The Joe Rogan Experience - #1139 - Jordan Peterson

Episode Date: July 2, 2018

Jordan Peterson is a clinical psychologist and tenured professor of psychology at the University of Toronto. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCL_f53ZEJxp8TtlOkHwMV9Q All Dr. Peterson’s self-improvement writing programs at www.selfauthoring.com 20% off for Rogan listeners. Code: ROGAN

Five, four, three, two, one. Hello, Jordan Peterson. Hello, Mr. Rogan. How are you doing? You look very spiffy today. Thank you, sir. This is a new look for you. You've been rocking these a lot, these big, gigantic, what do you call those things, these concerts that you guys are doing?

What do you, speeches? Well, lectures, discussions is really what I think of them as. Yeah. Because I'm discussing, I mean, you might think it's kind of perverse to be discussing with a 3,000 person audience, but it's not because if you pay attention to the audience, they're constantly, and the individuals in the audience, they're constantly providing feedback. So it's a discussion as far as I'm concerned. Feedback in applause, laughter, sometimes they shout things out too, right? Shuffling.

Shuffling. Yeah, well, really what you want, if you're on track, if you're where you should be, then it's dead silent and everyone's focused and listening. And so if that's not happening, I mean, you know, there can be laughter and that kind of thing, but generally speaking, you don't want to hear noise from the audience. So if you're pursuing a complicated topic and you're paying attention, and I'm always looking at individual people in the audience, you know, in the first few rows because that's all I can see because of the lights.

I'm trying to make sure that everyone's on track with the talk. And, you know, there's people gesture with their face and they gesture with their eyes and they shake their head and they nod and there's lots of things to pick up. And if you're not speaking with notes, you can really pay attention to the audience. And then, you know, if you're in the dialogue and that's where everyone wants to be. Yeah. It's an interesting thing you're doing because you have experience in doing that with lectures and colleges and universities but now it's the general public and people just pay to see it and you fill up these huge gigantic theaters i mean i've seen some of the places that you guys are doing it you and sam just got done doing one in vancouver and it's a huge place to two that's right yeah yeah back to

back and yeah so it was about five hours of intense discussion over two days and you know we were supposed to talk for an hour each night and then go to Q&A but we asked the audience Brett Weinstein who was moderating asked the audience if they wanted to go to Q&A or continue the discussion and you know the the response from the crowd was definitely continue the discussion and so, you know, the response from the crowd was definitely continue the discussion. And so we ended up talking for about two and a half hours each night. And again, it was the audience is along for the ride, you know, and they were good discussions as far as I'm concerned. You know, it was kind of marketed as a takedown in some sense, Harris versus Peterson. But the discussion itself was an attempt on Sam's part and my part to further our thinking about the topic and to bring everyone along for the ride, you know, for the journey, so to speak.

Yeah, well, you guys had two podcasts that you did over the phone. So these were the first meetings that you guys had in person. Yeah, it was the first time I'd met Sam. So these were the first meetings that you guys had in person. Yeah, it was the first time I'd met Sam. The first one that you two had was marred by this discussion about what is truth. Yeah. And it was like a strange sort of a—you got stuck.

You guys got kind of stuck in that first conversation. But I felt like the second one was much better. Yes. I mean, both of you kind of recognized there were some errors made in the first podcast. Yeah, we augured in on a definition and couldn't let it go. And so that wasn't so good. Yeah. And I wasn't in tip-top shape for that first discussion,

well, or for the second one for that matter. But they've been getting, each discussion I've had with Sam has been getting better. So as far as I'm concerned, and I think he feels the same way. And I mean, we're trying to sort something out that's really, really difficult. And it's the relationship between facts and values, which is parallel to the relationship between, say, objective truth and narrative, or parallel to the distinction between scientific fact and religious truth. All of those things sort of are layered on top of each other, and it's an extraordinarily difficult topic. And so it's not surprising that it's taking all of this discussion to even vaguely get it straight. It's been a central bone of contention among philosophers for,

well, probably forever, but certainly since the time of David Hume, several hundred years. Well, one of the more fascinating things that's coming out of the realm of podcasting is these kind of discussions, these long-form live discussions in front of enormous groups of people where you go over very complex issues. It's a new thing. I mean, and it's something that's greatly received by the public, which is really interesting. I mean, you guys are selling out all over the place. Yeah, well, I've really been trying to make sense of this, because I'm thinking, well, what the hell's going on? Why am I selling out 3,000-person auditoriums? But not just me, obviously.

Sam is doing it, and you're doing something on a larger scale, but very similar with your long-form podcasts. And then there's this whole rise of what Barry Weiss described as the intellectual dark web. That's actually Eric Weinstein's coinage. And so there's a group of us that have been sort of clumped together for reasons that aren't obvious. But I've been trying to figure that out as I do these lectures. Another thing I'm doing with the lectures or the discussions is trying to continually further the development of my ideas.

I use the stage, let's say, as an opportunity in real time to think. And I've been thinking, well, if you're surfing, you don't confuse yourself with the wave, right? That's a real mistake. You might be on top of the wave, but you're not the wave. And I think this long-form discussion and the public hunger for that is best conceptualized like that. There's a technological revolution. It's a deep one. The technological revolution is online video and audio, immediately accessible to everyone all over the world. And so what that's done is it turned the spoken word into a tool that has the same reach as the printed word. So it's a Gutenberg revolution in the domain of video and audio.

And it might be even deeper than the original Gutenberg revolution, because it isn't obvious how many people can read, but lots of people can listen. And now it turns out, so I mean, you got a little bit of that with TV, right? And you got a little bit of it with radio. But there was bandwidth limitations that were really stringent, especially in TV, where you could get 30 seconds, if you were lucky, and six minutes if you were stellar, to elucidate a complicated argument. So you can't do that. Everything gets compressed to a kind of oversimplified entertainment. But now, all of a sudden, we have this forum for long-form discussion, real long-form discussion, and it turns out that everyone is way smarter than we thought. We can have these discussions publicly,

and there's a great hunger for it. And I see this parallel, and this would be, what would you call it, supporting evidence for this hypothesis. The same things happened in the entertainment world because TV made us think, well, we can handle a 20-minute sitcom, or maybe we can handle an hour- a half made-for-TV movie.

But then Netflix came along and HBO as well with the bandwidth restrictions gone and all of a sudden it turned out that, no, no, we can handle 40-hour complex multilayered narratives where the characters shift, where the complexity starts to reach the same complexity as great literature and there's a massive market for it. And so it turns out that we're smarter than our technology revealed to us. And I think those of us who've been placed in this intellectual dark web group, you know, there's some things we have in common. We more or less have independent voices because we're not beholden to any corporate masters except peripherally. And we've been operating in this long-form space, and the technology has facilitated that. And so all of a sudden it turns out that there's more to people than we thought, and thank God for that. I'm struggling with – I don't want to use the word hate.

I don't want to use the word hate. There seems to be a non-acceptance or a resistance to the idea that anything of quality could come out of this group of people. It's really interesting to me. And I'm wondering why. When I listen to you speak or Sam or Eric or any of these people, Ben or Dave, and I hear very interesting points. And I'm like, why are people resisting that these are interesting points? Why are they resisting this? And I think there's a lot of people that are beholden to mainstream organizations, whether it's newspapers or magazines or television shows that feel trapped. I think they feel trapped by this format that they're stuck in. It's a very limiting

format. And it's a format that in my opinion is like, I mean, it might as well be smoke signals or ham radio or something. It's fucking, it's dumb. You know, this, this idea that you're going to go to commercials every 15 minutes and, you know, and in between you have 15 people arguing. I mean, I watched a panel on CNN once, and I think we counted 10 people that were trying to talk during this five-minute segment. I'm like, what genius thought that it would be a good idea to get 10 people struggling for airtime, barking over each other, no one saying anything that makes any sense because everybody's talking over and trying to stand out and trying to say the most outrageous things. And I'm seeing like some of the resistance to this when we span, I mean, pretty far, you know, from Sam and I lean more left and Ben leans more right. And you're what you would call a classic liberal. And Eric's very difficult to define and brett is fiercely progressive i mean these are brett in particular is a very left-wing

guy but this desire to label and to to have this diminishing label is like alt-right or you know right-wing or fascist it's very strange to, well, there's a couple of things going on. I think one of them is that the technological transformation that I laid out. And then the other is that I do believe that especially for the radical leftist types, the whole notion of free speech among individuals is not only anathema, but also something that isn't possible within their framework of reference. I've been trying to think this through very carefully because, you know, free speech in some sense has become identified as a right-wing issue. And I thought, well, how the hell did that

happen? And then I thought, oh yes, well, if you're radically left and you're playing the identity politics game, there's actually no such thing as free speech because you're only the mouthpiece of your group, whether you know it or not. So you don't get to talk as Joe Rogan, you get to talk as like Joe Rogan, patriarchal white guy, and that's it. And your utterances aren't a reflection of your own opinions as an individual, but they're an attempt on your part, whether you know it or not, to justify your position in the power hierarchy. And so everything right now, and this is where the technology and the death of the mainstream media and this political polarization all unite, everything is turned into a political conversation in the mainstream media,

and it has to be cast as left versus right. And if you're criticizing the left, then all of a sudden you're right, and right wing, and it has to be about politics. It's like, well, it doesn't have to be about politics. It could be about philosophy. It doesn't have to be cast in political terms. And then it's also subject to a form of, well, it's made more stupid than it has to be by these terrible bandwidth limitations. Like, I mean, I've been on mainstream TV talk shows, and it's a very strange experience because you're definitely content. You know, Marshall McLuhan said the medium is the message, right? The medium shapes the dialogue, and it does in a tremendous way, powerful way.

You go on a TV talk show, and maybe it's an hour long, something like that, and there's five guests, and you've got your eight minutes, something like that, and you have to be bright and chipper and entertaining and intelligent and sort of glitzy, and it puts that facade of momentary charisma on you, and if you don't play that out, you actually fail, right? Because you can't start a long-form discussion when you've got six minutes, and if you're trying to talk about something that's deep and difficult, well, you want to talk about it because you've got the access then and the opportunity,

but you've got your six minutes. You can't help but turn into sort of a glitzy entertainer. And so it cheapens everything. And then the other thing that I think is happening is that as the mainstream media, television in particular, dies, the quality people are starting to desert, like rats leaving a sinking ship. I guess they're good rats if they're quality people. And then there's ever more enticement to use clickbait journalism to attract a diminishing

portion of the remaining audience. It's like one of the things that's happened. So if you look at the five major indices of violent crime in the United States, they've declined by 50% in 25 years. It's absolutely beyond comprehension. It's so good. This includes violent gun crime, by the way.

And yet the reports of violence in media have gone up and up and up and up. You think, well, what's going on? It's like, well, it's clickbait. It's the equivalent of clickbait. And then to turn everything into a polarized political discussion takes no real intellectual energy. But it's also driven by the death spiral of the classic media, I think.

And I think that's actually why the polarization seems to be so acute now. Some of it is genuine, but some of it is the consequence of this underlying technological transformation and the death throes of the smoke signalers, fundamentally. What you're talking about when you're saying people, especially radical leftists, have to concede certain points whenever they discuss things, this is so true and so important, because you see that play out over and over again. There's very little variation from the official narrative when they talk about important subjects or controversial subjects. And whatever they are, whether it's transgender rights or whatever's in the news that's big and it's very popular right now.

There's these certain things that you're not allowed to deviate from. And that's an insanely restrictive perspective. And who's establishing these norms? That's a good question, man. Yeah, who is? Well, I blame the universities in large part for this, the activist disciplines. But that's only a partial answer because the universities are also responding to legislation like Title IX. And so they've been driven into...

Explain Title IX for people who say standalone. Title IX originally was just a piece of legislation that ensured that women would have equal access to sports events and so forth at the universities. That's what it was designed for. But it's become this umbrella legislation that pushes equality of outcome essentially across every possible dimension in the universities, and it's been used as a weapon by the radical left.

But, you know, some of that's driven by legislative necessity. What's happening, the reason that I think this is coming from the universities is because I don't think that this could, well, there's all these activist disciplines that are essentially subsidized by too high tuition fees and also by state funding. And they've produced an entire substructure of activists. And those activists are doing everything they can to lay out the theoretical structure for the radical left. And that's a structure that involves, there's buzzwords, right? Diversity is one, but that means diversity by race and ethnicity and sexual preference, for example, as if those have anything to do with genuine diversity of ideation, and

they don't, and there's no evidence that they do. Inclusivity, I'm never even sure what that means. Equity, which is a marker for, what would you call it? It's a code word in some sense for equality of outcome, which is a marker for, what would you call it, it's a code word in some sense for equality of outcome, which is an absolutely deadly doctrine. I think of all the mistakes that the radical left are making, and the moderate left for not calling them out on it, the equity doctrine is at the top of the list. And then there's other associated things like white privilege, that's a good one, and systemic bias, which is an absolute embarrassment from the perspective of a reasonable academic

psychologist, because psychological tests have been used to prove that there's this implicit bias that lurks everywhere, and the tests aren't reliable and valid enough to make that claim. Even the people who've made the test, the implicit association test, have admitted, except for Mazarin Banerjee, who's the chairman of the Department of Psychology at Harvard, they've admitted that the tests aren't reliable and valid enough to be used for the purposes they've been using for. And there's also no evidence at all that these unconscious bias retraining seminars have any effect whatsoever that's positive. It's all nonsense pushed by the ideological fulminations of the radical left. Is there any benefit in having these conversations, talking about implicit biases and recognizing that there's an extreme pushback against racism or sexism and all these different things, and that even though these things, these ideas

that they're pushing might not be tested and proven, the idea of putting it out there in the mainstream, that there's a shift in consciousness in terms of like how people will or won't accept racism or sexism or homophobia or whatever else is being discussed, that maybe it's far left, but maybe it's moving the needle towards where it needs to be. Well, I think that happens. I mean, I certainly believe that there's space and necessity for a constant dialogue between the left and the right. This is also something that I've been developing more particularly during these lectures. So I'm going to lay out a couple of propositions. So imagine that you have to move forward in the world.

You have to do things. And the reason you have to do things is because, well, if you just sit there and don't do anything, then you suffer and die. So that isn't an option. You have to move forward. You have to move forward towards valued things. So you have to have a value hierarchy. It has to be a hierarchy because one thing has to be more important than another

or you can't do anything, right? You're too split with your choices. So you have to do things, you have to value, you have to value some things more than others. Then you have to act out what you value in the social environment, because you're a social creature and you're not going to do things alone. Then as soon as you start to act out things of value in the social environment, you inevitably produce a hierarchy. And the reason you do that is because no matter what you're acting out, some people are way better at it than others. And it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter if it's basketball or hockey or plumbing or law. It doesn't matter. As soon as there's something valuable and you're doing it collectively, there's a hierarchy. Okay, so then what happens?

Well, the hierarchy can get corrupt and rigid, and then it stops rewarding competence, and it starts rewarding criminality and power. And so there's always the danger the hierarchy will become corrupt. The right-wingers say, we really need the hierarchies, and we should abide by them. That's sort of the motif of patriotism and positive group identity. And the left-wingers say, yeah, but wait a second. There's a problem here. A, your hierarchy can get corrupt and might,

and B, because some people are way better at it than others, you're going to produce a bunch of dispossessed people at the bottom. And that's not only not good for the dispossessed people, it actually threatens the whole hierarchy. So you have to be careful. You have to attend to the widows and the children, let's say, the widows and the orphans. Okay, and so now you can think about that as an eternal problem. You can't do without hierarchies, but, and that's the right-wing claim in some sense, you can't do without hierarchies and they're valuable, but they're also prone to corruption and they dispossess people. Okay, so now that's an internal problem. The question is, what do you do about it? And the

answer to that is, there's no final answer to the problem. So what you have to do is you have to have a left wing and you have to have a right wing and they have to talk all the time about whether the hierarchy is healthy and whether or not it's dispossessing too many people. And then the problem with that is, is that discussion can go too far because the right-wingers can say hierarchy uber all is right, that, that, that we've, the state is correct and everything's right. And so that's the right-wing totalitarian types. And the left can say, we'll flatten everything. So there's no inequality. And so both the left and the right can go too far. Now, the problem is we don't, we know how to define, I think one of the problems is we know how to define when the right goes too far. I think we learned that after World War II.

I think if you're making claims of ethnic or racial superiority, you get to be put in a box and put off the shelf, right? You're not in the dialogue anymore. It's obvious that the left can go too far, even though there are necessary participants in the discussion, but we don't know how to define when they've gone too far. But we don't have an obvious example. No, and you might think, well, that's the moderate leftist's problem. It's their moral responsibility to dissociate themselves from the radicals, just as it's the moral responsibility of reasonable conservatives to dissociate themselves from the Birch, John Birch, and Ku Klux Klan types. That's a very important point.

But it isn't just the moderate left's problem, because even the people on the right don't know what to point to when they say, no, you've gone too far as a leftist. Now, I've tried to... It's complicated, because I think it might be more than one policy. I think the really deadly leftist presumption is equality of outcome. I think as soon as you start talking about equality of outcome, you should be put in a box and put off the shelf. But it isn't obvious why. Like, that doesn't sound like, you know, white people overall.

It doesn't have the same guttural punch that the excess of the right has. It's, well, you're for equality of outcome. Why is that bad? Well, it's bad because when you play it out in society, and there's endless evidence for this, it's an instantaneously murderous doctrine. And I think it's because it shifts so quickly into a victim-victimizer narrative. I've had a great opportunity in the last month and a half. I got asked to write the preface to the 50th anniversary edition of Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago. And so I've been writing that. And one of the things Solzhenitsyn did, which was one of the things that made that book arguably the

greatest work of nonfiction of the 20th century, I mean, it's in the top 10 anyways, was to point out very clearly that the excesses of the Russian Revolution started right away. It wasn't that Lenin was a pretty good guy, and then Stalin came in and corrupted everything. It was like Lenin was not a pretty good guy. The revolution got bloody really fast. And what seemed to happen, so imagine you started to divide the world up into oppressor and oppressed, right? And you're going to do something about the oppressors. The problem is, is that you can define people multiple ways. This is the intersectionality problem. And almost everybody can be defined in terms of their group identity in some way that

makes them an oppressor. So like if you're a black man, well, you could argue that you're oppressed because you're black, but what about the fact that you're a man? And so does that make you an oppressor or someone who's oppressed? And the answer is, as the revolution progresses, if there's any dimension along which you can be categorized as oppressor, you end up dead. And so that's part of the pathology of the equality of outcome doctrine. What do you mean by that, like you end up dead? You end up rounded up.

You ended up being put into the oppressor camp, right? There's only so far you can go with that, right? I mean, you can't put all men in the oppressor camp. There'd be no men left. Well, yeah, but that is exactly the sort of thing that— So you really think that's how it plays out? Well, it is how it plays out. When you look for equality of outcome. Well, it is how it played out in the Soviet Union and China.

I mean, in the Soviet Union, we don't know how many people died. The reasonable estimates look like about 25 million. That's dead. That's not just, that's not imprisoned. That isn't families destroyed. That's just dead. And in Mao's China, it might have approximated 100 million. That's just internal repression. And so what seems to happen as soon as you decide that the hierarchy is unfair because there are oppressors and oppressed, then you can go after the oppressors with moral virtue. But the problem is that there's almost no limit to the number of ways that you can categorize someone as an oppressor. The category just starts to expand.

Like the communists killed all the socialists. They killed all the religious people. They killed most of the students. They killed all the religious people. They killed most of the students. They killed all the productive farmers. And they killed the productive farmers because they owned land, you know, and maybe a little house and a few cows, you know. I mean, to be a successful farmer in Russia at the turn of the 20th century didn't mean you were rich, right? It just meant you weren't starving. It's like they killed all those people because they were oppressors,

because they had more than someone else. That's how they defined it in order to get the people to rally against it. Yes. Yes. And the definition kept slipping because, well, look, even now, it's like, well, let's say we rally against the 1%, and those would be the money owners, let's say. It's like, okay, who's in that group? Well, everybody in North America is in that group. Worldwide, yeah. Well, but who sets the parameters, right? It's $34,000 a year sets you in the 1% worldwide. Right, right.

So does that make all of us oppressors? Basically, everybody who lives above poverty in America is in the 1% of the world. Right, right. And also by historical standards. Yeah. And so the problem with the oppressor-oppressed narrative is that you can multiply the oppressors endlessly. And there's no end to going after them.

Right. And as soon as you make a definition, you can move the boundaries and then the next person is the oppressor. And then you keep going. Well, and you also see the interesting thing too is that, and this is complicated, so I've been thinking about this proclivity of the left to destroy members of the moderate left. It's like there's the game, part of the game that's being played, as far as I can tell, the ideologically pathological game is, I'm more virtuous than you. Now, look, if you're on the radical left and you say, well, you're more virtuous than a right winger, it's like, well, who cares?

That's obvious because the rightwingers are pathological. So being more virtuous than them, that's not much of an attainment. But if I have my moderate leftist compatriot standing right beside me, and he's pretty damn virtuous, but I'm even more virtuous than him, then that's a real attainment on my part. It's a moral attainment with no effort on my part. If I can figure out some way of classifying that previously virtuous person as an oppressor along some dimension,

then all of a sudden I get an increment in my moral virtue. And that happened all the time in these leftist revolutions run amok. That was just a constant feature. So it's not good. It's not good. Why is it, and this is something that's always puzzled me, why is it that the left is defined by, there's certain values, and one of them is when you look at the right, you automatically think of racism, potential racism at least, dislike for gay people, homophobia. There's certain qualities that are always attributed to conservatives. And then there's certain qualities that are – and these are social things that I'm not quite sure I understand. Like why is it that the left is always associated in support of gay rights?

that the left is always associated in support of gay rights. The left is always associated in support of all races and all genders. Well, I think it's the dispossessed issue again. So imagine that we make these hierarchies, and they're hierarchies that are devoted towards a goal, and that the sum total of all those hierarchies is something like the patriarchy. Even though I hate that word and I don't think anybody should use it. I don't like that word at all. But we're speaking within the confines of that theory.

Just define it how you're using it. What do you mean by the patriarchy? Well, the patriarchy is the sum total of all Western hierarchies, let's say. Or it's the radical leftist vision of the sum total of all Western hierarchies. But it's always male. Well, that's the theory, is that it's male-dominated. What is patriarchy is a male-dominated word. Well, and it's a funny thing because, of course, there's lots of elements,

there's lots of sub-elements of the patriarchy that aren't male-dominated. So healthcare, for example, universities, the education system in general, there's lots of places where these sub-elements are female-dominated. But do you think that they're defined as the patriarchy? Do they define healthcare? Oh, it's a good question, Joe. I don't know what happens. If you have a sub-element of the patriarchy that's dominated by women,

is that still the patriarchy? It's like the structure's still intact. It's still performing the same function. Well, now the women are running it. Well, is that the patriarchy? And the answer to that is, well, we're all vague about what the definition is, so we don't need to address that issue. That's the answer. Well, here's some clear ones, right? Like major corporations, the vast majority of CEOs are male. We think of that as part of the patriarchy. Government, never been a female president. A vast majority of senators, congressmen, etc. Male. Yeah. So I guess we could say, well, the patriarchy is all those elements of hierarchical structure that are still dominated by men. Law enforcement, military, male, mostly male. Right. But it's a it's a peculiar definition. Right. Because it means you have to you have to fractionate the patriarchy into pieces. You can no longer talk about it as uniform structure if you're going to take out all those pieces that are dominated by women and say, well, that's not the patriarchy.

But the thing is that the whole concept is so ill-defined that it beguiles description. But it's always power, though, right? Well, that's the other thing. That's the claim. The other claim is that all hierarchies are predicated on power, which is a claim that's absolutely appalling. It's like plumbers, are they part of the hierarchy? You've got roaming bands of armed, aggressive, tyrannical plumbers coming to your door saying, use our service or else. That's not how it works. When you're going looking for a plumber,

you go look for a massage therapist, you look, or a surgeon for that matter, or a lawyer, you go look for the person who's most competent. And one of the things the left can't tolerate is the idea that hierarchies are predicated, in part even, on competence, which they clearly are. The best predictors for success in Western hierarchies are intelligence and conscientiousness. Those are the best psychological predictors of success. They only account for about a third of the variation in success. Maybe a third is probably about right. So there's still lots of room for randomness and even for systemic discrimination. But the notion that our systems aren't predicated in part on competence is clearly wrong. Now, you asked a question about the left. It's like, well, why are the left always on the side of the people who don't fit in, let's say, or don't fit so easily in?

And I think that is a matter of the consequence of hierarchical structures. So imagine in every hierarchy there are some people who don't do very well in any given hierarchy. people who don't do very well in any given hierarchy. Then imagine across all the hierarchies that there's a subset of people who are very likely to not do well in any of them. So you might say, well, they're systemically discriminated against. The left would be on their side because they're on the side, even temperamentally, of the people who are dispossessed. And the thing about that is that it's valid. Look, we need a spokesperson politically for the dispossessed. That's what the Democratic Party used to do when they worked for the working class, because the working class needed a political voice. It's like, okay, that's the Democrats.

Well, why do they need a political voice? Well, to keep the hierarchy from degenerating into rigid tyranny. It's part of the political discussion. But now the problem is, and this is the problem with the left, is that, well, what's the hierarchy? It's a tyrannical patriarchy. It's like, no, it's not. It's partly corrupt, like every system.

But it's less corrupt than most systems, and there's a lot of elements of it that are devoted towards self-improvement and self-monitoring. You have to be a little nuanced and subtle about these sorts of things and you can't throw the baby out with the bathwater and the leftist rhetoric has got so intense that the idea is, and people believe this, well the world is going to hell in a handbasket, everything is getting worse in all possible ways and there's systemic racism everywhere and it's utterly unfair and it should be torn down and rebuilt it's like no it's actually functioning unbelievably well even though it still has its problems you know and there's a big difference between saying there's systemic racism everywhere and the reason that there isn't perfectly equal outcomes is because of prejudice and saying no no

look the system is functioning oh let's say at 75%. It's doing all right. It's got some problems, including systemic prejudice, which hopefully will work themselves out across time and which show every bit of evidence of doing so. And so we don't need a radical solution. You know, and one of the things I've started to do with my Twitter account is to tweet out good, non-naive news. Because one of the things that's happening in the with my Twitter account is to tweet out good, non-naive news. Because one of the things that's happening in the world, and there's been half a dozen books

on this or more written in the last five years by credible people, is that the distribution of the idea of individual sovereignty and property rights and free market economies, etc., out into the rest of the world is making the non-Western world rich really, really, really fast. So between 2000 and 2012, the rate of absolute poverty in the world fell by half. Half. It was the fastest period of economic development in human history. We beat the optimistic UN target by three years. Staggering. You know, the rates of child mortality in Africa are now lower than they were in Europe in 1950. The fastest growing economies in the world are in sub-Saharan Africa. Millions of people, millions of people a month

are getting access to this incredible technology that's embodied in cell phones, right? People have access to fresh water like they've never had access before. The kids are getting immunized at a rate that's unprecedented. And yet we have this idea that's become rampant in the West that there's something ultimately corrupt about the patriarchal tyranny and that it has to be dismantled right down to its core. And a lot of that's being taught by the activist disciplines and universities. And I just don't get it. It's not acceptable. And their proposal to level everything off and to take away the insane power at the very top is equality of outcome. It's unproven in terms of it's never been done successfully to a utopian.

Right. And I also don't even think you can do it in principle. Because if you accept the proposition, the propositions I laid out, which is you have to pursue things of value. And if you pursue things of value in a social space, so you do it cooperatively and competitively, you do it with other people, then you're going to produce differential outcome because people will be differently good at it. Yes. Well, it's like, okay, you don't believe that? It's like, okay, do you listen to random selections of music online? Or do you do what everyone else does? You go for the one-tenth of one percent of songwriters, and you

only listen to them. You only listen to the one, you only read the productions of one-tenth of one percent of writers. You only listen to the podcasts of one-tenth of one percent of podcast broadcasters, right? When you watch watch sports on tv you only watch the athletic contributions of one-tenth of one percent of athletes so like where's the equality exactly where's that in your life you people who are pushing for equality of outcome you manifest that in anything you do you don't you're unbelievably selective just like everyone else and the reason you're selective is because because there are things that are happening that need to happen or that are entertaining and interesting, and you want the best in all of those realms.

That's how it works. And there is a best. That's the other thing that's so painful. And that actually is painful. You know, here's a problem of dispossession, a real problem. You know, here's a problem of dispossession, a real problem. One way to not do very well in any hierarchy is to have a low IQ. And so IQ is normally distributed.

And if you have an IQ of less than 85, it's hard for you to read well enough to follow instructions. That's about 10% of the population, might even be higher than that. Okay, so given that lack, how are you going to compete? And the answer is, you're not, because low IQ is a good predictor of poverty. Now, they spiral because, you know, if you're cognitively, if you're less cognitively gifted, and you have children, they're going to be in a less enriched environment. These things spiral, but you still have the essential problem. That's the essential problem of the dispossessed.

It's like hierarchies are complex tools to attain necessary goals, but they dispossess people. What do we do with the people that they dispossess? The answer is, we don't know. So we have to talk about it constantly to figure out how to solve it because it's an ongoing problem that transforms

and that's the reason that political dialogue is necessary. And then the danger is that the political dialogue will polarize into the radical left, no hierarchies whatsoever, or the radical right. Our hierarchy is 100% right at all costs. And so those are the... We have the eternal problem and those are the, we have the eternal problem

and those are the two poles that we have to negotiate between. It's interesting because the accusation has always been that what the left is trying to do with this equality of outcome thing is sort of an infantilization of the populace, right?

And the best example of that is sports. When you look at sports, clearly the best people win, right? And the best example of that is sports. When you look at sports, clearly the best people win, right? The fastest runners win the race. The people that have the best strategy win the game. The infant, that's a weird word, infantilization, I never get it right. But of that is what we do with children where you get participation trophies and no one wins. You know, when my daughter was three years old, she was in soccer and they didn't keep score. But everyone knew. Everyone knew these kids scored and they didn't.

At the end of the game, they didn't announce a winner. Well, you can't have a soccer game without keeping score. It's not a soccer game anymore. It's something else. But the score was kept. Of course. It just wasn't discussed. Well, of course.

It was the strangest thing. But this is to treat these little kids because they couldn't handle it. You know, she cried when the other team scored. I'm like, it feels bad when they score, so it feels good when you score. It's very difficult to say that to a three-year-old. So is she going to run hills? Is she going to practice drills so that she feels that good feeling more? And then there's a point where that becomes too far.

There's a point where you become an obsessive overwinner, right? And this is the people that want to crush their enemies. Then you become Conan the Barbarian. This is the far end of it. And this is what the left is terrified of, right? The idea of the left is the demure, the soft, the people that are kinder and gentler the idea of the right is the conqueror the people that you know their work hard play hard go kick ass go america that kind of shit and so these are the type of people that are going to be crueler they're going to do what it takes to win and the the people that you would consider that would

like equality of outcome are the people that are trying to slow that down. Does this make sense? Yes, absolutely. And I think that's how it lays itself out temperamentally too. Psychologically. This is the motivation for all this. Yes, yes, yes. And the radical left is compassion gone mad, although it's also envy.

Let's not forget about that. Envy. Well, absolutely. I mean, one reason to stand up for the dispossessed is because you're empathetic, you know, and empathy is not an automatic good. This is something we make a big mistake about. We think, well, I'm feeling sorry for you, therefore I'm good. It's like, no, I might be feeling too sorry for you. I might not be demanding enough of you. So, and that's the terrible devouring mother, you know, from a psychoanalytic perspective. Oh, everything you do, dear, is okay. It's like, no, it's not. Right. So, one of the things that Jean Piaget, the developmental psychologist, he was very interested in figuring out a way out of this.

And it's very much relevant to your concept, your talk about athletics. Okay, so imagine this. Because this is also something that points the way to a proper morality, which was actually something that Jean Piaget was very concerned about. He wanted to reconcile the distinction between religion and science. That's actually what drove him, even though he was, people don't know that, he was arguably the world's greatest developmental psychologist. So here's the idea. You know how you tell your kid to be a good sport? You say, it doesn't matter whether you win or lose, it matters how you play the game. Okay, so I've been unpacking that in my lectures because it's really, really complicated.

It's like you tell your kid that and they look at you and they think, well, what do you mean by that? Aren't I supposed to try to win? It's a soccer game, I'm supposed to win. And you say, well, yeah, you're supposed to win, but it doesn't matter whether you win or lose, it matters how you play the game. You know that that's right, but you don't know how to explain it to your kid. You say, well, you want to be a good sport. Okay, so imagine this, this is how it works. And this is crucially important. So first of all, life is not a game. Even a game is not a game. Because a game is, most of the time, a game is the beginning of a series of games. So let's say that you're on a soccer team.

Well, there's winning the game, but the game isn't the issue. The game is the whole series of games. So maybe the game is winning the championship. And winning the championship and winning a game are not the same thing. And the reason for that is, well, maybe if you want to win a game, the best thing to do is to let your star player make all the moves. But if you want to win a championship,

maybe the best thing is for your star player to do everything he or she possibly can to develop all the other team members. That's a different strategy. And the reason it's different is because it iterates across time. Okay, so I'll tell you a quick story. So when my kid was playing hockey,

when he was about 12 or so, he was in the championship game, just at a local arena, you know, and it was really fun to watch. The teams were pretty equal, which is something that you want, so that everybody can expand their skills while they're playing. seconds to the end of the game and the other team made a breakaway and came down and the guy came down the ice and scored. It was a beautiful goal and it was 4-3 and that was the end of it, right? And on my kid's team, there was the kid who was the star and he was a pretty good hockey player. He came off the ice and he was very annoyed about what had happened. He smashed his stick on the cement and was complaining about the refereeing and acting as if he'd been robbed. And his father came up and instead of saying, get your act together, kid, that's no way to display yourself after a loss. He said, oh yeah, man, you were robbed that the referees didn't ref right. And you played the best and you should have won. And I thought, you absolute son of a bitch. You're ruining your son. And then the

question is why? Because his son was the star and was trying to win. Why was he ruining his son? Well, you're trying to train your son not to win the game. You're trying to train your son to win the championship. And so that's a series of games. But then life isn't the championship. Life is a whole bunch of championships. It's a whole sequence of them. And so what you're actually trying to train your son to do

is to be a contender in the entire series. And the way you do that is by helping him develop his character. And the character is actually the strategy that would enable him to win the largest number of games across the largest possible span of time. And one way you do that if you're a kid is like, well, what do you want to do with your kid? You don't want to teach him to win. You want to teach him to play well with others. And that's to be reciprocal. So that means to try to win, but also to pay attention to developing the other people around him

and not to put winning the game above everything at all times. So then he's fun to play with. And this is absolutely crucial. You can help your kid become fun to play with between the ages of two and the age of four. If your kid is fun to play with, then what happens? Kids line up to play with him. And adults line up to teach him. And if kids line up to play with him, then he'll have friends his whole life.

And he'll be socialized and he'll be invited to many games, some of which he'll win, all of which he'll be able to participate in. And if he's fun to play with, then adults will teach him things, and then he wins at life. And so when you say to your kid, it doesn't matter whether you win or lose, it matters how you play the game, what you're saying is, don't forget, kid, that what you're trying to do here is to do well at life. And you need to practice the strategies that enable you to do well at life while you're in any specific game. And you never want to compromise enable you to do well at life while you're in any specific

game. And you never want to compromise your ability to do well at life for the sake of winning a single game. And there's a deep ethic in that. And it's the ethic of reciprocity in games. Part of the reason that we're so obsessed with sports is because we like to see that dramatized, you know, like the person we really admire as an athlete isn't only the person who wins. We don't like the narcissistic winners. They're winners, and that's a plus, but if they're narcissistic, they're not good team players,

they're only out for themselves, then we think, well, you're a winner in the narrow sense, but your character is suspect. You're no role model, even though you're a winner. And it's because we're looking for something deeper. We're looking for that, the manifestation of character that allows you to win across the set of possible games. And that's a real thing. That's a real ethic. It's a fundamental ethic. I think what you're pointing out that's very important is we're searching for the person

who's got it all nailed. Someone who tries their hardest, but is also honest enough about the circumstances to not cry foul when it's gone the other person's way yeah well that's part of resilience it's right like look you're not going to win it you're not going to you're not going to score on every shot right doesn't mean you shouldn't take the shots doesn't mean you shouldn't try to to hit the goal but part of part of being able to continue to take shots is to have the strength of character to tolerate the fact that in that instance, you weren't on top. It's more trivial in games than it is in fights.

And the response is much more negative from the fans if you lose a fight and complain about it. It's ruthless because they understand that you've made a huge character error. Yeah, so why do you think it's more important in fights than it is in games? Why do you think it's even highlighted there? Because the consequences are so grave because you recognize that the high is much higher and the lows are much lower. To lose a basketball game sucks, but it's nothing like losing a fight. There's no comparison. It's not even close. So what do you think it is that damages the fighter if he complains about losing? Why is that a mistake? Why do the fans respond so negatively

to that? Because they know. They know that you lost. They know that you're complaining for no reason and you're not a hero. They want you to be better than them. They want you to be the person that has the courage to step into a cage or a ring or wherever you, whatever the format is you're competing and to do something that's extremely difficult. And when you do that, they hold you to a higher standard. To lose with grace. Yes. And when you fall, especially if you were a champion, that is one of the most disappointing things ever when a champion complains.

Right. And it is, its response is horrific from the audience okay so that's a great example so let's imagine what does the person who loses something important with grace do and the answer is fairly straightforward he accepts the defeat and thinks okay what what is it that i have left to improve that will decrease the possibility of a similar defeat in the future. Yes. Right? So what he's doing is, because the great athlete and the great person is not only someone who's exceptionally skilled at what they do, but who's trying to expand their skills at all times. Yes. And the attempt to expand their skills at all times is even more important than the fact that they're great to begin with, because the trajectory is so important. More important in particular to the audience. It's extremely important to the audience because you

are the person who's competing. You are expecting them to live out this life in a perfect way or in a much more powerful way than you're capable of. Yes. And so part of that is the skill because they put in the practice, but part of that also is the willingness to push the skill farther into new domains of development with each action. And that's really what people like to watch, right? They don't like to watch a perfect athletic performance. They like to watch a perfect athletic performance that's pushed into the domain of new risk. They want to see both at the same time.

You're really good at what you do and you're getting better. Okay, so you lose a match, which is not any indication that you're not good at what you do. You might not be as good as the person who beat you. But if you lose the match and then whine, what you've done is sacrifice the higher order principle of constant improvement of your own skills. Because you should be analyzing the loss and saying, the reason I lost insofar as it's relevant to this particular time and place is the insufficiencies I manifested that defeated me. And I need to track those insufficiencies so that I can rectify them in the future. And if I'm blaming it on you or the referees or the situation, then I'm not taking responsibility

and I'm not pushing myself forward. And so then you also take the meaning out of it. Like, one of the things I've been doing on my tour, people are criticizing me to some degree for saying things to people that are obvious. Well, first first of all it's not like i didn't bloody well know they were obvious when i wrote those rules well my the rules in my book for example stand up straight with your shoulders back you know treat yourself like you're someone responsible for helping it's like i know perfectly well that those can be read as cliches the question is cliche's say, is something that's so true that it's become, that it's become, it's widely accepted by everyone. Well, but we don't know why it's true anymore. And so this issue, the issue that we're talking about here, the issue of being a good sport,

we need to figure out why that's true. And the reason that it's true is that you're trying to push your development farther than you've already developed at every point in time. And now that's true. And the reason that it's true is that you're trying to push your development farther than you've already developed at every point in time. And now that's the proper, that's the proper moral attitude. So when you see an athletic performance where someone is pushing themselves beyond what they are, you see someone dramatizing the process of proper adaptation. It isn't the skill itself. It's the extension of the skill. And when you see someone acting like a bad sport, then they're sacrificing that. And so they're sacrificing the higher for the lower.

And no one likes that. In the fights, it's got to be... See, the question is, that's the thing I can't quite figure out, is why that would be even exaggerated in a fight situation. And you said it's because the stakes are so high. Yeah, the consequences of victory or defeat, they're just so much greater. Your health is on the line. It's one of the rare things that you do where your health is on the line, your physical health. Right. So there are more extreme victories and more extreme defeats.

So the morality that's associated with defeat is more extreme. Because there's more on the line. Exactly. Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. And the way people treat the champions, it's a very different thing. It's the respect and adulation that a champion receives. It's the pinnacle of sports in terms of the love from the audience when someone wins a great fight. There's nothing like it.

And this is one of the reasons why these people are willing to put their health on the line because that high, the high of victory. And it's not just a victory. It's a, you know, who said victory is really the victory over the lesser you. It's the victory over. That's always the victory. Yes. you. Right. It's the victory over – That's always the victory. Yes. Yeah.

The victory is over – you've got to realize a guy like Stipe Miocic who defends his heavyweight title this weekend in the UFC, he is – he's the heavyweight champion of the world, but he's not undefeated. He lost in his career. He's lost a couple of times. And he – I'm sure he's lost wrestling matches and sparring sessions in the gym. He's a product of improvement. Right.

He's a product of discipline and hard work and thinking and strategy and constantly improving upon his skills. And because of that, he's the baddest man on the planet. So in my book, Rule 4 is, this is 12, excuse me, this is from 12 rules for life. Rule four is compare yourself to who you were yesterday, not to who someone else is today. Yes. Because you need to be, you need to have a hierarchy of improvement. You need to be aiming for something. And that means you're going to be lesser than people who've always already attained along that dimension. Yes. And that can give rise to envy so the question is who should you defeat in the final analysis and the answer is you should defeat your former self you should be constantly trying to do that and you're

the right control for yourself too because you're the one who's had all your advantages and disadvantages and so if you want to compete fairly with someone then you should be competing with you and it is the case and this is what we were talking about too with regards to the self-improvement of the fighter, is well, if you're improving yourself, then what you are doing is competing with your lesser self. And then you might also ask, well, what is that lesser self? And that lesser self would be resentful and bitter and aggressive and vengeance-seeking and all of those things that go along with having a negative moral character and those are things that interfere with your ability to progress as you move forward

through life so it's very necessary to understand that this is why you know i've been stressing this idea of personal responsibility it's like well personal responsibility is to compete with yourself is to be slightly better than yourself the next day. And better in some way that you can actually manage. And that's humility. It's right. Like, well, I'm a flawed person. I've got all my problems. Could I be as good as person X?

It's like not the right question. The right question is, could you be slightly better tomorrow than your currently flawed self? And the answer to that is, if you have enough humility to set the bar properly low, then you could be better tomorrow than you are today. Because what you also have to do is you have to say, well, here's all my flaws and my insufficiencies, and the best that someone that flawed and insufficient could do to improve and actually do it is this. And that's not worth going out in the street and celebrating with placards, you know. It's like, well, this is why i tell people to clean the room it's not going to brag to someone that you did that but someone as insufficient as you might be able to manage it and that means you actually are on the pathway to self-improvement and you're transcending your former self and you

might say well what's the right way of being in the world if there is such a thing and it's not acting according to a set of rules it's attempting continually to transcend the flawed thing that you currently are. And what's so interesting about that is that the meaning in life is to be found in that pursuit. So I've been laying that out in these discussions too because I say, well, the fundamental issue is that life is tragic and difficult, very tragic and difficult for everyone. And it's also tainted by malevolence,

because no matter how... Things are tragic and difficult, but there's always some stupid thing that you could do or someone else could do that could make it even worse than it has to be. And so that's life. And you need an antidote to that, because that can embitter you. Constant contact with that.

Just the tragedy, but the tragedy combined with betrayal and malevolence, that makes it even worse, especially if it's self-induced. Okay, so you need something to set against that so you don't get bitter and resentful. Well, what do you set against that? Doing something worthwhile, by your own definition, say. You need some reason to get the hell out of bed on a terrible day because you've got something good to do. Well, what's the best thing you can do?

Transcend your current wretched and miserable self. There's meaning to be found in that, and that's a meaning that's associated with responsibility. One of the things that I've been trying to lay out clearly is that life is hard. It's tainted by malevolence and betrayal. That can make you bitter. You need a meaning to offset that. Where's the meaning to be found?

Not in rights, not in impulsive pleasure, but in responsibility. You take responsibility for yourself, so you take care of yourself. If you're good at it, you have some excess left over to take care of your damn family. If you're good at both of those, then you have some excess left over to take care of your community. Those are heavy burdens. You pick up the burdens. You find that's meaningful. The best way to pick up the burden is to continually improve yourself.

And that's where the meaning is to be found. And so that meaning is in the continual self-transcendence. That's letting your old self die and the new self be reborn. Did you watch When We Were Kings? Is that the Ali documentary? Yeah. God, that's an amazing, amazing, amazing movie. Right at the end of it, so

Ali defeats Frazier, basically by letting him defeat himself, right? Because Frazier is angry and he's got a chip on his shoulder and he doesn't conduct the fight properly. So he exhausts himself chasing Ali. And Ali has basically just trained himself to take the damn blows, right? And to wear Frazier out. That's his plan. Then right at the end

of the movie, he knocks Frazier down. And it's pretty much the end of the fight, but Frazier out. That's his plan. Then right at the end of the movie, he knocks Frazier down. And it's pretty much the end of the fight, but Frazier sort of struggles to his feet. You know, he's just getting up off the mat, and now he's got his hand pulled back to just nail him, because he's completely laid open. And he puts his gloves down and turns away. That's the end of the fight. And Frazier

said, and this is true as far as I know, that that fight tamed him. Like, Frazier had a big chip on his shoulder, and this is true as far as I know, that that fight tamed him. Like Frazier had a big chip on his shoulder, and he was kind of a dreadful guy up until that fight. And afterwards, he was affable, and he was civilized. L.E. civilized him. But that gesture that L.E. made was that great gesture, because he could have flattened him, right? And he had every reason to, man.

He got taken apart. L.E. took punches like mad in that fight. And then in the final analysis, when he had Frazier down and he was struggling to his feet, he just let him go, man. Nobility of character right there. Something impressive to behold. Why are you defining people, like when you're saying this, why are you saying you're miserable, wretched life? Because there's a lot of people that don't have miserable, wretched lives that also just want to improve. Like why does it have to be the worst case scenario in order to warrant improvement? Because it has to work.

The theory has to work in the worst case scenario. Okay. So you're using the worst case scenario as an example. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But do you think that that perhaps may alienate someone who doesn't have the worst case scenario? No, I don't. Who just wants improvement? No, I don't think so.

Because, well, you know, it depends on how much time you have to outline the ideas. But, you know, because even if things are going really well for you now, there's going to be a time in the future where things are rough. You know, you're going to be ill. Family member's going to be ill. A dream is going to fall apart. You're going to be uncertain about your employment status going to be ill, a dream is going to fall apart, you're going to be uncertain about your employment status, like the flood is coming, right, the apocalypse is coming, it's always the case in life, and you have to be prepared for it, and the question is how to prepare

for it, and the answer to that is to find a way of being that works even under the direst of circumstances. That's the issue, and so you outline, and I mean, I am pessimistic about this in my approach in some sense, because when I'm talking to my audiences and the same thing happens and happened in my book, Maps of Meaning and in 12 Rules for Life, I'm laying out the worst case scenario. And that's sort of like hell. It's things are going really badly for you. And that there's just chance associated with that sometimes. And you and the people around you are doing stupid things to make it worse. It's like, okay,

what have you got under those circumstances? You've got the possibility to slowly raise yourself out of the mire. You've got the possibility to do just what the fighter does when he's defeated, which is to say, well, regardless of the circumstances that might have led to my defeat,

like even if there were errors on the part of the referee, this is no time to whine about it. This is a time to take stock of what I did wrong so that I could improve it into the future. And that's the right attitude. You know, in the Old Testament, one of the things that's really interesting about the Old Testament stories is in the Old Testament, the Jews keep getting walloped by God. It's like they struggle up and make an empire and then they just get walloped. And then it's all crushed and they're out of it for generations. And then they struggle up and make an empire, and then they just get walloped. And then it's all crushed, and they're out of it for generations.

And then they struggle back up and make an empire, and then they get demolished again. And it happens over and over and over. And the attitude of the Old Testament Hebrews is, we must have made a mistake. It's never to shake their fist at the sky and curse fate. It's never to shake their fist at the sky and curse fate. It's never that. The presupposition is, if things aren't working out, it's my fault. And that's a hell of a presupposition. And you might say, well, of course, you know,

that underestimates the degree to which there's systemic oppression, etc., etc., and the vagaries of fate. It's like it doesn't over-underestimate it. It's not the point the point is your best strategic position is how am i insufficient and how can i rectify that that's what you've got and the thing is you are insufficient and you could rectify it both of those are within your grasp if you aim low enough one of the things why do you see that that's another thing you keep saying aim low enough have a of the things you do... Why do you see that? That's another thing you keep saying, aim low enough, have a low enough bar. Why do you mean that?

Well, let's say you've got a kid and you want the kid to improve. You don't set them a bar that's so high that it's impossible for them to attain it. You take a look at the kid and you think, okay, this kid's got this range of skill. Here's a challenge we can throw at him or her that exceeds their current level of skill, but gives them a reasonable probability of success. And so like I'm saying it tongue in cheek to some degree, you know, it's like, but if you're, but I'm doing it as an aid to humility. It's like, well, I don't know how to start improving my life. Someone might say that. And I would say, well, you're not aiming low enough. There's something you could do that you are regarding as trivial, that you could do, that you would do,

that would result in an actual improvement. But it's not a big enough improvement for you, so you won't lower yourself enough to take the opportunity. Incremental steps. Yes. So this is also what is achieved through exercise. It's one of the most important. Well, what do you do when you go and lift weights?

You don't go and, like if you haven't bench pressed before, you don't put 400 pounds on the damn bar and drop the bar through your skull. You know, you think, look, when I started working out when I was a kid, I weighed about 130 pounds and I was 6'1". I was a thin kid and I smoked a lot. I wasn't in good shape. I wasn't in good physical shape. And I went to the gym and it was bloody embarrassing, you know,

and people would come over and help me with the goddamn weights. Here's how you're supposed to use this. You know, it was humiliating. And maybe I was pressing 65 pounds or something at that point, you know, but what am I going to do? I'm going to lift up 150 pounds and injure myself right off the bat? No, I had to go in there and strip down and put my skinny goddamn self in front of the mirror and think, son of a bitch, there's all these monsters in the gym

who've been lifting weights for 10 years and I'm struggling to get 50 pounds off the bar. Tough luck for me, but I could lift 50 pounds. And it wasn't very long until I could lift 75. And well, you know how it goes. And I never injured myself when I was weightlifting. And the reason for that was I never pushed myself past where I knew I could go. And I pushed myself a lot. You know, I gained 35 pounds of muscle in about three years in university. I kind of had to quit because I was eating so goddamn much, I couldn't stand it. I was eating like six meals a day. It was just taking up too much time. But there's a humility in determining what it is that the wretched creature that you are can actually manage. Aim low. And I don't mean don't aim, and I don't mean

don't aim up, but you have to accept the fact that you can set yourself a goal that you can attain, and there's not going to be much glory in it to begin with. Because if you're not in very good shape, the goal that you could attain tomorrow isn't very glorious, but it's a hell of a lot better than nothing, and it beats the hell out of bitterness, and it's way better than blaming someone else. It's way less dangerous, and you could do it. And what's cool about it, there's a statement in the New Testament, it's called the Matthew Principle, and economists use it to describe how the economy and the world works. To those who have everything, more will be given. From those who have nothing, everything will be taken. It's like what's very pessimistic in some sense,

because it means that as you start to fail, you fail more and more rapidly. But it also means that as you start to succeed, you succeed more and more rapidly. And so you take an incremental step, and, well, now you can lift 55 pounds instead of 52.5 pounds. You think, well, what the hell is that? It's like it's one step on a very long journey. And so it starts to compound on you. So a small step today puts you in a position to take a slightly bigger step the next day.

And then that puts you in a position to take a slightly bigger step the next day. And you do that for two or three years, man, you're starting to stride. You know, and I have so many people coming up to me now. This is one of the things that's so insanely fun about this tour, which is so positive. It brings me to tears regularly. It's mind-boggling. Because people come up to me, and this is happening wherever I go now, and they say, they're very polite when they come and talk to me, you know, and they're always apologetic for interrupting. And so it's never narcissistic, and it's never annoying. I'm really happy to see people. And they come up to me and they say, well, I know you've heard this lots of times before,

but I've really been putting my life together since I've been watching your lectures. Then they tell me a story about where they were in some dark place, too much alcohol, too much drugs, not getting along with their father, not getting along with their mother, not having a vision for their life, being nihilistic, playing too many video games, you know, like being suicidal, that happens a lot, having post-traumatic stress disorder, sometimes as a consequence of combat, whatever little slice of hell they were occupying. They say, look, I've been listening to your lectures, and I've been developing a vision for my life, and I've been trying to take responsibility, and I've been trying to tell the truth, and things are way better.

And so that's absolutely perfect. It's the right way forward as far as I'm concerned. And those are people who, they took stock of themselves. They said, I'm in a dark place and I'm a dark person and here's some things that this dark person in this dark place could do. Little things that they could actually do. I'll clean up my damn room. I'll make my bed.

I've had, I don't know how many people have come and told me. It's so strange. They said, well, I started making my bed and that made all the difference. It's like, well, yeah, you decided to aim up, man. And the first concrete instantiation of that was that you made your bed. And you think, well, that's nothing heroic. It's like, no, but aiming up is heroic. That's something.

And then lowering yourself to the point where you're not above the mess in your room. You're not superordinate to that. You lower yourself so that you straighten up. You're grateful for what you have right in front of you and you take care of it and you put it in order. It's like all of a sudden things start to get

better. It's so wonderful to be doing this tour because I see so, that's what this tour has been about for me. It's not political. I never talked to people after the talks. For example, I talked to about 150 people a night. We never talk about anything political. It's always this. I wasn't doing very well. I'm putting my life together. I'm getting along better with my father. I'm getting along better with my wife. I'm getting along better with my wife. I'm getting along better with my kids. I've got some meaning in my life. Thanks a lot.

It's way better. It's like, yes, that's the right thing. It's very beneficial for people, and they need to hear that. And there's something that comes along with that that's critical. And what that is is an honest assessment of yourself. An honesty, that type of honesty, honesty with yourself, it's very difficult for some people. And they don't have the tools for it.

And they haven't been explained how to do this. Or why you should. Or why you should, yeah. One of the things that happens when you go through school, you're told what to do. You're never told how to think. You're also told that you're okay the way you are. That's self-esteem. You're okay the way you are. It's like, no, you're never told how to think you're never you're also told that you're okay the way you are that's self-esteem yeah you're okay the way you are it's like no you're not and this is

another thing that well you are and you're not right you're okay as a human look if you want to be a black belt in jujitsu and you just started your first class you're okay as you are you're a human but in the goal you're not okay in. In the greater goal, the incremental improvement is important. You have to honestly assess your position and move forward. Yeah. Well, that's it. You're a position and a trajectory. Yes. Right. And when you say to someone, you're okay because of your position, that's not good enough because you have to say, well, wait a second, you need a trajectory.

And maybe you're okay if you're okay in your position and your trajectory. But the self-esteem movements and all of that, well, in your position and your trajectory. But you know, the self-esteem movements and all of that will accept yourself the way you are. It's like, no, because you need a trajectory. And one of the things that I think, one of the reasons that audiences are responding to what I've been saying in my lectures and what I've been writing about is that I don't tell people that they're okay the way they are. No, I say, no, no, you could be way more than you are. And they're relieved about that, you see, because if you're in a dark and terrible place, and someone says you're okay the way you are, then you don't know what to do about that. It's like,

no, I'm not. I'm having a terrible time, and I'm hopeless. You're okay the way you are. Well, then what? That's it? That's it? That's where I am? And what do you want to tell a young person? You're 17. You're okay the way you are. It's like, no, you're not. You've got 60 years to be better. And you could be way better. You could be incomparably better across multiple dimensions. And in pursuing that better, that's where you'll find the meaning in your life.

And that will give you the antidote to the suffering. The way I always describe it to people is there are disciplines that you can pursue, and those disciplines are a vehicle for developing your human potential And if you get better at these things you can get better at anything And if you figure out what it takes to become better at whatever sport it is or whatever art it is or whatever you're pursuing The same principles you can apply to the way you treat people you can apply to the way you educate yourself You can apply to way you keep your people. You can apply to the way you educate yourself. You can apply to the way you keep your body in shape. All those things are connected.

That's why you have to impose order. People have asked me in my book why I wrote it as an antidote to chaos, you know, because, well, there isn't anything technically wrong with chaos. Chaos is a place of great potential. Well, the question is what's the proper balance between chaos and order, chaos, potential, and order? Well, the answer is, look, when you're a kid, you're all potential. It's chaotic potential. It can manifest itself in any number of ways. And maybe you don't want to give that up. So you're like Peter Pan. You want to be a kid forever because you don't want

to give up the potential. And you look out in the world and all you see are Captain Hooks, you know, who've lost a hand, who are chased by death because that's the clock in the crocodile. It's already got a taste of him. He's terrified by death and he's a tyrant. Well, I don't want to grow up to be that. So I won't be disciplined at all. Well, that's no good. Because the way the potential transforms itself into actuality is through discipline.

And so then you, as you said, this is the trick though. You have to pick a path of discipline. Whether what path of discipline you have to pick is a different issue. There could be a rule. The rule could be, the rule might not be follow this rule. The rule might be you have to follow some rules. So it's a meta rule. And the meta rule is you have to discipline yourself.

And the issue is, well, how? That's not really the relevant question you can pick a disciplinary path that's why i often tell my clients especially young people they say well i don't know what to do it's like that's okay nobody does go do something do the best thing that you can think of put the best plan you have into practice it's not going to be perfect and it will change along the way but it will change partly because you become disciplined pursuing the path and as you become disciplined pursuing the path, and as you become disciplined, you become wiser, and as you become wiser, you become able to formulate better and better plans. So you can start vaguely and confused and develop a plan that's not so great, and you start to implement it, and then you accrue incremental wisdom as you implement your flawed plan, and that enables you to fix the plan.

And so that's part of that process of incremental self-improvement as well One of the more difficult aspects of that is personal honesty like being honest with yourself Being honest with yourself about what you're doing self-assessment. It's very difficult for people. They don't they're never they're never taught it It's not something that's encouraged. No, and it's dismal I mean imagine you only got a hundred you only have a hundred thousand dollars to go buy a house. And so you go buy, you go look at this house and it's like, Jesus, this house, man, it's like, it needs a lot of work. It's like, well, that's all you've got. Well, are you going to pretend that the house is okay the way it is? Or are you going to look for where it's rotten and where the plumbing doesn't work and where the stove doesn't work?

You have to go and look and see where everything needs to be fixed. And that's like, that is harsh, man. But, and then in order to do that properly, someone has to have taught you, it's look, you aren't your problems. Well, you are. You're most fundamentally that which, if it confronts its problems, can solve them. And that's the hero myth in a nutshell, by the way. The hero is the person who confronts horrible, chaotic potential and tames it and makes something of it, right? That's the fundamental human story. But the problem is that you have to face what you don't want to face in order to fix it.

And so you look at all the things about yourself that need to be burned off, that need to be dispensed with. And that, man, especially at the beginning, especially if you're screwed up, that may be like 95% of you just has to go up in flames. And it's painful. Even some of that stuff that you have to burn off doesn't want to die.

And it'll scream in agony while you're burning it off. It's not pleasant. But if you know that you're the thing that can transcend your problems, most fundamentally, if you know you're the thing that, if it faces the problems, can transcend them, then you have the faith that would enable you to take stock of who you are and you have to do that in small steps because most people don't have experience in transcending their problems so they really don't know what it even feels like it

seems like an alien concept it seems like something other people can do but if you do it incrementally you can show yourself that you can do it i mean it's one of the reasons why they have belt systems in martial arts you start off slow oh my god i got a stripe on my white belt. Oh my God, I'm a blue belt. You feel improvement. And for some people, it's the first real improvement marked absolute improvement in their life. Yeah, right. Well, and then that's an interesting thing too, because right there, you've got a bit of a measurement system. We have this system set up online called the future authoring program and we've implemented last time we implemented it because we've tested it three times we implemented that mohawk college in canada and we had people write about their ideal future and also to put in measurement strategies it's like okay here's your

ideal future here's how you're going to break it into goals here's how you're going to mark progress towards those goals because you've got to break it into goals. Here's how you're going to mark progress towards those goals. Because you've got to be playing a fair game with yourself, right? Because when you make progress, you want to reward yourself. So you have to identify what the progress is and you have to reward it. The consequence, we had people write a future plan for only an hour when they came for their school orientation in the summer before going to, it's a community college. And it dropped the dropout rate among young men by 50%. And it's, yeah, no kidding, 50%.

Yeah. And what that meant was, to me, what that meant was, just think about that. What that means is that these kids have been educated for 12 years and no one had ever sat them down and said, okay, what the hell are you doing and why? And how are you going to get, like, where do you want to go? Why do you want to get there? How are you going to get? And how are you going to get, like, where do you want to go? Why do you want to get there? How are you going to get there? How are you going to mark your progress?

They've never walked them through that exercise. You walk people through that exercise just to get them to do that increases the probability that they'll stay on track by 50%. That's incredible. Well, it's one of the things I've always complained about is that people teach you facts. They don't teach you how to approach life. They don't teach you how to approach life. They don't teach you how to think.

They don't teach you how to confront insecurities and different traps that your mind will set up for you. Yeah. Well, that's what partly what's so fun about doing this lecture tour, because that's exactly what I'm talking to people about. One of the things I talk about is, well,

why do you think, why bother thinking? It's like, you think, well, that's obvious. It's like, no, actually, it's not so obvious. It's like the issue that I discuss with my students at university a lot is, well, why write a good essay? Why bother? Well, to get the grade. It's like, no, that's not why. And if you think that, well, that's better than not thinking that there's any reason for writing, but it's a bad reason. Why write? Well, writing is a form of thinking. It's actually the most demanding form of thinking, I would say. There's other forms that are demanding. something that matters to you, it's like you're not living something that's meaningful. It's wrong.

You're not going to write a good essay because you're wrong right to begin with. It has to matter to you. Well, why does it matter? What does it mean that it matters? Well, it means that it's going to affect how you make decisions in your life. Something that matters affects how you make decisions in your life. Well, why does it matter how you make decisions in your life? Because if you make so stupid decisions, you're going to increase the sum total of suffering a lot. You're going to do stupid things to yourself. You're going to do stupid things to other people. And you're not going to be as good a person as you could be. So not only will you do stupid and terrible things,

but you won't have manifested the good in the world that you could have manifested. So that's the lack. So you write an essay so that you can think, and you think so that you can live properly. And so you write damn carefully. You make sure that every single bloody word is a word that you want to use. And you make sure the phrases that you put the words in

are as solid as they can be. And you make sure the sentences are well constructed and that they're organized into proper paragraphs. And the paragraphs are sequenced and the content of the thing matters. And you put your soul into it. and you know when you've done that because it's gripping when you write it's meaningfully engaging and this is another thing that I've been sharing with my audiences meaning is actually an

instinct like you think okay so we already decided that incremental self-improvement is the proper route okay so how do you know when you're incrementally self-improving properly? And the answer is it's deeply engaging. It's deeply meaningful. And the reason for that is you're actually adapted neurologically to identify the pathway of maximal incremental improvement. That was a discovery conceptually by a guy named Vygotsky, who was a Russian neuropsychologist who coined the term zone of proximal development. You hear now and then people say they're in the zone. That's the zone of proximal development. You hear now and then people say they're in the zone.

That's the zone of proximal development. And that's that place that you occupy when you're improving at the rate that's optimal to you. And your sense of intrinsic meaning signifies that. That's how your bloody brain is wired. And so then you might say, well, what's the antidote to the tragedy and malevolence of life? And the answer is to put yourself in the zone of proximal development, because that's where the maximal meaning is. And that actually does prepare you for life. And so the question, why think, is, well, you think before you act, and you act to put yourself in the zone of proximal development. And you do that to,

as an antidote to the catastrophe of life. Well, that's the, well, that's the answer. And the thing that's cool about that, and this is, I think, part of what I've been telling people that's sort of novel is, well, where's the meaning? The meaning is in responsibility. You know, because people avoid response.

That's Peter Pan again. Avoid responsibility. It's just a burden. It's like, no, it's not. It is a burden, but voluntarily hoisted. It's the place of maximal meaning. And the more responsibility you take, the more meaning you have.

And that's the antidote to the catastrophe of life. And everybody also knows this because just look, it's so simple. When are you sick of yourself? Well, that's when you're being useless and irresponsible for yourself and for your family and for your community. You're not even taking care of yourself. Well, you can't sleep with a clean conscience unless you're psychopathic, if you're not taking care of yourself.

And then when are you not awake in the morning at 3 in the morning tearing yourself apart with a guilty conscience? It's when you've done something useful, at least for you, and you can say, oh, well, check one on my side. You say, okay, so fine, you adopt a little responsibility for yourself and you can say, oh, well, check one on my side. You say, okay, so fine, you adopt a little responsibility for yourself and you can sleep with a clean conscience. What happens if you adopted full responsibility for yourself and then for your family? Lots of the people who are coming to talk to me say now, I've been really trying to put my family together.

Like I've made that a goal. I'm trying to heal my family and bring it together and it's working. So here's a story. I love this story, man. It just killed together. And it's working. So here's a story. I love this story, man. It just killed me. I was in LA at the Orpheum. You know, it's rough downtown in LA places around the Orpheum too. And Tammy and I, my wife, because she's traveling with me, and is a big help, by the way. We're wandering around downtown LA that morning after the talk, and we're walking down the street, and we're on streets we probably shouldn't have been on but in any case because what the hell do we know being stupid Canadians and so we're walking down the street and this car pulled up beside us this kid hopped out it's good looking Latino kid 20 21 something like that he jumped over and he said he's all

excited he said are you Dr. Peterson I said yeah yeah he said I'm really really happy to meet you I've been watching your lectures for like a year and a half, and I've been trying to put my life together, and it's really working. I'm really doing way better. I really wanted to thank you. And so it's lovely when you're walking down a kind of rough area, and somebody pulls up beside you, and they jump out of the car to tell you how much better their life is.

That's a pretty good morning. But then that isn't all that happened. He ran back to his car. He said, wait a that isn't all that happened he ran back to his car he said wait a minute wait a minute went back to his car and he got out his dad and they came over together and his dad was just smiling away like a real smile you know and so was the kid and they had their arms around each other and they said look like we've really been working on our relationship for the last year and a half and it's going just great we want to thank you and the father said something like i'm really happy that you got my son back to me.

It's like, yes, that's what this bloody tour has been like. It's great. And everybody that's coming to these talks, that's what they're trying to do. You know, I got 3,000 people in each audience, and what they're trying to do is figure out how can I take maximal responsibility for my own life? How can I imbue it with the meaning

that helps me withstand tragedy and suffering? How can I be a better person? And wouldn't it be great if that was of optimal benefit to my family and the community? You're getting very emotional about this. Well, it's something, Joe. Jesus, I've seen like 150,000 people in the last two months. You know, and this is what it's... Well, you'll have a chance to talk to Ruben about this too.

This is what it's been like. It's so positive. I can't believe it and it's just one person after another saying like look I was I was having a rough time I'm really happy that I've been encountering what you've been talking about I've really been trying to put things together and it's really helping yeah Ruben was pretty blown away by it we had a long conversation about it about he just feels like there's some crazy movement going on and something's changing in the world because of this. This new avenue of learning and developing is opening up for these people. Well, and I've been thinking about that, too, because, you know, like I said at the beginning, if you're surfing, you don't want to take responsibility for the wave.

And so, you know, I mean, first of all, a lot of what I've been telling people are things that I've gleaned from the clinical and the psychological literature. It's not like I'm coming up with this of my own accord, right? I'm transmitting information that I've learned from very, very wise people. And so there's that. But also, we don't want to underestimate the utility of the technology, right? Because we have this long-form technology now, and it's enabling us to have this discussion. And so we can get deeper into things publicly and socially than we were able to before and i see this i see this as a manifestation of that

and and as in and i'm hoping too that maybe maybe what's happening because we've we're going to have a lot of adaptation to do in the next 20 years as things change so rapidly we can hardly comprehend it and hopefully the way we're going to be able to manage that is to think. And hopefully these long-form discussions will provide the political, provide the public forum for us to actually think, to actually engage at a deep enough level so we'll be able to master the transformations. And I think that's possible. And part of the reason that I wrote this book, and well, part of the reason that I've been doing what I've been doing for the last 30 years is because I really have believed since 1985, something like that, that the way out of political polarization,

the way out of the excesses of the right and the left, is through the individual. I think the West got that right. The fundamental unit of measurement is the individual. And the fundamental task of the individual is to engage in this process of humble self-improvement. I believe that's the case. And that's where the meaning is. And that's where the responsibility is. And I think and I'm hoping that if enough people in the West and then and then the rest of the world, for that matter, but we're very polarized in the West right now, if enough people take responsibility for getting their individual lives together, then

we'll get wise enough so we won't let this process of political polarization put us back to the same places that we went so many times in the 20th century. I don't see another antidote for it. It's not political. It's ethical. This is the message that I always hear from you. And this is you as a friend. This is the you that I understand. But this is not how you're commonly represented.

You are the most misrepresented person I've ever met in my life. I have never seen someone who has so much positive that gets ignored and where people are looking for any little thing that they could possibly misrepresent and switch up and change. And I'm kind of stunned by it. I mean, I'm really not sure what it is about you that's so polarizing with all these different people that are deciding that you are some sexist, transphobic, evil person that's this right-wing, alt-right figure, you know, even to the point where it's kind of humorous to me sometimes when I read some of these takes on you. What do you think that's from? Like, what is, have you, this is a new thing for you? I mean, it's only been the last few years that you've gone from this relatively unknown professor in a university in Toronto to being this worldwide figure where people, obviously your message is resonating with people in a very huge way.

But the people that are opposing you, they're vehemently opposed. What do you think that is? Collectivists don't like me. Collectivists. What do you mean by that? People who think the proper unit of analysis in the world is A, political, and B, group-oriented.

The identity politics types don't like me at all. And they have every reason not to. Because I'm not a fan of identity politics. Do you think that's why you're misrepresented? Fundamentally. There's other reasons. I mean, I came out against this bill in Canada, Bill C-16, that hypothetically purported to do nothing else but to increase the domain of rights that were applied to transsexual people. But there was plenty more to that bill, man, let me tell you. And I read the policies that went along with it, and it was a compelled speech bill. And so I opposed it on the grounds that the politicians are not supposed to leap out of their proper domain and start to compel speech.

It's not the same as forbidding hate speech. I think hate speech should be left to hell alone personally for all sorts of reasons. But to compel the contents of speech is a whole new thing. It's never been done before in the history of British common law, English common law. And it's actually the Supreme Court in the 1940s in the US said that that was not to be allowed. And so it was a major transgression. And they said, well, we're doing it for all the right reasons. It's like, no, no, you don't get it. You don't get to compel speech. I don't care what your reasons are.

And why should I trust your damn reasons anyways? What makes you so saint-like? So that you can violate this fundamental principle, and I should assume that you're doing it for nothing but compassion, and that you're wise enough to manage that properly. It's like, sorry, no, I read your policies. I see what you're up to. I don't like the collectivists. I think they're unbelievably dangerous, and I have reason to believe that.

So I think that when push comes to shove, if your unit of analysis is the group, and your worldview is one group and its power claims against all other groups, that that's not acceptable. against all other groups, that that's not acceptable. It's tribalism of the worst form, and it'll lead to nothing but mayhem and disaster. And part of the reason you're doing it isn't because you're compassionate, it's because you're envious, and you don't want to take responsibility for your own life, and I'm calling you on it.

And so you don't like me, so I must be an alt-right figure. I must be a Nazi. I'm saying, your house needs a lot of work, man. There's a lot of rot in the floorboards. The plumbing is leaking. The water's coming in. You're not the sage and saint you think you are. There's so much work you have to do on yourself that it would damn near kill you to take a look at it.

Do everything possible. Do you honestly think that that's why people are responding to you in a negative way? That they only have their own personal problems that they're avoiding? It can't possibly be that you represent to them something that is either cruel or something that is not compassionate about people and their differences and their

flaws and their humanity. Well, I think it's certainly the case that the vision that's been generated of me is that. Yes, but that's what I'm getting at. Oh yeah, there's that too, but there's layers. Well, part of it's the political polarization. You know, at the moment, we're viewing almost everything that happens in the world through a political lens, at least the journalists, at least

first of all, first of all, I've got to make this clear. First of all, I've been treated well by lots of journalists, really well. Like the best journalists in Canada have been on my side since about two weeks after the Bill C-16 thing erupted. And those would be the journalists that have an independent voice and that have created their own following.

And they're in a number of different media places, mostly in print. And there's a coalition of newspapers in Canada, the Post Media Group, 200 newspapers. They came out fully in support of my stance on Bill C-16. And so there's lots of times that I've been treated properly by journalists. There's a small number of journalists, very noisy, and a small number of activists, very well organized, who've been on my case right from the beginning and those are people who are generally driven by a very radical leftist progressive agenda and i am not on their side i'm on their side as individuals i'm on their side as

people who could struggle forward but the collectivist vision it's deadly but you seem to be the poster boy for this uh very simple characterization like almost a caricature of what uh the the the alt-right figurehead is it's and it's to me as a person who knows you it's very strange to watch this take place and then when they can find anything that you say that could, without further explanation or definition, be misconstrued as appealing to this definition of you. Like, for instance, when all this, I guess they call themselves incels, involuntary celibates. I guess they call themselves incels, involuntary celibates. When all this stuff went down, when this guy drove his car into a group of people, it's a horrible tragedy. One of the things that you talked about with incels is that, and this was a part of the New York Times hit piece. You said one of the cures for this is enforced monogamy.

People decided, and I had never heard that term before, quite honestly, and I was like, what the fuck does that mean? It's a psychological term, and what it means is enforced by culture, that it is a good value. Monogamy, yeah, because polygamous societies tend to become ultra-violent. And that's been known in the anthropological literature for 100 years. And certainly leftist anthropologists were among those who discovered it. societies tend to become ultra-violent. And that's been known in the anthropological literature for a hundred years. And certainly leftist anthropologists were among those who discovered it.

Like she knew, the journalist knew perfectly well what I meant by enforced monogamy. She's not stupid. You use it as if everybody would understand it because you're an intellectual and because you're a professor and this is what you do. It was also two minutes out of a two-day conversation. Yes, yes. So it was something we just glanced over. Well, that was funny in some sense because my sense is if you want to pillory someone,

you should attribute to them views that someone somewhere has had. And the implication of that part of the New York Times article was that I wanted to take nubile young women at the point of a gun under state enforcement and deliver them to useless men. It's like no one has ever believed that. But it sounds like that. It's a real, the optics of that statement are very bad.

But the question is, why didn't, why wasn't there follow-up questions? And if there was follow-up questions to get you to define what you mean by enforcement on me. Well, there were. They just didn't make it into the piece. Well, that's a real problem. Yeah, it's a real problem. That's a real problem.

Because that is... It's so ridiculous because... It's an inaccurate definition of who you are. Well, one of the things I've said continually, and this is on record in multiple places, it's like, okay, so you're a young man and all the women are rejecting you. Who's got the problem? It's not, okay, so you're a young man, and all the women are rejecting you. Who's got the problem? It's not all the women. That's a bad road to go down.

If all the women are rejecting you, it's you. We both agree on this, but why is enforced monogamy the solution for people that are involuntary celibates? Well, it's the solution to the it's the solution to the relationship between men and women fundamentally is monogamous social norms men are unattractive if these men are unattractive to them but if these men are unattractive to women i don't mean just physically unattractive i mean women aren't seeking them as mates they need to become men yes they certainly do that's the solution that's the solution absolutely and we both agree on this yes but they need to do that in a society where monogamy is the social norm but isn't it the social norm anyway well that was partly my point although to the degree that we

deviate from that we tilt towards a more violent society i was making a very minor point i don't think they're related quite honestly i don't think that involuntary celibates i don't think they're related, quite honestly. I don't think that involuntary celibates, I don't think that having enforced monogamy as a part of our cultural norm is going to help those people. I really don't. It does. How's it going to help them? Well, because what happens is if a polygamous society develops, which is the alternative,

then a small minority of men get all the women. That's what happens. Okay, I could see that. That's the only point that I was making. In this theoretical world where polygamous societies exist en masse and then you do have this problem where there's a a small group of men that are fucking all the women but that's not what we're talking and also making the women unhappy right because the women don't have any access to a genuine intimate one-to-one relationship over any long period of time which is what the women don't have any access to a genuine, intimate, one-to-one relationship over any long period of time.

Which is what the women want. The whole idea is that the women want that. Right. Sure, if you have children. Right. But I still don't think that that is why these men are involuntary celibates. And I don't think it's the solution to that. I think the solution is that they need to become attractive to women.

Yes, that is the solution. There's no doubt about that. I don't think the two are related. Well, I was making a minor point. The minor point was that one of the ways that societies around the world have figured out that you keep young male aggression under control is by enforcing monogamous standards because it gives everyone a chance in some sense. So that's the only point that I was making.

It gives everyone a chance, meaning it clears more, more women will be available for one-on-one relationships rather than one guy who is some, you know, whatever, for whatever reason, some large figure in society. Yeah, well, you see this happening in universities where women outnumber men. So the men hypothetically have more sexual opportunity, but that isn't what happens. What happens is that a small minority of men have all the sexual opportunity. A fairly large minority of men don't. The women are unhappy because they can't find a committed relationship. It's bad for most of the men and the men who have all the sexual opportunity get cynical. But isn't this in some ways against your whole idea of equality of outcome? Because you're talking about equality of sexual outcome now.

If these men, if you have a guy like a LeBron James that's a dominant basketball player that just kicks everyone's ass, this is a guy who succeeded at the highest level, right? Well, there's going to be people like that sexually. There's going to be people that are better at finding mates and this is what they enjoy. They enjoy having many mates. They enjoy being, yes, but if this is what they enjoy, if it's a man who doesn't want a family and enjoys dating multiple women, why is that bad? Well, I think the fundamental reason it's bad is because it's bad in the long run for children. It's bad for children if he chooses to have children. Yeah, but that's it. That's the fundamental issue as far as I'm concerned. And I think it's the answer. Look, to give the journalist credit, that is the point she was making. Apart from pilloring

me and caricaturing my perspective, that was the point she was making. Well, first of all, I'm not in favor of unbridled hierarchies. Like I already said that, you know, the proclivity of a hierarchy is that all the spoils go to the person at the top and that can destabilize the whole structure. So we have to have a dialogue about how to rectify that. But how could you possibly rectify that if one man is, like say if we've got one six foot five beautiful man who's got a perfect body and he's brilliant and he just wants to date a bunch of women. And all the rest of the people are five foot one and they're fat and they're lazy and like this guy's going to, if this is the competition, he's going to win. Yep. There's no way around this.

And even if you decide to have enforced monogamy, where it becomes a popular thing, the women are going to be more drawn to him if he chooses to date them. They might decide, I would rather have him sometimes than never at all. That is actually what does happen. But what is wrong with that? Well, what's wrong with it is that it destabilizes society and it's bad for children. You said that. But what if they don't want to have children? There's a lot of people that don't want to have children.

There's a lot of people that choose to go their entire life without having children. There's men in their 30s. Some of my friends have vasectomies. They don't want children. So why would that help in any way, these involuntary celibates? Well, I think you tilt the society so that it serves the interests of, well, that's a good question. But you see my point. I do.

I do. Look, I see your point. There's no doubt about it. You're almost forcing an inequality of outcome. I know. That was her point, too. To the degree that she had a point, that was her point. But it doesn't run contrary to my opinions

that the issue of outcome has to be addressed. I already said there needs to be a reason for the left and the right. And the problem with hierarchies is that they can get too steep and destabilize everything. That does happen. That particularly happens in the sexual domain. And there's plenty of anthropological evidence for that. But you still might say, well, who cares?

Because the men who are winning should be allowed to win and the women should be allowed to choose. It's like, yes, except that there's the problem of children. And so society steps in on behalf of the children. And you can say, well, lots of people don't want to have children. Yes, and that's truer now than it used to be, although many of those people end up having children anyways, you know, the guys who sleep around all the time. So that doesn't circumvent the problem.

But the issue here for me isn't the men or the women. It's the children. We're trying to set up societies where the probability that children will be raised in something approximated in an optimal environment is optimized. And that's going to mean sacrifice of opportunity and choice on the part of adults. It's necessary. I agree with you, but I think that what we're talking about mirrors what we're talking about in sports. It mirrors what we're talking about in business.

It's everything else. There's going to be people that are better at all different aspects of life. There's going to be people that are talented in terms of like getting women to like them. Yes, that's true. Well, that's why also, look, you see this. Women are hypergamous, which means they meet across and up dominance hierarchies. And so if you're a male who's successful in a given hierarchy, the probability that you're going to have additional mating opportunities is exceptionally high.

It's an unbelievably good predictor of that. That hypergamy is a very uncomfortable discussion. Yes, it certainly is. It doesn't matter. Well, there's plenty of uncomfortable discussions to be had. That's a big one, though. It is. The idea that it defines women's sexual choices

by the fact that they want bigger, bigger, better. They want someone who's more successful, someone who's higher on the social ladder than what they're accustomed to or what they have now. Yeah, well, what women do is, like, mate choice is a very difficult problem. So how do you solve it? Well, here's how women solve it. Throw the men in a ring, let them compete at whatever they're competing at,

assume that the man who wins is the best man, marry him. Yes. It's a brilliant solution. It's a market-oriented solution. It's actually the solution that appears to have driven our evolutionary departure from chimpanzees. It's a biological solution. It's a biological solution, but it has a cost. What is the cost?

Well, the cost is polygamy. And so we rein that in with enforced monogamy. And we do that in order to provide stable circumstances for children. enforced monogamy and we do that in order to provide stable circumstances for children. Is a polyamorous society just as unattainable as this utopian Marxist idea? Yes, I think so. Because it looks like, and this is another point I was making that didn't get covered in the article, although I wrote about it somewhat extensively on my blog, is that societies tilt towards monogamy across the world. It's human universal. Now, that doesn't mean that people

don't have polygamous or polyamorous tendencies, because they certainly do. And it's certainly also the case that one of the ways that women gerrymander this system is that, like, the number of children who are in a... Say you're married, and you have children with your husband, but you also have an affair, so you have a child by another man. That's more common than anyone suspected. So part of the way that women solve the problem that you're just describing, and I'm not saying anything for this or against this, this is a purely factual biological claim,

is they pick a monogamous marriage and they cheat with high status guys. Now, you know, obviously in the confines of the marriage, that's a terrible thing, but... That's a very uncomfortable subject, though, for women in particular. Well, it's an uncomfortable subject for everyone. Right. But it's a terribly uncomfortable subject. They don't like the idea that this is a common thing, that women choose a safe man that is willing to be monogamous with them, and perhaps maybe they're above him in a social class or sexually, and then they'll cheat with someone who is above them.

Well, it's common, but it's not the norm, right? It's still the norm not to do that. The norm is fidelity. But there's plenty of exceptions. And this is enforced monogamy, culturally, the norm. This is the very definition of it. Well, enforced monogamy is this. It's like, okay, so my son's getting married in September. And so let's say he comes to me in a year and he says, hey, dad, guess what? I've had three affairs in the last year and they've all been successful. I haven't got caught. Aren't I a good guy? What am I going to say to that? No. What the hell are you doing?

That's not what you're supposed to be doing. That's enforced monogamy. Enforced monogamy meaning the people around you try to guide them in a way that you think is going to lead to a harmonious family life. Yes, it's built deep into the cultural norms. And if that starts to destabilize, then there's trouble. And that doesn't mean that it's not prone to all the problems that you laid out. Look, there isn't a bigger problem than successful reproduction. It is the big problem. And all of the solutions that we've generated for it are full of flaws. Like here's an example, the gender pay gap. Okay, there's no gender pay gap. There's a

mother gap. There's other reasons too, but women really take a hit when they become mothers. Okay, that's unfair. Fair enough, man. What the hell are you going to do about it? It's not just that though, right? And this is what also, I'm sorry to interrupt you here, but this is one of the things that I wanted to bring up, but I kind of lost track of it. The misrepresentation of you mirrors the misrepresentation of the gender pay gap, because it's a convenient misrepresentation of you mirrors the misrepresentation of the gender pay gap because it's a convenient misrepresentation that upon further inspection and understanding, you realize there is no gender pay gap.

The gender pay gap, when people discuss it, they don't understand it. And I've had these conversations with really intelligent people that just listen to what's in the news or read some very quick article talking about this problem that we have. And they assume that a man and a woman are working the same job, but the woman is unfairly paid 79 cents to the man's dollar. That's not the case. It's not even close to the case.

The case is women choose different professions that don't pay as much. They work less hours and they oftentimes get married and have children. And because they have children, they take paternity leave, and they make less money because of that. So there's about 10 reasons or 20 reasons for the gender pay gap, one of them being motherhood, but there's a whole slew of them. Men work more dangerous jobs. Men work outside.

Men are more likely to move. But it's never discussed. Well, that's because people don't like multivariate problems. Well, it's not just that. It's a willful misrepresentation of a reality. Yes, it certainly is. And I think it mirrors this willful misrepresentation of where you stand. And I think these are all tied in together where people want bad and good.

They want a one and a zero. They want things to be very binary. Yeah, they want them to be binary in the way they already understand. They want everything to fit their ideological lens, and things are more complicated than that. This is a complex discussion that you're not going to get in a five-minute segment on a talk show. Right, exactly. You're not going to get this on a radio show. You're not going to get this in an article that gets edited by someone with a biased opinion. And this is the problem with mainstream media, and this is the problem with ideas, period.

Warren Farrell's book on, he wrote a book called, Warren Farrell is the guy who's most, what would you call, been most pilloried for pointing out the real reasons for the gender pay gap. He wrote a book called Why Men Make More. Who'd he write it for? His daughters. Why? Because he wanted to help

provide, now obviously he was doing it for public consumption as well, but one of the motivations was, well, men do help provide. Now, obviously, he was doing it for public consumption as well. But one of the motivations was, well, men do make more. Well, why? And if women want to make more, well, could they learn from the men who make more how to make more? And the answer is yes. The question is whether or not they'll do it. And the probable answer is most women won't.

Because how much you make isn't the only hallmark of success in your life. You know, it's like, it's one measure, and it might be a measure that really competitive men compete for, and they do, and that's partly to provide access to increased mating opportunities, because that's built into the structure, something we never talk about either, although we could. So Warren wrote this to lay out all the reasons that men make more, but it was so that his daughters, at least in part, so that his daughters could figure out how to be socio-economically successful it's

like yeah but that's not the only hallmark how much socio-economic success are you willing to sacrifice to spend time with your kids before they're three years old right well the answer to that shouldn't be none right because what makes look we already know this for for example once you make enough money to keep the bill collectors at bay so that's kind of lower upper working class say something like even centrist working class keep the bill collectors at bay additional money doesn't improve your quality of life other things do so maybe it's a rational response when you're like 30 see See, the irrational men. Here's the irrational men. Maybe they drive the world, but they're the irrational men.

More success is always better along this unidimensional axis of achievement. Gordon Gekko, greed is good. Well, there's a tiny percentage of men who are hyper-competitive along those single axes of competition. And maybe they drive most things. They probably do. But that doesn't make them right. It also doesn maybe they drive most things. They probably do. But that doesn't make them right. It also doesn't make them most people. And it doesn't make them happy.

Well, happy is a whole different issue. That isn't what they're after. But it's a big part of it because everyone is, well, you are though. In pursuit of success, it's implied that happiness goes with that success. Otherwise, why the fuck are you doing it? Yeah, well, domination, power,

charisma, prestige. That's implied. It is. Success and happiness are, they're inexorably connected in our perception. Yeah, well, it's often a flawed equation. You know, like, what happens, look, I worked in law firms,

with law firms for a very long period of time, and I worked for lots of high-end women, lots of them, and they were, like of high-end women, lots of them. And they were usually extremely attractive. They were extremely intelligent. They were extremely driven. They were very, very conscientious. They varied in how agreeable they were.

Some were disagreeable, litigator types, and some were more agreeable. They often had a harder time in the law firms. But the law firms lose all their women in the 30s. They all bail out at partner level. A lot of them. Well, Jesus, it's, yeah. It's a good percentage. It's a huge percentage.

And it isn't because the law firms don't want them. The law firms want them because you can't find people like that. They're really rare, especially if they're also rainmakers, if they can bring in money. So the law firms bend themselves over backwards trying to keep the women. They can't keep them. Why? Well, the women decide that, oh, I'm working 18 hours a day,

flat out, all the time, seven days a week. My husband makes a fair bit of money. If I made half as much money as I made, we'd still have plenty of money. Why am I working 18 hours a day? Well, that's not the question. The question is, why would anyone work 18 hours a day? That's the mystery. And the answer is, a small minority of men are driven to do that. And so they'll do that. No matter hit the pinnacle. I mean, they could keep going if they wanted to, but they've accomplished their goal. They've definitely shown, man, they're bloody

well in the game. And they wake up at 30 and they think, oh, wait a minute, I want to have a relationship. And so I want to have some time to put into that. I'd like to have kids and I'd actually like to see my kids. It's like, is that irrational? this is another thing that you and i are in agreement on but when i see people talk about the way you discuss women they misrepresent what you're saying and paint you in what i think willfully paint you they do it on purpose they paint you as a misogynist i don't understand why i don't understand if it is because they disagree with you on things. So this is a convenient way to demonize your position by demonizing you as a human being. But... Well, it's partly too, because I've made the case that there are differences

between men and women. Yes. But like, why that isn't a feminist case is beyond me. It's like, no, they're exactly the same. It's like, no, they're not. It's ridiculous. It is. And it's confusing. It's confusing. Purposefully confusing.fully confusing yeah and then thing is the data are in so look and people have accused me of pseudoscience you know which i really think is quite comical because this the studies that i'm reporting aren't who's accused you of pseudoscience oh god journalists journalists of all stripes especially when i talk about differences between men and women it's like oh that's pseudoscience. It's like, actually, no, it's not.

It's bloody mainstream science, both biology and psychology. But why do they like to do that? Well, because it seems to be there's a reason that goes along with the radical leftist agenda that if there are, that a world of equality of outcome

could not be achieved, and that's the desirable world, if there are actually differences between people, actual differences, like that aren't just socioculturally constructed so that you can gerrymandered. There's also something as well. If you're really power mad, you want to believe that human beings are infinitely malleable, because then you can mold them in whatever image you want. And if you say, no, they actually have a character, right? There's something built in, then that interferes with the totalitarian regime but here's what's happened is like look we've got a good personality model we've had it for about 40

years something like that the big five model five dimensions of personality and they were established statistically a theoretically by left-leaning psychologists okay and i'm not saying that they're ideologically contaminated but what i am saying is there's no evidence whatsoever that right-wing leaning psychologists produced the big five, because there are no right-leaning psychologists. So enough of that. That isn't why the big five came up. Okay, so once you have a good personality model, you can say, okay, well, do men and women differ? And the answer is, yeah, it turns out they do. There's quite a few differences, but the biggest ones are women are more agreeable,

because that's one of the traits, agreeableness, and it's the compassion, politeness dimension, and they're more prone to negative emotion, anxiety, and emotional pain. And that mirrors a psychiatric literature that shows worldwide that women are more likely to be diagnosed with depression and anxiety, just like men are more likely to be imprisoned for antisocial behavior, which is the reflection of low agreeableness. This is true worldwide. Okay, so there's no evidence of any bias. Unless you say everything's biased everywhere in the world. Fine, could be. But we've also controlled for that.

So now, there are personality differences between men and women. Now, the first thing we might point out is they're not that big. So if you draw a random woman and a random man out of the population, and you had to bet on who was most aggressive, least agreeable, and you bet on the woman, you'd be right 40% of the time, which is actually quite a lot. You'd be right quite a lot. But if you take the 1 in 100 person who's most aggressive, least agreeable,

there's an overwhelming probability that they'll be male because the differences get more extreme at the ends of the distribution. People don't understand the statistics. You can have two populations that are quite similar and still have radically dissimilar outcomes if only the extremes matter. So like who are the most powerful physical fighters in the world? Men. All of them. Well, does that mean that there are no women who can beat a man in a fight? No.

It also doesn't mean that there are, there's plenty of women who are more aggressive than men. But if you take the most aggressive, physically powerful people, they're all men. All of them. Because they're like one in a thousand people, or one in 10,000 people. So you can have walloping differences at the extremes, despite most similarity at the middle. People don't understand that. But then the next thing is, okay, well, there are differences between men and women, personality-wise, apart from the biological ones. Are those caused by cultural differences? Hey, turns out we can answer that. How? Rank order countries by how egalitarian their social policies are. Does everyone agree? Yeah, yeah. The Scandinavians are at the top.

Everyone agrees. Left, right, doesn't matter. Everyone agrees. It's like, okay, so you stack up the cultures by how egalitarian their social policies are. And then you look to see how big the differences are between men and women up that hierarchy of egalitarianism. And if as the societies become more egalitarian, the differences between men and women disappear, then it's socio-cultural. That isn't what happened. What happened was, is that as the societies

got more egalitarian, the differences between men and women got bigger, not smaller. It means the sociocultural construct people, and I'm talking to you sociocultural construct people, you're wrong. You're wrong. You make the societies more egalitarian, men and women get more different. Who makes the argument in opposition to this? All the social constructionists, all the radical left-wingers. And what do they use as fact? They don't have facts, but then they criticize the whole idea of facts.

Then they go after the whole idea of science as a Western patriarchal construct. What's their motivation? The motivation is that if people are different, then equality of outcome isn't neither desirable nor achievable. And why do they want equality of outcome? Why is this so attractive to them? That's a good question. Well, part of it is.

Part of it is actual compassion. Look, man, it's not good that people lose. And it's certainly not good that some losers lose all the time. Who wants that? You happy when you walk down the street and see homeless people? It's like, hey, look, the hierarchy's working. Look at these homeless people. No one's happy about that. Right. Right. Okay. So the fact of failure within a hierarchy of value is painful. And so to give the devil his due, you give the left its due, just like you do the right, is like, yeah, it's painful

that hierarchies produce dispossession. Bloody right. Okay. What's the cure? Get rid of the hierarchy. Hey, well, wait a minute, man. You get rid of the hierarchy, you get rid of the value structure, you get rid of the tools that allow us to generate absolute wealth and stop people from starving. It's a catastrophe. Okay, so there's the problem. You have to have the hierarchy.

But then also, it isn't just compassion on the left. It's envy. It's like, okay, if I'm standing for the dispossessed, what makes me so sure that I'm not just standing against the successful? And maybe that's because I'm bitter and jealous and envious and resentful. And certainly it's highly probable. If you look at what happened in the leftist societies that tried to pursue utopia, and you don't read envy and resentment into that, you don't read envy and resentment into that, you don't know the history.

Because that's clearly the case. Why else did they become murderous? This is the question. It's like, it's clearly the case that the Soviet Union, for example, was motivated by the desire for equality of outcome as a primary motivation. What happened? 25 million people were killed.

Why? Why? Well, was it all compassion and love for the dispossessed? Or was it absolutely bitter resentment and hatred for anyone who had any shred of success whatsoever on any possible dimension of evaluation? So this compassion for people that aren't doing well, when utilized the wrong way, or when approached the wrong way or when approached the wrong way leads to attacking people that do well that's the danger of compassion that's exactly well look what happens if you get you think oh look at how isn't it lovely that the mother grizzly bear takes care of her cubs yeah it's lovely man till you get between her and her cubs, then it's not so damn lovely. And that's the flip side of that affiliative agreeableness.

It's like if you're on my side, if you're the infant who's sheltering under my wings, it's like I'm the absolute epitome of maternal love and care. But if I've identified you as a predator, you better look the hell out. And that's playing out in our political landscape at a very, very rapid rate. That's the female side of totalitarianism, as far as I can tell, the feminine side of totalitarianism. It's not just that. It's not just that agreeableness

motivates aggression, because it certainly does. It's also that it's that the envious and the resentful can use compassion as a camouflage for their true intent, which is to tear down anyone who has more than them. That's the why. You notice, like, when there's discussions about the 1%, we already talked about this. Well, who's the 1%? Well, I'm in the park in New York demonstrating against Wall Street.

Down with the 1%. It's like, wait a second. You're in the 1% there, Mr. Protester. No, no, you don't understand. The rich are those who have more money than me. Yes. Right. That's the definition. Who's rich? Someone who has more than me. Not me.

It's like, well, why isn't the 1% North America? Why not? Because it's inconvenient. That's an inconvenient fact. So that's part of it. But there's the envy and resentment. This is the real pathological end of the full compassion

that motivates the radical left. It's like, yeah, you like the poor, do you? What makes you think you just don't hate the successful? And that's a question. It's like, because you're not perfect, man. There's hatred in you.

And the probability that it's more powerful than love is pretty damn high. So look to your own viewpoint before you go out there and try to fix the hierarchies of the world. Just exactly what it is. And it's worse. Like, look, in the Russian Revolution, for example,

let's say, just for the sake of argument, that the first rung of revolutionaries were only driven by compassion. Maybe they were. They all got killed. They got killed by the people who came after, and they weren't so interested in compassion at all. They were interested in ferreting out

everyone who had a modicum of success on any dimension, and doing them in. And that happened in wave after bloody wave. They killed all the successful farmers. Those were the kulaks. They killed all of them, rounded them all up, killed them, raped them, stole all their property, sent the remnants to Siberia, froze them to death. Ten years later, six million Ukrainians died because they couldn't raise crops.

Why do you think that people are so opposed to discussing these things or to challenging cultural norms? Because one of the things that I've seen, especially in terms of the differences between men and women, this reaction to some of the things that you've said has been very, it's very strange to me. It's very strange that people aren't recognizing that these are unbalanced approaches and that there's. Well, some of it's just complicated, Joe. It's like, well, let's say there are differences between men and women,

just for the sake of argument. The biggest differences seem to be an interest by the way. And so what's going to happen is that if we let men and women sort themselves out, there aren't going to be very many female engineers and tech types, and there's going to be a lot of female nurses. There's not going to be many male nurses and healthcare types. There's not going to be very many male elementary school teachers. But is this a bad thing?

Well, that's the question. Who knows? Do we know? I don't know. Well, the idea of having an equal society where gender inequality is completely knocked down gender pay gap is non-existent yeah well that's a problem because that's a quality of outcome well it's also it's yeah the equality of outcome thing is a non-starter whether it's okay with like if men and women sort themselves into different occupations which looks

highly probable i don't know if that's okay. And then it's also like, okay, compared to what alternative? Like, should every elementary school teacher be female? Should every psychologist be female? Because that's what's happening. And the answer to that is, well, I don't know. But there's another answer, which is, well, what do you propose as an alternative to free choice that isn't going to cause more trouble than free choice? Because I would say, well, okay, let's say I'm a feminist for the sake of argument. All right, so I think, well, there are differences between men and women. There are actual differences. And so some of those are biological.

Some of them are strategic in some sense because women pay a bigger price for reproduction. And so that's going to lead them to make different choices. That's just rational, based on, it's rationality based on biological differences, so it's like a second-order biological difference. There's differences in temperament and interest. It's going to lead them to make different choices. Is that a pro-feminist

stance or an anti-feminist stance? It's only anti-feminist if you assume everyone has to be exactly the same and the outcomes have to be exactly the same. If your goal is, no, leave people the hell alone as much as possible, let them make their own informed and free choices, then you let the differences manifest themselves in the world and you take your knocks because of that. The problem with that is this narrative of equality. The equality of outcome, yeah.

And just equality of human beings. Just looking at people as we're all equal. We're not. Some people are better at different things. We're equal in terms of our rights. We're equal in terms of the way we should treat each other. We're metaphysically equal. Yes.

Right. But in every other dimension, we're radically unequal. And there's pain in that. That's the problem. That's the problem. That's the problem. The pain in that. That's the problem. That's the problem. That's the problem, is the pain in that is real. The only thing that's worse than the pain of inequality is the pain of forced equality.

And I'm not being facile about that. It's like, look, I see the IQ issue is the killer one for me. It's like, look, if you have an IQ of less than 83, you can't be inducted into the American military by law. Why? Because there isn't a damn thing you can do that isn't counterproductive, despite the fact that the army wants you because they can't get enough manpower. That's what they decided. It's like, okay, so you're on the low end of the cognitive distribution.

What are you going to do? Not much. And it's going to get worse. Is that good? It's not good. It's horrible. Do we know what to do about it? No.

Right. And we can't have equality of outcome amongst people with lower than 83 IQs. Right. No one's advocating for that. No one's asking for that. Well, people will say, well, the IQ tests aren't valid. It's like, well, yeah. One of the conversations that you had that I found to be shocking and it started a trend of misquoting

and misrepresenting you was uh you did an article an interview with vice and they use a snippet of one of the things you said and tried to pretend that you had made these very curt statements and one of them well he was he was annoying so I got kind of curt and that was probably my strategic error makeup is that the one you're talking about yes makeup and the way people dress you know and yeah well i was trying to draw first of all how was he annoying he knew everything he knew everything well it was just in his attitude you know it was he was challenging you he wanted he wanted this from the very beginning this was him arms crossed right right eyes up it's like like, I know more than you, and B, you're probably that reprehensible person that I've thought about, and it's my job to reveal you. He was signaling.

He's left-leaning. He was deciding that what you were doing was representing the patriarchy, or you were representing male-dominant structures that he was saying that are not correct. Yeah, well, it wasn't even that. Is that an accurate assessment? Yeah, but it wasn't even that it was left-leaning. I've talked to reasonable left-leaning people. It was built right into his attitude, and so it made me a little testier than I might have been, which was my strategic error.

And, you know, you asked earlier, well, why do I get pilloried with some regularity? And some of it is probably my own inadequacy. You know, it's not, it isn't that I've handled all the opportunities that I've had perfectly, you know, and I can get hot under the collar. It's a mistake. It's a mistake because the right approach in these situations is to use minimal necessary force and to allow myself to get irritated. Let's say even minorly when I'm faced with someone who's doing this is not productive, doesn't work well. And so I really need to keep that under control. And when I do keep it under control, it works better. The makeup one was particularly annoying to me, because I think it's a valid conversation. It's an interesting conversation.

I said, and they didn't put this in their initial cut, I said, I'm not saying that women shouldn't be allowed to wear makeup in the workplace. I said that explicitly. Well, that was why people were so angry when they saw the full version of it. I mean, the full version was released. Someone leaked it, right? Someone who felt like you were being misrepresented and that the editing was unjust decided to leak it.

And people were absolutely furious. Yeah, well, I think the vice people actually released it, but other people took the full release and clipped it with the clipped release and showed how it was being misrepresented. Is that what it was? Yeah. But so, okay, so the makeup thing,

it's like, all right, look, here's the, first of all, I make a mistake sometimes in treating journalists like I would treat my graduate students. So when I'm having a conversation with my students and we say, well, here's a problem. It's an intellectual exercise. A sexual, sexual behavior. How do we regulate? What are the norms around sexual behavior in the workplace? So that's the question. It's a question. We don't know. Okay. Here's a bunch

of possibilities, possible rules, right? No flirting, no hugging, no eye contact for more than five seconds. That's Netflix, right? No hugging. That's NBC. Is that what they have? Damn right. They have no eye contact for more than five seconds? That's right.

Holy shit. NBC, no hugging. Was that real? It's real. What the fuck? What if you're having a conversation with a woman who's your boss and she's asking you questions about things? Then you look down every five seconds.

Oh, fucking Christ. Is that real? Yes, yes, it's real. It's real. That's so bad. That's such a terrible idea. Yes, it's a terrible idea. But there's a lot of women that I'm friends with

that I've never had any sexual interest at all, and we look at each other in the eye. That's what you say, but you're a potential rapist, and you're a manifestation. Yes, you get the whole picture. I look like one, right? Yes, you get the whole picture. Yes, you get the whole picture. So if you have a discussion, you say, well, look, what are the rules governing sexual behavior in the workplace?

Okay, can you come to work in a negligee? No. How about boxers if you're a man? No. Okay, so there's some... What about a short skirt? Well, this is the thing. The devil's in the bloody details, right?

It's like, okay, you can't come to work naked you can't come to work in boxer shorts you can come to work in a suit okay so the line is somewhere between boxers and suit where exactly is the line exactly can a man wear shorts well if he can't why can a woman wear a dress? The way that men in professional organizations, the way that men solve this problem was that everyone wore a uniform. And a uniform makes you uniform. That's why you wear it. And the uniform is the suit. And it's a derivation of a military garb.

And so the idea was, well, we want to get rid of excess diversity, right? In clothing, wear your damn suit. Then we know you're playing the game and we don't have to be distracted by what you're wearing. Okay. So that's what men did. Okay. So now women come into the workspace. It's like, hmm, what do they do? Well, there's business professional dress, right? And there's some rules around that, but what are the rules exactly? Exactly. And I was thinking, well, we're worried about sexual misbehavior in the workplace. You can't look at someone for more than five seconds. You can't give them a hug. Okay.

What about makeup? Do we have a discussion about makeup? Oh, I know we can't have a discussion about that. It's like, well, is makeup sexual signaling? It's like, well, if you're an evolutionary biologist, the question is makeup sexual signaling? That's not even a question. It's like, well, obviously that's what it is. That's why that conversation was frustrating because he was saying, because they want to do it.

They want to wear it. They want to look good. What does that even mean? Well, that's right. That's right. What does that mean? What does that mean? Well, everyone knows what that means, Joe.

He has to say that. No. He has to say that because in his tribe, you have to communicate that way, right? This is what's implied. Oh, women wear makeup because they want to look good. Okay, buddy, what do you mean by good? But do you think he's doing that because that's

his take or because he's trying to rile you up like you're getting riled up right now? Both. As a journalist, it's kind of his idea or his job to challenge you in some way. And at the very least, offer the devil's advocate opinion. Sure. Like, explain yourself better.

Why shouldn't they wear makeup? They just want to look good. You need to explain yourself better. Why are you saying there's something wrong with makeup? Oh, yeah, but the way he did it was like, oh, Dr. Peterson, it's obvious what it means for them to look good. Like, everyone knows that. Do you think that he felt... Well, I don't know it.

Like, perhaps, like, he was intellectually sp Do you think that he felt, like perhaps, like he was intellectually sparring with you and he was being aggressive about it? I think he felt, I think he felt that. I think he felt that it was necessary

to challenge me, that that was his role as a journalist. But fundamentally, he was smug. He thought he came at the entire conversation with an air of

intellectual condescension. It was built right into the discussion right from the beginning and he never dropped it at all. It's like, well, I know what you're doing and I know what's up and I know how to take you apart. And I know that whatever you're talking about is just an attempt to defend your

actually reprehensible opinions. Oh God, about an hour, something like that. How much did they use? Oh, in the clips, hardly any of it. I don't even know, a couple of minutes. So yeah. Yeah, so your tendency to get riled up can be exploited. Yes, of course.

And it's the problem of deviating from the doctrine of minimal necessary force. Like, the best times, the best interactions I've had with contentious journalists is where I've absolutely kept my cool, you know. Like Kathy Newman. Yes, but, um, and I, Kathy Newman. Yes, exactly. Exactly. And I, so what you're saying is, well, that's what he was like. Yeah. It's like, I know who you are and I know you're covering it up. It's like, well, it's these con these concepts. These are complex situations when you find men and women who are sexually attracted to each other and they're working in confined environments for long periods of time and they essentially spend more

time with the people they work with than they do with their lovers and their wives and their husbands and it's weird you know men and women interacting with each other in closed-in boxes is weird that's what an office is it's closed in box they're all together and if they find each other attractive and they're interacting with each other socially, especially if there's any interaction that deviates outside of the work discussion, they start talking about different things. You also don't want them to find each other unattractive. Right. Like if you're taking someone out for dinner, on a business dinner, it's like, even if it's

guys going out together, let's say, it's not like they're working to find each other unattractive. And I don't mean sexually. You want to manifest yourself as attractive. You want to enjoy each other's company. Yes, you do. And you want to be charismatic and you want to be witty and all of those things. And that shades, especially when you add, assuming a heterosexual environment, you add a heterosexual component to that, the borders become fuzzy. And so I was talking about

border conditions so well if we're going to have a conversation about this let's talk about the border conditions oh no we can't do that it's like I thought that's the discussion you guys wanted why do you continue to agree to have these conversations that are going to be edited oh well that's a good question the Jim Jeffries one was another one yeah Jim's a friend of mine but I mean he gave you a good question and you actually gave a good question. The Jim Jeffries one was another one. Jim's a friend of mine. But, I mean, he gave you a good question, and you actually gave a good answer. You said, actually, I'm probably wrong about that. Yeah, yeah. When you were talking about whether or not gay people should, whether someone should be forced to bake a cake for gay people.

And you said, forced to, probably not. And he said, well, what if they don't want to bake a cake for black people? Yeah. And he said, well, actually, probably, they probably should bake a cake for black people? And he said, well, actually, probably they probably should be forced to. Yeah. Well, I'm probably wrong. Yeah. Well, I was probably wrong in everything I did in that in that part of the discussion, because I hadn't thought that issue through enough to actually give a good answer.

You didn't expect that issue because this is not something you talk about commonly. No. And it's it's actually complicated. Right. I mean, obviously, the whole I won't serve you because you're black thing is not good. But then again, you also have the right to choose who you're going to affiliate with. But then that's complicated because it's a commercial circumstance. And then if you're making a cake, is that the same as serving or is that compelled speech? It's like, oh my God, these are border cases that cause a lot of controversy. I don't mean serving black people, obviously, that's not a border case. cases that cause a lot of controversy. I don't mean serving black people, obviously, that's not a border case. But these cases that cause a lot of controversy is where two principles are at odds, and it isn't exactly clear where to draw the line. And I'm not happy with, you know, I'm not happy with my answer to that. But I hadn't spent the like week it would take to think through the issue

and really have a comprehensive perspective. And you didn't expect that to be a subject anyway? No, no. What, how long did you talk to Jim for? Oh, I think about 45 minutes, maybe an hour, quite a long time. And they used two minutes. Yeah. Well, my daughter has told me, and my wife as well, my son as well, in these discussions, we've been thinking about how to handle the media, which is, oh God, a very complicated question.

And one hypothesis being, don't do interviews that will be edited. And I've thought about that and been thinking about it, and that might be the right answer. It might be the right answer going forward. I think it is the right answer. Well, it could easily be. That's the only way you can't be misrepresented. True. Because all of the problems that I've seen with you, all of them, come from you being edited.

Yes. I mean, there's complex subjects that people would disagree with you on. But when you look at complete mischaracterizations of your point, these have been established because of editing. Yes. Well, I guess the only counter argument is this. And I mean, a lot of these opportunities come, I've had opportunities that are coming at me at a rate that doesn't allow me to think them through as much as I could optimally. But then there's another thing, which is, it isn't necessarily a mistake to lay yourself open to attack. Because sometimes it reveals the motives of the attackers.

Like that's what happened in the Kathy Newman interview. Now that could have gone really sideways. Like I was lucky there to some degree because she interviewed me for 40 minutes or whatever and something like that. And then they did chop it down to seven minutes or three minutes and it was exactly what you'd expect. And that is what I expected after I walked away from the interview. I thought, oh my God, they're just going to chop this into reprehensible segments and pillory me.

But I walked away from it because there was 50 other things to do. But then it was so funny because they did do that, and then they put up the whole interview. And the reason they put up the whole interview was because they thought the interview went fine. It isn't that they knew that that was going to cause commotion. Not at all. Not a bit. Not a bit. And I know this for a fact.

So they put up the whole interview. And then, well, what happened was what was actually happening revealed itself. And that was very, very effective. Now, having that happen meant that I had exposed myself to substantial stress and risk, because that was stressful. I mean, first of all, there was the interview. Second, afterwards, I thought, oh my God, I'm going to get pilloried for that. Then they did release the cut. Then they released the whole thing.

Then there was all this response to it. And then the Newman people, who were absolutely flabbergasted by the negative response, said, Peterson has unleashed his army of trolls, and poor Kathy had to go into hiding. It's like, there's no evidence of any credible threats. They said they called in the police, but you can do that without there being reason. You can just say that, which is what they said. They played a victim narrative instantly, although one thing Kathy Newman is not, even though she might play it at the behest of her employers is a victim she's one of the most powerful people in britain she's no

victim so to play the victim card in a situation like that is absolutely reprehensible but that's what they did and then like a dozen newspapers did it and said well peterson's trolls are attacking poor kathy and i thought oh now i'm really screwed you don't own your fans well the idea that people that are interested in the things that you have to say that you have control over them like you can give them marching orders is foolish and you're not the person that does that. Well and how many million

people do there have to be before they're not all trolls? Yeah. Because that was the real issue there. It's like okay 10,000 people commented on the video. Trolls. Okay what about 150,000 well what about 10 million well now if you look at the video which is about 10 million plus all the clips it's like 50 million and the comments the pro the comments that are critical

with regards to Kathy Newman's conduct are running about 50 to 1 so that's all trolls is it I don't think so it's preposterous. That narrative's preposterous. But you see, that was a good example of taking the risk. And I'm not saying it's justified, and I think that it's very, very stressful. But you take the bad along with the good, and maybe it's time for me,

it might be time for me just to disappear to some degree altogether. Do you worry about being overexposed? Oh, definitely. I've been worried about that for a long time. Yeah, and is there any benefit in that? Is there any benefit in more exposure? Are we talking about the same thing we were talking about earlier with regards to men working insane hours?

I mean, is your message out enough that you don't have to do these ridiculous interviews constantly? Maybe, maybe. Well, and I don't want to turn into a parody of myself and all of that. I mean, I think, and I am trying to handle this and I've got people who are advising me, we're trying to figure it out. I think that this tour is a good thing. Yes. But that's, that's very controlled. I think that this tour is a good thing. Yes. But that's very controlled. Well, it's also completely unedited. Yes, exactly. It is.

And long-form conversations. Yes, and I think that coming on your podcast and talking to Ruben on his shows and so forth, I think that's good. The interaction with the journalists, I'm certainly not taking anywhere near the number of opportunities that I have in front of me right we are trying to be very

careful in picking and choosing but that doesn't always go well and it like it could be that it could be that I shouldn't do anything that is edited at all that's certainly possible so well this is the problem you speak in these you speak in these long form podcasts and interviews and you get a chance to extrapolate and unpack some pretty complicated issues and compare them to other complicated issues and try to find meaning and middle ground and try to illuminate certain positions.

When you expose yourself to editing, you expose yourself to someone's idea of what the narrative should be and how to frame your positions in a dishonest way. And you're seeing it time and time again. And it exposes the problem with medium. Look, I went to the Aspen Ideas Festival last week, which is a whole story in and of itself. But I was interviewed there by a journalist from the Atlantic Monthly. And it was a relatively long-form interview.

I think we talked for 40 minutes, something like that. And it's going to be edited. Now, I trusted her. I trust her. Now, whether that'll be, how that will play out in the final edit, I don't know because she won't be the only one making the decision. Right. Well, the question is, should have I done it?

Well, look, it was the Aspen Ideas Festival. It's a different audience. It's left-leaning. I thought, well, maybe I'll go talk to a left-leaning audience. People are always criticizing me for not doing that. I usually don't do it because I don't get invited. But so I went and talked to them. It's like, and Barry Weiss interviewed me in front of the Aspen Ideas

Festival, and that was long form uncut and put on the web. And so maybe that was useful. The Atlantic thing, well, it might be good. We'll see. It does expose me to the risk, though, because it'll be Was it wise to do it? Look, I've been fortunate so far. Despite the fact that I've been taken out of context at times, and a fairly significant proportion of times, but not the overwhelming majority of times, the net consequence of all of that has been to engage more and more people in a complex dialogue, as far as I can tell.

So that's the good. That's the good. It doesn't mean that the strategy that I've implemented so far is the only strategy that will work into the future. We can also clearly establish that you didn't plan any of this to happen. This whole thing that happened from you opposing that bill and then going to where you are, how many years later now? Two years?

Two years almost, yeah. That's fucking crazy. Yeah. I mean, you think about the transformation of your life and your public image. I mean, it's unprecedented. I can't think of a single public intellectual that has gone from being a university professor to being essentially a household name.

I mean, you get brought up with at least my circle of friends all the time and people that I run into all the time. I can't tell you how many people I've run into after comedy shows or in an airport that talk to me about you. So this is a mainstream thing. Yeah, well, so that conceivably... There's no precedent. No. Well, it's partly, you know, that's also partly the consequence of this technology. It's like, you know, like in 2013, I thought,

huh, I wonder what'll happen if I put my lectures up on YouTube. It's like, beware, man. And that's what I thought when I made Bill C-16 videos. I got up at like two in the morning. I thought, this is bloody well driving me crazy that damn university is going to force unconscious bias retraining which is not a

validated process by any stretch of the imagination on its employees and I work for the university and I'm a psychologist so why are they doing that? why would they do that? do they do that to silence people that are protesting? are they doing that because they want to enforce a certain type of behavior? Well, I think there's two reasons. I think that there's some genuine concern for the dispossessed, and then there the HR types, for example, at the university think

it's okay for them to retrain other people about their hypothetical views on the off chance that they might be racist and forcing them to admit that they're racist by making them agree to participate in the training. I don't think that, but for me, that wasn't even the issue, although it was an issue. The issue is we can't measure unconscious bias reliably and validly. I'm a psychologist and a research psychologist. I know the literature. That's a misuse of it.

It's a misuse of it. And the damn university was doing it. They were hiring consultants who didn't know what the hell they were talking about. Let me ask you this. If they are, this is a university. This is an establishment for higher learning. This is a university. This is an establishment for higher learning. How can they possibly act on something when there's no clear evidence that it's real, that it works, that it's effective, and they're doing it just to make people happy or just to make themselves happy or just to reinforce an idea that they want to be true? Well, that's the thing. That's the thing. It's part of, for me, it was part of the hegemony of the radical left. It's like, no, no, you're not going to do

that at the university I work at without me telling people that there's no warrant for that from the psychological community. So anyways, I got up at two in the morning and made these videos. I thought, well, let's see what happens if I make these videos. It's like, well, this is back to the technology issue. It's like, I didn't know what YouTube was when I put my videos on it. You didn't know what YouTube was? Well, you know what? No one knows what YouTube is. That's the thing. Well, look at what happened to you. You have a million, billion and a half downloads a year. It's like, you're definitely riding a giant wave. Like, would have you predicted this 15 years ago?

No. So, you know, you're in the right place in the right time and you're a very interesting interviewer because well especially for long form because you're very very curious but also very very tough like it's interesting watching you because if you don't understand something you will go after the person and you're not doing it in a vindictive way but you're quite a formidable interviewer. And I've been trying to figure out why you're so successful. And like, you're a lot smarter than anyone might think, which is quite interesting. So you're a weird combination, because, you know, your persona doesn't shout intellectual, but you're damn smart, and you're tough as a bloody boot. And you ask really provocative questions, and not because

you're provocative. And so your personality in this long form seem to suit each other really well. You're also really good at pursuing things you don't understand instead of assuming that you know what you're talking about. So you take the listeners on a journey, right? It's an exploratory journey.

But fundamentally, what's propelled you to superstardom in some sense is not just your ability, which is non-trivial, but the fact that you're on this giant technological wave and you're one of the first adopters. And I'm in the same situation. We're first adopters of a technology that's as revolutionary as the Gutenberg printing press. And so that's all unfolding in real time. It's like, look at what's happening. Yeah, well, the spoken word is now as powerful as the written word. That's never happened before in human history.

And we're on the cutting edge of that, for better or worse. That's a very good way to put it. The spoken word is just as powerful. Yeah, and maybe even more so. Because it's so accessible to people that don't have the time to read. Stuck in traffic, you know. Or, and here's another possibility, maybe 10 times as many people can listen to complex information

as can read complex information in terms of their ability to process it sure could easily we don't know maybe it's maybe it's the same number it's certainly easier to listen to a book on tape for me than it is to read a book yeah well so for so the question is for how many people is that true and i would say it might be true for the for the majority of people and then people are doing hybrids, you know, because you can sync your book with Audible, right? So they'll read when they have the time, but then when they have found time,

which is also a major component of this, that's the time when you're driving or the time when you're doing dishes, is now all of a sudden you can educate yourself during that found time. This is a big revolution. And blowing out the bandwidth makes a huge difference because well we talked about that at the beginning

looks like people are more intelligent than we thought and you and I are both and the rest of this intellectual dark web that's kind of what unites us everybody has an independent platform virtually everybody they have an idiosyncratic viewpoint

they're interested in having discussions and pursuing the furtherance of their knowledge even though they might have a prior ideological commitment. Sam does, and I suppose I do, and Ben Shapiro certainly does. But they're still interested in having the discussion. But more importantly, they're capitalizing

on the long form. And the fact that that's possible is a reflection of this technological transformation, and the technological transformation might be utterly profound it looks like it and so that's you know i've been trying to sort this out because i keep thinking why the hell are these people coming to listen to what i'm saying it's like well i'm a guru you know i'm a sage it's something like that it's like don't be thinking that first think if there's

situational determinants first take your damn personality out of it. Okay, what's going on? Oh yes, this is all fostered by YouTube and fostered by podcasts. What's so new about that? No bandwidth restrictions. No barrier to entrance. Possibility of dialogue because people cut up the YouTube videos into chunks and make their own comments on it. It's a whole new communication technology.

Also a lack of interference by executives and producers and all these different people that have their own bias. That's right, it's unmediated. Yes, unmediated is giant. Yeah, well, and that's all part of the reason you're so popular too, is like you just put this on. So you've got exactly the right balance of competent production, because there's nothing excess about it.

It's competent, but no more than that. I know that's by design, but you also don't edit it. It's like what you see is what you get. It's like everyone's relieved by that. We can make our own damn decisions. I think that's very important. If you're going to have a conversation with someone that's honest, you can't decide what to leave in and what to take out.

Well, that's partly also why i deal with the press the way i do yes if i'm going to have a full conversation it's like i'm willing to take the hits yeah and and i understand what you're saying but that's one of the reasons why it frustrates me so much is that i see what they're doing and i'm like what you're doing is ancient what you're doing is it's it's this is what people did 20 years ago 30 years ago for you can't really do that anymore you can't misrepresent people. You used to be able to if you were in the press. You could take people, quote them out of context, do whatever the fuck you wanted, put an article about them, and they couldn't do a goddamn thing about it.

It happened to me in 19, boy, it was like 99. I had a comedy CD that came out, and this woman wrote an article about it, and she just lied. She lied about my perspective. She lied about the bits. She misquoted the bits. She didn't just paraphrase them. She changed what the bits were to make them misogynist or hateful or whatever it was. And in doing so, there was no recourse.

There was nothing that I could do about that. I'm like, wow, I'd never experienced that before. I was like, this is stunning. And then I found out this person did that a lot. And this is what she did. And there's ultimate power that comes with being the person that has the pen, being the person that has the typewriter.

And you're the person who works for the Boston Globe or whatever the publication is. That is something that existed forever. And that you had to be either a friend of the press. You had to play ball. You had to bend to their will. You had to do what they wanted you to do. And they could misrepresent you and choose to paint you in any way they like.

And it's one of the reasons why I don't do anything anymore. I don't do any interviews anymore. I don't do anything. I don't want to do anything i don't do anything i don't want to do anything yeah this i do enough man you want to know about me fucking there's a thousand podcasts there's more than a thousand there's i think there's there's 1100 and there's a bunch of other ones too right right it's just it doesn't make any sense yeah well that that's that that it may also be the position that i increasingly find myself in i think it's the right position because then the misrepresentations don't exist anymore. So then the only problem is the dispute over the actual ideological conversations or the actual concepts.

But, you know, the thing is, you know, you made a point there that's quite interesting. It's like we are in a new media landscape. So now if someone comes out as a media figure with some institutional credibility and misrepresents, it's exposed. And so then the question is, how much risk should you shoulder to expose the proclivity for media misrepresentation? And the answer to that might be some. Now it might be moving, you know, maybe I've done enough of that. I mean it would be easier for me in many ways if I just stopped doing it, but there's some utility in having it play out. And so, well, so I'm trying to only take those opportunities that appear to have more benefit than risk.

And when I'm defining benefit, well, the question is then what constitutes benefit? And I guess what constitutes benefit is, well, that would further the attempts that I'm making to bring information to a vast number of people that could conceivably help them stabilize and improve their individual lives. That's worth a certain amount of risk. Well, it certainly increases your profile, increases your profile. And even if, you know, you have 60% of these people are going to get a bad perception of you, 40% of these people that never heard of you now are going to understand who you are because they do further investigation.

So there's some benefit in that. But the negative, I mean, I get text messages from random people that I was friends with years ago that say this Jordan Peterson is just such a lying sack of shit. And he's this now. I don't even know who the fuck you are. And then second of all, like, why are you contacting me? You're not even saying hi. You're saying Jordan Peterson is a this.

Yeah, yeah. Well, there's an emergency at hand. He's a scam artist. He's a fraud. And I'm like wow and so they'll see an interview you know like the the jim jeffries clip which is a minute long or whatever it is or the vice piece or the initial kathy newman piece and they just form this determined position on you and then read hit pieces on you and then this is where they take their opinion. This is where it's from. And it's – I feel like these are the last gasps of a dying medium.

I really do. I think too. I don't think that people appreciate it. I think the people that are listening to this that do appreciate long-form conversations and with all – warts and all, all the ugliness and the mistakes and the critical errors and the people that appreciate that, they have a real hate for being lied to. You know, because it changed when you're trying to- Also for being treated as if they're stupid. Yes. Which they aren't.

Yeah. That's both. It's just, it's deceptive. Yeah, that's both. It's just it's it's deceptive when you when you edit someone and take their words out of context and change them around. You're being deceptive. The New York Times did that again this week. They had some philosophy professor from Hong Kong University write a piece on me and he took they quoted me. It was a sentence. There's like the first phrase was in quotes and then there was some joining words. And then the second phrase was in quotes and there was some joining words.

was in quotes, and then there were some joining words, and then the second phrase was in quotes, and there were some joining words, and then the third phrase was in quotes, and the three quotes added up to a statement that bore no resemblance whatsoever to what I was saying. How can they do that in the New York Times? That seems to me to be something that should be the antithesis of what they stand for.

I don't think they can, Joe. I think they're killing their brand so fast that they can't... But it's so disturbing to me as a person who's been a fan of the New York Times forever. I just don't understand how they could allow that to happen. How could you allow your, what is the gold standard for journalism, how could you allow it to become something that willfully misrepresents someone to push an ideology? They never did put my book on the New York Times bestseller list.

It's quite comical. How's that possible? Oh, they have rules, which they don't disclose. But one of them apparently is, well, if the book is published in Canada and distributed in the United States, then it doesn't count, even though they've had books like that on the New York Times bestseller list before. And I think, okay, well, is this bad or good? It's like, well, it's bad because to the degree that I might want to be on the New York Times bestseller list, although I haven't been losing any sleep over it. But you're selling, I know how many books you're selling.

Yeah, it's basically been the bestselling book in the world since January. You know, it's gone up and down to some degree, but fundamentally. It should be the number one New York Times bestselling book. Yeah, so they have their reasons. But I look at that and I think, oh, well, you can only do that 10 times until you're done. Because it's a fatal error. You have the gold standard for measurement. You're not measuring properly.

You're burning up your brand. You think, well, we're the New York Times, so we can burn up our brand. It's like, no, you can't. Newsweek is gone. Time magazine is a shell of its former self. Like the big things disappear, and they disappear when they get crooked and ideologically rigid. And so that's what's happening at the New York Times. Not with everyone there, but with plenty of them.

And it'll die faster than people think. But it's so confusing to me that it didn't used to be that. And now it is. And are they just responding to this new world where you have to have clickbait journalism and where people are struggling to find people to actually buy physical newspapers, which is a different thing.

It's hard to say. Because maybe, see, it's weird because you don't have to resort to clickbait because these long-form discussions are the antithesis of clickbait. Right, but are they struggling in terms of, like, how many people buy their newspaper? Oh, absolutely.

Every newspaper. The newspapers in Canada went cap and hand to the federal government for subsidies about six months ago because they're dying so fast. And so some of it is they're being supplanted by technology. That's a huge part of it. But as they are supplanted, they get more desperate. They publish more polarizing stories. That works in the short term to garner more views,

but it alienates people from the brand and speeds their demise. Classic death spiral of a big organization. And that's going to clean things out like mad. I mean, I don't know where CNN is in the cable news rankings now or cable show rankings, but it keeps falling. But it's falling in the rankings as cable itself disintegrates and dies. Why do you need cable TV? Right.

No one needs cable TV. The only people who have cable TV are the people who haven't figured out yet that you can replace it entirely online for like one-tenth the price with much less hassle. But the irony is people want a location they can go to to find out what's going on in the world. And this is the one thing that they used to represent. And, you know, I mean, I don't think Fox News is any better. I think you just have these ideological extremes left and right. And I remember very clearly watching the election coverage

before the election, like leading up to the election. I would go Fox News and then I'd go CNN. I just would go back and forth with them on my cable and I would just be laughing. I'd be like, what is really happening in the world? Because I'm getting two different stories. I'm getting Russia and I'm getting Hillary's emails. This is, I don't know what the fuck is what, what is happening?

I'm getting pussy grabbing and I'm getting Benghazi. This is what I'm getting. And I don't understand why. This is obviously ideological. This is not just— Look, it might be that as the technology is supplanted, the ideological polarization increases as the thing dies. Right. They're struggling for anyone to pay attention, and this is the way they have to do it to ensure.

anyone to pay attention and this is the way they have to do it to ensure and i think what's happening on the other side which is the side you occupy say is that a new technology that's long form that deals with many of those problems is emerging and it's going to emerge it's going to be victorious but in the meantime might already be victorious in the meantime clickbaity stuff still exist in the digital world yeah you know and then you're getting a lot of the articles that are written about you. People are absorbing these articles, not from a physical form, but getting it from digital. Yeah. Well, okay.

So then the sense is, well, do you have fundamental trust in the judgment of your fellow man, let's say? And my answer to that is yes, because although I've been pilloried to a great degree by the radical types in the commentariat and the classic journalists, the comments with regards to me on YouTube are 50 to 1 in my favor. And that's even the case when the ideologues put up videos about me that are designed to discredit me. And I've sold a million and a half books. It's going to be published in 40 countries. And thousands of people are coming to my lectures.

And so I would say the attempts to discredit me aren't working. And I think that's because even if you go to YouTube, you can see Jordan Peterson smashes leftist journalist. You know, as a clickbait thing. Someone's taken a two-minute clip from a video and they put it out and they're using that clickbait headline to attract attention. It's like it does attract attention and that probably even furthers polarization.

But I think that most people, enough people, that's the prayer, enough people are going for the long-form, thorough discussion so that the sensible will triumph. That's what I'm hoping for. The sensible will triumph. No, I agree. And I think that is sensible will triumph. That's what I'm hoping for.

The sensible will triumph. No, I agree. And I think that is what's happening. I think that's why this 50 to 1 number exists. But the number one in that 50, the 50 people that are actually understanding what's going on and agreeing with you versus the number one that are trying to willfully misrepresent you, they still exist and they're loud and they're fighting to be right. And this is one of the things that people love to do. They love to fight to be right. Instead of examining their position and wondering whether or not they are taking you out of

context and misrepresenting your positions to the world willfully and doing so in order to paint a negative picture of you that does not accurately represent who you are and what you stand for. Yes. But by doing this, they're destroying... The guy is a virtue without any of the work. They're also destroying their own credibility. Yes, well, that's the thing.

This is what's devastating about it. It's like they're trying to win. They're killing themselves. Right. Well, and that's a good motif for the entire conversation. It's like you try too hard to win, you kill yourself. You were talking last night when we were over dinner. You said that one of the most deadly things for a fighter to do is to overestimate his own position.

You're going to get slaughtered for it. Underestimate your abilities, yes. If you overestimate your abilities, you're in deep, deep trouble because you're going to get a wake-up call. Right. And objectivity is one of the most critical aspects of development you have to be you have to be objectively assessing your strength and weaknesses at every step of the way that's bravado right i'm i'm trying to prove how powerful i'm so powerful i'm so powerful it's an ego shield and that's why i was saying that the ego is the enemy we're talking about right it's like you, I want to get into this because this is a, I think this is a fascinating thing with you personally, that your diet, you're on this carnivore diet now.

Okay. So I want to preface that with something. I am not a dietary expert. So I'm now speaking as an uninformed citizen. Yes. Right. Well, this is anecdotal evidence from a human being that has dealt with autoimmune issues your whole life. Yes.

You have done this for how long now? I've been on a pure carnivore diet for about two months and a pretty, a very, very low carb greens only modified carnivore diet for about a year. So in the year. And a low carb diet for two years. So from the time that i've known you i've known you for what two and a half years now something like that yeah when i first met you you had much more weight on your body you look different yeah and you were back then you were eating like the standard diet right like normal people yes pasta bread meat chicken whatever yes

you shifted over to only meat and greens. I saw you and I'm like, you look fantastic. I'm like, what are you doing? And you're like, I changed my diet. I only eat meat and greens. And I was like, wow, that's fascinating. Well, I felt like, okay, what you're doing is cutting out refined sugars and all these different things that are problematic, preservatives, all the bullshit, processed foods, and you're

having this extreme health benefit. And I was like, wow, that's really excellent. You're showing great discipline. Then you decided to take it to another place and cut out the greens. What was the motivation for cutting out the greens? Well, all of the motivation for this has been my experience with my daughter, because she has an unbelievably serious autoimmune disease. I just talked to her this morning. What is it called? Well, it's arthritis, but there's way more to it than that. But the arthritis was the major set of symptoms. She had 40 affected joints and she had to have her hip replaced and her ankle replaced when she was 15 and 16. And so she basically hobbled around on two broken legs for

two years in extreme agony. And that was just a tiny fraction of the whole set of problems. I just talked to her this morning. She's in Chicago. Looks like she has to have her ankle replacement replaced. So that's next on the horizon. But apart from that, she is doing so well now. It is absolutely beyond comprehension. So she's very trim. She had a baby, but she's very trim. She's down to about 118 pounds. She's about 5'6". She's just glowing with health. All of her autoimmune symptoms are gone, all of them. And she was also seriously depressed, like severely depressed, way worse than you think.

She couldn't stay awake for more than about six hours without taking Ritalin. And she was dying. And I had a cousin, my cousin's daughter, she died when she was 30 from an associated autoimmune condition. So there's a fair bit of this in our family. It was bloody bleak, I'll tell you. And my wife always had a suspicion that this was dietary related, you know. Why? Well, we did notice that when Michaela was young, if she ate oranges or strawberries, that she'd get a rash. And then when she developed arthritis, if she ate oranges in particular, that would definitely cause a flare.

It was the only thing we could see. The problem is that in order to identify a dietary component, the response has to be pretty quick after you eat the thing. Like if it's two days later, how the hell are you going to figure that out? A lot of these responses appear to be delayed for four days and last a month. So good luck figuring that out. Anyways, Michaela noticed about three years ago, no more than that now, five years ago, she was at Concordia University and struggling with her illness and all the associated problems. She noticed that around exam time, she was starting to develop real skin problems. And my cousin's daughter, who I mentioned, had really bad skin problems and

wounds that wouldn't heal. And that was partly part of the process that eventually killed her. And she thought, oh, it must be stress. And then she thought, wait a second, I really changed my diet when I'm studying. All I do is eat bagels. All I do is eat bread sandwiches. She thought, all I do is eat bagels, all I do is eat bread, sandwiches. She thought, maybe it's the bread. So she cut out gluten first, and it had a remarkable effect, like a really remarkable effect. And then she went on a radical elimination diet,

all the way down to nothing but chicken and broccoli. And then her symptoms started to drop off one by one. And one of the things that happened is she started to wake up in the morning, she started to be able to stay awake all day. And when you're only staying awake for six hours with Ritalin, staying awake all day, that's like having a life. And so a whole bunch of things improved. Then her depression went away.

And I've had depression since I was 13, probably, and very severe. And I've treated it a variety of ways, some of them quite successfully. But it's been a constant battle. And my father had it, and his father had it. And it's all just rife in my family. And my wife has autoimmune problems in her. When you say depression, define it. Oh, oh, how would you define it? Because that's a blanket term.

Yeah. Well, imagine that you wake up and that you remember that all your family was killed in a horrible accident yesterday. You would feel that even if nothing was wrong. Yes, yes. Just dread. It's actually worse than that. Really? Well, one of the things Michaela told me was she thought, well, what's it like to be depressed?

Well, imagine you have a dog and you really love the dog and then the dog dies. And then about three years ago, our dog died. And that was Michaela's dog. And she really liked that dog. And she said, that was bad, but it's nowhere near as bad as being depressed. And I asked her too, at one point when she was about 15 or 16, I said, look, you've got a choice, kid. Here's the choice. You can either have depression or arthritis. Which one? I'll take the arthritis. Well, that was after she lost two joints so it was no joke it's no joke man it there isn't anything

no i wouldn't say that i wouldn't say there's nothing worse because worse is a very deep hole right but it's bad yeah people will prove you wrong right oh yes definitely worse worse is a deep hole anyways her depression went away all these symptoms went away and like radically so what changed her from chicken and broccoli to carnivore well she she she kept experimenting and she she got very sensitive to all sorts of foods in the aftermath of that too so this is why i wouldn't recommend that anybody does this casually because we don't understand much about it but the upshot was that well she kept she kept she kept experimenting and she started to add things back and take them away. And sometimes when she added things, the results were devastating.

She was like done for a month. She ate the wrong thing, done for a month. All the symptoms came back. The depression came back. She thought that her whole dietary theory was wrong because it lasted so long and was so extreme. And it took her two years to figure out that really what she could eat was beef and greens, and then she figured out that she could only eat beef.

So the greens themselves. Well, look, so what happened? Okay, so two years ago, she said, Dad, you have to try this diet because you have a lot of the same symptoms as me. Now, I didn't have arthritis, but I had a lot of the other symptoms. And I thought, oh, Christ. Okay, Michaela, I can try anything for a month. She said, try it for a month. I thought, okay, whatever. I can hang by my fingerna, I can try anything for a month. She said, try it for a month. I thought, okay, whatever.

I can hang by my fingernails from the windowsill for a month. It's like, it's just not that big a deal. And so I eliminated, I went on a really low-carb diet. Okay, so this is what happened. I had gastric reflux disorder, and I was snoring quite a lot. I stopped snoring the first week. I thought, what the hell? That's supposed to be associated with weight loss.

Because I had gained some weight. I weighed about 212 pounds and I'm about 6'1.5". So that was my maximum weight. I stopped snoring, which was a great relief to Tammy. That just quit. And that's a big deal, right? Because if you snore, you have sleep apnea and then you don't sleep right. And it's like not a good thing.

Okay, next. I started waking up in the mornings i'd never been able to wake up in the mornings my whole life i always had to stumble to the shower and then maybe i could wake up it took me an hour and i felt terrible and so all of a sudden i woke up and it was like oh look at that i'm awake in the morning and i'm clear-headed and and things aren't gloomy and horrible it's like well isn't that weird then i lost seven pounds the first month. I thought, seven pounds, that's a lot in a month.

And I'd already gone for a whole year on a sugar-free diet. I didn't lose any weight. And I'd been exercising. Sugar-free, but did you cut out bread and gluten? No, no. It was just no desserts, no sugar. And I thought that might do it. It didn't make any difference at all.

Seven pounds. Well, then I lost seven pounds the next month. Then I lost seven pounds the next month. i lost seven pounds the next month i lost seven pounds every month for seven months like i'd throw away all my clothes i went back to the same weight that i was when i was 26 and my psoriasis disappeared and i had floaters in my right eye and they cleared up and then the last thing that went away for me i was still having a bitch of a time with mood regulation and that sucked because when i changed my diet i didn't respond to antidepressants properly anymore. They weren't

working. And so although I was getting better physically in a variety of ways, like radical ways, I was really having a bitch of a time regulating my mood. And I was having sporadic, really negative reactions to food when I ate something I shouldn't. So that took about a year and a half to clear up. And I was still really anxious in the morning up to three months ago, like horribly. And then it would get better all day. People said, well, you're under a lot of stress. And I thought, yeah, yeah, I've been under a lot of stress for like 10 years. It's like, it's a lot, but it wasn't any more stressful than helping my daughter deal with her illness.

That's for sure. That, no, this is something different. And she said to me, quit eating greens. And I thought, oh, really? Jesus, Michaela I'm eating cucumbers lettuce broccoli

and chicken and beef it's like I have to cut out the god damn greens it's like try it for a month okay within a week I was 25%

less anxious in the morning within two weeks 75% and I've been better every single day I'm better now probably than I've ever been in my life. And I haven't been taking antidepressants for a whole year. So I don't know what, and I weigh 162 pounds. Like I have no, I'm, I'm, and I've actually gained musculature. I've been doing some working out, but not a lot.

And so I can sleep six hours a night. No problem. I wake up in the morning, I'm awake. If I take a 15-minute nap, that used to take me an hour to recover from, that's gone. Here's the coolest thing. I've had gum disease since I was 25. That's been serious enough to have, I've had to have minor surgical interventions, scraping and that sort of thing to keep it at bay. It's gone. I checked with my dentist before this last tour. No inflammation. And that's associated with heart disease, by the way, gum inflammation and gingivitis. It's a good risk factor. Heart disease. It means the systemic inflammation is gone. And it's not supposed to happen. You're not supposed to recover from gingivitis.

And my gums are in perfect shape. It's like, what the hell? So here's what happened. I lost 50 pounds. It's like, that's a lot. Right? I'm nowhere near as hungry as I used to be. My appetite's probably fallen by 70%. I don't get blood sugar dysregulation problems. I need way less sleep. I get up in the morning and I'm fine. I'm not anxious. I'm not depressed. I don't have psoriasis. My legs were numb on the sides that's gone um i'm certainly intellectually at my best at the moment which is a great relief especially doing this tour depression is gone um i'm stronger i can swim better um and my gum disease is gone it's like what the hell and you've done you've done no blood work, so you don't know what your lipid profile is.

No, I'll get that done again when I go back to Toronto. Do you take any vitamins? No. No, I eat beef and salt and water. That's it. And I never cheat, ever. Not even a little bit. No soda, no wine?

I drink club soda. Well, that's still water. Well, you know, when you're down to that level, no, it's not. Look, Joe, there's club soda, which is really bubbly. There's Perrier, which is sort of bubbly. There's flat water, and there's hot water.

Those distinctions start to become important. That is crazy. Well, we ate last night, and I ate what you ate. We both had that giant tomahawk. I had wine, though. Yeah. I'm curious about this.

I'm very curious. Yeah, me too. And I think I might try it. But I eat a lot of vegetables. Yeah. But I don't have any problems, like health problems. Hey, man. Disclaimer number two.

I am not recommending this to anyone. I am not recommending this to anyone. However, I have had many, many people come up to me on the tour and say, look, I've been following your daughter's blog, and I've lost like 100 pounds. I think, what? You lost 100 pounds? See, I lost 100 pounds in six months. I talked to a woman yesterday. She lost 15 pounds in one month.

She was 70. It's like, this is – here's a question. is everyone fat and stupid that's a question man because it's new is it something's yes it is it's new and it's not sedentary lifestyle that that hypothesis doesn't seem to hold water there's something wrong with the way we're eating and the what's wrong is that we're eating way too many carbohydrates, I think. But remember, I'm no expert. It's made a big shift. The elimination of most carbohydrates has made a big shift in my life. And I do cheat occasionally with bread, occasionally with pasta.

I will go off with ice cream and things along those lines. But most of the time, I'm just eating meat and vegetables. Most of the time. And then I'll have a cheat day like, you know, once a week or something like that. Especially if I go to dinner, I'll have a little pasta. And it doesn't seem to mess me up too bad, but I do feel shitty after I do it. It's like for simple mouth pleasure, I'm allowing myself to feel tired afterwards. Tired. Yeah. That's a big one, man. Yeah. But like I, yeah, like, well, really I can go on about six hours of sleep now. And it's so interesting to, I can't believe I can wake up in the morning.

Like that's never happened to me in my whole life. And when I was a kid, 13, 12, I had a bitch of a time waking up in the morning. It was just brutal. I just thought that's how it was. This is what, I mean, again, I'm not a nutritionist either. But what's fascinating to me is I haven't heard any negative stories about people doing this. Well, I have a negative story. Okay.

Okay. One of the things that both Michaela and I noticed was that when we restricted our diet and then ate something we weren't supposed to, the reaction to eating what we weren't supposed to was absolutely catastrophic. What did you do? What did you switch to? Or what did you eat, rather? Well, the worst response, I think we're allergic to,

or allergic, whatever the hell this is, having an inflammatory response to something called sulfites. And we had some apple cider that had sulfites in it. And that was really not good. Like, I was done for a month. That was the first time I talked to Sam Harris. You were done for a month?

Oh, yeah. It took me out for a month. It was awful. Really? Yeah, yeah. So I would say, look— So this is right before this whole truth conversation with Sam Harris that got stuck in the mud.

During. During. I think the day I talked to Sam was like the worst day of my life, not because of talking to Sam, but it was— Just physically. Oh, Jesus. I was so dead. But I didn't want to not do it. Apple cider. Like what was it doing? What was it doing to you?

Oh, it, it, it produced an overwhelming sense of impending doom. And I seriously mean overwhelming. Like there's no way I could have lived like that if that would have lasted for see Michaela knew by that point that it would probably only last a month. And I was like a month from fucking cider. Oh yeah. I didn't by that point that it would probably only last a month. And I was like... A month? Yeah, a month. From fucking cider?

I didn't sleep that month. I didn't sleep for 25 days. I didn't sleep at all. I didn't sleep at all for 25 days. How is that possible? I'll tell you how it's possible. You lay in bed, frozen in something approximating terror for eight hours, and then you get up. Oh, my God.

Oh, yeah. Not good. And this is from fucking cider, from cider. That's what we thought, yeah. I mean, look, again, I don't know what the hell I'm talking about. Okay, this is all a mystery to me. The fact that my daughter was so sick. See, the one thing that I did know, because I scoured the literature on arthritis when she was a kid, the scientific literature, because we were interested in the dietary connection. And the only thing I could find that was reliable was that if

people with arthritis fasted, their symptoms reliably went away. And that's actually a well documented finding. But then if they started to eat again, then their symptoms came back. And I thought, well, what the hell? Does it not matter what they eat? They can't be reactive to everything. hell does it not matter what they eat they can't be reactive to everything it's like no but they can be reactive to almost everything and the difference between everything and almost everything that's a big difference and so michaela seems to be maybe me too and tammy's on the same diet because she has autoimmune problems on her side of the family so michaela seemed to inherit all of them your skin looks better oh jesus joe Joe, I'm way better. This is what's weird. You look like more vibrant. It's very strange. Thank you, dear. You're welcome. But see, my point is, you're saying that there is problems with this diet,

but that doesn't seem to be a problem with the diet. It seems a problem with deviating from the diet, that your body becomes accustomed with it. Well, one of the hypotheses that we've been pursuing, and there's some justification for this in the scientific literature, is that the reason that you lay on layers of fat is because the fat acts as a buffer between you and the toxic things that you're eating. Because fat is actually an organ. It has functions other than merely the storage of calories. And maybe when you strip out that protective layer,

then you're more sensitive to what you shouldn't be eating. This is all speculative hypothesis, right? Or maybe you sensitize yourself by removing it from your constant diet. I don't bloody well know. Well, I would think it would be much more likely that because you think about people who are alcoholics, they develop a tolerance to alcohol. You get off of that and then you have a drink and your tolerances are shot and then you immediately have a adverse reaction to the alcohol. Same thing with marijuana. When people

do it all the time, your body becomes tolerant. Well, I think that the layering of fat on might be part of the tolerance mechanism. So it's not merely a matter of caloric intake. It's a matter of toxic caloric intake buffered by whatever it is that fat is doing as a neuroendocrine organ. But again, like I said, I'm out of my depth here, but you know, the whole, everyone's out of their depth. The goddamn food pyramid was made by the Department of Agriculture, not the Department of Health. It wasn't predicated on any scientific studies whatsoever. We shouldn't be eating massive quantities of corn syrup. We eat way too many carbohydrates.

Michaela posted a paper the other day. A doctor has successfully treated type 1 diabetes with a carnivore diet. Type 1, not type 2. So that's bloody impressive. Yeah, it's very curious to me because you're talking about the one adverse reaction which is when you deviated from the diet yeah what i'm talking about is when i read people's accounts of trying this diet it's almost universally positive yeah i know but again that's the problem well it's problem with anecdote right i mean i'm not just sure and it's the same with

all these stories that i'm collecting as i'm touring. And, you know, people, lots of people have come up to me and said, look, I lost 45 pounds in the last three months. I think, I think, well, it's shocking to me. I think, well, what do you make of that? And say, well, I can't believe it. Well, who can, well, I couldn't believe it. 50 pounds. It's like, first of all, I didn't know I had 50 pounds to lose. You know, I thought I was maybe 20 pounds heavier than I should have been.

I should have been 185, something like that. I guess that's 25 to 30 pounds. That was the maximum. I thought, no, no, I lost. I'm at 162 and I was at 212. So what's that? 50, 50 pounds. That's a lot of weight.

Jesus, I had to throw all my clothes away. I can't believe it. When I saw you last night, I was like, you're so slim. Like your stomach is completely flat. And this is not. I'm a lean, mean, fighting machine, man. And you're not an exercise fanatic. It's not like you're starving yourself.

It's not like you're running five miles a day. No, and that's another thing I should say to people. If you want to try a diet like this, you eat enough meat and fat so you're not hungry. Okay, you can't get hungry. You're not eating enough if you're hungry. And if you're hungry, you're going to cheat and it's going to drive you stark raving mad. The other thing that was really cool is like, I really liked sweets. Like I've kind of lived on peanut butter sandwiches and chocolate milk. Not really, but that was my go-to food, you know, both of which were terrible for me. But after I stopped eating

carbohydrates for a month, the carbohydrate cravings went away. You know, last night when we were out for dinner, somebody ordered bread pudding, and I bloody love bread pudding with caramel and ice cream. And so it was sitting there, and I could smell it, and I, you know, I thought I could go all Fantastic Mr. Fox on that bread pudding and just tear it down in about 15 seconds. But it wasn't as intense as a craving for a cigarette if you're an ex-smoker. It was like, well, it'd be really nice to eat that. But like my appetite declined by about 75% and that's been permanent. So there's a perverse thing for you. I eat way less and now I'm not as hungry. Okay. Well, how does that make sense? Well, you're not eating way less.

You're eating way less things. Yes. Because you had a 30-ounce steak last night. Yes, yes. I'm doing my best not to be hungry. Although it didn't look like it was 30 ounces. No, no, no. It was a small 30-ounce steak.

Well, I think it starts out 30 ounces before they cook it. Right. And it loses a considerable amount of volume. It's very fatty. Right. But that's the other thing, too. You must have to get a lot of fat. Yeah.

Well, I eat fatty cuts of steak. Yeah. And Michaela is buying fat directly from the butcher store. And we cook that up, cut it into small pieces and fry it up until it's crispy. Wow. It's actually quite delicious. It's not bread pudding with ice cream, but it's- Isn't that funny?

I know. It's so ridiculous. Well, I want your blood profile i want to find out what's going on with you because one of the big misconceptions when it comes to cholesterol and saturated fat and food is that if you eat dietary cholesterol that it affects your blood cholesterol levels it's not it's a super common misconception well those so the thing about clinical studies with diet are virtually impossible to conduct because you just can't you can't conduct a proper randomly distributed controlled experiment. It's too hard.

So a lot of what we're trying to do is pull out information from correlations. Right. You can't do it. Which is one of the real problems with correlating meat with cancer and diabetes and all these different diseases is because people are eating a bunch of shit with that meat. Oh, yeah. And they have different lifestyle profiles. Sure. Like, there's just endless numbers of confounding variables.

You only need one confounding variable that's relevant to screw up the study. Right. You can't get that information with correlational studies. We try because it's impossible to do the studies. How many people are incredulous? I mean, how many people, when they're hearing about this? Oh, everybody. Everybody. Well, you are not, but not but you know you're interested in this sort of thing but

they should be incredulous like when people make absurd claims it's like oh well i had 50 health problems and i stopped eating everything but meat and they went away it's like oh sure it's like yeah well wasn't you dying so yeah and i see the results and I know it's an anecdote. I bloody well understand that. And I'm highly skeptical about all of this, but I'm telling you, so that's why I'm telling you what happened to me and what happened to my daughter and also what happened to my wife, because she's, Tammy was always in good shape and she's exercised a lot and she reduced to the, to the, uh, pure carnivore diet about a month ago. She lost like 12 pounds and she was already slim. She's back to the same weight she was when she was 21. She's like 58, you know,

and she doesn't look 58. I can tell you that. So it's really fascinating. It's really fascinating because I just, as a person who studied diet for many years, I would assume that you need phytonutrients. I would assume you need vitamin supplements. Like vitamin C, for example. Turns out if you don't eat carbohydrates, you don't need vitamin C. Huh. Who would have guessed that?

How does that work? I don't remember. Michaela outlined a paper for me. Vitamin C is necessary for carbohydrate metabolism. But if you don't, again, remember, everyone listening, I am not an expert in this field. Right. So, but. But I want you to get your blood tested because I think if.

It'd be pretty funny if it was in good shape. Yeah, it would be. And I'd like to find out what your nutrient levels are and where they're coming from. I mean, how much nutrients are you getting? Yeah, I'm getting a little cramping in my toes from time to time, so I'm not sure about magnesium. Potassium, perhaps. Yeah, or magnesium.

That's a possibility. Well, that's all easy to supplement. It's very easy, which is why I'm concerned about, and also minerals, you know? I mean, certain minerals you're getting from vegetables that you're probably not getting. Yeah. Well, this is all, like, look, it seems impossible. It's not hard to supplement that stuff, though. Colloidal minerals, you know, there's some mineral pills.

You could take plenty of vitamin supplements. Well, there are people who basically lived on meat. You know, the Inuit did. The Maasai basically did. Yes. I mean, there's some supplementation, but not a lot. Yeah. And apparently if you do a carnivore diet, you're supposed to eat more organ meat.

And I do some of that, but not a lot. But I can tell you, like, I'm in, well, look, I wouldn't be doing this if it wasn't producing positive results. It's not like it's fun. I mean, for a while, well, it makes you a social pariah. It's like, let's invite the Petersons over.

Oh yeah. They don't eat anything. Oh, we have other friends. It's like, well, that's how it works. It's not malevolence, right? It's just, if you're a pain, no one invites you out. So I'm a social pain and an ideological pain, and now I'm a nutritional pain. So it's like I have no friends.

How difficult is it when you're trying to get breakfast? Like, what do you do? Well, lots of times when we're traveling, we cook. So we usually stay in places where you can cook. Oh, okay. But most places you can get a steak. And so that's mostly what we do. We've been traveling in a motor home, and so we've been cooking in the motor home.

Oh, okay. And I carry beef jerky with me, which we make. Wow. Yeah. It's crazy. You make your own beef jerky. Well, it's easy. We have a dehydrator, and you just basically put salt on it and throw in the dehydrator.

So that works pretty well. Do you anticipate continuing this? Well, I'm... God, forever is a long time. It is a long time. I'd like to be able to eat more things, but I'm going to experiment with that very, very, very, very, very cautiously. I'm going to add mushrooms next because maybe I could eat them. Well, this is why I'm asking.

There's positive benefits that a lot of people achieve and experience when they switch to a vegan diet. Yeah, right. One of the things it is is you get off of the standard American diet with lots of refined sugars and a lot of preservatives and bullshit. And then you find positive benefits. Chris Kresser has gone into depth about this. But then over time, the nutritional deficiencies in that start to wear on your health yep and i'm wondering well and who knows experience well it's certainly possible well certainly eventually this diet will kill me no life will well you're right biology will yes unless so it might science intervenes it might be that

for some people of vegan diet is preferable, well, certainly to a standard American diet. Well, for sure to a standard American diet, but also there's so much biological variability. You know, the things that bother some people don't bother other people at all, and that's something that we've got to take into consideration. Yeah, well, that's why I don't want to universalize from my experience, but this is what's happened to me, and this I don't want to universalize from my experience, you know, but, but this

is what's happened to me and this is what's happened to my wife and my daughter. So, and all of it's been, well, with Michaela, it's, it's miraculous. I cannot believe it. The last time I saw her, it made me cry. I've never seen her look like that. She looks so good. She's so healthy. And all of her other joints are not experiencing any problems.

And she's taking no immunomodulators at all. No medication. None. And she was on them forever. Oh, Jesus, yes. More medication than you can shake a stick at. Methotrexate, which is basically, they use it to treat cancer. It's a, what's the cancer-treating drugs called?

Whatever. I don't remember at the moment. She was on Enbrel, which really, really helped, but later opened to bacterial infections, so she always had pneumonia in the fall. But Enbrel really helped. And then heavy doses of antidepressants and Ritalin and Jesus. And how long has she been on this carnivore diet? Oh, God, she's only been eating meat.

It's got to be at least six to eight months now. Wow. And does she get blood work done? Yep. And her blood work, I won't comment on that. I don't know the details of her blood work. So I don't know the answer to that. It's fascinating.

I'm curious. I'm considering trying it for a while. The problem is I eat so much game meat. There's not a lot of fat in that. Get some fat. That's the trick there. Try it for a month. See what happens. What the hell? A month, you know? It's just a month. Yeah. No, a month's not hard. Yeah. Interesting. All right, let's wrap this up. I already did three hours. It's already 2.20, believe it or not. Crazy. Listen, it's always a pleasure.

Great seeing you, man. One more thing I want to bring up. How weird is this whole association to you? Because it's weird to me. The IDW? Yeah, the IDW. Just that. Of course.

Intellectual dark web. I don't know what the hell it is. It's like I've been trying to puzzle it out. I mean, I think what it is is a loose collection of early adopters of a revolutionary technology. That's what it looks like to me and and it we found each other because we're all doing the same thing but it's also

a bunch of people that are honest intellectually honest about their and and maybe don't even disagree don't even agree on things oh yeah well definitely but honest about perceptions well and also i think interested in long-form discussion yeah right and and able to engage in it because otherwise we wouldn't be having the relative success that we're having in the milieu. You know, and it got a name

and that's kind of interesting. That's Eric, though. Yeah, that's right. That's Eric. That's Eric. He loves it. Oh, yeah, he certainly does. He loves all this

spy versus spy stuff. Oh, definitely. Definitely. And he denies that he loves it, which is what's most interesting about it. I love to rib him. Yeah, well,

it's got this funny conspiratorial element there that's sort of true and sort of mostly dramatic. Well, as a mathematician, he's always looking for patterns and codes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't know what to make of it. I mean, things get a name, and then you think, well, why did that get named? And, well, someone named it. But, yeah, but the name stuck, so it seemed apropos to some degree. And, well, what do we have in common? Most of us are entrepreneurial. Most of us have our own

platform so we can speak independently. Most of us are interested in long form philosophical discussions, primarily not political, but bordering on political. Well, Ben's more political, obviously. Yeah, he's the most. Yeah, but he's also a very sophisticated political commentator. Yeah, he on the net. So it's not surprising that we're talking to each other. So I always go for the simple explanations first. You know, it's not a movement exactly. What it is, it's the manifestation of a new technology. And then, well, do we have anything in common that's worth discussing that would make this a viable group, let's say? And the answer to that is, I don't know. You know, I've been touring with Ruben. That's been good. It's been good to have a comedian along. And he's also a good interviewer. He does the've been touring with Ruben. That's been good. It's been good to have a comedian along. And he's also a good interviewer.

He does the Q&As with me. And it's nice to have some levity in the mix because the conversations are very, the discussions with the audience are very serious. Although I can crack a joke. And I can't tell a joke. But if something funny occurs to me, I can say it. And sometimes it's funny. So that's something. Funny occurs to me.

I can say it, and sometimes it's funny. So that's something. You know, and we've been discussing a fair bit, and I've had good conversations with Shapiro and Harris, for that matter. So there is lots of interplay between us, but I think that's more because we inhabit the same technological space more than the same ideological space, apart from the fact that we are actually interested in dialogue, fundamentally. So we'll see.

I mean, I'm watching it with curiosity. Are you apprehensive? Do you think that there's any potential downsides to being connected? Well, there's lots of downsides to it. Sure, there's lots of downsides. I mean, first of all, you know, most of us are on an individualistic path. I'm not really much of a group guy, you know, so am I in this group? It's like, well, I'm pleased to be associated with you guys, that's for sure, but I don't really know what it would mean, or if it should mean anything,

or if it'll screw up what I'm doing, or if it, I don't know anything about it, but mostly I'm curious. It's like, huh, this is a group. I thought this is the Rat Pack. I thought when I walked into the restaurant last, because we were out last night, it was Ben Shapiro, Sam Harris, Eric Weinstein, Dave Rubin, Joe Rogan, and me, right? And my wife, Tammy. And so we're all walking in there, and I thought, well, this is kind of like being in the Rat Pack in the 1950s. I thought, well, I know maybe it isn't, but that's what came to mind.

So I thought that's funny, and it's kind of cool, and the Rat Pack in the 1950s. I thought, well, I know maybe it isn't, but that's what came to mind. So I thought that's funny and it's kind of cool and it's interesting and it's edgy and all of that. But I'm not taking it seriously. I'm not also not, you know, I'm not taking it not seriously either, but I'm just watching. I'm watching everybody interact because it is a very motley crew of people. It is. And they're very different. And so

But it was very enjoyable. What did you think? Well, you were okay. So why did you think it was enjoyable? It's a good conversation. I mean, everyone that was in that group has been on my podcast or I've been on theirs. And you know, it's a fun group of really honest, interesting

people. Peculiar. Very peculiar people. Especially Eric. Yeah. He's listening right now. That's why I'm fucking with him. I love that guy. But I mean, they're all, it's, they're all, everyone's different, but everyone's also unique and they all bring a lot to the table.

And that's what's interesting about it. Yeah. The weird collection. Yep. You know, I don't know what to think of it. Like when Eric called me up about the whole New York Times thing, I'm like, what are you talking about? We're all together in this? And you did that.

Why did you do that? Why did I do what? Why did you be part of the New York Times article? I barely was. I just answered a couple questions. But they took a picture of you. You got a picture. Yeah, they asked me to take a picture.

They didn't take a picture of me. They shouldn't have taken a picture of me. I was dressed like I was going on stage at the comedy store. I didn't wear anything any differently. They were trying to make a big deal of it. I'm like, look, I don't have any time. You want to take a picture of me? This is what I'm wearing. We did it on the parking lot above the comedy store. It started to rain. I go, we're done. I got to go. I got to go on stage. I can't be soaking wet and then go on stage. That was it.

Okay, so your take on it is that it's, well, it's interesting. Your take on it is that it's interesting. Yes. Well, this is probably another thing that unites that group of people. Everyone in that group of people is likely to get in trouble because they find too many things interesting. Right. And it's trade openness. That's another thing that unites all of us.

Yes. Yeah. And so, and, you know, curiosity killed the cat. And so. Yeah, but we're not cats. True. Curiosity also built the pyramids. It did.

It did. It did. And it saved a lot of cats, too. Let's end it with that. All right. All right, Jordan. Always a pleasure, my friend. Hey, Joe.

Good to see you again. Good to see you always. Yeah. That's it, folks. See you soon