The Joe Rogan Experience - #1732 - Ben Shapiro

Episode Date: November 10, 2021

Ben Shapiro is a political commentator, host of "The Ben Shapiro Show," and author of "The Authoritarian Moment: How the Left Weaponized America's Institutions Against Dissent."

The Joe Rogan Experience. We've escaped the criminal communist state of California. We both look about 25% happier. I'm definitely happier. It's way easier to live here. It's like less traffic. Just forget about all the draconian COVID restrictions and dealing with an inept bullshit government, which is what it is. You save yourself some money too. It's that, but people are nicer. Yes.

It's like you're living in a, the regular folks, like, California is so polluted by show business. It's hard to really reconcile it. It's hard to really understand

how bad it is until you leave. And then you go, oh, okay. That's not normal. This is normal. Like,

just regular people. It's crazy. So I grew up in LA, right? I mean, I up in LA, right? I mean, I was in LA all the way up until last year, basically. And the only three years I wasn't in LA, I was in Boston for law school. So I've only been in like big blue cities my entire life. And when you grow up in LA, it's like, there's no other place. It's like growing up in New York.

There's no other place that exists in the country. And then you leave, you're like, whoa, the rest of this country is kind of fantastic. And people are, they're way nicer, just way nicer. Like in LA, there's a thing you do where you walk down the street. If you're not driving, you walk down the street, you spot somebody who you don't know. You kind of lock eyes with them. The first thing you do is you look away, right? You don't, you don't like, you don't catch eyes with somebody and have a conversation

with them just in the normal course of business in LA or New York. You move a tight LA or New York, you're walking down the street, you lock eyes with somebody like, hey, how are you? Yeah. They say hi. It's crazy. It's like a crazy thing. Well, there's a thing that happens when you just get too many human beings living together where people become a nuisance. It's just the population density of Los Angeles is replicated in rat population density studies that they've done. Have you ever seen those? No, I haven't seen these.

They're really fascinating because what they do is they've taken rats and they take them and they have a certain number of these rats together and they behave fairly normally. And then as they increase the population of rats, you start seeing what you see in large cities. You start seeing rats huddled in the corner nodding and shit. You see mental illness. You see violence. You see all kinds of. You see violence.

You see all kinds of stuff that you see in populations of humans and it's just, they become a factor and a negative factor instead of, you know, obviously rats aren't communicating

like people do where it becomes a community and you look forward to seeing those people but, you know, they have some sort of communal relationship with each other.

It feels like there's sort of a background level of threat that just exists when there are tons of people you don't know who are around you all the time. And in small communities, it's not replicated that way because you actually know your neighbors. You know the people you're dealing with on a regular basis. But if you're walking around a big city, just the kind of lizard part of your brain has to constantly be on alert. The next person who walks down the street could be the person who stabs me in the eye. In LA, that's actually not a wild consideration considering that they've let every mentally ill drug addict out onto the streets

and then said that it's a civil right for them to stay there like right outside people's houses. It's crazy. If you were a real conspiracy theorist, if you're a real tinfoil hat dyed-in-the-wool conspiracy theorist, you would look at the LA district attorney

and you would go, what the fuck is going on here like is this a plot to ruin the city is this it I mean is this like it is China hired this guy like what is going on between San Francisco yeah between that and San Francisco taking beautiful city I'll just destroy the city's boy and by the way not doing anything good for the people who are actually mentally ill and drug addicted just leaving them out on the street and pretending that sleeping on a street corner is the highest form of freedom. And definitely have to leave their shit just lying around on the streets while they poop on a corner.

It's just, it's unbelievable. And at some point, you would imagine that people would have to wake up to this. And you see this a little in New York, right? I mean, Eric Adams is a big change from Bill de Blasio. A big change, yeah. And you hope that at some point, for their own good, people in LA wake up to this. But in the meantime, I'm not going to be there. I'm out.

I don't care. Yeah, I'm not interested in helping. I read this article that called me and Elon cowards for not trying to fix it instead for leaving. How are you going to fix this? When did you leave? We bought in Florida last June. So it was June before last. Okay.

You were barely before me because I started looking in May. Right, exactly. Both of us were like, I see the writing on the wall. Oh, yeah. Well, that was my argument to my wife. So she wanted to stay for a long time.

And I'd been saying for a couple of years, look at this tax bill, look what we're getting in public services, look how bad things are getting. And she's like, no, it's fine. You know, you're making a lot of money, you pay a lot of taxes, that's fine. I said, right, but we're not getting anything back and in five

years you think this place is gonna be better or you think this place is gonna be worse and then you got the covid lockdowns where la just went out of its mind and they shut all the parks and they put the yellow tape on the turnoffs off mulholland like people are gonna what gather on the turnoffs off mulholland just mack on each other and spread covid like crazy in those three foot square turnoffs off Mulholland Drive. And so she was already like, this is getting crazy. And then during the riots, when they locked everybody in their house at 6 p.m., you remember this? They just curfewed the entire city at 6 p.m.

And then on Rodeo, they curfewed it at 1 so people could just run up and down Rodeo Drive breaking shit. And we heard gunshots at night. We're not in a bad area. We heard gunshots at night. They hit a footlocker half a mile this way and a Walgreens half a mile that way. She's like, OK, I guess we can check out Florida. Yeah.

Once the riots hit, that's when the mass exodus really started. Because when people started realizing that there's this weird idea that some politicians had. de Blasio was the worst example of it. To let the people just break the law and get it out of their system Like I don't understand that apparently there's some sociological theory behind this I Heard that one. I've heard there's some theory about and it was a Widely dismissed theory from the 60s and the idea about like letting people riot it out of their system almost like letting a child through a temper

Tantrum so when you saw people on Saks Fifth Avenue Smashing windows and all that the idea and the the cops were literally told to stand down. Oh, yeah They I mean we saw the pictures they burn the cop cars on Melrose right? Yeah, just bring every cop car on Melrose de Blasio is the worst example of a mayor. I've ever seen in my life He's a stunningly incompetent person when I see him talking Every cop car on Melrose. de Blasio is the worst example of a mayor I've ever seen in my life. He's a stunningly incompetent person. When I see him talking, when I see what's important to him, and when he was eating cheeseburgers talking about the vaccine,

like, you can get a free vaccine. I understand that fries are with this as well. You're eating terrible food. This is what makes people sick. What the fuck, man? There was a running gun battle for the last couple of years over who was the worst mayor. They had like Jenny Durkin in Seattle who was allowing Chaz Chop to happen. And then you had Garcetti in LA who was allowing riots to happen in de Blasio, New York. You had Lori Lightfoot in Chicago. It was like a running gun battle over who was going to be the worst public servant.

Yeah. I don't know who's better. You know, Lightfoot's in the lead. She's right there with de Blasio. She's terrible. I mean, she let me, like, all the worst of de Blasio, plus I'm only going to do interviews with people who look like me. Yes. Like, I don't even know how you could say that. That's so crazy. Yeah.

And then she repeated it. She's only doing it with brown and black people. Yeah. Only interviews with brown and black people, which is absolutely racist. And it's just, it's, do you hear about the gunfight that happened in Chicago where they let everyone go because it was mutual combat? No, this is. You don't know about this?

No, I miss this. I'm happy to show Ben Shapiro some news that's going to make you angry. Pull this up because it's so fucking crazy. One person was dead. I believe two other people were shot. They expelled 70 rounds. So 70 shots were fired on a fucking street. There's video footage of this happening where people were just driving by freaking out.

There's a dead body on the ground where a guy got shot. No charges. No charges because they said it was mutual combat. Chicago's lost its fucking mind. Prosecutors reject charges against five suspects in deadly gun-related gunfight, gang-related gunfight. Now, scroll up so you can see what it says. Where it says about mutual combat.

See if you can find where suspects have been released without charges. Cook County State's Attorney's Office explained the prosecutors had determined that the evidence was insufficient to meet our burden of proof to approve felony charges for a fucking gunfight where 70 rounds were shot on a public street. The state's attorney spokeswoman said, adding that the police officials agreed with the decision.

I think the cops just threw their fucking hands up in the air and they're like, we're done. But they used the term mutual combat in one of the articles that I read, which is usually related to— There it is. Mutual combatants was cited as the reason—wait, I thought that that's what a gang war is. Like, anytime there's a fight, I thought it's like two people fighting. Well, that term is supposed to be used for fistfights. Mutual combatants was cited as the reason for rejection. Mutual combat is a legal term used to define a fight or struggle that two parties willingly engage in.

That's a fist fight. That's two people hitting each other with their hands. It's like the plot of The Last Duel right here, right? It's a public safety danger. When you have a fist fight, there is very little danger that your fist is going to fly through a window and kill a baby. You know what I'm saying? But when you're just shooting guns in a street,

these fucking people are criminally incompetent. You know how many people are becoming Republicans? I think you do. I do. I have friends. My new home state, Florida, that was a 50-50 state. That ain't a 50-50 state no more. No, it's probably 75-25 or something crazy.

I mean, right now, it's moved. It's never going to be a 75-25. It should be. It should be. But right now, there's news that the Democratic Governors Association, right, which funds all these gubernatorial races. Remember, DeSantis only beat Andrew Gillum by like 40,000 votes in the last election cycle. DeSantis is just going to wipe the floor with his opponent. The DGA just pulled out.

They said, we're not going to spend any money in Florida. Really? Yeah. They're not going to win. What he's done is amazing because he's changed a lot of people's ideas about the way this should be handled because so many people even people that came on my podcast today were talking about criminally incompetent not today but in the past rather was saying how criminally incompetent he is and people are dying on the streets now you look at the covid cases he has less covid cases

than most other states i think it's only second to california there's the if you look at the overall deaths people were talking about the deaths, but when you make it age adjusted, it's an old state. It's the second oldest state in the country after Maine, right? And Maine has like seven old people in a moose. This is by the way, coming from someone who got COVID in Florida. I got COVID in Florida. And you're not dead?

No. Unbelievable. No, it was okay. I mean, you took the horse dormer and everything. I thought that would kill you too. You know what's interesting? You look like a horse now. I don't know what happened. CNN told it was okay. I mean, you took the horse warmer and everything? I did. I thought that would kill you, too. You know what's interesting? You look like a horse now. I don't know what happened.

CNN told me. Yeah, CNN never lies. Ever? No. Ever? They were very fair with their coverage. You went over to the barn, you're just grabbing some random pills and just- Well, I can't afford people medicine, so I had to go to a feed store.

I knew that they lied in the news, but when you see it about yourself, you're like, wow. And you see this concerted effort, this like clearly, this is, they've managed this. Oh yeah. They've thought about this. The headline was the equivalent of, you know,

Joe Rogan just had a swig of liquid used to wash cars. Yeah. Right, like you drink water over there. That's liquid we use to wash cars. We use Right. You drink water over there. That's liquid we used to wash cars. All these things for a variety of purposes. But meanwhile, in the middle of a pandemic, when you see someone who's, I'm not young, I'm 54 years old. And when you see someone who's better in three days making a video and then tested positive or tested negative, rather two days later, I was working out a day after that fine i felt fine i did 10 rounds in

the bag seven days after i tested positive and i was fine i was like really fine like didn't feel anything right but i've heard though that that ever since then shank wieger can kick your ass that's what i hear that's what i heard that's very terrifying he's been apparently he's been fighting his whole life wow that's that's some scary stuff yeah you had to run all the way to texas just to avoid him it's unbelievable yeah you're cowardice Yeah. You had to run all the way to Texas just to avoid them. It's unbelievable. Yeah. You're cowardice. I don't have to run that fast, but I can kind of like speed walk.

It's a strange time because I don't know why people are behaving the way they are, why they are not just actively engaging in conflict but encouraging it, nonsensical conflict, while people have gotten so tribal that they branched off into these groups that our group can do no wrong and that group can do no right. And we've abandoned this idea that we're supposed to be all in this together. I thought the pandemic was going to bring people together. I really did.

I thought it was going to be like 9-11 in that people were going to recognize like, hey, this is a threat to all of us. And let's all try to work together and figure this out. And I thought that if people got better and if people took a certain medication and it helped them, or they had certain lifestyle choices that were better, like things like vitamin supplementation and exercise, all these different things that I've always been talking about that maybe we would look at that and go hey we should probably look into this because it seems like

there's some people that get hit really hard by this and there's some people like Aaron Rodgers who just brush it off like it's nothing. I mean total shock that Aaron Rodgers

one of the healthiest human beings on planet Earth one of the best fucking quarterbacks alive that I can't believe COVID didn't take him down. I mean, he was a 75-year-old man with diabetes. So clearly COVID was going to kill him. But the amount of hatred for Aaron Rodgers so far outweighs the amount of upset

over a member of the Las Vegas Raiders allegedly running a person over at 150 miles an hour, right? Then he got, like, booted from the team the next day. But, like, the amount of public outrage is kind of insane. And again, like every adult in America, I know every child in America has had the opportunity to get vaccinated. If you want to get vaccinated, get vaccinated, right? I did, you didn't.

I don't care. I don't care. Once everybody's had the opportunity to protect themselves, we're done. But I think this goes to something deeper, which is I think they're kind of two, I used to think there were two types of is we I think they're kind of two, I used to think there were two types of people with regard to what they thought of human nature.

You know, some people think human nature is good. Some people think human nature is kind of sinful. I think that's still true. But I think there's another distinction that the pandemic really exposed. There are two kinds of people, people who are okay with living with a certain level of risk, and people who just are not and think that if they delegate all their power to people to make decisions for them, that all risk can be mitigated. And if that means controlling all the people around them, that's totally fine. That's a good point. Because it really is, you know, I think all of our society is built on the notion of risk seeking, right? People who build societies tend to be people who build companies tend to be risk takers and people who are willing to fail, right? Most people who take a risk in business fail. They don't succeed, right?

There's always the guy, we feature guys like you or people like me or people like Jeff Bezos, people who build big companies and win. Those are the people who make the covers of magazines or get ripped up on CNN for no reason. But the people who fail, I mean, that's most of the people who try to take a risk. Risk is risky. There's a whole group of people in America who no longer want to take a risk and they've been sold a lie.

I saw a really good piece by Scott Alexander, who used to write for Slate Star Codex before they outed him, and now he runs something called Astral Star Codex. And he was reviewing a book, and the basic thesis of the book is that since the beginning of the 20th century, there's been a big promise made to Americans, and that is there are authorities, and they live in Washington, D.C., or in your city, and they have a big button right here that they can hit that solves all your problems. And if they just hit it hard enough, it's going to solve all your problems. And for a long time, the media kind of went along with that because the media were part of an elite group that agreed with a lot of those ideas. And then the rise of the internet basically shattered that. People could get their own information. You could see through the screen that actually that button didn't exist. And so then the elites

in the society had to make a choice. They could either admit that that button never existed and they couldn't smash that button and fix all your problems, which would destroy their power. Or they could say, it's actually your neighbor. If it weren't for your neighbor, I could hit this button, but your neighbor is in here making me not hit the button. And so you have to hate your neighbor, right? This is why it's been so bewildering to me. So I am, again, I took the vaccine. My wife took the vaccine. My parents took the vaccine. I have young kids. I have no intention of them taking the vaccine. They're seven, five, and one. There's no track record of the vaccine for kids. And the risk to them is below minimal. But you and I can disagree on the vaccine. And I don't care what you do so long as you're not posing a threat to me. And yet there's this whole idea out there that if you don't do what I want you to do, you're going to kill me. I'm vaxxed. I'm not worried about it. As soon as I was done with that second dose, I'm free and clear. And by the way, I can get a mask if I'm all that worried about it. But there's a whole group of people who never want to think like that. They

want to mask up forever. You're starting to see it morph now. It's like we can't give each other flu. So we have to make sure that we mask forever. I'm not doing that. Well, I think that what you said is very important, that there's a bunch of people that don't like risks in life, period. And then when this came along, all of a sudden everything was a risk. And then when they saw other people's actions and choices as being a risk to them, some of the people that I know that I'm friends with that I would follow on Twitter who are riddled with anxiety. Like I have friends that have real psychological problems. They're comics and nice people in general, but are terrified of everything. And I'm watching them completely implode because of the fact that this is a real risk, that getting sick from this disease is a real risk. And so they look at everyone's individual choices as being something

that can impact their lives in a negative way. And they're looking at it completely disproportionately. They're not looking at it in a realistic sense. And they're not willing to look at the idea that there's other options. There are treatment options. Like this is the only time ever in our life where you have to do one thing and you have to ignore all evidence that other things are effective. Monoclonal antibodies are radically effective. I took them.

I was better in 24 hours after taking them. I have told a bunch of my friends, including Aaron Rodgers. The news is talking about all this crazy shit with Aaron. What they're not talking about is exactly the same thing they're not talking about with me. He got better really quick. And he got better with a drug that's approved for

emergency use authorization. And that's what it is. But if you take that and you're sick, then you don't need a vaccine. And that is driving people fucking crazy because they took it. They took the risk to take the vaccine and they know that a certain percentage of people do have an adverse reaction. I don't know what the percentage is because I think VAERS under reports. I think there was a Harvard study that said it was between one and 10% underreported. I don't know what that number, I don't know if that's real. But the reality is that there's some sort of a risk and people took the risk and they're

angry if other people don't take that risk. And then they want to point out that there's also a risk for COVID and you're fucking up and you're making a poor choice and they made a good choice because their choice is to take this approved vaccine and your choice is to just take your chances with this virus because you're worried about the risk of the vaccine so people like keith oberman will call you a coward like have you seen these unhinged rants from that fucking maniac it's one of the things i think that that really is important to note also is that when it comes to the risk calculation most of the people who are really paranoid about covid are people who live more like me than like you what i mean by that is

you're a guy who's kind of in the fight arena. You do physical conflict, right? You put yourself at physical risk all the time. Most people who are deeply afraid of COVID are people like me. They're in air-conditioned offices, right? They have security. They've spent their whole life in a bubble. And if you spend your whole life in a bubble,

then any risk penetrating that bubble looks just unbelievably outsized. And the human brain is not, we're not set up to calculate relative risk, right? We just tend to think of things as risky or not risky. We don't tend to think of things as like, it's a one in 10,000 chance. How do you even calculate that in your head? Does that mean like every 10,000 times I step out the door, I might die in a car accident? What does that mean exactly? We just tend to think of activities in one of those two binary categories. And so if COVID goes into the risk category, and then the media just keep pounding away every day that you are probably going to die if you get this thing,

which is not true. That's not even true for old people, right? Even for old people, the chances of death, if you're above 75 from getting COVID with nothing else, they're high. It's like one in 20, it's like five in 100. But if you are a 20 year old guy, who's healthy, your chances of dying from COVID are extremely low. And if you were an unvaccinated child, your chances of dying of COVID are lower than that of a vaccinated adult. And so this notion that all this is the same level of risk, which is peddled by the media to try and pay, it's all the platonic lie. It's all you can't control your own life. And so we are going to tell you what's best for you by scaring the hell out of you. And then when it turns out people get

the actual facts, when the fact shield that they've created is broken, when it turns out that it was not true, then people lose all faith in the institutions. And then the only way that they can try and reestablish the faith in the institutions to keep doubling down, they have to keep doubling down and keep trying to control you. They can't let go and say, we made some mistakes here. We shouldn't have lied in the first place. We overestimated our ability to know what was going on. Instead, it's no, no, no. Why don't you just listen to us?

We're the science. That's not a thing. No person is the science us? We're the science. That's not a thing. No person is the science. The science is the science. That's all. Not only that, they're ignoring some of the science. They're ignoring, you don't hear a peep out of any of these officials telling people, hey, folks, you've got to lose weight.

This is very important. We look at the numbers of people that are obese that catch COVID. It's very high. Here's another one, vitamin D. You've got to increase your level of vitamin D. Either get regular sun exposure or take a supplement. It's very simple. I told you, stay in your house and don't go in the sun for the vast majority of the pandemic.

Well, you can take supplements. It's not as good as being in the sun. No, but they kept saying, like, don't go outside, right? It was like at the beginning. Right. And we knew within the first month people were not catching this outside. Right.

We sort of knew. There was some concern. There was Chinese data and the Chinese data was showing that like nobody in China had gotten it. I don't trust shit that comes out of Chinese data.

That's fair. I don't trust any of it. I think there's so much nonsense coming out. I mean, look at what we know now about the Wuhan leak or whether or not it came from a lab.

Like, what we knew a year ago versus what we know now. It Wuhan leak or whether or not it came from a lab, like what we knew a year ago versus what we know now. It's amazing how much we opened up to the lab leak idea as soon as Donald Trump was out of office. It's like, hey, guys, you know, we've been going over these papers and it seems like that's kind of possible. Yep. You know, monoclonal antibodies, the same thing, right? DeSantis was saying monoclonal antibodies and then Biden said it. And then it was like, oh, monoclonal antibodies work, guys. Well, they're restricting the use of it. They're trying to stop people from getting it. Well, they rejiggered the supply, right?

It was being done at the state level, and then they federalized the supply chain. And they said, okay, now we're going to distribute it. And they said, that's not because we're trying to punish Florida, but it's a little because we're trying to punish Florida. It's not just trying to punish Florida. It's trying to make it far more difficult to get this stuff because it discourages people from getting vaccinated. Right. It's the same thing that we were just talking about. It's one treatment option.

This is it, the vaccine. This is one binary option, and that's how people are looking at it. And they're not taking into consideration all these other points of data that show that obesity is a factor, that diet and exercise are a factor, that vitamin supplementation is a factor. There's a lot of factors that are involved in keeping your body healthy, but this is not, it's not conducive to this brought to you by Pfizer. It's not conducive to that narrative. Listen, this fucking narrative is scary. It's the lack of willingness to expose information is totally crazy. And again, this is coming from somebody who's very pro-vaccine and thinks the vast majority of adults should get a vaccine.

Well, I am very pro-vaccine. This is not a vaccine. This is essentially a gene therapy. They've changed the term what a vaccine means because of this. You know that, right? Yeah, you know. The mRNA is a relatively new technology compared to the way they used to do vaccines, yes. It's relatively new, and there's no long-term safety data.

It doesn't exist. And we're in the middle of, obviously, it's important to do something, right? And so we're essentially in the middle of an experiment. This is a long-term experiment with people. And we're going to find out whether it's five years from now or 10 years from now. whether it's five years from now or ten years from now but if you look at the vast majority of FDA approved drugs there you know if you look at all of them like out of the who knows how many thousands of drugs have been approved do you know how many have been pulled out once they found out there's adverse side

effects after years and years of use it's fucking nuts It's a crazy number. Let's find out what the number is. FDA approved drugs that were, how would you Google this? Withdrawn. Withdrawn after finding adverse effects. I was reading an article about this because the article was a pro-vaccine article, but they were saying, you've got to understand how these things work. There's a reason why they do these trials understand how these things work. There's a reason why they do these trials over five, 10 years. There's a reason for this. So everybody that's saying, you know, safe and effective, safe and effective for most people. Yes. For most

people, safe and effective. So was Vioxx. So was Vioxx. I have a friend who had a stroke from Vioxx and he was in his thirties. Well well again the the notion that it's great for everyone or that it is okay there have been 12,787 drug recalls issued by the fda on average 1,279 drugs are recalled every year to understand this we don't know what the fuck is going to happen in 10 years. We don't know. But that's why it was always, for me, about relative risk of COVID

versus whatever you think the risks might be of the vaccine, which is why for people who are old, you really needed to get it. If you're 65 and up, it was you do whatever

you have to do to get it. And then once it got to lower ages, it was like, use your own best judgment. And I encourage my parents to get vaccinated. I encourage people that are in high-risk groups to get vaccinated. think it does and and obviously the other thing i mean

now they're pushing third shots right and like the data on third shots is really really sketchy unless you're really old and really immunocompromised but the thing about anyway the thing about the the covid vaccine that's interesting is that the adverse side effects are less frequent in older people for whatever reason. It's interesting. Worse immune response maybe? Maybe. Because a lot of this stuff is driven by the strength of the immune response. Exactly. Well also you're seeing people administer it incorrectly

all the fucking time including when they did it to the president. When they jabbed the president and I said I don't even think they gave it to him. I was joking around and everybody's outraged Joe Rogan is a conspiracy team. What is he saying? Well you're supposed to aspirate you fucks. When you see someone get injected and they just

go like that right into his arm, that is an incorrect way of vaccinating the fucking leader of the free world. Okay? If you're going to do it to the leader of the free world, maybe you should pull it back to make sure you didn't hit a goddamn vein and then push it through because that's what you're supposed to do.

I'm not a doctor. Your wife's a doctor. I'm sure she could tell you the same thing. I'll ask her about it. Ask her. I mean, the good news for Joe Biden is he's been dead for at least 15 years. Well, he's definitely a zombie. I don't know if he's technically dead because he's moving around and farting all over the

place apparently. Yeah, that was not. How crazy is that lady, Prince Charles' wife? Yeah, she's going around talking about him farting all over. Is it proven that she said this, or is this one of them Republican rumors? Oh, it's from the Daily Mail, right? So the Daily Mail was saying that she was going around telling everybody that he had really unleashed the beast. The Daily Mail's a tad sketchy.

I don't know if you know. That's fair. Didn't Johnny Depp, didn't he duke it out with the Daily Mail? Was it the Daily Mail? I can't remember if it was the Daily Mail. There are some tabloids over there. Tad sketchy. Tad sketchy over there.

I mean, it is pretty incredible how, yeah. So he's over there and the only thing he came away with was a story about how loudly he farted. That's not a great appearance. That's kind of the worst thing since H.W. barfed in somebody's lap at a dinner in Japan. That's just not a great presidential look. Did he do that? Oh, that's right. That was that famous story.

That's right. What did he have, food poisoning or something? Yeah, he just kind of leaned over and vomited. Oh, that's hilarious. That's hilarious. What happens? Because he's not going to make it. And this is one of the things that I said.

I mean, you know, you and I are kind of on different sides of the fence politically, but we're not with everything. I am very, I'm very pro police. I'm very pro military. I'm very pro Second Amendment. I'm very pro protecting families and people. And I'm very pro-choice. I'm very pro, you know, you gotta, I'm a person of, I believe in nuance and I'm not a person that's interested in subscribing to tribes and ideologies. But when I look at where we're at right now with this country, with this administration, this is what I said during the election. I said I would vote for Trump before I'd vote for Biden. I didn't wind up voting for either one of them. I voted for Joe Jorgensen. It was just sort of a throw my hands up in the air vote. But I would vote for Trump, I said, because I don't think Biden is there. I think he's having real problems. And I got people messaging me, you're wrong. He stutters. And I'm like, listen, I know old people me you're wrong. He's got he stutters and I'm like listen

I've seen oh, I know old people you do too. You're lying to me. You know what this is This is guy can't talk like he's falling apart He's intermittently lucid right and then that happens a lot when when you hit that age. He's probably on Adderall. Let's be honest They're probably juicing him up. They're probably doing something when it's important. I mean he he is just Sometimes there and he's mostly not and he's losing his train of thought in the middle of press conferences juicing them up. They're probably doing something when it's important. I mean, he is just sometimes there and he's mostly not and he's losing his train of thought in the middle of press conferences and he's getting very cranky and crotchety with people. Yeah. And he's yelling at people who, like in the space of a week, he went from yelling at Peter Doocy on Fox News for saying that he was

paying illegal immigrants or thinking of paying illegal immigrants like almost half a million dollars per person for the family separation stuff. He's like, we would never consider that. That's terrible. How could you report that to his own administration having to walk it back and then yelling at another reporter for saying that it's bad to pay people. Did you see Ducey with the press secretary?

No, I missed this one. Beautiful setup. He said, are you going to pay people that come over to this country legally? And she's like, this is the substitute press. Yeah, because Jen Psaki got the COVID. So she's out and this new lady is in and she goes, why would we pay people who come over here legally? She goes, Ducey goes, why would you pay people who come over here legally she goes and ducie goes why would you pay people come over here illegally and they're like the thug life glasses come down have you seen that

oh no i missed that one i'll have to see that it's pretty interesting but yeah no but biden's not there and and he's now in the upper 30s low 40s remember the thing about biden is that he was elected everybody's misreading their mandate you You mean about approval ratings? Yeah, his approval rating. Yeah. Maybe his heartbeat, but... No, that would be good. Upper 30s would be like a marathon runner. Oh, really? Okay. Yeah. Okay. Is that... Okay. You know more about this than I do, again.

That's low resting heart rate is awesome. If you get into 30, that's like Michael Bisping in his prime. Wow, okay. So he's not that. Okay, so in any case, he is you know, he's falling apart. He's in the high 30s, low 40s in approval rating. So he's not that. Okay, so in any case, he is, you know, he's falling apart. He's in the high 30s, low 40s in approval rating.

But Kamala's lower. She's at 28%, which I don't even know how that's possible. It's wild. Like, they've been hiding her. They've, like, got her in a closet somewhere, and they just hide her there

because every time she comes out, she weird, like, one of my life aspirations is to play poker with Kamala Harris. I'm not good at poker, but she has got to have the best poker tell of all time, right? I mean, she just cackles randomly. As soon as you ask her,

I mean, she makes Hillary Clinton just look charming and personable. It's unbelievable. She's at 28% and she's missing. She's completely MIA and people just can't stand her. And so if you're a Democrat and you're looking at 2024, you got to be thinking to yourself, what do we do? And then, you know, if you're a Republican, there's kind of Trump just waiting, biding his time, just waiting. What do you think happens? That's the worst Trump impression ever. I know, it's horrible.

You were talking earlier about your impressions are bad. That one's not good. Yeah. Do you have one that's good? My Obama's not bad. Let me hear your Obama. Well, let's talk a little bit about what's going on in America. It's not bad. It's not bad.

It's not horrific. I have to kind of get into it. Can I get a glass of water? Remember that one? Come on. I will say, America is not red states. It's not blue states. It's the United States.

They need work. They're not great. Remember when you drank the Flint water? Can I get a glass of water? This is not a stunt. I'm actually thirsty. We're talking about the Kamala Harris thing. Who wins?

How does that work? Or who takes over? If Biden plots it, you mean? If Biden can't make it, and I don't think he's going to make it. I don't think he's going to make it to 2024. And if they run him again in 2024, there's no fucking way. There's no way It's a layup I mean whoever's on the other side be the only thing that the Democrats are praying for really just on a political level is they want

Trump to come back as he gets high the negatives, you know what? I think it's gonna be I think it's gonna be Kamala and Pete Buttigieg I think that's where they're gonna try to yeah, I mean, I think that I think that's right. I think that Really good speaker. He's very I can let handsome guy. Yeah, I mean, I think that's right. I think that... He's a really good speaker. He's very articulate. Handsome guy, you know, and he checks a lot of the boxes. He's gay and married.

It'll ask the media to suggest, again, that anybody who opposes the agenda is anti-gay and anti-black if you have that combined ticket. They've been having trouble with that, right? They keep saying that if you oppose Biden's agenda, it's because you're racist. And it's like,

that guy is whiter than any person on earth. Right, but here's the thing. What would... who would be the lead? Would it be her as the president, him as the vice president? Because that's not going to fucking work. Yeah, I think it's hard to say that they're going to supplant her at the top of the ticket with Buttigieg, because then what do you do with the whole intersectional coalition of all of it? Right. You're supplanting a black woman. I'm not sure what the current math is on intersectionality. Like, who ranks higher, the gay man or the black woman? He would have to be trans.

If he was trans, he would get a head. If he was trans, he would get a leg up. Right, but then is he a straight woman? And then he, like, goes down on the intersectional scale, or what? Yeah, he's a trans woman, you fucking bigot. Right, but then he's married to a man, right? Then she's married to a man, so then she's a straight trans woman, right? Isn't that how it works?

I don't think so. It depends. It's like a bad algebra problem. Yeah. It's like two plus two is five, you know? Because math is racist. It's true. California, man.

I think if you look at her approval rating, I think she might get abducted by UFOs. That's the plan. They might say, and I'm not kidding. If I was her, I would be fucking terrified. I would be legitimately terrified for my life. And I'm not kidding. Well, I mean, she should certainly be terrified that they're not going to let her run for

president. No question. They're not going to let her run for president. Honestly, if I'm the Democrats, I've been saying this since the last election cycle. If I were the Democrats, I'm praying for Michelle. Right? Michelle's very popular. Michelle Obama?

Yeah. Michelle's very popular. She could win. She could win. She could win. 100%. She's cultivated this very kind of crossover. I'm praying for Michelle. Michelle's very popular. Michelle Obama? Yeah, Michelle's very popular. She could win. She could win. She could win. She's cultivated this very kind of crossover, I'm a nice person image. She's very likable. She's cultivated that for sure.

I think that's a good move. I think that Kamala Harris has got to figure out a way to step out. She won't, though. How could she? How could she? She just keeps failing up. She's going to get sick. She's going to get a booster and the booster's going to wreck her.

Just go missing for 10 days. Like who? I don't know. Who's that guy that's missing? Oh yeah, where's he? What's his name? I heard a rumor. The guy from California, right? I don't know what's going on with him. I don't know either.

No one knows. California, right? I don't know what's going on with them. I don't know either. Yeah. No one knows. Anyway. So it's, yeah, they've got problems on that side of the aisle. But the problem for everyone, really, is that they keep misreading what the mandate is. Right? Like when Biden was elected, he was elected with basically two mandates. Be dead and don't be radical.

And he was dead, but he's also being kind of radical. And he was dead, but he's also being kind of radical and Americans are just not into it. The mandate wasn't be dead because they rolled him out for the debates. It was be not Trump. It was be barely alive, like be barely sentient, don't make trouble.

He was pretty good in the first debate. Yeah. He was pretty good. Like for him? God love me, I defended him against Kamala Harris who I thought was awful in that first debate when she attacked him as a racist, it was really dishonest.

It just shows you how politicians are, right? Now he's the greatest thing since sliced bread for her. Yeah, not just that, but she said she believed the woman who accused him of sexual assault. Right, but now she's the vice president, so they're best friends again. We should definitely believe these people and trust them with all of our life decisions. Well, that's what's so crazy. It's like they expect you to have a really short memory to forget, like, this was just a month ago. You guys were at each other's neck.

I mean, I think that was the plan with Afghanistan. I think that's the plan with everything. I think everybody is under the misimpression that there is no long-term memory. And there isn't a long-term memory, but it's almost like T-cell memory. Like, it exists back there and when it gets activated, like, the immune system spins up, you know?

I think they're accustomed to having complete control over the media narrative and they don't have that anymore. That's the difference. They've always had Fox News, which they have labeled as racist and homophobic and sexist and and, you know, horrible warmongers and horrible, greedy corporatists and all the terrible things that they could associate with Fox News. And they felt like most of the media they had a control of. They had control of CNBC and MSNBC and CBS. CNN and ABC. All the letter networks. Everything. Yeah.

But they don't – that's not impactful anymore. That's what's crazy. I think it's why – Something happened and there's this new wave of media like your show and like Breaking Points. There's so many shows out there now where people actually talk about

the real facts in a non-partisan way and explain what's going on and what moving pieces are in play and how these bills are getting passed and what are the special interest groups that are forcing this through and what's happening? This is what's happening. And that didn't exist before.

But I think that, again, until people let go of the core notion that government is going to solve their problems, it's just going to keep bouncing back and forth. Because if you're on the right, you think the federal government's going to solve your problem if Trump is president again. And if you're on the left, you think that as long as Biden's in control, federal government's going to solve all your problems. And so we can be as dissatisfied with the systems we want to be on all sides of the aisle. But until we recognize that really, we need to stop pretending that these people are capable of solving our problems and just

they should leave us the hell alone in the main. It's just going to get worse. Some people don't want that, though. Some people want daddy. They want daddy to come along. I mean, this is what Benjamin, wasn't it Benjamin Franklin that had that quote about people who choose? Surrender liberty for a little temporary security deserve neither liberty nor security. I mean, that's literally what you're saying. Yep. And I think that that's true. I mean, there are polls in Britain right now showing that a majority of the population in Britain wants to just keep masks forever. Forever? Forever.

But meanwhile, my friends were over there, like Chappelle was over there. He told me that no one wears a mask. So you're walking around London. It's just everybody's just acting like there's no COVID. Well, that's the other thing. I think that what people say to pollsters and even how they vote and then how they act in their daily lives are just not connected. I think you vote how you want to perceive yourself very often. It's like I perceive myself as a good person. Therefore, I voted for X. Keep those masks forever. And then in your personal life, I mean, as a good person. Therefore, I voted for X. Keep those masks forever. And then in your personal life, I mean, this is what you see from Democratic mayors, right? They're like, yeah, we're going to push mask mandates. And then if the spirit moves you and you're London Breed, the mayor of San Francisco, and you're at a concert and the

spirit moves you, then off comes the mask. Meanwhile, you're masking up my five-year-old in class. Like, it's just... Well, not only that, they're forcing five-year-olds to be vaccinated. That's crazy. Going to restaurants. That's insane. It's insane. And we don't have, again, no long-term safety data, especially with children.

It's wild. Also, they're not at risk. If the parents are vaccinated, they're supposed to be protected. And if the children catch COVID, they're not at risk. So we're done, unless this is a money-making scheme. People get mad at the data. So we were having this kind of knockdown drag out fight in our local area about some institutions that had mask mandates. And my wife was very anti mask mandates, particularly for kids. She is a doctor and she was talking to some people who are part

of this institution. And she wrote up this long document with all the links and all the data about how mask mandates for kids are ineffective, how they don't do anything, how they're really stupid, how they're counterproductive, how there's no data to back them. And I said to her, if you send that, they're going to get madder at you. They don't want the data. The data makes them angry. And she was like, no, no, no, they'll want the data because she's a nice person and naive. And she sent it. And sure enough, people got madder because the idea is that once the data come up and kind of bite the perspective, people get very angry if their perspective is the one that got bitten.

And so they have to suppress it. I honestly think that's part of what's happening with big tech right now. I think that there's almost two battles with regard to big tech. One is just the size and scope and the social effect of big tech and all of that. But the other one is there's a group of people who really don't like alternative viewpoints being out there. And so they are going to stump as hard as they can to get people deplatformed and to use big tech as a way of siphoning off perspectives. Well, you see that in those Project Veritas videos where the people who work for these organizations are so nonchalant about the way they're discussing. Look, they're at dinner discussing how they suppress

conservative voices. And if you're a person who has an understanding of the importance of free speech, which is one of the cornerstones of this country, you know that free speech works both ways. You have to hear an other person's perspective, and then you argue your perspective, and you see which perspective makes more logical sense. This is what free speech is all about. This is what growth is about. This is how we understand each other's points of view and we learn about other people's opinions and ideas. And this is how you change your own opinions, ideas. You encounter some that enter into your mind that you go wow i never considered that

that's actually a good point and then you shift your judgment you shift your perspective this is important for humans it's always been important for humans echo chambers are fucking terrible they're terrible in every way shape and form and this idea that we're giving up these echo chambers we're we're we're giving control of them to these fucking wokesters that work for corporations that can arbitrarily just decide, oh, this person talks about that. Let's fucking shadow ban her. This person talks about this. Let's ban their YouTube page. This person says data that's inconvenient for our narrative.

Let's silence them. That is fucking crazy. And it's completely un-American. There's something perverse that's happened, too. And that is you can spot it in the language so until 2016 remember social media was everybody's friend everybody loved social media until 2016 the media were like big on social media it was great it had been used to reach out to new voters and it helped people in the arab spring and all this kind of stuff and then trump wins and all of a sudden on a dime everybody switches to social

media facilitated the spread of russian dis. Now, my company is an online company. We spend a lot of time on places like Facebook. So we know what the numbers look like when you have high engagement. The number of people who are actually affected by so-called Russian disinformation over the course of the 2020 election, the number of people who access those posts is less than the number of people who access posts from my personal Facebook page over the course of maybe three weeks or a month. Okay. It was not, it was not a massive, huge wave of Russian disinformation that shifted the 2016 election. There had to be some excuse for why Trump had won. And so it was, it was Russian disinformation. And then you saw there was this really interesting linguistic shift. They went from disinformation, which is an active thing, right? That's like the Russian

government spreading things that are not true in order to subvert our politics to misinformation, right? It's only one letter different, but it's completely different. Disinformation is a state actor or terrorist group or some organized group pushing a perspective that is false in order to undermine the comedy and cohesiveness of a community. Misinformation is just, it can be true, but if it's missing context or if it's presented in a way I don't like, it's misinformation. And so now we have to target misinformation. And that can be anything. And not only that, we will set up a group of fact-checkers, fact-checkers who all happen to align with one political point of view.

And these fact-checkers will determine whether or not you have violated the ban on misinformation. And then we'll downgrade you on that basis. And it doesn't matter if the fact-checkers shift their own opinion on this sort of stuff, right? We'll ban you for six months from social media if you talk about the Chinese leak theory. But then if everybody flips on a dime, then, well, you know, the fact checkers are okay with it so long as it's the right people who are saying it now. And the same monoclonal antibodies or hydroxychloroquine or ivermectin, right?

It's all the same kind of stuff. It's misinformation when it's deemed inconvenient for a particular narrative. And then as soon as something is convenient for the narrative, it's not misinformation. So that shift has been really dangerous and really ugly. And again, if they think that it's going to end well for them, that somehow this is going to reestablish social capital, that people are going to get back together because you force them to only listen to one point of view. Good luck with that. I don't think they're thinking that, but I do think that intelligent people are waking up to the reality that being a part of these groups that are doing this, that are silencing opposing views, there's no long-term future in this because people recognize

what is actually happening now. A growing number of people. There's still a lot of people that watch CNN that think I actually took horse dewormer, but there's a lot of people that recognize like, oh my God, this is just a lie. Like, oh my God, the news is lying about all kinds of things. And they're pushing a very limited perspective, a very limited point of view. And they're demonizing anything that has an opposing perspective. You're seeing more and more courageous journalists step out and then you're seeing things like Substack and you're seeing podcasts and shows like yours where people have the ability to express themselves without any worry about editorial control.

And this is where the legacy media, they try to jump in and they try to put boots on the throat, right? So you're over at Spotify and the minute you signed over at Spotify, the legacy media, they try to jump in and they try to put boots on the throat, right? So you're over at Spotify. And the minute you signed over at Spotify, the legacy media went and tried to find a couple of malcontents over at Spotify to try and get them to say, oh, we're going to walk out. It's going to be just, it's going to be blood in the streets over at Spotify. Now, in reality, it's like a couple of people who are bitching. Well, they actually did bitch. I mean, it's not the legacy media didn't orchestrate that.

There was people that worked there. No, I'm sure it was. But the legacy media decide which malcontents in a particular company to magnify. Well, it's not even just legacy media. A lot of online websites did that, but they did that because it's good clickbait. It's good for the news. This is part of the problem with journalism today is that there's no money in print anymore. So people aren't just buying newspapers. You can't look for the New York Times

to be this complete unbiased source of information with very clear and concise headlines. Now it's about what kind of engagement do you get online? Well, the way you get engagement online is things have to be outrageous. Do you know how many people write really good articles and then their fucking editor comes along and writes some bullshit headline for it?

And so it gets submitted with something that is completely different than the tone of the actual article itself because this is the way you can get people to click on it. And they'll change things. I do think there's something else, though, and it's why I mentioned the legacy media. And that is I do think that there are actors in the legacy media who want to see their sources of competition cut off at the knees. I think so, too, but I think— they started talking about regulating podcasts not all that long ago i feel like carol swisher at the new york times talking about you know they're why can't the same rules that apply to journalism apply to podcasts why can't why why doesn't facebook crack down on the dissemination of of podcasting information why like i don't think it's a coincidence that

you have the kevin ruse's and they can't like every single day. Kevin Ruse over at The New York Times puts out a list of what he says are the top traffic links at Facebook. OK, and he does that specifically because it names like me or Dan Bongino or a few other people on the right. The idea being that Facebook is pushing really hard right wing propaganda content. The only reason he's doing that every day is to try and pressure Facebook into not doing that anymore. Right. That's that's the whole goal. I think there is a real concerted effort by legacy media to basically say the only approved sources should be us and anybody else who's out there is not an approved source. I agree with you on that. I definitely agree with you on that. But I think that there are a growing number of people that are connected to legacy media that realize that you can get much further being independent.

And it's a much clearer path. And you don't have to deal with editors that change the titles of your stories. You don't have to deal with these bullshit narratives that you're being forced to push. You don't have to be a cog in this machine. I don't know if it's me moving out of California that's made me more optimistic because I don't live kind of in the center of this anymore, but I do feel more optimistic. I know you saw that announcement about the University of Austin.

Did you see that today? Yes. It's a cool thing. It's a bunch of people from a bunch of different sides of the political aisle. You've got Larry Summers and Aideen Strassen, then you've got Barry Weiss and Andrew Sullivan and Saurabh Amari, who's very right-wing, and you've got all these people who are founding a university. It'll take them years to build, but they're trying to provide an alternative to a sort of propagandistic worldview that's being taught in a lot of college campuses.

Like the possibilities for building alternatives have never been higher. And that is the thing that makes me optimistic. And again, I think part of that is just living around people who don't think of themselves as reflections of the federal government every day. Like if you're I was trying to explain this to people who are from Florida who think of themselves as Floridian. Same thing in Texas. You talk to Texans. They think of themselves as Texans. Yeah.

In California, you think yourself as a Californian kind of culturally. But it's not like the state of California stands against the federal government. The state of California has its own prerogatives. Like if you live in L.A., L.A. and the federal government are kind of just the same. I mean, they just mirror reflections of one another. It would never occur to you that there's sort of a separate cultural identity that exists as California versus the federal government. It's so transient.

Right. The state's so transient. And it's also that the involvement of government in your everyday life is so great in California, but minimal in other parts of the country, that your points of contact in your everyday life is so great in California, but minimal in other parts of the country that like your points of contact in Florida or Texas with the federal government, or at least federal government like policy are fairly minimal. So when the federal government starts actually exerting pressure, you start feeling it more than in California. But don't you think that before the pandemic, the way that you interacted with the government

in California was minimal. Not with the local government. Well, it was less invasive than it was. And soon, as soon as they- Post-pandemic, it's crazy. Post-pandemic, it went nuts. From my personal perspective, for me, I didn't even give a fuck who the mayor of Los Angeles was. It didn't matter until they shut down restaurants and comedy clubs.

And then I was like, what are you doing? Who are you? Who are you to tell people what they can and can't do? And especially when you're talking about like outdoor dining and outdoor shows and things that don't have any risk associated with that. Oh, yeah. It was so obtrusive. You're right. I mean, that was a –

That changed everything. I had seen it happening because, again, I'm conservative. So I feel that kind of stuff maybe more deeply. But as soon as the pandemic kicked in and they started doing just crazy shit, right? Like I could not take my kids to a public park in the middle. I couldn't take them to school. And I also could not take them to a public park. They closed the beach.

Right. They put sand all over the skate park, right? Like I'm not going to skate there, but I'm just telling you, like when you dump sand all over the skate park, because you think the people who are skating past each other at 15, 20 miles an hour. Exactly. When we went to Florida and then we were visiting, and the first couple nights we just went to an outdoor restaurant because they're eating outdoors at the restaurants.

And you couldn't do that in L.A. My wife and I looked at each other, and we hadn't been out to dinner with each other for two months because of this. We were like, this is a different thing. This is nice. This is better. Yeah, this is better. And I think the more people realize that this is nice this is better yeah this is better and i think the more people realize that the that this is that this is better thing i think that there's going to be like the great

sort the big sort is happening people are leaving the red the blue states they're coming to the red states it is a sort ideologically still people digging their heels in there's you know california still has 40 million fucking people it doesn't have population growth though no california is losing congressional seats right yeah new. California is losing congressional seats. New York's losing congressional seats. It's interesting, isn't it? Yeah. I mean, this is, I think,

was it 2019 was the first year that California had less people? Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah, they've started losing people. That was actually before the pandemic. They were doing that just because of taxes and the homeless situation.

Right. But the homeless situation, boy, that's like fucking... And you weren't allowed to complain about it. That's the thing. In California, if you are not a homeless person- Then you're a horrible person. They changed it to the unhoused, too, which was amazing. The unhoused?

Yes. Interesting. They started- The de-housed or the unhoused? Unhoused. Oh, the unhoused. They started calling them the unhoused, which is always a red flag. As soon as they tried to use a more innocuous term to deal with, which is a public health crisis.

It's a mental health crisis. It's a public health crisis. I mean, it's also like a wheelchair access crisis because these poor people that are in wheelchairs, they can't get through the fucking sidewalks because they're covered in tents. The ADA should deal with something like that right well i mean for for years in california the rule has been that you weren't allowed to take people's shit off the street right if people's the because there's a ruling from the from the federal courts right the aclu was the one that did the case there was an ordinance on the books in la that the police were not allowed to move the quote-unquote personal property of people who are living on the streets it's like garbage bags just filled with garbage and you weren't

allowed to take them away because this was the personal property of the people who are living on the streets. How in the world this is seen as some sort of empathetic move on behalf of the homeless is beyond me. And you saw, I mean, it was kind of incredible, like the power of human innovation. I mean, people have built like two story buildings, like with tents. And I was amazed sometimes at the creativity. I mean, you'd see like, I remember we drove past and there was a guy there with a turntable. He had somehow hooked it into one of the light posts. Like he'd actually broken into the light post on the street.

He was using it for electricity and he had a turntable. And I was like, you know, kudos to him for really liking his vinyl. But I just wonder if that's like the best way that you want people to live in California is on the street with like an old turntable so they can play their authentic music without the perversion of digital. Well, my thought is if he's that innovative, why doesn't he just figure out a way to apply

it to an actual life? Like get the fuck off the street and you might be able to actually do something. Right. Like if you're the type of guy who figures out how to tap into the electrical wires. I was like, that's kind of like, he knows more about engineering than I do. I saw a video of a guy welding. Somebody put it online. There was a guy welding inside of his tent.

Someone should tell him there's like a million open welding jobs in the United States right now. There are a lot of open welding jobs right now. You know, you're dealing with people that have a lot of mental health issues. No, that's the issue. And no one will talk about that. No one will talk about that. Because what's incredible about that is that is one place where you would assume that people in a left-wing state like California would put all their all their focus right right i mean like that's a place where i'm a i'm a super right-wing guy the state does have a role in making sure that people who literally cannot take care of themselves

have a place to go and get their medication yeah like how in the world has that been that been the big failure in california like why is it that that we are not making it easier to involuntarily commit people who are actually a danger to themselves and or others living on the street? Like, it's insane to me. But involuntarily committing people, that's, a lot of them are just drug addicts. And involuntary commitment of drug addicts.

No, it's different. I'm talking about like people who are, there are people who have serious schizophrenia issues who are living on the streets of California. Like, it's different. I'm talking about people who have serious schizophrenia issues who are living on the streets of California. It's a real thing. But how do you determine

who's... They have court hearings for this sort of thing. If you're going to be involuntarily committed, typically there's a court hearing. So we would have

an insane amount of cases in front of these already bogged down courts where we try to figure out whether or not we should put people in some sort of a cage.

So we'll spend tens of millions of dollars on random trains that go to nowhere in California, but you can't spend some money on the court system? That's a misallocation of resources. Yeah, I'm not a fan of those trains that nobody uses. Yeah, we definitely needed to train because the exact same route is the I-5. Definitely necessary. Well, the idea was that you're going to get people in California to behave the way you get people in Connecticut and New York to behave. Where all the cities are five minutes apart on the East Coast as opposed to like Fresno and LA.

Well, it's just no one's going to take those fucking things. Who takes a train to Fresno? It's a culture of people driving. And the idea, I guess, is like if you can change that culture slowly but surely, it would be better for the environment. They're all such liars. I remember Gavin Newsom was on. I did a morning radio show. Is that that guy that is-

Wait, he's missing, right? That hurt, he's missing. Yeah, I don't know what happened to him. Anyway, so Gavin Newsom was on this morning radio show. Is he missing right after he got his booster shot? I don't know. Anyway, he was on this morning radio show that I was doing. And I asked him, this is when Jerry Brown was still the governor, and he was lieutenant governor. And I said, so, you know, this whole like bullet train thing is really stupid and a waste of money, right? And he's like, yeah. And like a year later, he's like, we need a bullet train. We really, monorail, right? We really need the bullet train.

We really need the bullet train. You know, it's interesting. Your voice and your opinions are, like, during this pandemic in particular, your profile has become magnified. And what's fascinating to me is there's people who love you. And then there's these moms who get super upset that their son is into Ben Shapiro. I have encountered many of these women, these very opinionated, always liberal college educated women who are furious that their sons, well, Ben Shapiro says, and they do not want to hear it. What is it about these liberal women and Ben Shapiro? Like, why is this oil in water? What is going on?

I don't know. Honestly, I don't know. I mean, like, I'm telling their sons to, like, get married, lead responsible lives. Yeah. Go get a job. I know. But it resonates with these boys, which is fascinating to me. Well, I'm telling, in a certain sense, Jordan Peterson and I are coming at it from very different angles. Jordan's coming at it from a kind of spiritual and psychological

angle, and I'm coming from it from a very practical angle, like what's going to bring you success in life. But we're saying the same thing, which is- Well, I am as well, though. I'm saying that in an interesting way as well. Get your shit together, yes. I mean, but there are a lot of people out there who feel like, I thought Jordan had a great point on this. So somebody was asking him. They were saying, oh, you know, Jordan Peterson, he's speaking just to young, white, disaffected males. And Jordan's like, wouldn't you rather that I speak to them than nobody speak to them? Or are you just saying that you don't want anybody to speak to them? Right.

Exactly. I mean, that's kind of the thing. As a society, we sort of have said to young men that we actually don't want you to be responsible. Like responsibility is somehow connected with toxic masculinity. Maybe you're assuming too much. It's part of the patriarchy. And I think that's bullshit. I mean I think that one of the chief obligations in life for a young man is to become a provider,

is to become a protector of their family. The way that I judge masculinity, and maybe it's self-serving, is not by how many push-ups you can do, but by how you provide for your wife, how you provide for your children, what are you doing for your community. These should be pretty simple things, but people get super pissed when you talk about that

because you're speaking up against the notion that, I guess, the chief and core of all human aspiration ought to be your individual identity. They're like, if you just are solipsistically looking at how do I feel today and what do I feel about myself and my identity, that that's actually a really bad way to live your life. And I think that that's seen sometimes as if I'm trying to kind of steal man, my opponents, that scene is unempathetic. It's unempathetic because what I really should be focused on is how do you make people feel the most authentically them that they can feel? And my answer is my definition of what

a healthy human identity constitutes, I think is fundamentally different from a lot of people who oppose me. I don't think that human identity is in chief, just your feeling of internal subjective authenticity about what you're doing today. I don't think that it's all about your feelings. I think that it's very much about how you interact with society. It's about the things that you do. What kind of accomplishments are you taking part in? How are you building your community? How are you innovating? What kind of risks are you taking? What kind of obligations are you undergoing? And once you do that, then people see that as judgmental because we're in a society where the thing you're supposed to care most about is what you feel here. And then if everybody else accepts that, right because we're in a society where the thing you're supposed to care most about is what you feel here.

And then if everybody else accepts that, we're supposed to be a society that's chiefly built on us all accepting our own internal self-definition. And I'm saying there's an objective reality out there, and it's unpretty. That objective reality is filled with things you're not going to like. And then the question is, how do you deal with that objective reality while acknowledging that no one has the utopian capacity to magically wave a wand and fix all those problems? a bunch of people that think that the world does revolve around every single nuanced feeling that they have. Also, there's this rejection of responsibility and discipline. And this equation, they're equating discipline with not just toxic masculinity, but cruelty. That you're cruel if you impose discipline or if you encourage discipline. And I say, I follow Jocko Willink's advice, discipline equals freedom. And I think that's

real. And I think that if you can figure out a way to work hard, you will feel satisfaction from the results of that work. It makes you feel better. For a society that's so concerned with feelings, you should be looking at all the different ways that the life that you choose affects the way you feel about things. And if you have really accomplished goals and actually exerted discipline, done things that were difficult to do that you didn't necessarily want to do, but you knew had long-term benefits. That is a part of being like an actualized human. That's a part of being a man. It's a part of being a woman. It's a part of being a person who accomplishes things in life. And people don't want to hear that sometimes because they want to hear that you've done enough. You're amazing. You're a winner. You're a perfect person. You don't need to work harder.

You just, people need to accept you. And we need the government to step in and fill in all the holes, fill in all the blanks. And this income inequality idea, like there's an income inequality problem in this country. Well, guess what else there is? There's a fucking effort inequality problem in this country. Some people don't else there is? There's a fucking effort inequality problem in this country. Some people don't put forth as much effort. Does that mean that everybody should work 12 hours a day, seven days a week? No, it doesn't.

It doesn't mean that. But it does mean that you probably can do more. You can probably work harder or think harder. And if you do that, you will be rewarded with success. Not always, because there's a lot of complications to life, and you've got to figure your way through these things, and a lot of times you're going to try things and fail. And this is what we were talking about earlier when it comes to risk.

Yep. No, I was just thinking the risk kind of throwback to the conversation because I was talking to some students recently, and I was saying that most of the decisions that are important that you make in your life are big risks, and the ones that you don't think about are really big risks. So people tend to think that, you know, when people say you lead a risky personal life, what they tend to mean is that you're, you know, having profligate sex with a lot of people. The actual riskiest decision you can make in your personal life, there's two. One, getting married. Two, having kids. These are very risky decisions. They're risky decisions

because you are foregoing current benefits for future benefits, right? When you get married, you're saying I'm foregoing all these other possibilities that are out there. And I'm betting I'm putting all my chips in the center of the table with this one person that this one person is the person I'm going to want to spend the rest of my life with. That's a very risky decision. And you have to make it on incomplete information because who the hell knows who you're going to be in 20 years or who this person is going to be in 20 years. But you're making that decision because in order to gain anything in life, you have to take that risk. The same thing with kids. Kids are a huge source of risk. I mean, I've said to folks before that, you know, as life progresses, you take on sort

of broader risks emotionally. So when you start off and you're single, I would say that your emotional range is like a 10 to maybe a negative 10, like happy is like a 10, bad is like a negative 10. Then you get married and the emotions now are like 20 on the upside, like when you're very happy with your spouse and then negative 20 when something bad happens to your spouse, right? And then you have kids and all limits are removed. The worst things that happen in your life are with your kids and the best things that happen in your life are with your kids. That is broadening your scope of risk. Having a kid, not knowing what that kid is going to turn out to be like in 18 years, right? Is a disaster area. I mean, when you get

pregnant with a kid, you have no idea what that kid is going to be like when they're born. I mean, it's a huge risk. And that's true in business. That's true in education, right? Every time you plan for the future, you're taking a risk. And people who are risk averse say, well, I don't really want that risk. I want to be cared for. I want there to be something without me taking, but it's the risk taking, it's the choice that makes you a fulfilled human being. Even if the risk fails, even if the risk fails, if you took the shot, you still get credit on, I think, a certain moral and even on a subjective self level. I think you get credit for taking the risk and for taking the shot. And I think people sometimes resent that.

And so that's why we speak about, to take it to economics for a second, when people, it drives me up a wall when people describe people who have made a lot of money as the privileged. That drives me up a wall because you don't know their life story. Maybe they really weren't privileged, right? Maybe they were super not privileged and maybe they just invented a really cool product that a lot of people wanted to take advantage of.

Maybe they weren't born rich. The vast majority of people who got rich in the United States were not born rich in the United States. Is that true? Yep. The vast majority, really? If you look at the Forbes top 400, the number of people who are in the United States. Is that true? Yep. The vast majority, really? Yes. If you look at the Forbes top 400,

the number of people who are in the top 400 because of inherited wealth is actually really, really low. There's high turnover in the Forbes top 400. Look at the people who are the richest. Bezos was not born wealthy. Bill Gates was not born wealthy. Didn't Elon Musk's family have a lot of cash?

I don't know about Musk's personal background. But I don't think that he inherited. Most people are not like Trump. They didn't inherit a shitload of cash, and then they ended up being worth a lot of money. I don't know about your personal story or where you came from when you were a kid. I was lower middle class, middle class.

I grew up in a house with three sisters. It was 1,100 square feet. I shared a bedroom with all three of my sisters, one bathroom for six people. Fun. Right? Like, yeah, it was great for the first 11 years. And then we were like middle, middle class. And then my parents worked their way up.

And over the course of your life, you work yourself up, right? My family was similar. Yeah, we were poor when we were children. When I was – me and my sister were children. We were on welfare, food stamps, the whole deal. So, I mean – We lived in San Francisco. So, you're a good example.

So, you're privileged in the sense that – like as I am, in the sense that we're blessed by living in a system where hard work and innovation matter. And that's great. And we're blessed because, yes, there's some luck to life for sure. And we're blessed by that luck. But the notion that there is, that it's all luck or that it's all privileged and that it's just a matter of being, it's like drawing a lottery ball. It's not like drawing a lottery ball. You can increase the chances that you hit. It doesn't mean you will, but it can certainly increase the chances that you will. And right now I'm hearing a lot of people who are ripping on the so-called meritocracy, right? Meritocracy is super bad. Meritocracy is undermining communal values and it's really

ugly and it's really bad. Who's saying that? You get it from right and left, actually. There's a philosopher named Michael Sandel who has a new book out called The Tyranny of the Meritocracy in which he basically argues that there's a cadre of people who, because they got wealthy, they believe that they get to rule the rest of society because they merited being wealthy. Don't you agree with that? I agree. So that I agree with. But that's actually definitionally not meritocracy. Once you've decided you're going to set the rules of the game so that you are in control, it's no longer a meritocracy.

If you've bubbled yourself off from the possibility of falling off the top of the pyramid, that's not a meritocracy anymore. It's a financial oligarchy. Right. Then it's an oligarchy. So what I've said is that actually the term meritocracy, it's kind of fascinating. I was reading about this today. The term meritocracy was coined in 1958 by a guy who's a real left-wing critic in Britain. He was supposed to mock the idea of the meritocracy. It was supposed to be.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was supposed to be. He wrote a book that was, I'm trying to remember the name of it. And the basic gist of the book is a sci-fi book. And it was that there would be a future in which people who considered themselves the most intelligent and most hardworking would rule society on behalf of everybody else. And I think that the mistake that we've made is that when and there's truth to this, there are people who believe that they are morally better because they are richer, for example, that definitely exists. But there's a distinction to be made between a skillsocracy, which is really

what a free market economy is. It's a skillsocracy and a skillsocracy, which is really what a free market economy is. It's a skillsocracy. And a meritocracy, which says that you're more moral because you have these skills. Not necessarily. I wouldn't think it's moral. I would just think you accomplished more. You have more merit. So there's two aspects.

I don't think it's moral. When it comes to hard work, yes. There are certain baseline things where if you're a hardworking person who happens to have been born of mid IQ, you'll do better than the mid IQ person who is not as hardworking. But you probably won't do as well as the guy who has two standard deviation IQ ahead of you who work like mildly hard. And you didn't earn your intelligence, right? That's sort of the point of the critique of meritocracy. That's not necessarily the case either because there's a lot of people that do have a very high IQ but they're not motivated.

Right, who fail. Yeah, but they don't have a desire to succeed. So I guess what I'm saying is I think there's some connection but not total connection. So there's some connection,

gives you a better shot. Right. But there are certain inborn, look, I'm a smart guy, I'm very hardworking, I'm never going to play in the NBA. Right, there's certain

inborn qualities in human beings that are not the same. And so we can say two things at once. One, it is better to be hardworking, I'm never going to play in the NBA, right? There's certain inborn qualities in human beings that are not the same. And so we can say two things at once. One, it is better to be hardworking. Second, we need a system that rewards intelligence, innovation, and hard work. Because those have excellent externalities, right? Even if not, it's good for me that Bill Gates does well. But don't you think there's also- And then third, that there's a moral component to life that is separate from those things. And we

reward people in different ways. Like as a society society we tend to think the only reward is a financial reward but living in a community that's not true this is what the problem is i think that there's when you have a community you have you have needs for all these values of compassion and this connection with your neighbors and the idea that you're all in this together. And when you're just ruthlessly competitive, the problem is you abandon all of those in seeking a path for yourself, a selfish path. This is what people on the left are terrified of. Right. About people that use the term meritocracy.

Right. And people that are in this pursuit of business and of success and monetary gain. But I don't think that they're mutually exclusive in other words. I don't think so either. And this is where I think the mistake is made on both the right and the left. The people who say meritocracy undermines social capital on the right, and the people who say that meritocracy undermines your ability, kind of the same critique. Meritocracy undermines you getting along with your neighbors and makes you ruthlessly selfish and non-altruistic. I don't think those are the same critique. Meritocracy undermines you getting along with your neighbors and makes you ruthlessly selfish and non-altruistic. I don't think those are the same thing, right? I mean, I think that you can be meritocratic, believe that intelligence, hard work, innovation should

all be rewarded. And then on a moral level, like the way that we, honestly, the way that we repay people on a moral level for doing what we think are moral things, it's typically not financial. It's typically in terms of honor, right? It's typically how we treat people with honor and respect in your community, right? How many people go to somebody's funeral is a good way to sort of judge that, right? And so there are a lot of people in, I think, every community who are not the wealthiest, but the most people will show up at their funeral because those are people who were good people, who helped out their neighbors, who really worked hard at doing right and and i think that we have to work on both tracks i think that there's a temptation right now in society to say that because there are people who are wildly successful and people

who are less successful that the entire system by which success is charted monetarily is wrong yeah i think that's incorrect well and at the same time i think we can't forget that the way that we actually measure human value is not only by how much monetary success you have and the kind of transactional value you create in a society, which is a big thing, but also oh, you've made X amount. Next year, you should try to make Y. And this is one of the problems with corporations, right? This diffusion of responsibility that happens of being a part of a gigantic group that's just set out for universal and continual growth. Like this idea that you're going to continue to make money and this is what you focus on. And if you do that, you're a winner. And if you don't do that, you're a loser. And when people obsess on something that's as simple and as singular as the amount of money that you make, that's the mark of excellence. It's very difficult to quantify how well you're doing for your community.

It's very difficult to quantify whether or not your employees are loved and feel happy and you feel like you provide an environment where they feel like they're a part of something. I agree. And this is why, but I think that the mistake that we're making very often is we try and solve what, I think, honestly, what you're describing, there's a spiritual problem and we try to fill it with economics or with monetary recompense or something like that. And this is the value of religion, in your opinion. It's certainly a huge value of religion. I don't think it only has to be done through religion. I think traditionally it's been the largest driver of social cohesion. But it's certainly a major thing. But those decisions are made every single day.

You decide on a given day whether you want to do a show or whether you want to stay home with your family. And sometimes you probably reject the show and you give up the money and you say, I'd rather be home with my family because it's more important for me to invest in the time with my family. I do this a lot too. I will not speak. I will not go out of town for Sabbath. I just won't. So I give up gigs on Friday afternoons if I can't get back home in time for Sabbath or on Saturday nights if I can't get out after Sabbath in time. And it's just important to me to build the social capital at home with my kids and with my wife and with my parents who live in the same community and with the other members of my community. And you put the phone down. Oh yeah, there's no phone, there's no electricity, right? Yeah, you can leave a light on or leave a light

off or whatever, but you're not allowed to. How does that work? You leave it on before Sabbath. As long as you're not actually... Oh, so you don't touch it. Right, you can't touch it. Yep, yep. It's good times. But the truth is that all of society is going to end up adopting this if we don't wish to get eaten by the metaverse. We're all going to have to have days where we just disconnect from all this stuff. Let's talk about the metaverse because I'm really fascinated by this decision of Facebook to change the name of Facebook to meta and to the metaverse, which I think people are just going to – they're gonna realize that that this is this is a crazy idea that you're gonna give your life to some sort of augmented or virtual reality world that's created by a guy who's involved in this company whose algorithms are sowing the seeds of distrust and hate although but now we're gonna fucking let him take over

What you see and feel? Because you're gonna have a new company and this new company is gonna be virtually reality-based where he's literally he he Reenacted a scene from Black Mirror. Yeah, well, which is unironically. I know and you know what makes me a little sad I think that it's gonna happen. You think it's gonna happen? Yeah, I think that you know what makes me a little sad? I think that it's going to happen. You think it's going to happen? Yeah. I think that you and I are of a different generation, dude. I think there are a lot of kids who are growing up in Fortnite world and spend a lot.

And I think the pandemic really accelerated this. There are a lot of people who lived online for the entire pandemic. And so for people like me and for people like my parents, not seeing other humans for a long time was actually quite painful and terrible. Like we actually did want to get out and be with the community and see friends and do that sort of stuff. What if you spend your entire life

from the time you're a little kid interacting with screens? What if those screens are getting increasingly sophisticated so that they are interacting with you in ways that humans would? What if you get to be whatever, like we're a society,

we were just talking about this, where you get to be whatever you want to be. What if there's a world where you actually can be and everybody sees you the way you want to be seen? Would there's a world where you actually can be and everybody sees you the way you want to be seen? Would you rather live there where you're rich and good looking and everybody likes you? Or would you rather live in the real world where you're disconnected from all that

and you end up with Ready Player One world? It's going to happen. As long as it can become indistinguishable from reality, which it will be able to be. It's going to take time. Whether it's five years or 10 years. If you go back and look at Pong, which was the first game that I ever saw when I was a child, it's ridiculous. It's like a white ball that bounces across and you have a straight line.

Two paddles, yep. That's a paddle. And it's the dumbest game. You could never convince a child to play today. They'd be like, get the fuck out of here with that stupid game. I can go play fucking Halo, right? But back then when I was a child, that was a big deal. If you extrapolate, if you go just go in the future from now, what they're available, what they have available now with these insane video graphics, the Unreal Engine, and then move yourself 20 years in the future, yeah, it's going to be indistinguishable. And the AI is getting better and better in terms of being able to imitate human behavior, in terms of being able to innovate on its own.

And haptic feedback suits and all these different things. And all these video games that they have that emulate sports, they're getting so close. When you watch these basketball games and the UFC has a game, when you watch the players, the fighters move around, like, God, it's so close. It's not quite there, but they're getting better and better with each iteration. And it's just a matter of time. And what I wonder is if we are innovating ourselves, and when it comes to this stuff, if we're innovating ourselves out of existence as a civilization. But don't you think that's probably where this goes, no matter what?

No, I think then the barbarians come to the gate. I think that's what happens. Really? Because the real world still exists. So if you innervate an entire generation of people, and let's just take this on the most baseline demographic level. None of them get married. None of them have babies. In two generations, the same kind of matter. You're going to have a good time in the virtual reality, and then there are going to be no babies to carry this on. And the only people on earth are going to be religious Jews, religious Catholics, and religious Muslims.

And that's it. The vulnerability lies in the power grid. and religious Muslims and that's it. The vulnerability lies in the power grid because the power grid is so vulnerable that if someone just detonated the power grid, all this stuff stops and then you have no life. Your life is completely, you've invested it completely in this augmented world,

this virtual world. But this virtual world, all you have to do is pull the plug and it's out and it's out for millions of people. It's like the equivalent of dropping a nuclear bomb on a culture like if you really all live inside of a computer system some sort of a some sort of art yeah it's virtual reality yeah no that's right and it's and what i fear is that when you do that to a civilization it's basically the equivalent of you bringing a wild animal and you put it in a cage for a long time and now you can't release it back in the wild right it's going to get eaten what happens

to you as a civilization right what happens if you've taken an entire generation of people told them that their entire life exists online they don't have to interact with other humans they don't have to interact in human ways with other humans and then there's like an entire other earth out there that isn't doing any of this right by the way china's not doing this right china is china's banning it yeah China is banning it. China's banning it. China's saying you're not allowed to go online certain days of the week if you're a kid. We're going to ban the kind of stuff that you can see. So in the long run, which civilization is going to be more durable? The one that actually understands the vulnerabilities

of human nature or the one that says we're going to use those vulnerabilities to make you feel subjectively happier? I'm amazed at the level of conditioning. Here's what killed me about the pandemic, honestly. What killed me? The level of conditioning that it took in order to rejigger how people think was so low. It shocked the hell out of me. It really shocked me. I was talking to my business partner, Jeremy Boring, about this. And early on in the pandemic, he was like, people aren't going to stand for this. When they shut everything, it's like three months from now, people are going to be losing their minds. They're going to be out on the streets protesting to get rid of the masks and they're going to be out at ballgames

again. I was like, that's not right. I think it'll take a year. We're like a year and a half in and half the country is still like, oh, you know, what if this just continues? Like, all right, I guess. Like the amount of dependency that was bred by people saying, just go back to your house and people be like, human beings are really adaptable. And this is something that Brett Weinstein and Heather Haring talk about, right? That's our superpower. We're super duper adaptable. So we're super adaptable. To our own detriment. Sometimes to our own detriment. So if we change our social circumstances radically in a way that's unhealthy for us, and we are now interacting with technologies that were built to take advantage of our lizard brain, then what happens when there are people who are just not engaging in the same,

they're not playing the same game that we are, right? We're essentially drugging ourselves. Robert Nozick is the libertarian philosopher. He talks at one point about what he calls the experience machine. It's the thought experiment. And the experience machine is basically VR. He's writing this in early 1960s. He says, what if there was a machine where you could plug into it, you'd feel the illusion of choice, you'd feel as though your choices had some sort of significance, and it would give you the dopamine hit that you get in regular life. Would you plug into it or would you not? And his theory was you wouldn't plug into it because you still want to feel like your life has real world consequences. But what if everybody you know is in that experience machine?

Then you're the one who gets left out if you're not in the experience machine. What is real world? What is real world? I mean, that's what the problem is. That analogy was created before the sophistication of computer systems has reached the point now where you can look at it 20 years from now and you kind of get an understanding of where it's going to be. When you're dealing with what's from now, and you kind of get an understanding of where it's going to be. When you're dealing with what's possible now, I don't think you're going to be able to stop

people from doing it because I think it's going to be so overwhelmingly addictive. You look at how many people are just addicted to looking at their Instagram. Yep. It's so simple. Yeah. It's nothing. I mean, it's nothing. The dopamine hit you get off this little phone.

It's minimal, but people are completely I mean, it's nothing. The dopamine hit you get off this little phone. It's minimal. But people are completely all in on it. Yep. And I think that what that's going to what I do wonder if there's going to be. And I wonder what you think about this. If there's going to be a bifurcation in the same way there's been a bifurcation about so many issues between the people at the top of sort of the elite spectrum and the rest of the population where the people of the elite spectrum are making the metaverse, but their kids aren't actually in the metaverse. Right. Steve Jobs didn't let his kid use an iPad. Exactly. Like I'm on the internet. My kids are seven, five, and one. They're not allowed, we don't have the TV on in our house. My kids don't watch TV.

My kids don't get internet access until like 18. Like that is not a thing I want. 18? They can be out of my house and they can get internet. They're going to rebel. They're going to do drugs. They're going to be in the street. These kids are going to turn tricks. It's going to be a real problem. It's going to be a real problem. That's a pretty wild ride you took me on there, Joe. That's really upsetting.

That's what I do. Yeah. Sorry. That was. We went straight from my kids aren't watching Cocomelon to they're turning tricks in the streets of Florida. Turning tricks is such a great term. It sounds so cute for what it actually is.

Yeah. You know, it's a terrible thing, but it sounds like cute. Oh, they're turning tricks. Like, if you didn't understand English, you'd be like, oh, they're magicians? And they're like, no, no, no. Of a sword. Yeah. But, yeah, I mean, we're going to limit, but I think that that's one of the stories.

If we're talking about the elite kind of versus everybody else gap. Maybe. Everything that gets created is. If they're that about the elite kind of versus everybody else gap. Maybe. Everything that gets created is. If they're that concerned about their children. But you said everything, right? Yeah. I mean, like people promulgating technologies and value systems they don't actually live in. Right.

And then everybody who is watching is like, I will do that. Right. And then those people themselves don't do it. Have you been paying attention to how little coverage the protests in Europe get? Because there's incredible lockdown protests in Europe that have been going on for essentially 17 months. And you see very little coverage of it. Yeah, the media locks it. It's amazing. It's amazing. Because it is a big story and it would sell papers. So there's some sort of a concerted effort to suppress it. So there's some sort of a concerted effort to suppress it. Yeah.

Again, all I can say is I think that a lot of the media, whether it is in the United States or whether it is abroad, works in cahoots with whatever government is in power. And if the government says jump, a lot of the media say how high. I wonder what the conversation is. Like what are they doing with Italy? Because, you know, Italy has protests and they literally have like these cameras where you can see the area where the protests are. And either they're shutting these cameras off or they're using old footage. Like if you look at where these protests are taking place, see if you can find that. Because some people have done like a deep dive on that, Jamie, where there was a large scale protest in Europe. And then there were some cameras where you could watch it online and they weren't showing any of it.

That's unbelievable. I mean, it's wild. In Australia, they basically criminalize protest, right? I have a good friend of mine who lives in Australia and he's freaking out because he, they're essentially, he lives in Western Australia. There's no COVID cases out there. And they are essentially telling everybody they have to be vaccinated or you can't work. And he's like, I'm moving to New Zealand.

I'm going to get out of here. Well, it's, I mean, listen, my company is suing the Biden administration over this vaccine mandate. Are you? Oh yeah. Like the day they announced it, we sued him in the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals.

What court? Fifth Circuit. Put a temporary stay? Fifth Circuit, yeah. Fifth Circuit, like, day after. They basically said there are grave constitutional issues. It was like a one-paragraph order saying national hold, grave constitutional issues. And again, I don't even know.

How does that stand right now? So my understanding is that it's not going to be put in place for the moment while it gets adjudicated. And it's going to get adjudicated all the way up to the Supreme Court, I would imagine, pretty damned quickly. Well, it gets adjudicated and it's going to get adjudicated all the way up to the Supreme Court, I would imagine, pretty damned quickly. I'll be honest with you. I don't think that Biden has any actual feeling about it going into place. Come on, man. Yeah, I think that is bullshit.

In the same way that the CDC eviction moratorium was just like, I tried. I tried. Right. And then we're done. I think that's this because it makes no logical sense. He promulgated it under the emergency temporary standard. He said he was going to do it two months ago. And then it doesn't go into place formally until January 4th. So if I said to you, there's an emergency, Joe, your house is on fire.

In two months, we'll start taking care of it and we'll announce a plan. Then two months after that, we'll arrive with the fire trucks. You would say one of two things. Either I'm the most incompetent person alive or there's not really a fire at your house. So if you're going to promulgate an emergency temporary standard, you have to do it under emergency conditions. So if you say it's an emergency, you got to do it now. You can't wait two months and then wait another two months to put it in place.

So that's one problem with it, legally speaking. And then there are a bunch of other problems, including the fact the federal government doesn't actually have the power under OSHA to do this. So how does the state government have the ability to say that children have to be vaccinated? So states have a lot of power. States have a lot of power. They have enough power to do that? Yeah. Yeah. So states, states, localities have public policing power and public health power. And that is very much out of proportion with the federal government. The federal government has very little of that. They have to connect it with interstate commerce constitutionally.

Do they have any discourse? Do families have any discourse? Any recourse on it? Recourse, rather, because do they have any recourse in stopping something that could actually, I mean, that could impact their life in a huge way. If the child has an adverse reaction to these... They could file a lawsuit. They could theoretically say that it's a violation of civil rights and then it would be reviewed probably under rational basis review, if I i'm getting this correct meaning that all the city or state would have to

show is that there's a rational basis for what they're doing because they are given really broad power typically courts don't like to step in they like to say it's a political issue what kind of rational basis could you give when you're looking at the incredibly low mortality rates when when it's children and not only that the children that have died, I think- They're all unhealthy, virtually all. Yeah, according to Marty McCary, who's my guy on this, over at Johns Hopkins University, the epidemiologist, he says, grand total, the entire pandemic,

the number of kids who have died who are healthy is between 10 and 20. Over the course of the entire pandemic, 700,000 people have died in the United States. That's kids under 18, by the way. That's not five-year-olds, that's kids under 18, 10 to 20. That's a subgroup of 73 million people in the United States. So why the push? I mean, again, I think that people have scared themselves out of their wits. But no, but from the top, why the push? Do you think

it's a financial push? No, I really don't. I mean, I can see why it might be a push from Pfizer or something, but I don't see why government actors would go along with that. Don't you think they have an influence on government actors? No, I think bribery is rarely the reason why people in government suck at what they're doing. But it's not bribery. Even influence. I think usually it's just people believe that if they can end this, like all the incentive structures this entire pandemic were in favor of crackdowns and mandates.

That was all the incentive structures. It was very easy to be Andrew Cuomo. When people are scared, they're willing to basically do anything. And in a lot of blue areas, they're way more, I mean, you know this. In LA, they are way more scared of COVID than they are in Austin or than they are in where I live in Florida. It's not close. Or Nashville, it is not close at all. Not at all. It's a completely different thing. And because of that, if all your constituents are scared out of their minds and you say, we're going to do everything we can, that means vaxing the kids. That means making sure everywhere's a mask, even post-vaccination, that everybody

wears a mask everywhere. They'll do it, right? They will. And if you're in a red area, conversely, it actually takes some balls to say, listen, I'm not going to do what that guy's doing. He's saying he can protect you. I think he can't. I think that you're just going to have to assess the risk on your own and make a decision yourself. It's actually kind of a ballsy decision. It was amazing. Like in the early days of the pandemic, when the media were trotting out Andrew Cuomo as the greatest governor in America and Ron DeSantis as Satan, the one who was actually making a ballsy call was DeSantis, not Cuomo. The easiest thing in the world is to say, everybody stay in your home. I, the great and mighty, will save you.

I will mitigate all risk. And because then if somebody dies, you can say, well, it's because they didn world is to say everybody stay in your home. I the great mighty will save you I will mitigate all risk and if you live and because then if somebody dies you can say woes because they didn't listen to me Right. I mean I could have cracked down harder You remember when he was on television when DeSantis had this whole chart of what they were gonna do their plan was to protect Elderly and the vulnerable right and and people were freaking the fuck out there. Like what are you doing? Like how are you doing this like this is horrific and the problem was that it didn't jive with the actual results of the virus itself. Like it didn't like the reaction to the pandemic. It didn't it didn't make sense. Well, from the earliest days when I thought that I thought like everybody else that they would take 10 years to approve a vaccine. Right. That was like the going wisdom for months was that it takes a long time to get a vaccine through the process. And then they generate this vaccine, right? That was like the going wisdom for months was that it takes a long time to get

a vaccine through the process. And then they generate this vaccine, which again, I'm in favor of the, but I started thinking like, what do you do if there is no vaccine? How do you re-enter society? How do you get back to something resembling normal if there had been no vaccine? And the answer, if there had been no vaccine was you tell everybody who is say 65 and up, you need to stay home. Then you tell all the school kids, go back to school because they're at very, very low risk. And then they get natural immunity. Then you tranche in the next healthiest group of population.

But the fear was the parents and the fear was also the people at the school that work with the kids. Right, understood. But you could Zoom the teachers in. The parents could wear N95s. What? Wait a minute.

Zoom the teachers in. Zooming the teachers in, you leave that fucking class full of children with no one there to supervise them? No, you have like an 18-year-old supervisor. All the college students were off. Oh, boy. They could have done that. I have a question. How is it better?

Listen, I had kids who were being at, I had kids at home. So did I. Right. I mean, like, there are a lot of people who had jobs who couldn't go to their jobs because the kids were home. It was the worst. Like, having, watching, I sat down and my kids went to a nice school, a private school, and I watched the fucking lazy ass teacher teach the Zoom class. And I was like, this is bullshit.

I can't believe I'm paying for this. It was so bad. A lot of parents felt that way, by the way. Oh my God. A lot of people took their kids out of school. But if you just sat and watched and the teacher didn't know that you were in the room like I did, you'd be furious. I mean, some of them were good.

Some of them were trying to engage with the children and they put forth a lot of effort. But my God, there was a lot of lazy teachers that liked to teach in their pajamas. And they were worried about coming back. They did everything in their power to keep from coming back into classes. That's why there's that huge – I mean, the revolt over schools is like a very, very real revolt. But the, the,

the point is that if you were going to do something rational without the vaccines, what you'd have to do is tranche the healthier percentages of the population back in. Yeah. Even if you don't start with kids, you start 20 year olds, you start 25 year olds under 30.

Right. And that's what Sweden did. Essentially. Sweden was like, okay, if you're above 65, you should stay home. You should wear a mask.

If you're young and you're healthy, you should probably just go about your life and live like normal. We forbade that from the outset. I mean, I got just ripped up on Twitter for suggesting that we ought to treat people differentially based on age with regard to COVID. year olds the same way that we're treating 80 year olds like the risks are not the same and to treat this as a society that's as a as a disease that's supposed to shut down the entirety of human society because you refuse to treat people differentially based on age is totally crazy but people were unable to do that well in the beginning we weren't exactly sure how this was going to pan out and what this disease was but now now that we're 18 whatever months in, we know. We have an understanding of it. By the way, when it came to age, like two, three months in, we knew. When it came to age, it was very early.

We knew that if you're old, if you had diabetes, if you're fat, it was going to be a problem. We knew you were more vulnerable, but there was all these anecdotal stories about young people that got really sick and were hospitalized and died. And you still see those. Usually, it's people that were unvaccinated. They love to show those. They didn't believe in the virus. Now they're dead. Well, then the media does take that angle. I love that.

They do love to take that angle. They don't like my angle. Right. My angle's not good. I'm vaccinated better in two days. Not a fun angle. No, I noticed that when you got better, they stopped covering it. Well, they just covered the ivermectin. They're just saying that I'm pushing a dangerous conspiracy theory. But if you don't get it, and if you do get it and you are unvaccinated, then, man, the world just deserves to – I made this point on my show and people lost their minds because they're talking about, you know, if you – maybe we should just make it a standard that if you're unvaccinated and you have to go to the hospital that we won't care for you or you have to pay for your own care. There are some people talking like this. And I said, okay, well, first of all, welcome to libertarianism.

Second of all, like, I wonder if you would apply the same standard to, say, obesity. Right. And obesity caused diseases. And people are like, how could you compare the two? So how could you not compare the two? You're saying that my failure to get a vaccine would mean that my health is in my own hands. And I'm saying that if you have avoidable obesity, then your health is in your own hands. One of those things is very unpopular to say.

Essentially all obesity is avoidable. Unless you have some sort of severe genetic condition as far as I'm aware. There's no severe genetic condition that makes you take in calories. They don't exist. Again, you're the expert on this stuff. I mean, look at us, clearly. It's just, you know, there's obviously the people that are, they have a higher propensity. There's people that have a tendency to gain weight. There's people that have real issues with their immune systems, real issues with their endocrine systems, real issues with their thyroids. And it's easier for them to gain weight.

They have a slower metabolism. All that's real. But it doesn't force you to eat. And it also doesn't force you to seek medication to take care of yourself. So it is similar because you're saying to people that, you know, you could have taken this medication, you could have avoided this problem, so we're not going to treat you. Well, same thing could be said for obesity. And even easier because like exercise is free. Like you can just walk around the block. There's

a lot of things you could do. You know, I'm not saying that you should not be treated because you're obese, but there are so many fucking problems that people have when it comes to risk takers, when it comes to alcoholism. There's a lot of injuries that could be avoided if you just stayed home. You know, if you're a BMX rider who's had 15 broken bones, why the fuck should that hospital take you into the emergency room? You know, you're on your own, buddy. You're the guy who decides to do backflips off of a fucking ramp somewhere.

Right? You could apply these perspectives. Once that logic applies, it applies all the way across. But it wasn't applied all the way across, right? It only applies to a certain type of disapproved activity. Well, it's because we're in the middle of this thing. And the idea is that, well, first first of all here's another part of the problem the reality is the vaccines only work they don't work exactly how they were advertised

the original take on the vaccine was is going to be 95 effective and there's an extremely rare incidence of a breakthrough case and even in those cases you're going to be fine i know 15 fucking people that have had breakthrough cases. They're not rare at all, especially not after five, six months. And then with variants, you know. So the idea is that you're going to be able to give it to other people. But if the vaccines were effective, that wouldn't be a problem. Right.

Well, the vaccines are effective at preventing hospitalization and death. They're not even, though. I mean, they're a lot more effective than not. Right. Right. More effective than not, right? Right, more effective than not, but there's a lot of other things that people could be doing too that would make them even more effective

and those aren't even encouraged because they're easy and free. Like exercise, losing weight, vitamin D. There's a lot of factors that aren't taken into consideration at all. Again, it's this binary approach. Exactly. Why not all of the above? Why not

exercise and then also consider whether you might want to exercise? Because you don't make money off of those. So there's no push. Also because I think there's something else. If you're a politician, I don't think it's about the money. I think if you're a politician, you want to be really unpopular as a politician. Tell people to lose weight. Correct. Right. You want to be unpopular as a doctor, by the way, tell people to lose weight.

True. Tell people to stop being a fat ass and stop eating so much food and get off your couch and move yeah that's that's a giant factor right i mean that if you're a politician your chief mechanism of staying in power is by telling people things they want to hear the number one thing no one has ever wanted to hear is you need to eat less and you need to get off your ass and move right Right. Nobody likes hearing that. Right. Right. Stop eating shitty food. Yeah. It's such a strange time for sorting out what's the best way to approach life. Because as you said before, there's some people that just are completely averse to taking risks. They don't want to take any risks and they want the world set up for them. I mean, I've seen this argument that the government should provide essentially everything for you.

It should provide food and shelter. The government, if they care about you, there's enough money in the world to provide food and shelter to every person on this country, if not the entire planet. And that's what we should do, and that's how we should redistribute wealth. I've seen that argument. I'm sure you have, too. It's a big argument. It's a strange argument, right? Well, it destroys the incentive structures.

Well, I've seen during this pandemic, it's changed my opinion on unemployment because I've seen people abuse unemployment. I always thought unemployment's great because it gives you a nice little safety net and I believe in safety nets. I believe in universal basic income. I believe in universal healthcare.

I think it could be applied in a way that would work and benefit people and benefit our society and make people less desperate. But then I see what the fuck is going on during this pandemic with healthcare. I have a friend and he owns a bar and his fucking bartender told him I'm not willing to work more than 20 hours a week.

And he goes, why? He goes, because then I lose my unemployment. So this guy's making $80,000 a year working 20 hours a week And this is what he wants to do and my buddies like shit And he just has got to wait until unemployment runs out and then he can get his full-time bartender But he's actually that the the good economic stats from last month that was not a coincidence, right? The the federal unemployment ran and then all of a sudden there are a bunch of people who wanted to get back in the Workforce because when you pay people to stay home, they will stay home.

That is always going to be the case. The fact that this is somehow controversial is beyond me. If you pay me to stay home, I will stay home. I would go crazy. I don't think you would stay home either. I think this is another part. That may be fair. There's another factor when we talk about people with anxiety and depression and all these different things that haunt people today. I don't think it's a coincidence that this society has made it where we don't value trying to work hard and solve things and do things that are difficult.

Because I think in the pursuit of doing things that are difficult, your mind becomes engaged. You have a lot of commitment to these tasks. You have a lot of investment in it. And if you succeed, you feel great. I mean, this is a real factor. No, this is totally right. I'm not dismissing genetic predispositions for depression and anxiety and a lot of things. There are some people who need medication for sure. Yes, 100%. For sure. But working hard and doing something that's difficult is actually good for you. It makes you feel better.

I totally agree with this. And I think that as a society, one of the things that we've done is we've demeaned duty. We've said that duty is bad. If you have an obligation or a duty, that's because something in society has put something upon you. Because duty and obligation are placed upon you. But here's the thing. If you willingly undertake a duty or obligation, or even if you don't, even if there's just a duty or obligation that is put upon you by life, not by like some evil person out there who's trying to hurt you,

but by actual life, because life is filled with hardship and terrible things, you actually facing up to a problem and then defeating the problem or fighting the problem, it makes you stronger. It makes you more confident. It makes you a better person. Exactly more confident it makes you a better person exactly it makes it doesn't make you a better person because very often you have to become a stronger and more capable human being in order to in order to overcome those problems eliminating problems doesn't make people happier there's there's this there's this weird idea out there that if we just cared for everybody we just gave everybody what they need we'd all sit around and we'd just create art and we'd just like be poets in our free time. If we got rid of jobs, it's not true.

I had an argument with a guy. He was telling me that we should tax. First of all, he's saying there should be no inheritance. And I was like, what are you talking about? He goes, it just creates douchebags. And I go, it doesn't always create douchebags. I go, it can, but if you're a good person and you develop good values in your child and then that child inherits money and uses it to create a great business and actually creates value for the community and for people around you, that's possible too. And he's like, they should do it on their own.

I go, well, what would you propose that that money go to? And he said, the arts. And I go, go look people sell art Any art that you can't make any fucking money off of it means nobody finds value in it I give you're talking about like doing Shakespeare in the park and making a hundred thousand dollars a year How about fuck you? You know by the way go get a job By the way, who do you think is actually giving the money to the Shakespeare in the park?

It's all the kids of the rich people. Yes. That's who's actually funding Shakespeare in the Park. Right, but I mean Shakespeare in the Park's not even the best example. It's probably like that fucking- Modern art. Remember that video that de Blasio made where he was talking about bringing arts back to New York City and had people doing this like expressive dance? Yes, yes.

Do do do do do. Like the worst fucking music and they're doing this horrible dance. Yeah, it's solid. We're gonna bring back the arts. We're gonna bring the, we're gonna, as the city opens back up, we're gonna bring back the arts and you're like,

what the fuck are you saying? That video was so insane. Yeah, the real estate values in Florida went up that day. Oh my God. It was like, people were like,

get me out of here. But he's a lame duck mayor so he's just going fucking. Well, the stuff that he's doing, that he was trying to do with the schools, that Adams is gonna walk back,

this is like case in point, where he's trying to get rid of the magnet schools and yeah because they're not racially proportionate adams i think is going to be good for that city because he can't be worse he's a democrat but he's also tough on crime he's a former cop he's a good coach he's coming in after like the lindsey administration in the 70s and they screwed up the city beyond all recognition you got someone who came in with kind of left-wing credentials but he says i'm to bring the cops back. I'm going to make sure that the streets aren't dirty, like doing the basic things mayors are supposed to do. Yes.

I know. It's crazy ideas. He's so strange when I see de Blasio. He's so strange that I can't understand how he got elected in the first place. I'm like, was there no other choices? Like what? He's so odd. I think that-

Even the way he communicates is so disconnected. But when the disconnect gets so big, then people are just like, oh, I'll take a chance on the idea guy. Right. He says diversity. He says intersectional. He says all these words that I like to hear. He's going to change the world.

We got to give it a chance. We got to give it a chance. Well, he gave it a chance. It didn't work out all that great for him. Did you see that story in California, by the way, about how they're going to try and reteach math? Did you see this one from the New York Times? What? Yeah, it's solid.

Reteach math? So they're going to figure out how to teach math differently. They said that they don't want to have – they're getting rid of some of the objective standards with regard to math because math is – and they want to get rid of the idea that there are naturally gifted children. They said they're not allowed to say that there are naturally gifted children anymore when it comes to math. Isn't that the case with New York as well? Didn't they get rid of the idea that there are naturally gifted children. They said they're not allowed to say that they're naturally gifted children anymore. Isn't that the case with New York as well? Yeah, they're trying to get rid of the magnet schools over there too. But the gifted programs.

Yes, the gifted programs because there's too many Asian kids. America's white supremacist, so all the Asians are succeeding. I love that narrative. So what are they trying to do with math? So it was this article in the New York Times, and I'm trying to remember all the details. They said you're not allowed to talk about naturally gifted kids. You're not supposed to reward right answers or punish wrong answers. What?

Yeah. So there's like a big kind of parents revolt going on in California over this because the idea was that there was too much racial disparity in math performance in california and so change change the standards which by the way i can't think of anything more racist than that that is so super racist it's like not enough black kids are scoring well on the test that means that black kids i guess are too dumb to do well on these tests get rid of the tests like or alternatively there's an explanation where kids need to study more. Well, you only find out if someone knows things if you test them. It's the only way you find out. How else do you find out?

You have to like say, show me how to do this problem. And then the kid tries and you go, oh, that's not how you do it. By the way, I think this is like entire, I think the scam that is college is predicated on society trying to get around the basic truth that you just said, which is we can tell by test scores whether you know things and are good at things. Well, I mean, obviously there's some tests that favor people that have grown up in certain environments because you have more access to certain kinds of information. But once you teach people and then you test them, there's only one way to find out whether or not they know the information. They have to be tested.

The idea that you're going to eliminate tests and somehow make things more equitable or more even is kind of crazy actually what you're going to do is you're gonna make people more racist is what you're going to do and the reason for that is because thomas soul talks about this he talks about different types of discrimination and he says there's group discrimination where you base your perception of an individual on the group data that is available. And then there's like discrimination, discrimination, which is, you know, that a person is smart and they're a group you don't like. And so you just ignore the fact they're smart because they're from that group. So the two examples that he gives, right, is let's say that you're walking down the street at night and it's in an inner city neighborhood and there's a black guy walking

down the street and he's wearing a hoodie and he's a young guy, 17 years old. Are you going to cross the street or not if the opposing example is an 80-year-old white woman? And he says, well, based on the group statistics, you're probably going to cross the street more often if it's the 17-year-old black kid than if it's the 80-year-old white woman. Now, let's say that that 17-year-old black kid you know,

you know the kid, he's a nice kid. If you still cross the street, that's what makes you like a super giant racist. In the former case, you're just using the group data available. The problem is that using group data available very often is wrong, right? What if the 17-year-old kid is a nice kid, right? You shouldn't be doing that either. You need specific data. Test data is specific data. So let's say now that you are an administrator at a college and you're not allowed to use test data. All you know is that on average, black kids score lower than white kids, right?

So who do you let in? How do you make that decision? Wouldn't it be better for black kids for you to have the test data because you know which black kids definitely deserve to get in as opposed to which ones don't deserve to get in? So you start using stupid generalizations.

The whole point is more specific data is better. More specific data fights discrimination. And yet we have this whole weird idea that if we get rid of specific data, better. More specific data fights discrimination. And yet we have this whole weird idea that if we get rid of specific data, if we get rid of test data, objective data, this is going to end discrimination. Precisely the reverse will occur. People will start using stupid stereotypes. Yeah, I think the real problem is the disproportionate amount of schools that are good that are in places where people have money. Schools where people don't have money aren't funded as well. And a lot of them suck. And that's a real issue. Also, the crime issue.

If you're terrified of going to your school because your school is riddled with gang violence, and something needs to be done about that, because you have to create an environment where children feel safe enough to go to school and learn. And I think there is a disparity that needs to be adjusted and accepted and approached in a way where we're realistic about it. I mean, we've said this, you and I have had this conversation before about what do you do with gang-ridden neighborhoods, like what we talked about earlier with that fucking scene in Chicago, which is so insane. And you made a really good point. And the point is, more police presence is actually better. More police presence actually lowers crime,

makes things safer, and gives people an opportunity to do things that they don't have. And that point is very hard for people to grasp. But I talked to a cop about this, and he was explaining to me that statistically, when you look at it, more cops, and Michael Schellenberger talked about this as well, more cops actually make an environment where you have less police brutality. Less cops make more stress on the cops, it's more difficult for them to do their job, and you actually wind up with more police brutality. So by having this idea that you're going to defund the police because of police brutality, you're actually increasing the opportunity or the possibility of police brutality.

It's totally counterintuitive. But this is what needs to be done. Like we need to figure out a way to establish law and order in these communities where a lot of these folks, they don't want to be in a fucking gang. They're just hardworking families that are trying to get by. And these kids are growing up in this environment where that seems to be the only realistic option. For sure. If you want to be protected, you have to be a part of this group.

I mean, between the need for police officers in these communities, and then this is a growing problem across all demographic groups, but it is not even by demographic groups. Single motherhood is a major problem in the United States. If you want kids to be better educated, if you want them to take school more seriously, if you want them to do better in school, what every study shows, every single one so far as I'm aware,

is that it's not even the presence of a father in the home, it's how many fathers are in the neighborhood. So this is a Roland Fryer study. He did a study on this, and what he found is that a father in the home makes a huge difference, obviously, but it's percentages of fathers in homes in the neighborhood that makes a huge difference. So you have role models. Right.

People that you can associate with. A hundred percent. I mean, and again, this is not a racial thing because there are parts, this is something Charles Murray talks about a lot when he talks about white Appalachia versus, for example, you know, rich white areas. Like there are huge cultural differences with regard to education between white Appalachia and rich white areas. It's not a race thing. Right. That's like how people are taught thing. Yes.

It's an environment. There are a lot of poor Asian communities where kids are studying their ass off, and that's why they're doing amazing in school is because they're studying their ass off. That's a cultural thing, right? That is a cultural thing. I grew up around a lot of Koreans because I did Taekwondo, and so it's a Korean martial art, and the hardest working people I've ever met in my fucking life were Korean. Like, I couldn't believe.

My friend Jungsik, I still think about him to this day. I haven't talked to him in more than 20 years. This fucking guy was on the U.S. National Taekwondo team while he was going through his residency. Whoa. How the fuck? Like, he was studying, and in the middle of studying, he would take all his books, throw them in his backpack, and he would run up the stairs of the school.

And that's how he would get his cardio in. I mean, the point- He was always tired. He always liked like this. And they would come and kick everybody's ass in training. I'm like, Jesus Christ, man. Like he was so hard. And he was a medical student.

I mean, and he was telling me the the way he grew up and I'm not saying that this is healthy cause I don't think it is, but nothing was ever good enough. Like his father was never happy. If you got an a minus you piece of shit, you know, you need to get an a plus. Like if you got a 90, you need to get a hundred fuck bees. Bees are for pussies. Like there was no bees. It had to be A's and this is just how he grew up. And I don't think it's good. I don't think it's healthy. But it's fascinating. And you see this cultural attitude.

It's more likely to have you value the things that you're being told to value. For sure. I mean, this is Amy Chua's point, right? Yes. Amy Chua's talked a lot about this in Tiger Mom. Yes. Yes. In other books like this.

Second generation. You know, his family were immigrants. And they came over here and like, we have an amazing opportunity to try to make it here in America, and they're well aware that South Korea was right next to North Korea. North Korea is fucked, and South Korea is better. America is the land of opportunity. They took a big chance taking their family over to America, and then you're watching this sort of insane discipline and work ethic applied to life. And it's applied in such an effective manner that you see schools actively discriminating against Asian people. It's unbelievable.

It's wild. And it is. I don't know how people don't see that as incredibly racist. Racist. That Asians are too successful. Therefore, we must not admit enough of them. Well, they calculated like what are the ways that we can sort of make it more difficult for them to get in. If we can't apply it to just scores, we'll have to like have some sort of a social thing.

I also just have questions about the general way in which we determine what is now quote unquote equitable in terms of how we break out groups. So for example, too many Asians getting into college because they only comprise what five, 6% of the American population and therefore, and that they comprise 20% of the degree holders or whatever it is. And it's not proportionate. Whereas black people comprise 13% of the population, but they only comprise 6% of the degree. That's very unequitable. And so they have to be a reflection of the general population. What about the fact that women whoise 6% of the degree. That's very unequitable. And so they have to be a reflection of the general population. What about the fact that women, who are 50% of the population, now represent a vast majority of degree holders and graduate degree holders?

You never hear the opposite. You never hear it. Women are smarter than men. Just say it. Well, I mean, sometimes, yeah. I mean, it depends on the degree sometimes. I mean, like it depends on what field. Are you denying women are smarter than men?

Are you a sexist? What I am saying is that. If it's clear, the data shows women are smarter than men. Well, the IQ data show that they're pretty much even. And then the. But they get more degrees, so they work harder? Yes. Yes.

I mean, yes. The answer is that more men drop out of college and don't work it all the way through. But why do you think that is? And why is there a disparity of wealth then when the women enter the workforce? Well, so women tend to make different decisions as time goes on. Oh, you're a sexist. Yeah, right. You're a sexist. Yeah, like my wife. My wife is my wife. She made different decisions, right?

So she went to college. She took off a couple of years and worked, and then she went to medical school. And then she's taken a bunch of time off the workforce to take care of our kids because she wanted to. I have a very good friend who's a very smart guy, but he made the mistake of making that argument. We were actually talking about divorce, and he was saying maybe the reason why women get more money in divorce, maybe the reason why it's fair, is because of income inequality. And I go, what do you mean? And he goes, well, you know, women and men work together, and women make 75 cents to every dollar a man makes.

I go, do you know that they have different jobs? Do you know how that's calculated? And he's like, no. I go, yes. And he's like, is that really it? I go, yeah. And then I sent him a bunch of shit, and he's like, oh. I'm like, but you're arguing it.

And Obama argued it. You remember that? Obama argued it on time. He's the aggregate stat. But they knew that wasn't real. When Obama did it, he knew. Oh, no. Yeah, they know that's a lie.

He's a lawyer. Yeah. He knows that's not true. He knows that that's not true. It's a slippery thing to say, right? Well, that, I mean, everybody in politics knows that it is not true that if you just aggregate the stat, just without regard to how many hours are worked, how many years in the workforce, what types of degree, what jobs have been chosen.

Like it turns out that engineers get paid more than teachers. Women tend to outnumber men when it comes to teaching degrees, but men vastly outnumber women when it comes to engineering degrees. One of my favorite conversations is Jordan Peterson having a conversation with a feminist where she brings up male privilege. And he's like, well, for God's sake, what privilege? We get murdered more? We go to war?

And he just starts rattling off all these different things. And you see this woman not prepared for this conversation. Well, again, this is one of those things where it's like your ideas of what the world should be are not in any way reflective of what the world is. Like one of my favorites along these lines is when you talk about, people will talk about, you know, women and men, and they really have exactly the same interests. First of all, have you ever met a woman? Have you ever met a woman? So they'll say the fact that there are not enough female engineers is evidence that there's discrimination in society against female engineers.

Does anybody actively say that? Yes. I mean, this is why they have essentially affirmative action programs for females in places like Google. The idea is there are not enough female engineers. This is an act of discrimination and it must be rectified. And then when Larry Summers says, well, no, it probably is not about that. It probably is about job selection, whether women want to go into engineering, maybe test performance. Then he gets thrown out as president of Harvard University over that. I was there when that happened. But the stat that I love the most is that if you go to the much vaunted Nordic countries, right, where they have all sorts of great social welfare benefits and all of this, the gap in earnings between men and women is larger than the gap in earnings in like a developing country like Latvia or Lithuania.

And the reason is because when women work in countries where income is highly prized and you don't have a big social safety net, they choose the high income jobs. And when they are in a social safety net country, they get to choose what they actually want to do, which is not engineering. Generally speaking, they tend to pick the stuff they like to do, which are more human connection oriented jobs. Women tend to like those men like machines. Women like people. This is just a general for every woman. every woman, true on average, obviously. This goes back to what we were talking about before that we put so much value, unfortunately, in this country on success being quantifiable by bank accounts. And many people

don't look at the world that way. And when you force people to look at the world that way, because you say, this is our only metric that we count. The metric that we count is how much money you're earning. Well, we're looking at men and women, and we're saying, well, men are making more, so we have an inequitable society. Right. Right. But it's only based on this one metric. Right. Exactly. And that's the- Whereas, like you were saying about these Nordic societies, if you give women the opportunity, when you have more equality, they tend to take more gender specific roles like that are

like the stuff they like to do yes you would think of as being more you know stereotypical nurses teachers yes right like all the sorts of stuff where you have a lot of personal interaction they feel more rewarded by those jobs and but we think in this country that that is there's something wrong with that because they don't get there's not the same amount of money involved right and so we should we're thinking about it wrong and then the corrective mechanism is wrong because then we're like okay well what if we just redistribute the income then is everybody the way it should be it's like well no then no that didn't fix anything that's communism and there's uh there's a real fear of mine that there's this push towards communism as country. And as I've said before,

this idea of income inequality is always addressed, but not the idea of effort inequality. We're all engaged in this weird idea. And this weird idea is that you work and you get a certain amount of money for that, but the money's not proportionate to effort. It's proportionate to your thought process, how you find your way through things, problem solving. It's basically a puzzle. And some people find an easy path to that puzzle. You invent something amazing, and then you're insanely wealthy. And people say, well, that's not fair. But it's not about fair. It's about reality. There's a thing that happened.

And this one thing that this person created, he sold a billion units of this thing. And now he's got a shit ton of money. If you want a shit ton of money, you should figure out how to sell a billion units of something. And people are like, but that's a – that is reality. That is reality. It's an uncomfortable reality for a person with no money and no success and no idea for a product that you're going to sell a billion units. It's also, it's not just reality. It's the only reality that provides positive externalities.

So what other metric are you going to use for success? So the way that we measure success in terms of monetary exchange is the most goods, services, products that you provided to somebody else and they paid you for willingly, right? Which is why you can be an NBA star and you're really not producing anything except your own skill level on TV. And we pay you lots and lots of money for this, right? You've created something that is non-replicable and we will pay you for that, right? You've created a good product or service that's not replicable. And so we'll pay you money for that. This has positive externalities because the more

skilled people we have doing skillful things, the more cool things that we have on the market, right? We actually want to incentivize the guy who created the stupid thing that sold a billion units because that's going to bring the price of that thing down because people are going to now compete in that market to undercut that guy, and they're going to develop new products in that market, which is why a poor person now lives better than the king of France did in 1300. That's because of all that innovation. The positive externalities of us rewarding innovation and effort and intelligence are very high. So you say that's not fair.

On a moral level, maybe it's not fair. Maybe if you were God, you could figure out a different way that would make it more fair where it was based purely on how many hours of sweat labor you put into a thing. The problem is that if you actually try to create a system where you reward people based on the pure number of sweat hours they put into things, it's a wildly negative externality because now you're incentivizing people to just put in work at the thing that is the easiest for them to do without regard to pleasing anybody else, without regard to trying to create a product, good or service that somebody else will willingly buy from you. This is why when people say that capitalism is selfish and it's non-altruistic, I've been ripped by the Ayn Rand crowd for saying this, but it actually is a form of forced altruism. If I create a product, a good, or a service, and nobody wants to buy it, but I really satisfied myself, that's selfish.

What's not selfish is I now create a product, good, or service, I now have to provide something to you that you want want and you have to provide something to me that I want right this is mutual altruism you provided me something I want the argument against it is the stock market what about it speculation there's a stock market like manipulation hedge funds

people moving money around moving numbers around getting insanely wealthy by betting on companies failing things being public but you need to manipulate stocks and and find a way to skirt the system and use computers to like make these little quick transactions back and forth and back and forth and generate insane amounts of wealth essentially doing nothing but you created a massive amounts of fluidity and liquidity in the system, right? How many companies now get funded? Lots of companies get funded. How many companies were funded 200 years ago? Right. None. So you think that it's good that

these companies get funded because they could in turn provide goods and services that people want and appreciate. And we should tolerate all these fucksters who are figuring out how to get insanely wealthy and do blow off the assholes of Russian strippers because they figured out a way to use this system to generate money. Yes. They're the grease in the engine. So you need that. You need the grease in the engine.

I'm not saying that that's more. This isn't a moral question. Right. The question is, does it create positive externalities for there to be a system where you can do an IPO tomorrow? And it used to be that if you had to retail a company, right, you actually had, it was a lot harder to go public with a company 50, 100 years ago than it is now. Yes. Right.

It was much harder to raise money for a company 50 or 100 years ago. go by having these people around that will raise capital because of the stock market because of the fact that there's an amazing opportunity for people that have no business being in that you have nothing to do with that company other than the fact that you're funding them and you're moving capital around and you're giving a and in some cases you are hedging against the possibility of loss in the company which allows other people to read the signal and then allocate their capital elsewhere so you're short selling a company. You're saying this company is not worth as much as people are saying it's worth. Right.

People are going to draft off of you, presumably. And then they're going to sell their stock and maybe they're going to put their money in a more successful company, which allows the company to raise more money, buy back its stock, reinvest, do all that sort of stuff. So it's an imperfect system, but it has a net positive effect. Correct. Correct. And when I say imperfect, perfect compared to what, right?

What is perfect? Right, exactly. There's no centralized allocative resource that is capable of doing that sort of work. So do I think that like on a pure level, this goes back to the whole difference that we were talking about earlier between meritocracy and skillsocracy

that I was trying to make. We tend to think of like, does that guy deserve it? I mean, he's just sitting in a room and he's playing with numbers. Does he really deserve it? On a moral level, no, I don't know if he's going to heaven or hell, right? I mean, I don't know. But on a skills level, I suppose he deserves it because

he's adding positive externalities to the system. And that's the only way that income gets generated anyway. Right. I mean, how else are you going to do that? Right. Now, what about Bernie Sanders' How else are you going to do that? Right. Now, what about Bernie Sanders' concept that you could take a very small amount of each of these transactions, these speculative transactions, like a fraction of a penny, and you could apply that to free college education, universal basic income, or universal health care at least, that you could use,. This is his concept of democratic socialism, that you would apply this in a way that's not punitive to these companies.

It's a small amount in each transaction, but overall does a net good for the culture, for society, for the community. So I think it really depends on how much grit you're adding to the grease in the engine, right? I mean, assume that the transaction costs he's adding are now the sand that you're adding to the grease that the engine, right? I mean, assume that the transaction costs he's adding are now the sand that you're adding to the grease that's in the engine. So all these things are just designed to grease it. So now you're adding sawdust. So how much sawdust can you add before you clog up the engine?

I mean, so you could probably add some. Can you add tons? Probably not. But what we're seeing is just this tiny amount, less than a penny. But I don't know how large the transactions they're pulling are or how frequent they are. So I don't know how large the transactions they're pulling are how frequent they are so it so i don't know you're about to say i like how the that's how these people you were saying that's how these people these fucking democratic social well i mean i mean i i don't know very slow well i don't know how large the transactions that we're

talking about are on average and what percentage of that transaction he's trying to grab all right so until i know that i don't know, are we talking about very marginal amounts, or are we talking about not at all marginal amounts that are crucial to how that business operates? I don't know the answer to that. By the way, I don't agree with free community college, period, because I think too many people are going to college. So I think that's a bad example. I think he should pick something better to spend on if he wants to spend the money.

Do you think people should pay a lot of money for college? And if so, do you think the government should continue to subsidize it? I don't think the government should continue to subsidize it? I don't think the government should subsidize college. I think the private loans should subsidize college. And we have a lot more engineers and a lot fewer liberal arts majors. Do you think that, yeah, right. Do you think that if we did not subsidize college and private loans did,

do you think the same rules should apply that are currently in place where you can never get out of your student loans? It's one of the weirder things. You take a child that's essentially, their brain is not fully formed yet, and you saddle them down with hundreds of thousands of dollars in student loan that they have to pay for the rest of their life. There's people today that are, they're getting their social security docked because they owe student loans. You want to talk about being at the end of the game and realizing you're a fucking loser? When you get your social security docked, the money you're supposed to live on, and the country's like, no, fuckface. You owe us money because you have to pay for that school you didn't use. Right.

So I think that if you are a private institution, just like any other loan, you should be forced to take the risk of the loan. So education is a little weird in that there's no collateral, right? I mean, like if you get a loan on a house- Can't take the house back. It wouldn't even take the degree. Right. Right. So, but that's why you're going to get a lot more loans in areas where people expect high income return, right? And a lot fewer loans in areas, like there was a study that came out recently and it said that something like 28% of all degree holders end up significantly financially worse off for having had the degree than for getting the degree.

Really? Yeah. 28%? Yeah. It was in the Wall Street Journal like two days ago. Based on what? Because you take out a loan. Right.

You get a degree in something useless. You get a job in something that didn't require the degree. What if you didn't have the degree? But are people more likely to hire someone who has a degree? Depends on the industry and it depends on the major. So majors make a huge difference. You major in ed, that's not going to do you a lot of good. You major in engineering, it's going to do you a hell of a lot of good.

So one of the big problems is trying to treat all degrees as equivalent, which they are not. We also have a major credentialing problem in the society where a lot of people are now requiring a college degree where they shouldn't have to have a college degree. where a lot of people are now requiring a college degree where they shouldn't have to have a college degree. There are a lot of jobs in the United States that do not require a college degree, and we'll be like, we'll only take a college graduate. So at our company, we don't screen for college degree. What's fascinating is the goodwill hunting approach, right, is that you really can get an education without a college degree.

You really can, but in order to be considered a person who's a serious thinker. Like here's – I agree with this. This is what I was saying earlier about the testing where I was saying that colleges are kind of a scam because we won't just use tests. Yeah. So if you give me an 18-year-old kid's SAT score and his grade and his GPA and you say he's going to major in liberal art, I can tell you from his GPA and his SAT score whether he's probably going to be a good employee or not. I don't need four years of having him debted himself for $150,000 well as late to figure that out. But isn't the idea that during those four years he's going to learn about life and have a more nuanced perspective of the world

because he's going to be educated in all sorts of different things like history and sociology? Nah. They don't do that crap anymore. They don't? Nah. Colleges are worthless unless you're what we call at UCLA a South Campus major. Well, they're really good at indoctrinating communists. Right. True. True that.

There's got to be some sort of coming-of-age ritual that involves education. It used to be a high school graduation. That was the coming-of-age ritual, right? Yeah, but it's not anymore. It used to be a high school graduation. That was the coming of age ritual, right? But it's not anymore. It could be again. Why not? Will something make high school better? How about we just have apprenticeship programs? You finish high school, you get an apprenticeship.

Yeah, I think there's something... Sort of Peter Thiel's model, right? To find if there's something that you're really actually interested in and then we start developing apprenticeship programs in all these different industries. I mean, if you want to talk about how other countries do it, there are a lot of countries that are tracking kids a lot earlier than 18.

It's a segment of 14, 15 saying, what are you interested in getting them sort of, if you're, are you into math? Are you into history? So, but what about, I mean, if these people do do that, don't you think there is some sort of a benefit to the education that colleges provide because they do provide at the very least they provide an environment where ideally your your ideas are questioned and your concepts yeah no no you don't think so anymore no no i think that most colleges you go there to get the degree and then you get out and then you do what you're gonna do with their life and i think the idea that you're going there and you're learning about,

like, that's a very- You're separating from your family, you're getting away from your neighborhood, your hometown. There's got to be some benefit to that, right? Yeah, but you could do that working, right? And then you'd actually be useful. I mean, if you ever hire people who are fresh out of college with a poli-sci degree, I mean, I don't think they're significantly more useful than- What about gender studies? That's huge that's you can i mean i need to know what somebody's pronouns are before i hire them or if they know all the proper pronouns we give

like a 56 question test surely there's got to be some i mean maybe that's what they're trying to do here in austin with this university that they're trying to i think that's what they are trying to do they're trying to re-establish some sort of kind of classical theory of how education is taught, you know, and civics and having debates and presenting different sides of the aisle. But in most colleges, I don't think that's necessarily a high priority. They're diploma mills. They're diploma mills. There's a little bit of that, but we've lost the value of actually just being educated, of learning things, of expanding your understanding of the world itself. That's not that valuable to people anymore for some strange reason.

So for me, it was actually, listen, I went to UCLA and then I went to Harvard Law and I really enjoyed both of them, both very liberal colleges. But I think the reason I enjoy them is because I'm not liberal. So for me, it was learning about a lot of ideas that I didn't know anything about. So I got to like test out those ideas and think about them and read the countervailing point of view. But if I'd been on the other side of the aisle, I'm not sure I ever see much of the other point of view at all. Interesting. Because you came into them as a conservative.

Yeah, I was already conservative going to college. When did you decide you were conservative? I mean, I can't remember when I wasn't probably would be the fair answer there. So as soon as I realized I was political. This is just growing up in a religious household? Yeah, religious, and then obviously very pro-Israel household. And so you go on campus, that's a big issue there. And so when you go up in a religious household that comes along with certain values, like hard work, reward and punishment, right? There's certain things that are sort of baked in. Value of education is very big in the religious Jewish community. And then when it comes to like foreign policy issues, when you get on campus, and campus is

a lot more variable when it comes to Israel, for example, then you realize that you might not be in friendly territory on some of those issues. Well, it's shifted over the last few decades, right? And it's the percentage of people that are pro-Israel has probably shifted away and its support of Palestine has become more favorable. Yeah, it's been linked in with the sort of broader

dispossessed people's narrative. Yeah. Like the idea that there's victims and victimizers in the world. Israel's a victimizer, its enemies are victims. Right. And you can tell

because Israel's successful and its enemies are not. So therefore, Israel must be super bad. You saw a lot of this rhetoric, actually, during the last Gaza war, where people were saying things like, well, the Palestinians are just like Black Lives Matter. And it's like, well, they're not exactly like Black Lives Matter. Like, as much as I dislike Black Lives Matter and as much damage as they did, they weren't firing like 10,000 rockets into the middle of populated areas. Right. But that's Hamas. That's not the actual people that are trapped in Palestine themselves. Right. Right. I mean, I'm talking about the government. Yeah. I

mean, the Hamas government in the Gaza Strip. Yeah. Which presides over a couple million people. Do you have sympathy for the people that are trapped under the regime? Of course. I wish the regime would go away. I wish they would overthrow the regime. That'd be great. The problem is that they haven't had an election since 2006 in Hamasistan, in the Gaza Strip. They haven't had an election in the Palestinian Authority, in the West Bank, since 2005, 2006. Really? Yeah, Mahmoud Abbas is in the 15th year of a four-year term in the West Bank, and Hamas took over the West Bank and took over the Gaza Strip after Israel completely pulled out in 2005.

So Israel completely pulled out of the Gaza Strip. Israel has no military presence in the Gaza Strip, right? They have people along the border. They don't have internal presence. Do you have, have you debated people about Palestine versus Israel? Yeah, sure, I've talked about it. Have you, are these available online?

Because I haven't seen you debate that. Not too much. I should probably do one. Yeah, you should. It'd be fun. I've done some informational videos. I did like a fairly long, actually it was like a 45-minute informational video about sort of the history of Israel going all the way back to biblical times, all the way forward through the Roman period, through the Ottoman Empire, through the British Empire, et cetera, to the modern era as well. things in modern life is to see the rubble of those houses after they get missiled,

you know, after they get smashed and, you know, you see the difference in the firepower that Israel has and the iron dome and all these things. Thank God, by the way, thank God for the optics.

Thank God for the iron dome. Let me just put it this way. If there were no iron dome, there probably there'd be a lot less of the Gaza strip left because the iron dome is the only thing that prevented mass casualties in Israel. If Mexico started firing 10,000 rockets into San Diego, the American flag would be flying in Mexico City within 24 hours. So no state worth of assault can allow that kind of assault, except if you have apparently Iron Dome shooting down

10,000 rockets above your cities. When AOC and all these people that didn't want the Iron Dome to be funded, when there was this sort of... So backwards. It's really backwards. That's a defensive technology. I mean, you're actively arguing that you want the rockets to fall into the middle of Israeli cities at that point. That is a purely defensive technology. I think their argument was that there's a disproportionate amount of firepower in Israel's side. I would certainly hope so, considering that they're opposing an actual terrorist group. I hope there's a significant differential of firepower between the United States and Al Qaeda as well. And what was the

argument that they, because I've heard her discuss the whole Israel versus Palestine thing, and she seems about as educated about it as I am. Yeah, and I don't think she's particularly versed in it. Which is fascinating that she has an opinion about it that's so strong. It's turned into a bit of a wokeness issue. Well, again, I think it goes to there's this feeling broadly writ on the hard left that whenever there is an imbalance of power, that means that some deep injustice has been done. If somebody whenever there is an imbalance of power, that means that some

deep injustice has been done. If somebody is powerful and somebody has less power, the person who's powerful must have victimized the person with less power. Again, Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip in 2005 in its entirety. Well over 90% of the Palestinian population in the West Bank lives under complete Palestinian control in Area A of the West Bank. Under the Oslo, there's Area A, there's Area B, there's Area C. Area C is the area that's still under total Israeli control, right? And if the Oslo Accords had proceeded with the Palestinians not pursuing terrorist attacks, then that would now presumably have been in the process of further negotiation. It's not. Area A has been under complete Palestinian control for a while, right? If you actually drive in Israel, there's signs on the roads in Israel and the West Bank where it says, the Israeli government can no

longer guarantee your safety if you drive off this road and into this Palestinian city. This is now Palestinian Authority-controlled territory. You're taking your life in your hands if you drive into this area, right? So it's a very difficult situation. All I can say is that the number of Arabs living inside Israel, Israeli Arab citizens, who wish to be members of the Palestinian Authority ruled areas or the Gaza Strip is nearly zero. Israeli Arabs want to live in Israel. They do not want to live in Palestine. And there's a reason for that. The regime in Palestine is awful.

Are they allowed to emigrate? Sure. So they can leave Palestine if they're allowed to leave and get into Israel and Israel will take them in. Well, sorry, the other way. 20% of Israel's population is Arab, right? There are zero Jews living under the Palestinian Authority. There are zero Jews living in the Gaza Strip. But what I'm saying is, can people from Gaza that are Palestinian move to Israel? Can they try to emigrate immigrate? You could put in an application. It would probably be fairly difficult. You'd have to demonstrate certain prereqs like you would if

you're immigrating to the United States, presumably stricter because they have to have security concerns because Gaza is really riddled with terrorism problems. But what about people that move into Palestinian territory? What about settlers that move into Palestinian territory? What about settlers that take over people's homes? I've seen these videos where people are complaining that or having these mass grievances that Israel. So if we're talking about Sheikh Jarrah, that was the one that came up most recently. So to be fair, these are called disputed territories, really, meaning that Israel has a claim to them. The Palestinians have a claim to them. There's a lot of dispute as to who owns them in most cases.

In some cases, you actually have Israelis who are going into undisputed Palestinian areas and the Israeli government clears them out. That happens in the West Bank sometimes. Why is that? Because those would be under Area A or Area B. They're understood to be Palestinian territories. But if you're talking about Sheikh Jarrah, so Sheikh Jarrah is a different thing. So the Israelis go into these Palestinian territories

and they take them over. Well, not permanently. I mean, it depends where we're talking about. So there are a couple different cases, I think, that we're talking about here. Okay. One is the big one that resulted in the latest Gaza war, supposedly.

So there's the real reason for the Gaza war, and then there's the public reason for the Gaza war. What's the real reason? The real reason for the Gaza war is because Mahmoud Abbas, who's the dictator slash president of the Palestinian Authority, who hasn't been up for election since 2006, Mahmoud Abbas said that he was going to have an election in March, the first election they'd held in 15 years. It became very clear to him that if he held an election, he was going to lose, and he was going to lose to the Hamas and Islamic Jihad for both terrorist groups. He was going to lose to that coalition. And so he canceled the election. And then to misdirect from the fact that he had

canceled the election, he decided to essentially gin up an enormous controversy over the Temple Mount. Now, I've been up to the Temple Mount. The Temple Mount is the site of the Al-Aqsa Mosque, okay, and the Dome of the Rock. It's also the holiest site in Judaism. The Western Wall is not the holiest site in Judaism. The actual Temple Mount is, because that's where Solomon's Temple used to be. And that area is essentially run by the Islamic Waqf. So if you're a Jew, you're not

allowed to pray up there. By Israeli law, if you go up there and you pray, you have to do it quietly or surreptitiously. They have sort of a wink-wink, nod-nod situation going on. But only Muslims are allowed to pray openly up on the Temple Mount. And that's in Israeli territory because they wish to prevent further conflict. So there are two issues that happened.

One was Sheikh Jarrah. Sheikh Jarrah is a little outskirt of Jerusalem. And there's a big legal controversy over essentially two apartment buildings. Back in 1948, these had been Jewish-owned apartment buildings. And then in 1948, there's a big war between the Jews and the Arabs. The Jordanians end up in control of that area. These apartment buildings are then lived in by some of the Palestinians. No legal deed is ever granted to them by the Jordanian authorities. Okay, if the Jordanian authorities had given them legal deed, they would have retained that sort of deed after 67. So in 67, there's another war. There's like a war every 10 years in Israel. In 67, there's another war,

Israel wins back all of Jerusalem, they unify the city of Jerusalem, right? That's why old and new Jerusalem are now in Israel. So the so Sheikh Jarrah, a lot of the people who had owned the apartment buildings prior to 48, they now come in, you have basically a legal dispute, in which the Palestinians who've been living there for 15, 20 years because of the war, they say, we live here, we own it. And the Jews say, here's our deed of property, we own it. This goes through the Israeli court system. There was an agreement that was reached where the Palestinians would have to pay rent to the Jews because the Jews still had the legal deed. The Jordanians had to transfer. I know this is very complex, but this is how everything

is over there. Okay. And so bottom line is that the Palestinians there stopped paying rent and there's a court ruling that comes down saying you haven't paid rent in 10, 15 years and now you're going to be evicted. That started a war. Okay, that's really what we're talking about. Okay, and then there were a bunch of people who went up to quote unquote pray

and also protest up on the Temple Mount. They started assaulting Israeli soldiers from the Al-Aqsa Mosque. There's video of them throwing rocks from the Al-Aqsa Mosque at the soldiers. This turns into a major issue. And then, again, all generated, at least in part, by the Palestinian Authority, trying to distract from the fact they hadn't had an election. And then Hamas gets in on the act because they have to be kind of louder than the Palestinian Authority.

They start firing rockets in the middle of Israel. So this is what you're saying is the real reason. Now, what is the public reason? So the public reason, what they said is Israel is attempting to evict Palestinians from Palestinian territory. And this is just the beginning of the Judaization of all of Israel. Now, again, if this were the Judaization of all of Israel, you'd have to explain why there are some 4 million Palestinians who are living in this area. Like what you'll hear from critics of Israel's, Israel's engaged in some sort of genocide.

Israel's trying to wipe out the, it's the worst genocide in human history. Like the number of people who are living in the Palestinian areas is a multiple of what it was. The criticism is that it's like essentially an open air prison. Well, then they should talk to the people who administer that prison, namely Hamas.

The warden of the prison is Hamas. Israel pulled out all military in 2006. But the people are not allowed to leave Palestine and immigrate into Israel. Because of security concerns. They can work in Israel. They have to pass checkpoints because of security concerns. So these security concerns are the reason

why the people are trapped, and then Hamas is the reason why they're trapped. And yes, because if Hamas wished to make peace with Israel, then Israel would be perfectly willing to have an open economic relationship with the Gaza Strip. It seems like your perspective. I mean, Hamas's charter openly calls for the destruction of the state of Israel. It's not like there's a big secret.

Your perspective, the way you're describing it is not, is not, I don't hear it anywhere. Yeah. You know, what I'm hearing from the mainstream is essentially the narrative over the last few years, and even by some of my guests, has been that Israel is imposing its might on the Palestinian people. They've created this open-air prison,

and the reason why Hamas exists in the first place is because the people feel powerless and they need something to counter this regime of the Israeli government that's controlling them and keeping them in this spot. And they continue to encroach on Palestinian land and move their city and their people closer and closer to the point where they're going to eventually wipe out the Palestinians. Okay, it's crazy to think they're going to wipe out the Palestinians. There's been no evidence of that whatsoever.

Israel made an offer in 2001 to give the Palestinians essentially all of the West Bank with some land swaps because there's a lot of very populated areas in the West Bank. So right now, again, not to get technical, Area A is essentially— well, it's all Palestinians, and it's about 90% of the Palestinian population in the West Bank. Area B is sort of jointly governed. Area C is solely Israeli control, and there are actually more Jews than Arabs living in Area C of the West Bank. It's like 365,000 Jews, about 300,000 Arabs living in that part of the West Bank. It's very complex.

Everything is very, like, right on top of each other, territorially speaking. Israel in 2001 offered a full peace deal, including shared control over the old city of Jerusalem, or at least parts of the, over East Jerusalem, I should say, not the old city, East Jerusalem. Israel offered in 2008 a similar deal under Ehud Olmert. Mahmoud Abbas got up and walked away from the table without a counteroffer. Israel has multiple times offered to settle the conflict with a separate Palestinian state. It has never materialized because the problem is that when you promise people what is promised in the actual Palestinian Authority original charter, which is the destruction of the State of Israel, Havzis won't do it. The fact is that the Palestinian Authority, which is the governing

authority in the West Bank, these are the moderates. The Palestinian Authority is supposedly the moderates against Hamas. It was founded in 1964. It's called the Palestine Liberation Organization. 1964, you'll notice, before 1967. In 1964, Jerusalem was under the control of the Jordanians. The West Bank was under the control of the Jordanians. So when you say you're going to liberate Palestine in 1964, you don't mean Jerusalem. You mean Tel Aviv. You mean Haifa, right? You mean full Israeli cities. So the notion that this, what you have here is an intractable conflict in which if Israel puts down all of its guns tomorrow, there would be no Jews. And if the Palestinians put down their guns tomorrow, there would be a Palestinian state. This has been the state on the ground since Oslo. So their position is that all of Israel

is illegitimate because it used to be all Palestinian owned? It used to be Islamic territory. And that's their position that it should go back to that? That is the position of the Palestinian, I mean, of the Palestinian Authority, that was Yasser Arafat's position, that's certainly Hamas's position. Like, the Palestinian Authority hides the ball a little bit, Hamas does not hide the ball. It's a fascinating conundrum because we spend so much time in America thinking about it and concerned about it,

but very few people know the actual complicated details of it. I mean, the bottom line is this. There are civil and human rights inside of Israel. If you are living in the Palestinian authorities, there are not. And when it comes to the domestic rule, I'm not talking about the foreign policy, the travel, or the ability to deliver weapons in or something, which again, Israel keeps control of that because they're afraid of the terrorism. When you're talking about domestic law inside the Gaza Strip, you're talking about a place where gay people are literally dragged around the streets on the back of ropes. I mean, this is it operates more like the Islamic Republic of Iran than it does like a full functioning Western democracy. In Israel,

one of the governing parties right now in the coalition is Arab. There are Arab judges who sit on the Israeli Supreme Court. Arabs, Arabs comprise about 20% of the entire population of Israel. Arabic is one of the official languages of the state of Israel. So when people talk about discrimination, what they should note is that there are well over a million Arabs who live inside the state of Israel

and are Israeli citizens. And in the Palestinian areas, where they would hope to be a Palestinian state, there are zero Jews, and there is a reason for that. I really want to see you debate someone about this, because I would love to see the counterpoints that aren't available to me that I don't understand. I would love to see someone- Yeah, and I'd be happy to do that.

I think it would be good for everybody because I've learned a lot just here talking to you about this. I'll take you on a visit also. You should go with someone- No. You don't want to go? It's fine. Barry Weiss tried to get me to go too. I'm like, listen, you Jews are always trying to get me to go to your motherland. Settle down. Right now you have to come to Florida. We'll get to Florida first. I know.

It's the motherland. This is the motherland for barbecue. That's about it. You have a flight, so I know you have to leave very shortly. Is there anything else that you feel imperative you need to get off your chest? No. As long as I'm here, go buy my book, Authoritarian Moment. Oh, you have a book?

Another one. Exactly. How do you have time? One a Authoritarian Moment. Oh, you have a book. Another one. Exactly. How do you have time? One a year, man. How do you have time to write all these books? I write fast. I write fast. I also enjoy it.

You know, you said before, like, if I had free time, I wouldn't sit around on my ass. Yeah. It's true. Like, if I have free time, I write. I love writing. So between the time I finished that book in March and when it was released in July, I wrote a novel. This is what I wanted to talk to you.

When you cover subjects, I know you're running short on time, but when you cover subjects that you discuss and you have these rants on your show, do you write these out? Do you write out your points and your perspectives? Or do you just know them and then just run with it? I mean, I know them and I run with it,

but I'm constantly writing. So some of the stuff we've talked about today is stuff that I'm writing about currently or certainly thinking about and reading about. So that's why people will say like how long does it take to get ready for your show?

And it's like, well, there's the short answer which is maybe an hour at night and a little bit of time in the morning and then there's the long answer which is like all the time. Right?

Like just sit there, read, write, think. Hopefully come up with something interesting. Okay. Well, I'm going to let you go. You're a good man, Ben Shapiro and I appreciate you. Well, it's good to have you outside of California, my friend Joe Rogan. And don't let the horsey worm get to you. I won't. Bye, everybody.