter and funnier than any group of celebrities. And I think that's why people like it. And also to the point about the fourth wall, I talk about stuff that happens that's embarrassing to

me the fact that i didn't know that cows could be male or female i mean no that cows can only be female i didn't i thought that they could be male and female and the fact that i thought that no i didn't know that i didn't know that also i was being that kingpin remember kingpin i got up this morning and i milked the cow we don't have a cow yes we got a bull remember that one that may not be the family for we may have to cut that one out folks just kidding we're leaving that one in i think yeah but you know what i also thought i also thought that veal was its own animal that's how stupid like i'm not like i have a problem that's good i have a problem yeah well listen we are here for your book you got important business to conduct because my audience loves you

i'm a big fan of you as well so we have this book out here i have a copy uh the plus self-help for people who hate self-help now listen because we're breaking down the fourth wall and greg can tell you this 99 out of 100 hosts will swear they read the book and they got a one-page PR sheet with questions to ask. I promise you, I actually read most of the book. I got through about 60% of it. Yeah, no, I did. I'm not kidding. And my questions are based on what I – this is not a PR sheet.

That is Dan Bongino's handwritten notes. So when I see you in person, I want you to know I put actual work into this. This is no PR. You impressed? Yeah, because most of the time I don't do that. I mean, I don't read box news books as much as I read other books because they're always like historical stuff. Like Kilmeade's books, I'll never read his.

Never read his. I had Kilmeade on about the Alamo. They his. Never read his. I had killed me. Number one. The Alamo. They are. He kicks ass. Are you kidding me? Every time I rakes it in, his,

his paperbacks are like number one. Yeah. Yeah. His audio books are number one. It's ridiculous. And he just walks around the office with a backpack all the time. And it's like, dude,

you could buy and sell us. Why are you here? But Greg, seriously, like you and him, very few people do as much. Like you do the five, you do the Greg Gutfeld. I mean, kill me. The dude doesn't stop working. Like it's ridiculous, you know?

All right, so listen, here's why I'm with you. He must hate his family. Dan, he hates his family. That's what it is. He hates his family. I'm going to have to ask him about this. Next book comes out, I'm sure he'll be on too. I'm crying here. All right. So I hate self-help books too. There's only two I ever read that I thought were really worth their time is The Road Less Travel, which like a billion people read.

And then the follow-up, The People of the lie was a great book, but most self-help books are kind of like stuff they know nobody's going to do. And it sounds cutesy. So when I read your title, self-help for people who hate self-help, I thought, all right, like I'm going to actually read this book and your PR person sent me a hard copy, which is good. I don't like like the PDF files. So why, what about this book? I know the secret. I've seen it. But what about this book is different than the traditional 12-step book here? Well, I think it's because I don't, I'm not a self-help person. You know, I worked in, I worked in like service magazines, Men's Health, and that gave advice. And everybody who gives advice are weird. They're just weirdos. Self-help authors tend to be really kind of creepy

when you meet them. I'm not, I don't consider myself creepy. I consider myself a normal person who wrote a self-help book based on kind of like this simple wisdom. I was, okay, let me back up because I wasn't going to write this book. I was going to write about cancel culture and mob rule, but I realized that I wasn't giving any solutions. And meanwhile, I was dealing with my own issues with cancel culture and mob rule in my own life. I was going on social media too much. I was screwing around on Twitter. I was drinking and tweeting. And I decided like, okay, before I do everything, anything in the day, I'm going to ask myself, is this a plus or a minus? So before I tweet that thing, is this a plus or a minus? Before I send that email to the five producer, is this a plus or a minus?

Or that snarky little comment to one of my co is that, so what happened? I started doing that and I started thinking, well, you know what? Maybe this is the answer to all, to the, I had like five book proposals and oddly enough, they all become kept, became like the chapters that I go like, this could be the solution for these problems I'm so obsessed with. And that's what it was. So it boiled down to like every day you got to make a choice. Is it a plus or a minus?

And it's basically providing top spin on your decision making. So every decision you make is just a little better. And, you know, just, you know's just i can't even i can't even describe my own book this is why book interviews suck and authors suck no no you i'm gonna describe your book better than you can because i actually have it that one of my handwritten notes because i actually read the damn book is you know to explain the plus because i gotta tell you like i read the chapter where you write about the plan. It's such a simple concept. You're like, you know, why hasn't anyone thought of this before?

Like, is what I'm about to do actually going to benefit or hurt me? Like this, this is not complicated. And yet I've never heard it explained so simply. No, seriously. Like you have this thing on the plus explain what that is, especially in relationship to booze tweeting, which was another question later. So I'll have to cross that one out. We got to that one all right yeah you know what's funny is it because i just never had this it's called it's just called um impulse control maybe a

comment in wisdom and maybe i never thought of it but i thought you know what plus or minus every decision that i make like okay so okay, let's say my wife, Elena. Yeah, I want she's doing something that's kind of bugging me. And so maybe I'll just point out this and go plus or minus. That's an easy one. Minus. Don't do it. And then you're just going to cruise along and then there's something else and you sit down and there's something on Twitter that pisses you off beyond belief. Jimmy Kimmel's saying something stupid and it's like, ah, I'm going to retweet it and I'm going to make fun of Patton Oswalt and all these losers. And then I'm like, plus or minus, I go, this is going to preoccupy you for an hour. You're going to check to see what happened

and then somebody's going to call you and say, Greg, get off Twitter. Minus. Skip it. Sometimes you can think, like you want it to if you think it's going to be a plus, you can wait. Like I tweet myself into an email and then I look at it two hours later. And if I still think it's funny, I'll tweet it. But it prevents the drunk. Go ahead. Sorry. No, I was going to say about that one.

It's really simple, but smart. So I'm fighting with Paula right now as my producer. Right. right so this morning she's now wearing her hands in frustration behind here's my my wife i'm sorry i love by the way your dedication to your wife wait hold on i gotta read this folks this is great this is greg's dedication in the book obviously the plus self-help for people who hate self-help make sure you pick it up amazon barnes and noble Noble. To Elena, is it Musa? I'm sorry, I don't want to say her name. Yeah, Musa. Some lady I know. That's the greatest.

So great. So great, too. But you're plus and minus. So this morning, we're in this battle, right? I did my regular show. Yeah. And we're about this speech I don't want to do or anything like that. So we're going back and forth.

And I'm like, okay, do I come back with some wise-ass comment right now? If I would have taken it now, if I would have read your your book before I would have been in much better shape right now, she's still mad at me because it was clearly a net negative to be a wise ass. So I just wish people would adopt your approach more often, including me. Do you know, do you know what's interesting? Cause you, you, you work a lot from home and i during the pandemic i worked a lot at home and so i had to do like i had to do like a zoom meeting about a month ago this is a great story about being married and working so i'm at home and generally when you're in an office you have a different tone a different set of tools so like when you're dealing with it and and your computer screwed up you talk to the it guy at I do, and not the best kind of tone.

And it's like, dude, I can't get this thing to work. What is going on? And do not tell me to unplug and plug it back in because I already did. No, no, no. You you block me out of my account. And so I'm setting up the Zoom call and my wife is here and I'm talking to IT and she was looking at me in horror. She'd never seen Greg. She'd never seen work Greg before. She never saw Greg work. And it's like, is that what it is? Is that what it is? I'm sorry. I don't mean to distract you. My wife tells me, you know, I'm in a lot of different businesses. Bongino Report, Parler, everything. My wife, I swear, she hears me on the phone sometimes. She's like, who the hell are you?

Like, what do you think this is? What are you, a prison guard? She's like, and I'm like, listen, Secret Service, get stuff done. That was her only job. We'll worry about the feelings and the cutesy stuff later. She was shocked. I know this story. My wife got up and walked outside, got into a car and drove.

And I think she might have even driven to Manhattan because she was gone for like three hours. And it was just like she couldn't. I think she discovered that she was married to like a Jekyll Hyde thing. The other thing that pisses her off, and I bet this happens to you. And also, I talked to Jesse about this a lot. When they say, stop talking to me like i'm a panelist or a host on your show do not talk to me like i'm on the verdict is in paul has been vindicated she says the same thing i'm not a panelist on the five it's on bon williams

you don't need to debate me it's not we're courtroom, dude. Do you know what's so funny? I believe that the skills that you use on a panel are actually good for a relationship, but nobody agrees with me. Because if you're arguing with your wife, you want to pretend that you're her lawyer when you're arguing. So you're trying to make her argument better, but it doesn't work it doesn't work so it's like you just have to shut up plus or minus and then do that little trick and then it'll become almost instinctive but it's so funny we all have the same problems and it's uh but i think the work thing is the same for all guys who are working at home right now in the pandemic their wives or actually i should reverse it their husbands and the work when the wife is working you see her working and that's interesting too so it's it's kind of like I didn't know this person is it might even be more attractive I know it's less attractive for my wife to see me work no

it's definitely attractive for her she says she hates it when I gotta crack the whip at some of the companies we run she loves it I had some good date nights. Oh, ferocious. Fourth wall, I'm sorry. But after that, she's like, this is crazy. She said she doesn't like it, but I know she likes it. She definitely likes it when a boss mode comes out. All right, listen, there's more about your book though. Again, folks, pick this up. The Plus, Greg Gutfeld, self-help for people who hate self-help. Greg with one of his funny looks on this. You know, the book is, I know we're talking about it and we're kind of joking, but you have a lot of really good stuff in there. That's, I think, deeper than you'd let on. You don't want to scare people by pretend that it's like a philosophical, but some great stuff.

You talk about this and I've heard you say this on The Five quite a bit. The prison of two ideas. And gosh, Greg, has there ever been a time in human history where this trap is more evident? I mean, right now it's either shut down the economy or you want people dead or lockdown schools forever, or you definitely want teachers dead. Can you explain this? Cause I get really sick of hearing this. Also, the other one is you want, uh, uh, you either, you want to punish protest. You want to, you want to hurt peaceful protesters. What's the other side of that prison? If you if you want justice or law and order, screw it. I'm going to go to the ones you use because they're better. The prison of two ideas

means there's only two there's only two stances in an issue. You either love the environment or you're for nuclear power. You can be for nuclear power and love the environment. So they keep dividing it. I'm trying to think, like, you could, okay, this one, you can be for peaceful protesting and want law and order. But what they say is, if you want law and order, you are going to be violent against peaceful protesters. No, you want law and order and you want going to be violent against peaceful protesters. No, you want law and order and you want to bear it out the violent people and protect the peaceful protesters. So the prison of two ideas makes it impossible for us to have a discussion because it immediately demonizes your opinion, puts it in a prison and says, oh, you want to open up the economy and people are going to die. And it's like,

no, we can open up the, we can have both. We can open up the economy and save lives. There's going to be a risk, but so the prison of two ideas is designed to get us to argue with each other instead of cooperate. You know, this is the power of economics and not to kind of get off track, but, you know, studying economics is my passion my whole life. And, you know, economists, what's the old joke? You know, you need a one armed economist because they'll always tell you on one hand that they'll never give you an answer. But the benefit to economics is that always couch an answer is it does force you to weigh cost benefit in a way it's not black or white. Like nobody says to you, I use the example all the time, like, you know, in the winter,

nobody ever says to you, hey, it's heat or no heat, brother. That's not it. Everything's about the margin. How much heat do you want? But nobody says that with these lockdowns now. It's your exact example of the prison of two ideas where if you say, if you dare open your mouth and say to someone, Hey, you know, we locked the economy down. People are killing themselves. We're seeing high school

kids drugging themselves and committing suicide. Redfield said it yesterday, the CDC doc, you know, we're seeing kids losing a year of education. Have you weighed this? You want someone you, bro, you definitely want people dead. And you're like, was that not a fair question? And it's a mechanism to shut you down. You know, I mean, one more thing. I mean, it's your interview, but I noticed this happened to you. Well, it happens a lot. You would media matters.

You said something on the five where you were just couching an answer and weighing both sides. And they were like, God felt like wants this guy dead. And I saw you like erupt on this loser piece of garbage who I then piled on. but that's kind of what you're talking about right yeah you know what's funny is you you make you make you started out with the idea of economists that that is what is lacking a lot of most of the most of these thinkers are

very shallow in their skill set anybody who's got an economic background or likes economics understands cost-benefit analysis, and it exists everywhere. It's everywhere. But like, okay, celebrity, movie stars, musicians, reporters, if they're not in economics, have none of this skill set. They can't do it. They weren't it in school but you made you remind me of another another another theory i came up with it's called uh game over theory where like in the old video games when the story development was really short the games didn't last long it didn't matter if it didn't have memory when you when you died in the video game you just started over right yeah you started over now with new video games it, the story of development is so long that you have to save because you don't want to start over the next day. The way they talk about the pandemic and about the riots and about Trump, it's game over every day.

They start over with the same talking points as if you've never talked about it. So Trump's tweeting, oh, my God. Yes, it's been 40 years. We're on chapter eight now. You're still in the preface. And also it's like the pandemic. We are just let's say you're talking about going back to school. Someone will say, well, we just have to make sure that the children are safe. And it's like, OK, so we've moved on from that. Like in their head, it's always at the end of the day, the gate, the chalkboards erased. And they start over with the same argument which is oh we need to worry about the children it's like we've already incorporated that into the cost-benefit analysis you moron and it's also with um non-violent protests versus violent protests the first

their first argument is the last one you know what everybody has a right to freedom of speech yeah i know but we're talking about the looting and the burning and the arson. I know. But the mostly peaceful protesters, they have a right to speak. I know. the hill every day. That's what happens when you're a conservative or a libertarian. You have to start over every day with these people. And I don't know if they know they're doing it, but they're stupid. That's a great analogy. It's a great analogy. Folks, we're talking to Greg Gutfeld, an author of a book I got through in a couple hours. It's really terrific. It's called The Plus. Greg Gutfeld, there it is right there. Amazon, Barnes & Noble, bookstores everywhere. We're going to take a quick break. We'll be right back with Greg Gutfeld. Today's show brought to you by NetSuite. Listen, the last few months have taught us what's really important in life. It also taught us what we need

to eliminate or change. It's no different for business. What are the changes you need to make now? Do you have a hairball of multiple software systems not talking to each other when you could streamline your business systems with just one? All you need is NetSuite by Oracle. It's the world's number one cloud business system. Finance, HR, inventory, e-commerce, everything you need in one place. Saves you time, money, and headaches. Whether you're doing a million in sales or hundreds of millions, NetSuite gives you visibility

and control. You can manage every penny of your business with precision. Join over 20,000 companies who trust NetSuite to go faster with confidence. NetSuite surveyed hundreds of business leaders. They assembled a playbook of the top strategies they're using right now as America reopens for business. Get your free guide today. Seven actions businesses need to take now and schedule your free product tour at netsuite.com

slash Bongino. Don't wait. Get your free guide and schedule your free product tour at netsuite.com slash Bongino. Don't wait. Get your free guide and schedule your free product tour right now at netsuite.com slash Bongino. Netsuite.com slash Bongino. Go today. Today's show is also brought to you by our friends at ExpressVPN. You've heard me mention them at the beginning of every show. You know why? Because you know you got cancel culture on social media sites. You know, you got all this stuff out there. The left wants to silence you, boycott voices they don't agree with. Twitter, Facebook, there's supposed to be open platforms, but you don't need them watching you all the time. It's not an op-ed column on the New York Times. What does it have to do with ExpressVPN? Well, instead of letting these social media sites

cancel your right to free speech, how about canceling them instead? Now you can just deactivate all your social media accounts, but you don't want to do that. That's what they want. Instead, use ExpressVPN. Why? Because ExpressVPN has free to access sites, you know, like Facebook. You know how they make their money? By tracking your searches, video history, and everything you click on. Don't you think it's weird? They seem to know what you're going to do before you do it, and they sell your valuable data. Not with ExpressVPN, they don't. Because when you use it, it anonymizes much of your online presence by hiding your IP address. It makes your online activity more difficult to trace and to sell to advertisers. Come on,

this is an easy call. ExpressVPN couldn't be easier to set up. You tap one button on your phone or your computer, and you're protected. ExpressVPN also encrypts 100% of your data to protect you from hackers and internet bad guys. Don't wait. It's finally time to say no to censorship and take back your online privacy. Don't wait another day. Go to expressvpn.com slash Bongino. We're proud to have him as a sponsor. Go to my special link. You'll get an extra three months of ExpressVPN service for free. Again, that's expressvpn.com slash Bongino. Expressvpn.com slash Bongino. Protect your online data from prying eyeballs today. Expressvpn.com slash Bongino. Now back to my interview with Greg Gutfeld.

All right. I want to welcome back Greg Gutfeld, author of the really fantastic new book, The Plus. Please go pick it up. Support great. It's a really good book. You'll zip through it really fast. A lot of great insights. Greg, one of the things you talk about in the book that you bring up is this cancel culture. You get into it. And I heard you on Tucker the other night and you had a little bit of a disagreement with Tucker about the cancel culture. And I'm with you on this. A hundred percent have been told I'm a mad, mutually assured destruction guy. If the left is going to say tweets you sent out when you were 14 are applicable now when you're 47 or whatever they are, and there's no apologizing and no redemption, then those are the rules and those rules apply to you. And when they apply to you, you'll get how stupid they are.

Tucker seemed to disagree a little bit. If you could elaborate on that. stupid they are. Tucker seemed to disagree a little bit. If you could elaborate on that. Yeah. And I think the reason why Tucker disagrees is he's so far removed from social media and it's amazing. He doesn't care. He doesn't care. And he doesn't give a damn. It's like, if they come after him, he's like, I don't care. And like, you know, maybe somebody will tell him about it later, but I don't think he even, he's even aware of it. If you're living in this in this other world, you're on it, I'm on it. We know that you can get ruined. And anybody could do that. I, I believe that every I believe that we should all be sharing the risk. So we make it costlier for these losers. But at the same time, I realized that's not enough. And we need a mutually assured destruction. I love Scott Adams had the idea of like, if

somebody is trying to get you fired from your job, you should be able to try to get them fired from their job. So you need to find me like there has to be a transparency when somebody's coming after you to find out where they work and then call there and then have people call there because if they have skin in the game, they're not going to do this. And to your point, mutually assured destruction makes sure they have skin in the game, they're not going to do this. And to your point, mutually assured destruction makes sure they have skin in the game. And that's what's missing. By the way, did you notice like every problem in life is based on people not having skin in the game? I was thinking about the COVID stuff.

All the people that are criticizing Trump never were criticizing him in the beginning. They didn't take any risks in making practical advice. Pelosi never said anything. The left didn't say anything. So now how dare they have criticism when they didn't have any skin in this? And you think about the mobs. I mean, it's like the people that are don't worry about the violence, don't live in those cities. You know, it's like they're not like when I was talking about what happened in my neighborhood, it was there were people that were like, so what? And it's like, cause I don't have any skin in the game. I saw that segment on the five when you, I think it was one you were, and I gotta tell

you, you know, you're always kind of, you, you, you laugh a lot, you know, but sometimes you get really fired up and I saw it. I mean, kind of, you know, knowing you pretty well, you were, that was legit. Like you were really pissed. Like, don't tell me this isn't happening. Like we can debate and talk. That's what this show is about. But don't suggest to me that I live in the city that's being now... I mean, you were really pissed. And on your skin in the game, Nassim Taleb has a book

called Skin in the Game. And he brings up how the Hammurabi codes and stuff where if you built a house and it collapsed, you were forced to live in the same type of house or something. And believe it or not, those houses were built pretty damn good. And I think you're right. These people out there on Twitter, they feel like, oh, I'm insulated by my liberal label and no one will come after me. And I agree with you a thousand percent that once these rules start to take out some of their people by these ridiculous rules, we all know are stupid. They realize the damn rules are stupid. Hey, can I ask you a question?

Of course. Do you have a hard time reading Taleb? I have like three of his books. And I know this is off topic. No, I think my audience loves him. He has the weirdest style on Twitter. Do you ever read his tweets? Yes, his tweets are insane. He's an weirdest. He has the weirdest style on Twitter. Yeah. Read his tweets. Yes.

His tweets are, he's, he's a, he's an angry guy. But the thing is like, as you know, with the conversation you and I had before the show, I'm an angry guy too. So I like that about Taleb. If you go after Taleb on Twitter, he'll eviscerate you forever and he'll never let it go. He'll talk about it for 20 years and he'll never forget it. and he'll never let it go. He'll talk about it for 20 years and he'll never forget it. But his book, The Black Swan is just a work of genius. Like I've never seen. I mean,

he had, he did this like longitudinal look and I guess he figured all these successful people had to have this one thing in common and he couldn't find anything except for the fact that they all collected opportunities whenever they could. They went to these cocktail parties and eventually they just met someone and his conclusion that a lot of this is just luck you made yourself was just genius. But it's interesting because he's obviously a deeply philosophical guy, even though he comes off kind of angry on Twitter. But like I said, your book has a lot of this stuff in there. I want you to downplay. You make another point, speaking of tying to your book, even though you make it in kind of an easy to relate to fashion, Greg's book, again, The Plus, available now, go pick it up, folks. You make this point, I love Joseph Schumpeter, who always said capitalism was going to kind of

sow the seeds of its own destruction, because it's so successful of a system when allowed to flourish that people start to notice things. You write this in your book in almost the exact same way, that this is why these Twitter mobsbs work because we're so successful. Nobody's worried about food. Our biggest problem is obesity. We're just too fat. We eat too much. Nobody has to work on a farm 12 hours a day. I mean, even, you know, it's just, you know, you're not forced to do it. And you make this brilliant point that this is why Twitter mobs work because a lot of these kids are so damn bored and have nothing to do. So they just join a damn Twitter. It a great point yeah it is i think almost like ambivalence and boredom are the biggest villains in in young life i mean it's like when you see especially now you see the

the twitter mentality by the way has trained them to think that this kind of rage over little things or anything is now natural behavior. And so now they're on the streets. And now you see these gender, these gender warriors, let's say that, call them social justice gender warriors, where it's mostly men who now identify as women. And they're almost all white, which is interesting. These Black Lives Matters, the most agitated, violent people are white, which I find hilarious and sad. But anyway, beyond that, they now it's now kind of created almost like a mental illness or or let's say a mentality where they're in constant rage. They're in constant rage and they can't stop. And I think it's from out of boredom. They don't have, maybe they don't, maybe they don't have a

skill set. Maybe they don't have much of a future. And I don't want to give them an excuse, but maybe they have got to get everything in life. They're never going to have to worry about anything except will they have a livelihood or a career that they're proud of, but they took gender studies, right? They don't have a career that actually could create wisdom and gratitude and achievement. If you're in academia and doing nothing but social justice, all that's left for you is to scream into the void on Twitter or towards a federal building in Portland because you have nothing else. It's like they've created this. This boredom creates this world that they're now trapped in and they think it's real. And it's actually a threat to us, which is sad.

You know, one of the things you bring up in the book too is their never-ending search to find things to be pissed off about. Now, Greg, you and I are reasonably smart. I mean, listen, I'm no Stephen Hawking, but we get the idea. Like if you're genuinely outraged, you shouldn't have to find a subject to be out, right?

Like if someone kicks you in the cojones, you're pissed off. You don't need to, wait, am I outraged about this? Like that's the interesting thing about outrage cultures they're so bored they have to find stuff the perfect example is the redskins like when you ask native americans about the redskins nine out of ten are like yeah it's great it honors the red you know it honors our hair whatever it is it doesn't bother

me at all so only one out of ten actual native americans is even remotely offended about this and yet you're right you've got some 18 year old, snuggie wearing, s'mores roasting kid living in mama's basement with no job, never gotten his hands dirty in his life, has never had to work on a farm

to actually feed himself like real men do. And he's like, the Redskins, I'm furious. I'm furious. And go ahead. You know what?

This is like, everybody keeps making fun of women calling them Karen. I was one of them. But most of the Karens, it's not a gender thing. I feel like it's almost just an exclusively white leftist thing. And they are the ones that are making a big deal over things. culturally appropriating black lives matter and black lives matters knows this so that so i do believe that in black lives matters there are authentically upset people and i've seen them yelling at white leftists telling them shut up yeah stop throwing that crap and it's there's you see these videos now more on twitter uh black women screaming at like white leftists taking like

when they were looting taking stuff from them and going, knock it off. I love that. I also love on Twitter. I love on Twitter when people, um, in your, in the outrage theater, when they tweet, I'm shaking. No, literally shaking. They say literally, literally shaking. They're literally shaking. No, you're not. You're not shaking. You're not shaking. You're literally shaking. If you were in a car accident or a 9.0 earthquake or, you know, or, or a home invasion, you are not literally shaking because a comedian made a joke on Twitter. You jackass. They are jack wagons. All right. Listen listen i know you got to run you you got a ton of shows i did one more question for you it's an interesting one of the podcasts i like econ talk

by russ roberts it's terrific it's these hour-long long-form interviews but he had a guy on uh he was from cuba he worked for the cia his name was martin gurry and he was talking about how initially the printing press you know during the 30 years war everybody said the printing press is so horrible people got to see religion and print for the first time. There's this 30 year war. All these people died. It was awful. I bring that up because a lot of people, I think you and I agreed are like, sheesh, what's the point of Twitter, man? This thing just sucks. Like the world is a big net negative because of Twitter right now. My question, right? Do you think they'll like the printing press that maybe this is just the short term thing and in the long run, maybe the exchange of information will make us better or are we really just doomed?

I hope so, because there's like some real promising things here. For example, the idea of the world becoming a hive mind, which means we might be able to solve things a lot faster when you've got billions of heads involved in finding a cure for something. Remember, looking at cures for disease before everybody's working together, that would take years. It could be the vaccine. Looking for a vaccine might actually be faster when you have this hive mind, when you've got all these people interconnected. I hope that's the case. But we are living in an experiment right now. We are literally, literally, we are living in an experiment with social media. We are the lab rats. We don't know how this is going to go. That's going to be interesting. Yeah. I mean, one of the things in your book, again, folks, the plus, and we'll wrap it up here. You give an example in the book about this very

phenomenon on Twitter, where you talk about Megyn, former colleague at Fox where the whole blackface episode, which you just mentioned and asked the question, like, was this at one time acceptable in our history? And yet you have the governor of Virginia. We don't know if he's the Klansman or the blackface guy. We still haven't figured that out. And he's still in office.

And you're like, like, how is this legit on Twitter? How is this a legit argument? You were outraged about Megan Kelly and you don't give a damn about kuklux klan or a blackface guy she wasn't even wearing anything she just said kind of like a silly thing and then all of a sudden the world explodes he's still he's still operating and he got i mean he got away with it and the same thing with like i still love the kimmel on hiatus story which is like he knew the basketball pick was going to come out, and all this

other stuff was coming out. And he's like, yeah, then he goes, I'm going to go on vacation. I'll be back in September. And it's like, wow. I can't do that. You can't do it. I can't do that. We get canceled. No, you got to handle that like Jesse did the other day on the five, where you

announce in advance, if you think there's going to be a scandal, you're going up before it breaks. That right? Jesse did that on the five the other day on the five, where you announce in advance, if you think there's going to be a scandal, you're going up before it breaks that, right? Jesse did that on the five the other day. I'm going to Maine. So if anything, you're brilliant, brilliant move. Greg, listen, thanks for joining us. I know you got to run folks. Pick his book up now. The plus by the great Greg Gutfeld, better than expected. Always hilarious. His book, you'll get through it in a couple hours. Please support this man. He deserves it. Greg, thanks a lot. I know you got to run.

Thanks, buddy. Yeah, appreciate it, pal. See you soon. Take care.