The Joe Rogan Experience - #1769 - Jordan Peterson

Episode Date: January 25, 2022

Jordan Peterson is a clinical psychologist and the author of several best-selling books, among them "12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos," and "Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life."

The Joe Rogan Experience. Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day. That state of intense concentration on that before you can really manage it. I think there's mental endurance involved too, because I think that, are we up? I think there's mental endurance that comes with uh anything that you do on a day to day basis whether it's writing whether it's uh doing podcasts whether it's uh doing stand-up comedy i think anything we have to think and and manage like complex ideas and manipulate your language and your the way you're speaking and and be able to

Engage in the dance between two people. I think you got to do it all the time I think if you just do it every now and again Like especially like if you took time off of speaking to people Like if you hadn't talked to anybody in a long time and then you talk have you ever done that? We haven't talked to anybody in a long time then you talk to them. It feels odd It feels awkward because I think there's like a thing where you haven't talked to anybody in a long time and then you talk to them? It feels odd. It feels awkward because I think there's like a thing where you have to get used to it. You got to get used to it.

Yeah, I found that was particularly the case with the podcasts is that it's hard to do that sporadically. Yeah. You also lose that rhythm of preparation because you get it. Well, I did. I'm not sure. How do you prepare for your podcast? Like if you have an author come on. I usually read their book.

When? I have two books that I'm reading right now that are future people that are coming in February. So they're a lot ahead. Yeah. Well, it's like one of them is a climate change book, and it's intense. And so it's requiring a lot of thinking. And then I have to like look at the criticisms of this guy and criticisms of the work and, you know, who believes that in 10

years Miami is going to be underwater? Who believes that this is probably hyperbole and that it's a gross exaggeration? And the reality is, you know, the world sort of always goes through these cycles of change but human beings are definitely having an effect on it but a small effect compared to cows and other other things it's like it's hard to sort out the climate change one is a weird one so that well that's because there's no such thing as climate right climate and everything are the same word and i that's what bothers me about the climate change types. It's like, this is something that bothers me about it technically. It's like, climate is about everything. So, okay. But your models aren't based on everything.

Your models are based on a set number of variables. So that means you've reduced the variables, which are everything, to that set. Well, how did you decide which set of variables to include in the equation if it's about everything? And that's not just a criticism. That's like, if it's about everything, your models aren't right. Because your models do not and cannot model everything. What do you mean by everything when you say models?

Well, that's what people who talk about the climate apocalypse claim in some sense. We have to change everything. It's like, everything, eh? Okay, what... And it's the same with the word environment. That word doesn't mean... It means so much that it actually doesn't mean anything. Like, when you say everything, in a sense, that's meaningless, right?

Because, well, what are you pointing to? Well, I'm pointing to everything. Well, what's the difference between the environment and everything? There's no difference. What's the difference between climate and everything? Well, there's no difference. So this is a crisis of everything? It's like, no, it's not. Or if it is, well, if it really is, then we're done, because we can't fix everything. Well, we have to. What they mean specifically is the human, what human beings are doing that's causing the earth to warm. Right, right. But you have to include all these factors in the models to determine that, all these factors. Well, what can you not include? Well, then by deciding what you

don't include, you decide which set of variables are cardinal. And you have to make that decision in some sense before you even generate the models. This is a big problem. It's partly, it's not the only reason, but there's another reason that, another problem that bedevils climate modeling too too which is that as you stretch out the models across time the errors increase radically and so maybe you can predict out a week or three weeks or a month or a year but the farther out you predict the more your model's in error and that's a huge problem when you're trying to model over 100 years because the errors compound just like interest.

And so at some point, it's all error. In fact, it's already the case that even if the climate models are right, the error bars are so wide by 100 years out that we'll never be able to measure the effects of the changes we're making now. We'll never know if the changes we're making to save the climate actually worked. We can't measure it. The errors are too large 100 years out. What do you mean by the errors? Like what errors? Well, prediction errors.

So, look, imagine that you're going to predict how your life goes. Okay. Well, you can kind of do that. No, you kind of know that tomorrow is going to be somewhat like today. Okay, but how much is next year's day going to be like today? Well, somewhat, but less certainly because you might get sick, for example, and then over a five-year period, well, there's much more that has to be accounted for. And so the probability that your prediction is correct decreases as you move forward in time. That's why we discount the future,

right? So if you ask people, you want $5 an hour, do you want $5 in a month? They're going to say, well, I want $5 now. Well, you think, well, why is that? Well, if I have it now, it's certain a month, well, there's a lag in there and anything could happen. And you can play games with people this way. And because people differ in the degree to which they discount the future, because how seriously to take the future is actually a near computationally impossible task to solve. How seriously should I take the future? Well, it depends on how uncertain things are. How uncertain things are, are they? Well, I don't know. Classic example. There's a chicken. And the farmer goes out every day and feeds the chicken. And the chicken thinks, man, I've got a good friend in this farmer.

And then one day it's dinner time. And the chicken's the main course. Right? And so the poor chicken used induction to derive certainty. The farmer comes every day. He didn't realize there was a massive flaw in his theory. And one day that flaw reveals itself and everything falls apart. Well, that makes sense when you're talking about chickens and farmers. Yeah. But when you're talking about human beings and CO2. So we could play a future discounting game. So this is how this sort of thing is calculated, this discount curve. So I could say, I'll give you $5 an hour, $5 in a week. Which one do you want? And people say $5 in a week.

Then I say, okay, I'll give you $5 an hour. I'll give you $10 in a month. It's like, hmm, okay, $10 in a month. Okay, I'll give you $5 an hour. I'll give you $7.50 in two weeks. Or I'll give you $5 now, or I'll give you a $750 in two weeks, or I'll give you $50 now, or I'll give you a $500 in 10 years. And so imagine you do that with all sorts of amounts over all sorts of timeframes. Then you can compute a discount curve, which is how much people devalue the amount a dollar is worth as it progresses out into the future.

And what you generally find is that impulsive people discount the future more heavily. That's actually the definition of impulsive. And you might think, well, the impulsive people are wrong. It's like the ant and the grasshopper. You know, the grasshopper is fiddling all summer, and then he starves to death in the winter. And the good old ant who packed away the is fiddling all summer and then he starves to death in the winter and the good old aunt who packed away the the supplies is he's doing fine in the in the winter he sacrificed the present to the future and isn't that sensible yeah it's sensible you should save except well what if it's 1920 in germany 1923 let's say and you're you're in a period of hyperinflation it's like grasshopper one because he spent all his money before it became worthless.

So should you save or not? The answer is, it depends. And then there's a further answer, which is, it depends on things that you actually can't predict. And so it's actually a computationally impossible problem to figure out how much to discount the future. It's actually impossible, which is why we vary so much in it. Part of that reason is the magnitude of our prediction error increases the farther out we predict. Yeah, but the grasshopper and the ant

analogy doesn't work because they're based on food. And the food that the ant supplied and stored and stocked away is still good. Inflation doesn't mean jack shit to an ant because they don't deal with currency. Well, the other way an ant could follow up is – But you know what I'm saying? Well, fair enough. But, I mean, ant colonies also have wars. And so it's just as possible that the ant will store up all this food and another ant colony will move in and that'll be the end of that.

And this is a huge problem. Well, you're very unlikely to be robbed and pillaged unless you have wealth. Right. And so the ability to store wealth across time to decrease the risk of the catastrophes of future, that's a huge, that's the problem in some sense that civilization set out to solve. How can we stabilize things over a long term enough to make long term investing a reasonable proposition? Here's a positive spinoff of that. So I worked on the UN committee that wrote the Secretary General's report on sustainable development. I worked on the Canadian subcommittee to be technically accurate. And I was by no means the head of that. I worked on the Canadian subcommittee to be technically accurate. And I was by no means the head of that. I worked with the team that worked on that. But we edited and wrote

and rewrote a fair bit of the document. And so I did a lot of work in the background, learning what I needed to learn to work on that committee with some degree of, what would you say, qualification. I read maybe 200 books on ecological development and economic development, the relationship between the two. 200 books? Oh, yeah, yeah. It was over about a two-year period.

And a lot of it was on oceanic management, because I did realize that one thing we're doing that's extraordinarily stupid on the ecological front is destroying all the marine life within 40 miles of the shores. And all the marine life is within 40 miles of the shores. Like you think, the oceans, they're vast. It's like, yeah, but they're empty. Except for where the sun can shine to the bottom. And that's the 40 to 200 miles, say, on the coastal shelves. And we've trawled those bare like seven times.

Isn't that wild? It's a catastrophe. But that was the only real environmental catastrophe that I encountered in all that work that I thought was both credible and addressable. We know how to fix that. You make marine protected areas like national parks that you need about 15% of the total coastal territory

really protected. And that solves that problem, essentially. And then everybody has fish because the fish, they don't just stay there. They move around. You can have your cake and eat it too with marine protected areas. But mostly what I learned, and this was really cool, was that this was so cool. And I really believe it's true. The fastest way to make the planet sustainably green and ecologically viable is to make poor people as rich as possible as fast as we possibly can.

Because the thing about poor people is that, well first of all they live in, they're not resource efficient. They use a lot of resources to produce very, very little outcome. And so that's a problem. Slash and burn agriculture, for example. But even more importantly, when you're insecure on a day-to-day basis, you don't know where your next meal is coming from. You're not paying attention to the broader environment, that hated word, around you. And you can't even really worry about your children's future in some real sense, because like, no, no, you don't understand. Lunch is the future.

We don't have lunch, we're hungry. And that goes on for like a month, we're dead. That's the future. So what happens, if you can get resources to the poorest section of the population, as soon as they get to the point where they have some hope of a genuine future, especially for their children, they immediately become concerned about broader environmental considerations. And then the attempt to make the environment habitable and sustainable, that comes up of its own accord at a grassroots level and spreads everywhere. And evidence for that is clear.

And so this is one of the things that really bothered me about COP26. So, and that was based in part on this. What is that? That was the big climate meeting in the UK just a few months ago. You know, the one where all the COVID rules were suspended so the important people

could talk about important things. In any way, any case, I thought, if the politicians who were discussing environmental sustainability were serious, especially the left-wing ones, and I say especially because the left-wing ones always say, well, we care about the poor and dispossessed. It's like, do you really? When push comes to shove, it's like, is it the environment or poor people? If your idea is that we have to limit growth to save the planet. If we limit growth, poor people starve.

Because whenever we put limits on economic development, who suffers? The rich? Are you really? That's what you think? And you're on the left? You think if you put limits on economic development, the rich will suffer.

That runs contrary to every theory that your whole political philosophy is based on. You put limits to growth on, the poor stay poor or get worse. Doesn't matter because the planet has too many people on it anyways, which it most certainly does not. If you are serious about the environment and even vaguely concerned about poor people, all of your policies would be devoted to making the poor rich as fast as possible. But that would violate the anti-capitalist presumption, let's say, that the reason for environmental degradation in the first place is, say, entrepreneurial and free market development,

which it most certainly isn't, that's actually completely backwards, make poor people rich. So what should a COP26 been about? That's fairly straightforward. It should have been about trying to generate as much energy as we possibly can to be distributed as widely as possible in the cheapest possible manner.

And what would that be, nuclear? Well, I would say ultimately, likely nuclear, and probably not fusion because it's so, you know, fusion has always been a year away, 10 years away for the last 50 years. We haven't managed it. Nuclear, likely. France managed that very effectively. We can do it.

And we still have a weird idea of nuclear because of the several, you know, whether it's Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, there's been a few disasters. Yeah, more people die every year from solar energy than die from nuclear. Who dies from solar? Guess how you die from solar? Sunburn? No, you fall off the roofs when you're installing it. Oh, that's gravity, right? Yeah, gravity, gravity. And you know, that's a good example of unintended consequences because systems are complex. And when you change them, you think only good things will happen. It's like, well, you know, oh, so I was going to, you asked about energy. Yeah. There's also a environmental progression towards clean energy. Yeah. And so the poorest people burn wood.

Well, that's not so good because, first of all, they cut down the trees and burn the trees. And second, if you're concerned about pollution, especially particulate pollution, especially indoors, which kills, I think, 7 million children a year. 7 million children a year are killed by indoor particulate pollution what yeah yeah yeah how is that possible well seven million indoor particulate pollution you meaning from starting fires in homes like to keep warm without good good ventilation systems yes exactly these people are poor is that a real number can you yes that's a real number i need to know that that's a real number that seems that's know that that's a real number. That seems insane. That's good.

We should double check it. Seven million children die every year from indoor particulate pollution. Yeah. And so you want to burn wood. Well, charcoal is better. Coal is better than that in terms of pollution as well. And then fossil fuels are better than coal. And then natural gas is perhaps the cleanest of the fossil fuels.

And maybe, I don't know if you know this but this is also this is so funny too the united states has cut its carbon emissions 15 in the last 20 years it's gone down not up down why fracking fracking yeah fracking really this thing that environmentalists hate it's like don't but it's a double-edged sword right because fracking has Really? This thing that environmentalists hate. It's like, don't frack. But it's a double-edged sword, right? Because fracking has definitely polluted some water supplies. Not really. No? It hasn't polluted any water supplies?

Look. Did you ever see that? Everything pollutes something. And so the idea that there's any source of energy that we can derive that's not going to produce some pollutant as a consequence, that's the kind of nonsense you hear from people who say things like net zero. We're going to hit net zero by 2050. It's like, no, we're not. Fracking does have issues.

Okay, more than 90% of the world's children breathe toxic air every day. Yeah, how many of them, Joe? How many? 93% of the world's children under the age of 15 years, 1.8 billion children. But this is about polluted air. I don't think this is necessary about indoor particulate pollution. But that's all indoor.

Okay, it says World Health Organization estimates that. Sorry, it's 600,000, so I must have been citing figures over a decade. There is a part on here that says it lowers the life expectancy of up to 7 million people per year, but it doesn't say they all die. Oh, okay. Oh, okay, okay. Thank you for clarifying that. They're talking about what, though?

They're talking about pollution, right? Air pollution? Look, it says there, together up, the second line there, together household air pollution from cooking and ambient air pollution causes more than 50% of acute. But that's both things. Yeah, but it's still almost all of the inside. Yeah, but the outside air pollution is trivial.

Let's just read it so that people understand what we're saying because we can read this. Together, household air pollution from cooking and ambient outside air pollution caused more than 50% of acute lower respiratory infections in children under 5 years of age in low- and middle-income countries. Right, and read the next one, too. Air pollution is one of the leading threats to child health, accounting for almost 1 in 10 deaths in children under five years of age. That's fucking wild.

Well, it's just poor children, and the world has too many people on it anyway. But you say that, you're being facetious. Yeah, yeah, definitely. I still want to, like, we've kind of, like, you went on these rants, so I want to, like, bring you back to back to like this idea of climate environment we should be concerned not just about particulate pollution but shouldn't we be concerned about the effect that we're having on the co2 that we're releasing the atmosphere now from what I've read it has an impact they don't exactly know what percentage of an impact it has but it's most certainly something that we can reduce what I Well, that's not so certain.

What I've also read is that one of the problems is when people start talking about electric cars is that it's literally impossible for, there's not enough minerals. These conflict minerals they use for these batteries, there's not enough to give a car, as many cars as we have in this country, as many cars as there are in the world that are mostly internal combustion engines, if we replace those with battery-powered cars, I don't think that's possible. Well, where are we going to get the electricity? Well, there's that.

Well, yeah, that's a big problem. Yeah, fair enough. But even if we did get the electricity from nuclear, which, by the way, is fairly clean. It's all in whether or not there's a disaster and whether or not they have these precautionary measures set in place to, you know, to have systems that will be able to shut down the core when there is a disaster. Fukushima didn't. Right. And that's part of the problem. And those were large scale reactors.

Right. And they have small scale reactors now, thorium salt reactors that are small and modular in some sense. And when those sorts of things happen, they shut down by themselves. But we should talk about it because those Fukushima, when, I mean, okay, let's look this up. When was Fukushima first online? I want to say it was in the 1970s. Is that correct? Likely.

I think it was. That's when most of the nuclear development took place. Because I remember reading about it at the time and finding out that they couldn't shut it down. I was like, what? Okay, 67. Construction began 67. Commission date 71. Okay, so yeah.

So 70s essentially. Imagine getting a car from 1970 and expecting it to be compliant with whatever emission standards we have today or breaking. You ever drive a car? I'm an enthusiast. I love old cars. But I take them and I bring them to these craftsmen and they put modern brakes on them. Right.

They put modern suspensions on them so you don't kill yourself driving them. But if you drive an old car, like if you get a 1970 Pontiac and you just try to drive it around, the brakes are fucking terrible. The steering is like you kind of have a rough estimate of where you're going. They're awful. You take a 2022 Chevrolet, like

a Corvette, and drive that. My God, it's like telepathic. The acceleration is like time travel. New cars are so good. Oh my God, they're so good. Plus, I know, I know. The acceleration is like time travel. Yeah, new cars are so good. Oh my God, they're so good. Plus they have airbags. And the stereos are great. The old stereos in those 60s and 70s cars,

it was like listening to the end of a 210 counts with a string between them. Not just 60s and 70s, you go into the 2000s. Everybody used to buy aftermarket stereos. You used to get a car and then you bring it to a place and get a stereo place. Shout out to my friend Kenny Fong, Darkside Motors. I would bring my cars to Kenny, and Kenny would hook me up with people that would do the stereo, fix the wheels, and all kinds of stuff. You always had to do that.

But then car manufacturers realized, why are we leaving all this money on the table? Let's just give them an option to have better stereos and better wheels and better suspension and all that jazz. So they fixed that. But my point is, anything from 1971 sucks, including the nuclear power reactors. But if you get a nuclear reactor from 2022, all that advancement in technology and innovation, you're going to have a far better system. Yeah, well, we're, see, part of the problem, I've been very curious about why the left-wing types, particularly, seem willing to sacrifice the poor to their utopian.

I don't think they're thinking that way. I just don't think they played it all out. When push comes to shove, that's what they do. And it wouldn't take much thought to figure it out because let's say you increase the cost of energy and that's the price you pay to move forward to a hypothetically green economy. But you increase the price of energy. Okay. So what happens is that in any system that's hierarchical, and the left-wingers know this because it drives their whole philosophy. the left-wingers know this because it drives their whole philosophy,

in any hierarchical system, when you stress the system, the disproportionate amount of that stress falls on the people who are in the lower rungs because they're barely hanging on anyway. So, you know, you get a 1% increase in unemployment. You get a 5% increase in psychiatric hospitalizations. Well, why? It's because there's a bunch of people there who are right on the threshold of psychiatric hospitalization, and then they lose their job.

It's like, that's the end of that. And so even among birds, even among birds that don't live in strict hierarchy, so non-social birds, not ones that hang about in flocks like crows, the birds will move into an environment, any environment, and the more able, in some sense, healthier birds get the best nesting spots.

They're closest to the food. They're sheltered from rain and wind and all of that. So they're not psychophysiologically stressed. And so then when any kind of avian flu comes through, let's say, to challenge the bird population, the birds die from the bottom up. That's the old saying, when the aristocracy gets a cold, the working class dies of pneumonia. It's like, okay, so fine, increase energy costs. Well, what happens?

A bunch of poor people fall off the map, like a bunch of them. And the more you increase the energy costs, the more that happens. And so if the price we have to pay to move towards a sustainable environment is increased energy costs, the more that happens. And so if the price we have to pay to move towards a sustainable environment is increased energy costs, and it isn't, that's a policy decision, it doesn't have to be that way. The absolutely 100% inevitable consequence of that will be that you sacrifice the poor. Except the left, the real hardcore leftists, they want to implement socialism. And implementing socialism will solve a few of those problems. Yeah, well, that's part of the issue, is that the pro-environment stance

is contaminated by an anti-capitalist rhetoric. Now, the problem with the socialists, so let's take this apart a little bit. I mean, the socialists always point out something that's true. And Marx pointed this out. But it wasn't Marx's discovery. And he's like seriously wrong about it in an important way. So Marx observed that money tends to aggregate in the hands of fewer and fewer people. Okay, the first question is, is that true? And the answer is, not only is that true, it's so true that you can model the distribution of money in a population using equations derived from physics. Like it's really unbelievably true. But then Marx said, that's capitalism. That is not true. And it's actually an underestimation of the problem,

because if the problem of inequality, which is an actual problem, was as simple as, let's change capitalism, well, yeah, let's change capitalism. Unfortunately, the problem is so deep that changing capitalism won't change the problem at all. And in fact, in most of the places where it's being attempted, especially the more radical forms of communism, let's say, rather than socialism, because we can distinguish the two and should, it's important to do so. In countries that became communist, it wasn't like a small percentage of the people still didn't own all the resources. It's just that there were hardly any resources and almost everyone had nothing. was still a tiny a fraction of people who were the privileged elite and so you know if you play

monopoly what happens when you play monopoly everybody starts out equal and one yeah exactly and so you can you can actually model this problem with something as simple as a monopoly game that's actually a fairly good model of how money distributes itself in the environment. And you can blame that on capitalism, but you can get the same, you can get exactly the same result if you have people trade because they flip a dice. So if you took 100 people,

let's say you give 100 people $10 each, and then they had to trade with each other. If I, you flip a coin and I flip a coin, and if it's, we flip a coin, if it's heads, you get a dollar. And so that's your game. Heads gives you a dollar. If you play that out till it concludes, what happens is some people lose, let's say 10, they have $10. They lose 10 times in a row.

Well, then what happens? At zero. Well, they can't trade anymore. So what happens is people lose at different rates. But if you lose enough, even if So what happens is that people lose at different rates, but if you lose enough, even if it takes you a hundred trades to lose all your money, as soon as you hit zero, you're done. If you play that out to its conclusion, even though it's random, completely random, the trading, one person ends up with all the money and everyone else ends up with zero. And so I'm a member of a native Canadian family, West Coast Indian family,

native family. And this particular culture had a tradition, the potlatch. And they had the same problem in their culture. And the problem was that some of the big chiefs over some period of time would end up with like all the stuff, all of it. And that wasn't good because, well, for obvious reasons, you know, it would destabilize the society. That's, in some sense, the least of the problems. And so they evolved this mechanism.

They'd have these big celebrations that rich people would put on where status was determined by how much of that wealth you would give away. Right, right. And that was the potlatch. Yeah, yeah, they had to do it. Well, that's philanthropy, right? People really looked very highly upon very wealthy people that engaged in a lot of philanthropy. Yeah, well, and I haven't, this might be a biased sample, but I don't think so. And if it is, it's biased towards entrepreneur conservative types who you would think in the parody sense would be the least likely to do this. I haven't met anyone who has a vast fortune whose primary concern is, isn't, what the hell can I do with all this money that's beneficial as fast as possible? They're not

sitting around thinking, I need another super yacht. Now, look, there's going to be people like that, you know, but I haven't met any of them. Have you met Jeff Bezos? No, I haven't. I haven't met Bezos. I bet he's got a couple of super yachts. I'm sure he does.

I'm sure he does. But like, I'm pretty happy about the fact that he's building rocket ships and that actually takes a lot of capital. Yeah. You know, and the other thing that, there's a couple of other things about capitalism that are worth thinking about.

One is, all the evidence suggests that relatively free markets are the best way to make the absolutely poor richer. That's not an inequality issue. It's just that while they're not starving, and that's something, we've lifted more people out of poverty in the last 15 years

than in the entire course of human history. Can I pause you for a second there? Yeah. Oh, one point that's something. We've lifted more people out of poverty in the last 15 years than in the entire course of human history. Can I pause you for a second there? Oh, one point that I forgot. I've read this the other day that where Karl Marx is buried, they have to charge money because they have to maintain it. Uh-huh. Very funny. And they need money to maintain it, which is, make sure that's true. Yeah, yeah.

Because it's hilarious. I read that and it was like a meme. And I was like, is that real? Because it is kind of funny. My daughter once was like a meme. And I was like, is that real? My daughter once- Because it is kind of funny. My daughter once bought me a 50% off Karl Marx doll, which I thought was just ridiculous. And she bought it for that reason. That's adorable.

She told me it's so funny. It was so funny. Now, capitalism. Yeah. Here's, when people start talking about capitalism and we talk about capitalism uplifting poor people, And we talk about capitalism uplifting poor people. One of the issues that a lot of people have in this country is when you ship jobs overseas and you ship companies start manufacturing things overseas for essentially pennies on the dollar. Yeah.

I mean, this is like, it's one of the great contradictions to the progressives in America that they complain about capitalism on a fucking iPhone. Because if you knew where that iPhone was, if you went down to the factory where that iPhone was manufactured, you'd be heartbroken. If you went further to where the minerals are dug out of the ground in the Congo, you'd be devastated. That's the reality of capitalism. That's the reality of sending jobs overseas. The cure to that is a more even distribution of wealth within the company,

meaning that the company would have to, and I'm not picking on Apple like any company, name them, they would have to pay the people that work there a decent living wage with great benefits and health insurance and dental and all the stuff that people want need in order to feel secure and safe Give them a great working environment Don't overwork them and now how much money do you have because the amount of money that Apple has put aside and? Obviously I'm an Apple fan. I have an Apple phone right here. I'm not picking on Apple But they are one of the richest companies that's ever existed on the face of planet Earth But how are they doing that?

One of the ways they're doing that is by paying people very little to make their products that they sell for a giant amount of money so what what's the solution to that well it's the solution to pay people a fair amount and if you do that is the solution to pay people a fair amount in another country or is the solution to pay people a fair amount here where we can regulate it because we do manufacture some things here but we manufacture way less than we used to because it costs too much money to do so. But that word too much or that phrase too much is bullshit. It's not that it costs too much, it's just that it costs more and they don't want to

pay it. They would rather just reap in profits and the way they do that is on the backs of poor people. Now if you do that on the backs of poor people- We can take that apart a bit. Right. But here's my question. If you really wanted to make these other countries, like third world countries, and raise them

up and really increase the economy, what you would do is pay people in third world countries where you have these plants the same amount that you would have to pay them in America. Then you'd have a complete change in those environments. Okay. So we can take that apart a bunch of ways. I mean, part of the advantage to manufacturing things where wages are relatively low is you give those countries a competitive advantage. So part of the reason that there aren't millions of people starving in China is because even

the Chinese communists woke up enough to realize that if they opened up their economies, that free market is nothing different than allowing unrestricted choice among consumers in some sense. So when we're talking about the free market, we should be careful about what we're talking about. It's like you get to have choice about what you buy. That's the central spirit of free market capitalism. Exporting those jobs stopped the Chinese, a huge proportion of the Chinese, from living in absolute privation and likely decreased the probability of like a broad scale war. And it also brought the Chinese into the economy, which is a big deal. The Chinese produce more engineers every year than

Americans have engineers. And so now we've unlocked an unbelievable amount of brainpower, and that's produced an insane technological revolution. Now, I think it's unfortunate that a lot of that was done on the backs of the American working class. And I think that the Democrats abandoning the working class when they were in that state of privation was a catastrophe of public policy, and also part of the reason why Trump got elected. But it isn't obvious to me that exporting those jobs was a bad long-term decision. Because, well, you want a world where 20 million Chinese are starving? That's not good by any measure, right? But is that the only way that they don't starve? The only way they don't starve is if iPhones are manufactured there for pennies on the dollar?

Yes. Really? Well, no other solutions ever worked. But that doesn't mean they can't work. Yeah, it might. If they work in America, it might? Really? Well, I don't know, Joe, because either...

Look, that's a good question, you know, but for me, the problem with utopian theories is that they're hypothetical. So I like to look at what's actually worked. And what's clearly worked is the introduction of free market principles into poor countries. So, for example, Africa has the fastest growing economies in the world, particularly sub-Saharan Africa.

That's really something. And some of those countries are really getting on a reasonably solid footing. And most of that's happened, almost all that's happened since the Berlin Wall fell. And part of the reason for that is that that continent isn't being riven by a terrible conflict between the communists and the capitalists. And most of the reason the eradication of that conflict has been beneficial is because they're not doing unbelievably stupid and counterproductive things at the policy level. They're letting markets flourish to at least a limited degree. And's making that's people aren't you know

there's i talked to some people i was in washington for a week last week and i talked to some people who are working with uh un committee that's prime goal is the eradication of part of of hunger well there isn't any hunger in the world anymore that isn't caused by political conflict. Everyone has enough to eat. In fact, it's so interesting that one of the emerging problems, especially among the poor all over the world, is that they have too much to eat. And so we're seeing diseases of affluence replace diseases of privation. And you think, isn't that too bad? western diets and you know fair enough but you want to be fat or dead and fat's better and fat isn't optimal let's say but it beats the hell out of dead how many people starve to death now in the world yeah almost none and let's look

that almost all almost all those who do do it because of political conflict. Like it's purposeful starvation now. So someone has put a blockade on ships and goods. Yeah, to starve them. To starve them. Right, as a political weapon. When you're saying, when you're talking about the prosperous areas that have prospered because they brought in the market, and these companies have shipped these jobs over to these places and allowed these people to flourish. The flip side is Detroit.

Right. Detroit was one of the wealthiest cities in this country and hence one of the wealthiest cities in the world just a few decades ago. It wasn't that long ago. When they were in the height of their manufacturing, all the American automobiles were made in Detroit. Cadillacs and Chevys and Fords. And that was where everybody worked.

And then it was also where the union auto workers had established a strong foothold and they made good money. The people got paid a great wage and everyone who worked in those places, they had a good lifestyle. Well, Henry Ford did what you said that capitalists should do. I mean, when Ford was pressed on how much he paid his workers, because he paid them a lot, he said, I want to pay them enough so that they can afford a car. And so he ramped up wages dramatically. And that was partly part of his, you could say, self-interested vision,

although I think that's an oversimplification. It's like, well, if we want to sellested vision, although I think that's an oversimplification. It's like, well, if we want to sell our product, why don't we expand the consumer market? Well, those people have to have some money. That was Ford's notion. When I was a kid, I had friends that had done gigs in Detroit when I was just starting out doing standup. And they were like, whatever you do, don't go to Detroit with a fucking Japanese car because they will fuck your car up. I go, really? They go, yeah, these guys are autoworkers. Like they don't want to see foreign cars that they don't make in their city. It's a proud city that makes American cars.

So like there was a thing. Yeah, well, they were responding to a real threat. You were talking about old cars with me earlier. So one of my friends in the little town I grew up in, this was back in the mid-70s, had a Dodge Colt. And it was one of the first Japanese cars. And that thing was a real piece of junk in a sea of pieces of junk because cars in the mid-70s, they were not good.

They fell apart. They rusted fast, but nothing rusted faster than a Japanese car in Canada. Those bloody things, you could put them outside in the winter when there was salt in the road and watch them dissolve. But what was very interesting about that, I saw this with the Chinese too, because in Alberta, I went to Edmonton, I think this would be 1975 about,

it was the first Chinese trade fair in Canada. So they had Chinese manufactured implements at this display. It was really interesting because it was like walking back into 1945 or 1950. We looked at all these things and we thought, oh, that looks like exactly like what grandpa was using on the farm, you know, 40 years ago. So with the Japanese, it's like their cars were junk to begin with. Yeah, to begin with. And then they got to be Toyota. Yeah. And just think what Toyota did. You talked about how good cars are now. Well, the net consequence of opening up that competition was the Japanese got their act together.

I mean, in the 80s, particularly, Japan got so powerful that everyone thought it would be the dominant world economy for like 10 years. And they just went from nothing after World War II to like superstars in 40 years. And it's really hard to see how that wasn't everyone's benefit. Now, to your point, when you open up competition internationally, especially in manufacturing, you pose a tremendous threat to the current working class in your country, a tremendous immediate threat. It might be a long-term benefit because it stabilizes international relations between countries that might otherwise go to war, in which case it would be working class people

that would be being slaughtered like mad. But it's no doubt that, to me, there's almost no doubt that the freeing of trade worldwide and the benefits that that produced were paid for disproportionately by the American working class. And it also raises another really complicated problem, which is when your economy switches to information and services, which is more complex cognitively, to deliver, what do you do with people who would have been really good at working-class jobs but aren't going to be good in a knowledge

economy and the answer is we don't know which is not a very good answer and the idea that we could just somehow give them money you can't solve people's problems by giving I had a client who had a cocaine problem and he was he was rather intellectually limited this client and would have agreed with that assessment by the way i'm not being rude adorable statement well i'm gonna use that i've dealt with i've dealt with many people in my life who who who were they weren't going to university right they probably weren't going through high school and it isn't because they didn't work hard. Sometimes that was why. But it was because, no, they couldn't do that. They couldn't do it. And so they struggled, man. And this guy in particular, it was so interesting

because he wasn't doing too bad when he had almost no money. But he got a disability check because he'd been hurt at work. And every time he had a disability check because he'd been hurt at work. And every time he had a disability check, he was gone for three days on a cocaine and alcohol binge. And he'd just drink up all his money. Then he'd end up in a ditch somewhere, like really 80% dead. And then eventually dead because eventually it was that kind of behavior that killed him. But more money, he would have just died sooner. You need to be able to handle money. It's a tremendously destabilizing technology.

Okay, now about that man. Do you believe that that was a genetic situation or was that a situation of nurture? It was the way he was raised? Is it the environment that he grew up in? Oh, it was a couple of things. I mean, he really liked alcohol and there's a huge biological contributor to that. Some people, i worked with a researcher in montreal who had a monkey farm on saint kit's green monkeys and uh he was interested

in studying alcoholism and he would capture monkeys in the wild and bring them to his compound and then allow them to access a pretty sweetened mixture of rum and water. Well, they use something else other than water. And most of the monkeys could take it or leave it. 5% of them would drink themselves into a coma on first exposure. And he has videotapes of this. It was like watching Frat House, you know, on Saturday night. So it's really, it's comical. Drunk monkeys are actually pretty funny, as you might imagine.

But 5% of them would drink themselves to coma on first exposure. And those are the monkeys that would become alcohol dependent if you gave them unlimited access. Right. But you know the problem with those monkey studies, right? Those monkey studies is the same as rat farm studies. When they've done studies on rats, they've done studies with rats in cages. Yeah, these were monkeys in natural environments. Natural environments, how so?

Yeah, we knew about that. Well, they were housed in colonies. Housed in colonies. How large are these colonies and what kind of land are they on? Well, okay, let's separate this. It's very hard to get rats addicted to cocaine if they live in a natural environment. If you put them in a cage and bore them to death... Let's explain that to people we're talking about because there are studies that were done where initially people thought that cocaine was so addictive that if you gave it to rats they would just take the cocaine until they died right and they would even if they

wouldn't even engage in sex but then they realized that if you take these rats that we were doing this you taking these rats these highly stressed out environments you're putting them in cages. Nothing's natural. And if you take these rats and you put them in a far larger environment with trees and everything that a rat normally has. Like other rats, for example. Yeah, like real normal. Like a normal rat environment.

And then you give them cocaine. They're not interested. Yeah. They're only interested in it if you stress them out by putting them in cages. Now, is that the same with these monkeys? If you imagine the natural rat environment there. Yes. Okay, so now you have your rats in the natural environment.

Now, imagine you gave them access to cocaine and you stressed them. So what would happen is a certain percentage of the rats would start using cocaine in proportion to the amount of stress. Like if you let a bunch of cats loose. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And maybe in that case, maybe they'd prefer alcohol or benzodiazepines because that would specifically alleviate anxiety. And so it is the case.

And this was brilliant research showing that, see, a lab rat is not, a lab rat's actually a pretty good model of a human being for reasons we can go into later. But an isolated lab rat who's been genetically bred is not that much like an actual rat and when skinner did all his studies on lab rats not only were they isolated which rats never are in the in the real world because they're communal and social they play they laugh they wrestle yeah they have very complex social environments they're not that interested in artificial forms of psychomotor stimulation if they're in a natural environment but some of them will still be more interested than others there's still that variability that's

lurking in the background and with these monkeys most of them wouldn't take alcohol repeatedly but a small percentage of them would and And you see very much the same. And all I'm saying, I'm not saying anything revolutionary here. I'm saying, for example, if you experiment with 20 different drugs, you'll probably find the one for you, right? And people react differently to pharmacological substances. And a huge part of the variation in that reactivity is genetically determined or genetically influenced. So that's not a surprise. It's not much more surprising than saying some people are born more anxious than other people. Can I bring you back to this though? What kind of an environment were those monkeys in? Are they in a cage? They were in a cage, but it was a large cage.

How big is the large? The cage wasn't stressing them. How big is the large? Oh, these cages would have been... See, the monkeys actually didn't mind being in the cage. How do we know this? Do we talk to the monkeys? Oh, you can tell because they won't run out of it if you open the door. Like, there is ways of... So, you say, what does a rat want?

Well, how do you know what a rat wants? It's like, that's easy. What will he work to obtain? And so, rats, we know what a rat wants? It's like, that's easy. What will he work to obtain? And so rats, we know what that rats like play. It's like, how do you know rats like play? Well, you put rats, put two rats in a little arena where they can wrestle. And then the next time that they know they can go into the arena, so maybe do it a couple of times so they learn that,

then you can make them press a bar to open the door to get into the arena. So maybe do it a couple of times so they learn that. Then you can make them press a bar to open the door to get into the arena. Well, then you measure how many times they'll press the bar and how fast they'll press it. And then you can derive insight, direct insight into how motivated they are, because motivation is directly proportionate to the willingness to expand energy, logically enough. And so, and you can do the same thing with drugs. How hard will the animal work to obtain a given pharmacological substance is an indication of how rewarding that drug is to them. Those studies have been done unbelievably carefully, and we know that there's tremendous variation. So, but, so you can have your cake and eat it too. You can say, look, under most normal and natural conditions, it's not that easy to addict animals to an addictive substance, but there's still a percentage of them that are more susceptible to that than

others. And even in highly stressed human environments, not everybody becomes a cocaine addict or an alcoholic. And then you might say, well, why do some people become cocaine addicts and some people become alcoholic? And some of it is availability, but some of it is, well, they like alcohol better or they like cocaine better other people can take it or leave it and so when you say because you asked me is it nature or nurture right right and that's that's where this argument stemmed from but i was talking also about his limited intelligence um that seems to be completely independent of susceptibility to drug addiction right but do think that, you were talking about him being intellectually limited.

Yes. Do you think that that intellectual limitation... Made his life harder. Is it genetic? Yes. Yeah. Yes, it's not only genetic. Mostly because you can really impair people by putting them in situations of deprivation.

And so one of the things that's happened over the last century is the mean IQ has gone up seven points per generation, which is a lot, like it's really a lot. So 15 point IQ difference is the average difference between the typical high school graduate and the typical college graduate. So 15 points is four years of university, roughly speaking. Seven points in a generation is half the difference between a high school student and a college graduate. And it's gone up seven points a generation every 15 years. It's a lot. And so is intelligence mutable? Well, there's some evidence that it is. Why did it happen? Well, partly because there are far few extremely deprived people.

Even on the information front, some of this was the introduction of television. You know, you hear, television makes people stupider. It's like, no, it makes smart people who could have been even smarter if they would have read Shakespeare stupider than they would have been if they read Shakespeare if they're watching TV. But if you're a deprived kid and sitting in the crib with no one paying attention to you for like three years, TV is way better than that. And so if you give people access to information and access to enough food, let's say, you pull up the bottom end of the cognitive distribution tremendously. And a lot of that, a tremendous

amount of that has happened all over the world in the last hundred years. And that's a great deal for everyone because, well, that's that much more brainpower that's available for everyone to benefit from. Like it's unbelievably valuable. And you can see the cascade in that part of our technological transformation. It's so incredibly fast. It's like, well, the Chinese are producing as many engineers every year as the Americans have engineers. It's no wonder that things are accelerating at such a rate. Now, they don't innovate at the same rate as the U.S. innovates, but they're not doing too bad. And soon, you know, depending on how much they continue to flirt with totalitarianism, just think of all that billion people, all that creativity unleashed. Man, all that intelligence unleashed.

So that is the dance over there, right? The totalitarianism versus innovation, versus giving people the freedom and also removing the fear of that totalitarian government so they have the ability to take risks. No, it's the dance here too, right? In some sense, it's the eternal dance. It's the eternal dance. It's the part of the eternal dance between freedom and structure even. And that's a tough one because there's no freedom without structure. Like I used to play a game with my students

when we were talking about Jean Piaget, who was very interested in the development of morality through games. So I say to them, so we're talking about freedom. It's like, okay, freedom. It's a freedom from constraint is freedom. All right, fine. Let's play a game. You want to play this game? Sure. Okay. You move first. What do you mean? That's the game. You can do anything you want. You move first. You think that's not much of a game. It's like, no, it's, it's a complete, it's the perfect game. You're absolutely free to do anything you want. Okay. Well, everybody does what you did. You just sit there. The right amount of rules for freedom is not zero. Say now I put a chessboard in front of you, you think, oh my God, all the limitations. I can't throw a

basketball on the chessboard, which you certainly can't, not if you're playing chess. But now, you move first, I move the pawn two spaces forward. I see what you're saying. So having some structure and some rules to follow gives people more of a path to go out. To everything. Yeah, yeah. And so, and I think this is modeled by music. This is really worth knowing. This, like, almost took the top of my head off

when I realized it. And it took me about four months of thinking to figure this out. Because when I was in graduate school at McGill, I was really interested, I became really interested in the reality of evil, and I was very interested in the viability of nihilistic beliefs.

You know, why bother if everything's going to disappear in a hundred years? Who cares? Life, you know, it's meaningless. In the final analysis, life is meaningless. Right. Okay, well, you know, you can make a credible case for that. Now, it's an upsetting case.

Because once you accept that, first of all, you're anxious and hurt by it. So that's not so good. And second, it kind of makes you aimless. And that's part of nihilism. It's like, you know, you're anxious and upset, but you're also aimless. Because why bother? And fair enough, but you can make a credible case for it. But then I thought, well, when that gets out of hand, maybe you're nihilistic because you're mortal and life ends in death. So you're sort of nihilistic because of suffering. And so then you

become nihilistic as a logical response to that. And then what happens? And then what you see is that nihilistic people definitely make suffering worse. Definitely. They make it worse for themselves, for sure. But then they get bitter because their lives are so unbearable. And then they start to take it out on other people. So you are nihilistic that's not neutral it gets bad real fast so then i thought well what are are there any antidotes to meaninglessness and rational antidotes are hard to come by because you can just say well who cares if in a thousand years we're all going to be dead what why get out of bed in the morning you can't really make mount a rational case why that's not reasonable. Now, I'm not saying it is reasonable, but I thought about music. Music

is a very strange art form. I had a great journalist friend of mine, he said to me the other day, he said, all art aspires to the condition of music, which I thought was great. But music, it's, you think about the revitalizing effect music continues to have condition of music, which I thought was great. But music, you think about the revitalizing effect music continues to have in our culture, especially among young people, and that's really, really been the case since the beginning of the 60s. It's like, we got more nihilistic and less religious and all of that as our culture became more secular and more rational, more materialistic. And at the same time, the power of music as a cultural phenomenon just grew and grew and grew and grew.

Music gives you the intimation of meaning directly. So I used to watch punk rockers. I went to a Ramones concert once, which was really fun. We were up in the second floor of this theater in Montreal, and the Ramones were playing on stage like 100 feet away with their huge, not their studio, stadium equipment. It was so loud in there. Like I had to listen to the whole concert with my ears plugged, and I was still like three quarters deaf for three days. And beneath us on the stage, sort of, in front of the stage, there was a flat place, and all these

punks were down there smashing into each other and doing this really rough dance. And I thought, this is so cool. We've got all these nihilistic punks in here, like half beating themselves up, dancing, and being taken in by this rough music that gave them, even in their aggressive nihilism, a sense of meaning. I thought that was so cool. So why does music do that? That's a good question, because people think of music

as a non-representational art. It doesn't represent anything. It's not like a drawing or a picture, or even dance, where you can act something out. It's non-representational. I don't agree with that. What do you mean by music being non-representational? Well, it's not a picture of anything. Right, but it represents the feeling of the person who puts out the lyrics. Yeah, true. The feeling of the person who composes the music. True.

It's got emotional content. That's fair enough because there's unhappy music and there's happy music. Yeah. Minor keys and major. Definitely, it plays on emotions for sure. But it doesn't represent anything like a picture represents it, let's say, or a sculpture. That's all I mean. Not that it's, I didn't say it was without content. I see what you're saying. We said representation.

Yeah. Well, you could say it represents emotions and fair enough, fair enough. But I was thinking more like a picture of an actual thing. Okay. So let's think about what music is. First of all, it's a pattern. So non-patterned music is noise. It's a pattern. But then it isn't one pattern. It's multiple patterns

layered on top of one another in a harmonious manner and in a manner that indicates, in some sense, communication between all the patterned layers, because they have to go together.

And so, what's the world? Well, the world's made of objects. No, it's not. It's made of patterns. So music is just like the world, because the world's made of patterns. And then music has layered patterns that are all moving together in a harmonious manner. And so what do you do when you hear that, especially if it's got a beat?

Well, then you move your body. And you want to, right? The music calls to you to move your body. So now you're moving your body in sync with the patterned layers of the world. That's meaning. And then there's more to it. So that's so cool. Music is an analog of the structure of existence itself

And it calls to you to take part in that and then so maybe you dance by yourself Or maybe even better you dance with someone else and so then you both bring your bodies into this patterned relationship with this multi-layer harmony together in a spontaneous way Indicating that you can both play and are therefore potentially trustworthy future mates. That's unbelievably cool. And birds dance. It's not just human beings, you know. So this is a deep thing. And then music does something else too. It puts you on the border between chaos and order, because a boring song does exactly what you expect it to do and gets dull very quickly and an unlistenable song is so random you can't follow it and so what you want is predictability

with a leaven of unpredictability and then that puts you right on the edge that's the zone of proximal development Vygygotsky discovered that. Like a Hendrix song. Yeah, like Hendrix song. Well any great music does that. But I mean, Hendrix has so much creativity inside the structure of the song. These riffs that he'll do. Right, right, right. And everyone loves it. Oh man, I went to this bar in Nashville. This band was playing Kelly's Heroes, a great guitarist, the best guitarist I've ever seen. And they were playing old country music with a heavy blues rock twist. So they do this great version of Ghost Riders in the Sky. It's 15 minutes long.

And this brilliant guitarist just goes way out on a limb. And everybody in the crowd, it was so fun to be there. They're just thrilled to death because they're watching this man doing the same thing that surfers do. He's like dancing on the edge of chaos and order in this virtuosic manner. And everyone is so taken by that that it just lifts them out of the normality of their existence. You know, you see this joy just transfuse them.

And that's because they got an intimation of genuine meaning. And it's not amenable to rational criticism, which is the thing that I thought that struck me as so miraculous about music and why it has this element of salvation. It's like it puts you directly in touch with the meaning that sustains you in life, directly. And it shows you what that would be,

which is something like to observe the harmonious interplay of the patterns of being stacked on top of one another and then to bring yourself into alignment with that which is what yogis strive to do and what disciplined athletes strive to do and what we celebrate in athletics and it's all a reflection of the same thing and that's real it's real that meaning it's real also in what it imparts on other people it's not just it's it doesn't exist in a vacuum like even though people can play beautiful music when no one's around it's not the same as playing beautiful music in front of people because there's a thing

that happens when people interact with that music well Well, you see that. If you get lucky, you go to a music. I went to a Leonard Cohen concert, one of the ones he put on when he went on tour when he was old. He lost all his money when he was in a Buddhist monastery. Dangers of being in a Buddhist monastery, by the way. Did he really? Yes, his manager, Shanghai. Yeah, so he had to go back on tour, which turned out to be a great thing because he made way more money on that tour than he did, I think, in his whole life. Did he get a new manager?

Yeah, it was an old friend of his as well. It was really a catastrophe. But he got better and better as he got old, kind of like Johnny Cash, you know, because Cash got damn near transcendent just before he died. He put out some songs like The Man Comes Around that are just unbelievable. He wrote a book on St. Paul, by the way. He did? Yes, yes, he did. On St. Paul?

Yes, yes, yes. Yeah, yeah, so that's pretty interesting. So Cohen, when he came onto the stage, everybody gave him a standing ovation, and then he played his sets, and it was like a religious experience, you know? Well, it was. It was a religious experience in the most fundamental sense,

and everybody in the audience was there in the same place at the same time, doing the same thing with him. And you know what that's like when you go to a great... Well, that can happen too. I'm sure it happens to you at your comedy shows. When the whole audience is united and the stories are unrolling and everyone's focused on it, it's not exactly the same thing, but... It's similar. There's a hive mind.

Well, it's also, the good comedians are right, they're like musicians. They're right on the border between order and chaos, because the place of maximal funny is when you're just about pushing it too far. Right? You think, oh, do I have to say this? You know, do I have to say this? Like, yeah, you have to say this. Okay, I'm going to say it. And everyone cracks up and they crack up, you know,

and it blows apart their sterile preconceptions. That's part of cracking up, you know, when you laugh. And it's so cool because it's the antidote to their totalitarianism comedy and that's why you can tell anybody who goes after a comedian it's like oh yeah i know who you are you're the king who can't stand the fool that's the tyrant so you reveal yourself same as people who go after musicians or dancers well i think people are going after comedy for a different thing today because they're going after comedy for a different thing today. Because they're going after comedy for a literal representation of what the words mean, if you put them in print. And that's nonsense.

Yeah. That's not what a comedian is doing. Yeah, well, they're doing that. They're doing that because there are some things they believe that can't be made fun of. Yeah, but really what they're doing is just looking for targets. They're playing a game. The rules of the game have been established. Comedy violates the rules of the game.

Yeah, what are the rules? Because comedy take those things. Well, there's a lot of things you can't joke about. You can't joke about. Sacred things. Yeah, there's protected classes now. We all know who they are. We don't even have to bring them up.

Whether it's trans people, gay people, people of color, Asian people, whatever those things are. One thing you can mock relentlessly is white people, specifically white males. Well, they are pretty funny, you know. Sure, we're ridiculous. But there's a funny pejorative that people will say about a group of folks. They're primarily white males. That's a pejorative.

It's my audience. That's what everyone says. Oh, you're talking to those those young angry young white males but isn't that funny that that is that that means something negative that's not funny but it's horrible but it's a horrible generalization because you're taking an enormous group of people and you're looking at their ethnic background and their gender and then you're dismissing them. Well, for a while, you know, because people kept coming and telling me that, you know, your audience is only angry white, young white men. I thought, I kind of approached that wrong to begin with.

I mean, I knew my audience was primarily male, as I suspect yours still is. But then I looked at the YouTube stats, and 70% of people who listened to YouTube were males. So the fact that 70% of my audience was male was not an anomaly. It was just a consequence of the technology. What do you think that is? Why are 70% of the people that watch YouTube male? Does that make any sense? Women are more interested in fiction than nonfiction and men are opposite to that. So if you look at book buying preferences, for example,

women tilt towards fiction and men tilt towards nonfiction. And if you want to know why that is, it's because the most reliable difference that psychologists have ever found between men and women, the biggest difference, is interest. So women are reliably more interested in people and men are reliably more interested in people, and men are reliably more interested in things. Now, there's still overlap. It's one standard deviation, which is a big difference. But that isn't to say no women are interested in things, because some are, and no men are

interested in people, because some are. Like, I'm a man who's more interested in people than things. That's why I'm a psychologist. You more interested in people than things. That's why I'm a psychologist. You know, I actually have a relatively feminine personality structure because I'm pretty high in negative emotion and I'm pretty high in agreeableness. And that's the typical feminine structure. And that's an interesting discussion to have too, because, you know, we have this idea in our culture that you can be a woman born in a man's body. And that's not true. that you can be a woman born in a man's body. And that's not true.

But you can definitely be a man with a feminine personality structure. Like 10% of men are as feminine in their personality as the average woman is. And vice versa, 10% of women are as masculine in their personality as the average man is. Now you can move those boundaries around and say, well, it's 5% and 40 or something. It doesn't matter. But the point is there's plenty of men who are as feminine in their personality as the average woman. That doesn't mean they're in the wrong body. It just means that men and women are more alike than different,

even though they are different, and that there's huge range within both genders. And we need to know this. So what do you think is happening with trans people then? Well, there's a lot of different kinds of trans people. Okay, trans men, or excuse me, trans women, men to female. Well, then I would say it depends on what period of time you're asking that question about. Right now, if you look at teenagers, for example, who want to switch genders, 95% of them are unbearably confused. That's what's causing that.

And I think there's other reasons, too. I think this is a conjecture. When the trans teenagers came after me when I opposed Bill C-16 in Canada on compelled speech grounds, I spent quite a bit of time watching them. I already kind of knew about that fluid identity crowd. So when I was at Harvard, piercing and tattooing started to become a cultural rage. And I was interested in, well, who's doing this? Because I knew it was a practice that was limited to criminal subtypes and outcasts for a long time so for example if you worked in the circus you were likely to be tattooed you know and you toured around the circus and that was a kind of carny life and it was an

outsider life and if you were a prisoner same thing but then all of a sudden it started to make its inroads into the popular culture so we studied a group of early adopters of tattooing and piercing from the perspective of personality. Like, who are these people? And they were all highly creative people. And creativity is a trait. And all people who aren't creative, that's wrong. In fact, most people aren't creative at all.

And I can explain that later, but they're not. We developed a scale called the Creative Achievement Questionnaire, which assesses lifetime contribution to 13 different creative domains. And that your scores would range from zero, I have no training or talent in this area, to I think it was eight. in this area to, I think it was eight, I'm an internationally recognized expert in this area. Right. And so 70% of people, if you sum their scores across all 13 domains, scored zero. And I ask audiences like, how many portraits have you painted? Zero. How many songs have you composed? Zero. How many plays have you written? Zero. How many recipes have you composed zero how many plays have you written zero how many recipes have you let me stop you so the tattooed types are high they were high in creativity okay and a lot

of these people who are fluid in their identity are actually high in trade openness and they do have fluid identities and some of them are feminine men and masculine women. So yeah, but that doesn't mean that surgery is the cure for that. That does not mean that. Not at all. Well, what do you think it means when someone is so attracted to the idea that they were born in the wrong body? It means so much. They're so compelled that they're willing to go through surgery change

God it means all sorts of things I knew a kid in Toronto who was on the autistic spectrum and a lot of the people who were manifesting serious issues with gender identity or on the autistic spectrum. This is like Abigail Schreier's work and yeah Rapid onset gender dysphoria amongst women. Yeah. well, that's a different thing, the rapid-onset. That's more like... So part of the reason I objected to Bill Seesaw's 16 to begin with was because I knew full well as a clinician that as soon as we messed with fundamental sex categories and changed the terminology,

we would fatally confuse thousands of young girls. I knew that because I knew the literature on psychological contagion. And it stretches back like 500 years, that literature, 300 years. It's all outlined in a book by Henri Ellenberger called History of... History of... What's the name of the book? History of Psychoanalytic Ideas. It doesn't matter. It's Henri Ellenberger, and it's his main work, if you want to look it up. And so psychological contagions are very common.

And so one of them, for example, was the satanic ritual abuse accusations that emerged in daycares in the 1980s. And that was a consequence of women going into the workforce en masse, leaving their children with strangers and starting to have pathological fantasies about it, especially if they were borderline schizophrenic. And those fantasies propagated into the population. So what does this have to do with creativity? You were talking about creativity and people that are... Well, okay, so you see people with blue hair, the blue-haired crowd. Well, they're the same people that were doing tattooing and piercing, and they often are literally the same people because they have piercings.

It's like, well, they have mutable identities. They're not stable in their identities. They're creative. Creative people, by definition, aren't stable in their identities. That's their, they're creative. Creative people by definition aren't stable in their identities. That's what makes them creative. Now the downside of that is you can, creativity is a high risk, high return strategy. Your new idea is probably stupid and wrong and maybe it's fatal. But now and then, it's unbelievably successful. And also, now and then, our culture would die without it.

So we always have this problem, because we have to maintain stability, because otherwise everything degenerates into chaos. But mere stability won't work, because the future is different from the past. Like, technically different different in a non-deterministic way it's actually different and so then we have to figure out how do we modify our memories

or our traditions at a rate that enables us to keep up with the culture and the answer to this is in part we let creative people play multiple games on the fringe and some of them are radically successful and then we copy them so you think that a lot of what's going on with people that want to change their gender identity is creativity no i don't think so so what do you i know so you know so yeah that's not all of it but that's definitely part of it but there are

for sure a lot of people that transition, and there has been work on this that shows that if they didn't transition, they wanted to transition at one point in time, and then they eventually wound up becoming gay men. Yeah, that's definitely the case. Males to females, right? Yeah, well, it's confusing. Look, I mean, I also think, by the way, that part of what we're seeing in late adolescence with this insistence on the primacy of felt identity is the re-emergence of suppressed fantasy play that should have taken place at between, say, three and five, that's been suppressed by the imposition of technological artifacts like television and phones

and by the absence of free play among children who are hyper-supervised. So the fantasy play is imperative to develop your identity by trying out a bunch of different patterns of behavior and ways to be. Yes, so when my son was about two, his sister was about three and had a little gaggle of friends. And they used to dress him up like a fairy princess. And this didn't happen for like years. It happened for a couple of weeks, you know.

And he was playing along. And I went down there. And I'm a northern Albertan, you know. And so the gender roles there were fairly finely defined. And I was watching this. I thought, is it really a good thing that he's like got wings on a little fairy hat and a wand and a dress is like is that

okay and I talked to Tammy about it I said the girls are dressing Julian up like a princess and it kind of I have qualms about it but I'm not sure what to do because he was having a good time and he was playing with the girls. What qualms would you possibly have about that?

Because from my personal experience of having daughters, they think it's funny to put me in a dress. It is funny. Yeah, well, there was a dress that my wife was throwing out and my daughters made me put it on. They forced me to and they took pictures of me yeah i bet they thought it was hilarious yeah yeah my wife my my daughter decorated me up like a woman one day in her makeup class right so what's wrong with that nothing right well that's just fun no well that's it that's what i concluded you know i

thought well why would you worry about anything else other than it being fun? Well, probably because I had, why was I worried about it? I suppose because I hope that his pathway towards adulthood would be. Normal? Yeah, sure, sure. Normal biological male progression to. Yeah, yeah. And so I saw this plague but then i thought i only had qualms for like about two hours i went and thought about it i thought okay what's going on

here well he's playing with the girls okay should he play with girls yes definitely he should play with girls absolutely adult males should play with women, we should be able to play with people of the opposite sex. Like, so he's learning to play with the girls. Good. Is he enjoying it? Yes. Are they bullying him? No.

Are the girls enjoying it? Yes. That's all good. Okay, so what does it mean he's playing at being a girl? Oh, he's trying to understand what it means to be a girl. Well, how do you understand that when you're three, or maybe when you're 50? You play at it, which means you allow that pattern of being to inhabit you, and you experiment with it. Now, a lot of older transgender types, the late onset types, they're playing. They just don't know it. Now,

there are often people who have a kind of a rigid identity, and part of their escape from that rigid identity is to develop some of the characteristics that are typical of the opposite sex. They need it. What is the term, there is a term for a man who derives a lot of sexual pleasure he's heterosexual but he derives autogynephilia yes that's it yeah but i think the sexual explain fully explain that yeah well i don't i don't think it does i think the reason they derive because the question is why do they derive sexual pleasure finish the sentence you're not finishing the sentence like explain what we're saying yeah well they they they derive sexual pleasure they would get turned on by seeing themselves in the clothes of women yes or feeling it yes but i think the re the sexual instinct is directing them towards personality

expansion i look at it in union terms so part of the process of personality expansion in the deep psychoanalytic sense is first you're a persona or first you're nothing then you develop a persona which is a way of presenting yourself in a socially acceptable way to the world and maybe you confuse yourself with your persona now you've had conversations with people on your podcast who are stiff and you can't get a dynamic conversation going that's because they're acting out their persona. You're not really talking to them. You're talking to an act that they've constructed.

It's a puppet. An act that they've constructed to make themselves socially acceptable to the world. And sometimes, maybe sometimes it's just anxiety. Yeah, sure. It can be anxiety too. But then often under anxious conditions, people will revert to their persona because it's a well-rehearsed set of routines and that they know is socially acceptable. Okay, so for the Jungians, the first step outside the persona was the shadow.

Carl Jung. Carl Jung, followers of Carl Jung or students of better terminology, was discovery of the shadow. Oh, I thought I was the good person here, but it turns out that I've got like some darkness. And you often see this with, imagine you have hyper-compassionate people who are dependent and they won't engage in conflict. So they're always oppressed. And so then when you talk to them, you find out they're really, really resentful and they have a lot of fantasies of revenge, like a lot. And so then you work with them and you think,

okay, you have something to say and do here. You've got some harsh words to say, maybe to your partner. You've got some things to say to your boss. You've got to spine up and say it. And that's part of incorporating that, especially aggression. So agreeable people, compassionate people don't like aggression. But that's like not liking sex.

It's dangerous. But it's necessary. And so you want to integrate it. And if you don't, it has its own life. You know, you see people all the time who, they're so nice. You can't even be in the same room with them. They're that nice. But they're resentful and passive-aggressive they take it out in all sorts of ways partly because they're always unhappy they're often moralistically judgmental

because they're not saying what they have to say they got to integrate that shadow so that was part of it and yet the shadow is consists of in part all the things about you that you've deemed morally unacceptable and failed to develop. And so a lot, sometimes that's aggression, often. Sometimes it's sexuality, often. And so it'll manifest itself in impulsive, aggressive sexuality, say, under conditions of alcohol intoxication when it leaks out. Aggressive, meaning like rough sex? Yeah, forced. Forced. Yeah, yeah, definitely. Forced. So you mean like rape?

Well, or it doesn't have to go all the way to rape. It can be like over-aggressive sexual compulsion in a dating situation. So does that account for certain men that like violence in their sex, like they like abuse in their sex? Yes. Because there's a subset of men that like to hit women during sex. And a lot of them turn out to be these like kind of male feminist types, which is really strange. No, it's not. But it's really strange on the outside. It's strange to those men, too, because it's often very unsettling for them to see, you know, in the cloud of their niceness and their harmlessness, this deep, dark desire making itself manifest.

Do you remember that case of that Canadian broadcaster who was this guy who was like, talks like this very calm and then a bunch of women came out that dated him said he beat the shit out of them and he would want to beat them up during sex like really beat them up punch them in the face yeah well you know it's an open question how much assertiveness there should be in sex and that but that's the answer zero no i'm not saying in the least that that's acceptable let me be absolutely clear here well i was just not acceptable at all assertiveness no it's not it's it's it's repressed it's repressed it's it's what's repressed there's no clearer way of saying it it's like look look men many men are terrified of women, many. And so that terror might manifest itself, even in a relationship, in the inability to ever let the partner know what they really want.

They're terrified for what reason? Because of rejection? Yeah. Yeah. And then the feelings of inadequacy that produces, often which are necessary. They're necessary. Right. I was trying to explain this to a friend once where we had a friend of ours who had developed what seemed to be like a real hate

for women and he wasn't an attractive guy. And so we're having this conversation and I said, imagine if all of your interactions with women hurt your feelings and you're not a very thoughtful and introspective person, you would immediately associate women with negative feelings and you're not a very thoughtful and introspective person, you would immediately associate women with negative feelings and you'd be angry about them. And that's what's happening to that guy. He got a bad roll of the dice in terms of his facial features and his genes. It just wasn't that good.

And so girls were not interested in him. So he had developed this anger. And it was shocking. Welcome to the human race. Well, that's incels, right? Yeah. Welcome to the human race. Shocking. Well, that's incels, right? Yeah. Yeah.

Well, it's not even incels. It's like, okay, so I'll finish one thought because we were talking about transsexualism. Yeah. So the second stage of development in the Jungian sense is the integration of countersexual possibilities. So I just watched Joachim Phoenix in Joker. And he's a very charismatic actor. And I was thinking, oh God, because he carried that whole movie on single-handedly. It's a dark, dark movie. And it has to do with resentment. This man who was forced to be nice by his mother, who turns out to be absolutely crazy and abused him like mad when he was a kid.

And then he becomes this role model for the dissemination of complete catastrophe into the entire society. It's a story of Cain in part. But Phoenix really carries that. And part of the reason that he does that is because he creates a compelling character who's sympathetic. Like, you can be sympathetic to him because he really did have a hard life, like really hard. But Phoenix is an extraordinarily charismatic person partly because he's so unbelievably he's masculine in his features and carved but he's so graceful every single thing he does in the entire movie is a dance like he's conscious of every single

movement he makes every turn of his head is conscious. It's dance-like, and you can't take your eyes off it. And a lot of stellar performers had that ability to integrate, male performers had that ability to integrate that feminine grace into their masculine character. You saw that with Bowie, David Bowie. You saw it with Mick Jagger. They're good examples. A lot of those 70s glam rockers were gender benders, long hair,

a lot of flashy outfits. And they did show, and they weren't exactly androgynous. That's not the right way to think about it. Is they manifested a higher order integration of masculine and feminine. And that made them charismatic. It's Prince. He's the best example of that. Prince, sure, sure, sure, sure. Yeah. Sure. And so that's high-order integration. And I would say that part of the compulsion between adult-onset transsexuality of the autogynephalic type is a consequence of the sexual instinct manifesting self as a guide to the integration of personality across the sex divide. I'm sure you're familiar with Douglas Murray's work. Yes, and Murray, who's very funny, who I like very much, and who's one of the most courageous people I've ever met.

Yeah, he's brilliant. And he had an amazing point about civilizations collapsing and that when they start collapsing, they become obsessed with gender. And he was saying that you could trace it back to the ancient Romans, the Greeks. Yeah, Camille Pellia has made much of that. I think probably it's not so much an obsession with gender, it's a disintegration of categories as a precursor. So it's a marker for if categories dissolve, especially fundamental ones, the culture is dissolving because the culture is a structure of category.

That's what it is. Right. So, in fact, culture is a structure of category that we all share. So, we see things the same way. Well, that's why we can talk. I mean, not exactly the same way because then we'd have nothing to talk about. But roughly speaking, we have a bedrock of agreement. That's the Bible, by the way.

So I just walked through the Museum of the Bible in Washington. That was very cool. It's a very cool museum. So the structure, that's what the Bible provides. Yeah, that's what I figured out. I just figured this out this week. So the structure, that's what the Bible provides. Yeah, that's what I figured out. I just figured this out this week.

So it was a cool thing to walk through because it's chronological. They have one floor, which is the history of the Bible. But it's not exactly that. It's really what it is, is the history of the book. Now, in many ways, the first book was the Bible. I mean, literally. Because at one point, there was only one book. Like, as far as our Western culture is concerned, there was one book.

And for a while, literally, there was only one book. And that book was the Bible. And then before it was the Bible, it was, you know, it was scrolls, and it was writings on papyrus. But it was, we were starting to aggregate written text together. And it went through all sorts of technological transformations. And then it became books that everybody could buy. The book everybody could buy. And the first one of those was the Bible.

And then it became all sorts of books that everybody could buy. But all those books, in some sense, emerged out of that underlying book. And that book itself, the Bible isn't a book. It's a library. It's a collection of books. And so what I figured out was, partly because I was talking to my brother-in-law, Jim Keller, who's the world's greatest chip designer and has now designed a chip that's as powerful as the human brain, which is optimized for artificial intelligence learning, by the way. And so I talked to him about

that he said you heard of the internet i said yeah jim i've heard of the internet he said this is way more revolutionary than that so in any case we were talking about meaning in text because we were talking about translation and the problem of understanding text and jim said the meaning of words is coded in the relationship of the words to one another. And the postmodernists make that case, that all meaning is derived from the relationship between words. That's wrong, because, well, what about rage?

That's not words. And what about moving your hand? That's not words. So it's wrong, but part of it's right, because the meaning we derive from the verbal domain is encoded in the relationship between words. So now then you think, well, let's think about the relationship between words. Well, some words are dependent on other words. Some ideas are dependent on other ideas. The more ideas are dependent on a given idea, the more fundamental that idea is.

are dependent on a given idea, the more fundamental that idea is. That's a definition of fundamental. So now imagine you have an aggregation of texts in a civilization. You say, which are the fundamental texts? And the answer is, the texts upon which most other texts depend. And so you'd put Shakespeare way in there in English, because so many texts are dependent on Shakespeare's literary revelations. And Milton would be in that category, and Dante would be in that category, at least in translation. Fundamental authors, part of the Western canon, not because of the arbitrary dictates of power, but because those texts influenced more other texts. And then you think about that as a hierarchy, okay, with the Bible at its base, which is certainly the case. Now imagine that's the entire corpus of linguistic production, all things considered.

Now how do you understand that? Like, literally, how do you understand that? The answer is, you sample it by reading and listening to stories and listening to people talk. You sample that whole domain. You build a low-res resolution representation of that inside you, and then you listen and see through that. And so it isn't that the Bible is true. It's that the Bible is the precondition for the manifestation of truth, which makes it way more true than just true it's a whole different kind of true and i think this is i think this is not only literally the

case factually i think it can't be any other way it's the only way we can solve the problem of perception you said the precondition of the manifestation of truth yeah what do you mean by that how do you know when what you and I are saying is true? Well, it depends on what we're saying. Not exactly. You know this, Joe. The fact that you're so popular, this is a mystery.

And I've been tweeting about it while people have been attacking you. Why is Joe Rogan so popular? He's a gateway to the alt-right. It's like, no, he's a psychedelic hippie. That's a stupid hypothesis. That's wrong. Well, he's a gateway to the alt-right. It's like, no, he's a psychedelic hippie. That's a stupid hypothesis. That's wrong. Well, he's a propagandist.

It's like, no, Joe's an honest man. And he actually says what he believes to be true. But let's think about that. Because that isn't exactly what you do. You follow the conversation and you listen. And you spontaneously manifest words that indicate your reaction. And it isn't the words themselves exactly that are true, because you might be wrong and you might be right, right?

I mean, what do you know or what I know? We're going to be wrong a bunch during this conversation. But the process that we're manifesting in the discovery of truth and untruth that's not wrong that's exactly right and you know when we're doing it because it's it's so engaging the process that we're manifesting meaning the mutual exploration of structures of truth through dialogue. In good faith. In good faith. In good faith.

That's the most important thing. Yes. And then we could ask, well, what does in good faith mean? Okay, so first of all, I can trust you. And that's been my experience. You've never played games with me. We disagree. That's fun.

I can trust you. You we disagree that's fun I can trust you you don't play games I can talk to you you listen and you say things we have a conversation it's real it's fun we fall into it the time flies by right you know that's a cool thing that the burden of temporal mortality lifts in the face of genuine dialogue you think well there's a marker for paradisal meaning it's like a bit of transcendence of death right there and then you think no it's not it's like yeah yeah you go for five years without a meaningful conversation and see if you're dead because if you're not you're sure going to want to be well it's it's akin to isolation

i mean you can be around people but not have a good conversation and you might as well be isolated. You are isolated in the prison of your own thoughts. That's the problem. If you do like, if you are stuck somewhere where your own, the only conversation that's available is with dull people. Like if you have a job and the people at the job are like your friend who was on cocaine and alcohol and wound up dying from it. Like those kinds of people, if you're only around them, it can severely limit the way you express yourself and the way you see the world and the amount of stimulation you get out of interacting with people. So it'll inhibit your intellectual development because you won't be interested in expanding ideas and you may look

it it inhibits your not just your intellectual development but you're in the entire unfolding of your existence yeah no one of the things that i hope to talk to people a lot about on this tour is the idea that there there's there's a series on Genesis that became quite popular, and one of the stories I analyzed was the story of Abraham's very cool story, because Abraham's like 80 years old, living in his father's tent, talk about failure to launch, and God shows up one day and says, you have to leave everything you know and journey out into the unknown. And you think, well, what is what is that well that's the call to

adventure that's what it is and so and what happens to abraham this is a bloody catastrophe like the first thing he runs into is a war and then he goes into a totalitarian state egypt and they try to steal his wife and it's like man he's thinking things are pretty good in that tent. But, well, he goes on this tremendous adventure, and then he's the forefather of, you know, biblically speaking, half the people on the planet. He has this tremendous adventure. Think, well, what do you set against the suffering of your life? Well, the adventure of your life.

That's what you set against it. It's not safety. Forget about that. There's what you said against it. It's not safety. Forget about that. There's no safety for mortals. That's for sure. And besides, safety? That's what you want? You don't want that.

You want adventure. So then the question is, where's adventure to be found? In exploitation. Well, try it and see. Hell is to be found in exploitation. How about truth? Who thinks adventure is to be found in exploitation how about truth who thinks adventure is to be found in exploitation well that's kind of the claim that everything's about power

everything's motivated by power is that really what people say though who says that well the post modernists all say that that's such a silly expression what about love is love motivated by power yes that's why they distrust love. Is art motivated by power?

Yes. It's the mouthpiece of political ideology. When you're making paintings, that's motivated by power? Yes, because you want to climb up the socioeconomic status hierarchy. By painting? Play the stock market. That's ridiculous. You're just not very good at it.

Okay, what about music? Same thing. Motivated by power? You bet. Everything's motivated by power. Well, that was the answer that came out of France in the 1970s, and that was the answer that all the universities accepted.

Why do you think that the whole cultural critique is patriarchal oppression? Don't you think that that is done a lot by people that have not taken those chances, that that diminishing of effort by calling a painter or a musician and saying that those people are motivated by power.

These are from career intellectuals who don't venture outside of the universities. They don't venture outside the prisons of their own imagination. Or the echo chambers that exist. Yeah, yeah. No, I think a tremendous amount of it. I mean, this was Nietzsche's observation and Orwell's too. I think that a lot of that's motivated by resentment. Tremendous amount of it.

I think that's 100% true. And I think we should be very careful people aren't charitable. Very careful people aren't nice. And people that, I mean, there's people that make a career just insulting and shitting on people all the time. And they never can look at things from that person's perspective. Well, that is the expression of power then. Yes. Yeah, I always think you think everything's about power.

It's like that's a confession, buddy. The problem with that is it also attacks your own perceptions of yourself. Yes. Because you know who you are. You know what you're doing. You know, if you're just doing that. Well, what attitude do you have to yourself if you believe the only true expression of human existence is to be found in

the will to power it's crazy okay you're a psychopath right well it's also like even more when you're pretending not to be exactly dismal viewpoint what about friendship like is that power too it's all manipulation that's great that's a person who's never hung out with good buddies. Yeah, that's for sure. Ridiculous. Yeah, yeah. It's ridiculous. The best part of friendships is laughing and joking around with each other. Yeah, that's for sure. That's the play, for sure. Absolutely. It's the best part. Yeah, well, so you know, if you're in a humorless group, what's going on, but that's the same thing as killing the comedians. It's the same thing. That is an issue with people without humor. It is a problem.

Because if they're not capable of generating it themselves, they resent it for sure. Well, that's another reason why I trust you. I've watched your comedy specials. It's like, oh, yeah, he's funny. He's actually funny. Like, seriously funny. Like, seriously funny. Because you go very dark places very successfully.

And it's very funny to watch. It's like, is he really going to do that? Yeah. Well, thank you. Your Kardashian devil is like, that's one of the funniest things I've ever seen. And it's dark. You know, that's a good indication of that investigation of the shadows, right? You went way in there.

What spirit is possessing this manifestation? Satanic spirit crouching on a bedpost. Yeah. So funny. I couldn't believe you did it. It's really hilarious. Well, I was trying to figure out a way to attack a sacred cow.

I know, and you did it. You didn't get canceled for it either, which is amazing. Well, when I did, I attacked myself. Yeah. Far more than I attacked that. Yeah, well, that's what I did. That's also the sign of someone

who's got their sense of humor. That's one of the things I really like about English comedians in particular. The English are really good at making fun of themselves. Yes. And the Monty Python troupe was particularly good at that. Yeah, they were brilliant at it. Well, the people who don't like comedy,

I mean, you cannot like comedy, but that means you don't like good conversation that means that means you don't like camaraderie or you're incapable of it yeah and there are some people that are brilliant people that don't like comedy they don't like conversation they don't like they they they're brilliant at very specific maybe non-social things and maybe they're brilliant at engineering or maybe they're brilliant at mathematics or maybe they're brilliant at something that doesn't require the kind of back and forth play.

Yeah, the play. They can't play. Yeah, that's so important. My favorite people to hang out with are all funny. Absolutely. Yeah, my favorite friends. I'm going to New York. So I'm going on a 40 city tour,

which is going to be, I hope, playful and fun, you know, as well as serious because we're trying to maintain a spirit of play while we undertake it. That's part of the goal. And I'm inviting some old friends from high school to join me in New York, and they were this group of people that I knew who were competitive comedians, essentially. And all we ever did when we hung out together, the whole, all of the status jockeying was all funny.

Who's like, who's the fun? Who can say the most outrageous thing and then take it to take it. Yeah. Oh, we take it. So that's so fun. And I missed that.

I found it was really characteristic, that culture of healthy working class groups, affiliative groups. And as I sort of climbed the intellectual ladder, I found a lot of that fell away. It does. And I missed it a lot. lectures and his debates and his conversation one of the things that really highlights them is his humor like he has a wonderful way of making things seem really silly with jokes and i talked to him about it once like there was one that i watched that i laughed really hard and i called him up i go hey dude i go you could be a comedian like like a real legit comedian like your takes on things are very funny.

Like they're funny and they're clever and they're sneaky. Murray's like that too. Douglas, yes. Yeah, he's got a great sense of humor, man. Brilliant people are oftentimes, they're capable of anything. And Sam, 100% could be a stand-up comedian. I was walking through New York Times Square with Douglas Murray about a month ago, and we had gone to an opera and we were on the way to this unbelievably fun Russian bar. And we were walking through Times Square.

And then in Times Square, there's these people dressed up like superheroes, and kids that have been hired to do this. And Spider-Man ran up to me and he said, are you Jordan Peterson? And I said, are you Spider-Man? And that was pretty damn funny. And then Douglas Murray, we were walking by, and Douglas Murray said, I wish he would have asked me if I was Douglas Murray. And so it was ridiculously funny. He's very, very witty. You and Douglas Murray drinking at a Russian bar

must have been awesome. It was really good. We had a blast in New York. I'm sure. It was ridiculously funny. He had a blast in New York. I'm sure. It was ridiculously fun. He's got this sparkling sense of humor that goes along with his insane courage. He's very courageous. I've met a lot of people in the last five years,

and a lot of them have been the subject of unbelievably vicious attacks. And out of that, I've seen emerge some unbelievably brave people, like Brett Weinstein, for example, and his wife, Heather. They're unbelievably brave. And Ayaan Hirsi Ali, she's like that. But Murray is like, Murray, that guy's got a spine of steel. He certainly does. And he backs it up with consideration and thought.

Like he's thought these things through. He's not being flippant. He's not talking off the cuff. He knows what he's saying. And he shuts people down in a pretty beautiful way so i went to cambridge and oxford in december after i had been disinvited and that's a whole interesting story in and of itself because there's a real free speech movement developed at cambridge and centered on the school of divinity that's so

interesting yeah so it's really starting to manifest itself in all sorts of fascinating ways. But I tested out some of the ideas that I talked to you about today, about the idea that we look at the world through a, we have to look at the world through an ethical structure, not an objective structure, a literary structure, in fact.

And I developed a little bit more when I was talking to you today because I hadn't realized at that point that this literary structure, in fact. And I developed a little bit more when I was talking to you today, because I hadn't realized at that point that this literary structure was composed in part of the relationship between foundational texts, and that the Bible was by definition at the bottom of that. It has to be, technically, because I'll go back to that for a minute, because imagine that as we moved forward through time, well, at one point, we had no books at all, we had no writing. Well, then the question might be,

well, what did we write down? And the answer is, well, stories. Well, what are stories? Well, they're descriptions of people moving through time and space doing things. Now, that isn't all they are, because they can be boring. So they're interesting stories about,

they're interesting descriptions of people moving through time. Those are the ones that stick. You bet. Well, no one will listen to them otherwise or write them. They have to be interesting. So that means that our sense of meaning orients us to certain types of stories. Well, those are the ones that get written down and remembered. And so we aggregated those stories across time.

Those are our first basic documents. We're like a self-description. What are we doing? Well, here's what interesting people are doing. Well, how do we know? Well, because we're interested in them. And so then you think, well, what's manifesting itself? And that's that spirit of engagement.

And so there's also a religious twist in this. And so you and I are engaging in dialogue. That's dialogos, right? So it's the manifestation of the logos duly. And what is that? Well, it's the redemptive. It's redemption in action. That's what it is.

I mean, technically, that's what it is. So imagine this. You've got a bunch of worn-out ideas, and they're blinding you. And I got a bunch of worn-out ideas, and they're blinding me. And if we stumble forward in our blindness, we will fall into a pit. So what do we do about that? Well, I talk to you about what you think and I listen because, man, maybe you know something that I don't, that I need to know.

Yes. Well, so how is that not a redemptive process? Obviously it is. And what's its signal? Because it redeems you from your own totalitarian idiocy and the hell that leads to. You just told me that. You said, what happens if you're isolated for five years? I think of more of it as expansive than redemptive.

That's fine. I think of it more in terms, I mean, that's my personal experience in doing this podcast, which is... It's not just expansive, though. I agree with you. It's expansive. But it's not just that. Because while you're expanding, you're also discarding, right? Yeah, so that's part of it that makes it redemptive, right? And there's a reason that in Revelation, Christ comes back with a sword to judge the elect and

the damned. There's a reason for that, because that's a symbol of the operation of the Logos. And the Logos, even in dialogue, says, that's an interesting point. We'll keep that. Let's focus on that. Well, we can ignore that. We can get rid of that. We can junk that. And it's this constant, part of it's mercy, because let's keep what's good, because we want everyone to flourish. But part of it's judgment. That's the sword. It's like, no, no, not this. That's the sword. It's like no No, not this and most you most you get rid of most things right you can't keep most things you have to put them aside Well, that's that there's an old idea that Jung elaborated on that God rules with two hands mercy and justice and the mercy is

Well, let's let everyone flourish and welcome people and forgive them, all of that. But justice is more, yeah, but let's do the right thing and leave what's wrong behind. And that requires judgment, judiciousness. I talked to Jimmy Carr about how he prepared for his comedy tour. And maybe you do exactly the same thing. And he said, stand-up comedy is the most dialogical of artistic enterprises and I thought well what do you mean because you're just talking like I do on lectures I think I'm listening to the audience all the time it's making contact with them watching how they're reacting I'm

listening Carr said well I do a hundred shows before I go out and tour and I try out new material so he generates new material, a lot of it. That's the creativity part. Then he goes and tries it out in audiences. And they either laugh or they don't. And because he's brave and listens, he notices when he's not funny and he stops being not funny. And so the audience just tells him what's funny and then he collects that across 100 instances. And then that's funny and verified by the audience, and he goes out and tells those jokes. And so that's dialogical and redemptive as well. It's like, what jokes need to be told? Well, our culture has some sacred cows. Those are idols. The idols that the Israelites worshipped in the desert. The golden calf. Sacred cows. They need to be punctured.

Why? Because they're impeding our progress. Well, how do we puncture them? Well, one way is, we show that we can transcend them. And the Canadians are doing that all the time. Here's something we can't laugh about. Let's laugh about it.

Everybody breaks down. Everybody cracks up. You know, it's so cool, when people laugh, they can't fight. I used to go work out with Jim Keller, everybody cracks up. You know, it's so cool when people laugh, they can't fight. I used to go work out with Jim Keller, this chip designer, and we did this for years. And one of our jokes was, you know, we'd be striving to bench press, whatever we were managing at the time, 175 pounds,

like it's really straining, and then we'd crack a joke. And that was always funny. We spotted him, of course, because as soon as you laugh, all your muscular tension disappears. Right. And so that's so cool, Ace. When you laugh, you can't fight. You can't fight when you're laughing.

So how much laughing should we be doing? It's like, depends on how much fighting we want to do. And maybe if we didn't want to do any fighting, we'd be laughing all the time. And that's how you said, that cements your group of comrades together. Well, you're not fighting. What are you doing instead?

Playing. Yeah. Well, that's what we need to do, man, is we need to play. All of us. Yeah, well, I agree with that for sure. There's a thing going on with stand-up where you're working with the crowd, too. It's really interesting. Tell me about it.

I'll have a bit, and I'll have the bit fully structured. I'll write it out, and then I try to go on stage. And on stage, I'm informed by the feeling that I have interacting with the crowd to take it to a different place, to take the subject to a different place, to abandon parts of it that just don't feel organic to me. Right. And you learn through the crowd that you can't just write. Sometimes you can.

Sometimes jokes come out in full force. There's some jokes that I wrote that I literally wrote them down and then I did them on stage the the way that I wrote them down. And they always stayed that way. I don't know why. But some of them, they don't come that way. They come like as a thing that you have to piece together. Like here you have some material.

You have some raw material. And I guarantee you this could be a house. But you're going to have to figure out what the layout is. That's what happens when I'm lecturing. Yeah. Because I never give the same lecture twice. And I don't use notes. But I do the same thing.

I have a whole, I think about it like jazz improvisation. I have a whole bunch of stories that I know. And I have a whole bunch of questions that I've investigated. And what I try to do in a lecture, and that's what I do on the tour, is I have a question that I haven't investigated to my satisfaction. Then I sit backstage and I think, okay, what question am I investigating? It has to be one I actually want to investigate. It can't be a lie.

This is a good hint for people who want to write essays. Don't write an essay about a question that you don't want an answer to because that's a lie. And it'll be dull, and you'll hate it, and you'll hate writing, and you'll get a bad grade, and you'll get cynical, and you'll drop out. It's not good. So you've got to be a real question. So, okay, this is a question. I think it's worthy of pursuit.

I'd like to get farther with it. Okay, here's a theory I know about that we could explore it with. Here's another one. Here's some examples of that that make good stories. Here's another place I could go to investigate that. So I have that in my mind, and then I go out and I'm watching. I always watch single people in the audience, one at a time. The lights kind of interfere with that,

because I like to be able to see the people at the back, but I can't. So I watch the front people, and I see, is this landing? Like, are the lights going on? Because you can tell. And I think the thing that's most similar to what I'm doing in my book tour is stand-up comedy. So you can tell if it's landing, people are nodding and they're not fidgeting and the crowd isn't rustling. Like, they're all focused and some of them are looking like this and now then you see someone who's kind of nodding off

and if there's a lot of them that's a problem but if it's one guy you don't look at him look at someone else you know maybe you had a bad day you don't take that personally and then the crowd you said informs you and inform is really an interesting term. Information. So now you're looking at the crowd and you're looking at their eyes in particular and their face. And their eyes tell you what they're focused on, so what they think is important. And their face tells you how they're reacting. And then you glance around the crowd and then you get a sense of the whole crowd and you map that onto your body. And that gives rise to a set of intuitions that allows you to communicate because otherwise you couldn't communicate and that's listening although

you're doing it with your eyes but you're still listening and and that does inform this dance and that's partly also why people love stand-up comedy that's partly why they like my lectures is because they don't know what's going to happen and neither do i and it could fail at any moment and so a good lectures that failed spectacularly no but I've I've certainly had ones oh it's certain I certainly have felt that it might right because I'll go out on my thought tends to be quite tangential because I try to link lots of things together so then I'll go way out on a limb it's like I'm addressing this question. Idea, idea, idea, idea, idea, idea. Uh-oh.

I'm away from the tree and I don't know how to get back. Right. And then sometimes that'll happen mid-lecture and I think, then I get self-conscious. Then I forget everything I'm talking about. And then that can be real awkward. Yeah. But luckily, generally, so far, knock wood, if I pause, I can recreate the argument. And then I can figure out where I was headed.

And then I can think, oh, yes, that's why I made that point. And then I can go back. And people like that. You know, one of the things comedians often do is they'll tell a joke early in the set. And then quite a bit later in the set, they'll reintroduce the joke. It's a callback. Callback. Callback.

Yeah, I do callbacks all the time in my lectures. And people love that. You're doing stand-up. Yeah, yeah. Well, people love that because it shows them that they've followed along and that we're in the same place. Right. And they love that. They love that. And it's just as satisfying as a punchline.

Yes. And it is a punchline in some sense. It's like, oh, this is related to this. Yes. Click. Yeah. Fun. You can see lights going all the time in the crowd.

It's such fun. Yeah. People love that. Yeah. Well, and no wonder it puts them in the zone. So here's a cool thing. Vygotsky, Russian psychologist, studied the acquisition of language in children. So he thought, how do children learn to speak?

Because no one teaches them. They just learn. It's a weird thing. Even very intellectually impaired human beings learn to talk. It's really deeply embedded in us. So he looked at how parents talk to their children while they were developing language. And he found that parents talk to children at a level that slightly exceeds their current level of comprehension. And they do that without knowing they're doing it.

And so then you think, well, what are you doing? Think what you're doing. You've got the child and he knows some things. But he doesn't know enough. But you don't want to punish him and exclude him because he doesn't know enough. But you don't want to leave him undeveloped. So you speak to him so he almost catches on. And that way he gets something,

but there's a horizon, right? And the horizon keeps moving, moving. And so the child's right at that edge. That, Vygotsky called that the zone of proximal development. That's the zone. That's the term. So when you're in the zone,

which you love to be in, and you know when you're in it, and so does the audience, so does everybody, they're in the zone, man. Athletes are in the zone. Everyone's like, oh my God, they're in the zone.

Isn't that cool? It's like, yeah. It's the precondition for cool. It's like everything. I think what's going on with comedy, at least I can speak to that, I've never really done any lectures, but with comedy, what's happening is there's, it's kind of a mass hypnosis and the audience is trusting you with their thoughts. If your thoughts are clean enough, meaning if they're, they're precise enough that someone can follow you with wonder,

like not knowing where you're going with it. It can't be too obvious. One of the worst things a comic can do is have too many words to set up a premise and to set up a punchline because then it allows the person to formulate their own punchline. And oftentimes they come with the same punchline. A little sooner. Right. Because if a person is going to write, if that person is going to use too many

words to describe something, oftentimes they're unskilled, right? So their punchline will also be obvious and it's a real problem. But that same punchline, even though it's obvious, would be effective if you hit it with an economy of words. So that wonder is really an interesting thing. So most of the things around us we don't attend to. And that's because there's an infinite number of things around us. Well, except maybe if we're on psychedelics, in which case we attend to everything. Everything all at once. Yeah. And that's too much. And everyone says, oh, that was too much. It's like, yeah, that is literally the definition of too much. And we know why. I never feel like it's too much well that's good never no no i feel like i can't handle it at the moment okay okay that's fine i'm not even that i can't handle it i can't categorize everything right like it's it's overwhelming

in in its possibilities yeah but one of the things that i love the most about psychedelics is that it informs me of that just by existing. It informs me that all of my notions of reality itself are bullshit. They're all bullshit. And I live in this sort of confined, disrestrained, narrow, carved pathway world because that's where i live all the time but then sufficient yeah and then but then you have a psychedelic experience and it just boom so that's gone that wonder that you described that's like a fractional psychedelic experience so you say well they entrust you with their wonder it's like yes they do. So when we're sitting in this room, most of the things that are going on around us, we're not attending to. So basically, we perceive them as equivalent to zero.

So that's kind of interesting because everything around us is infinitely remarkable. And yet, we perceive everything as if it's zero. Now, the reason we do that is so that we can use our limited attention on a few things. Yes. So it's necessary, but it's also blinding. Now, when you start to wonder about something, what you're actually doing when you wonder about it is freeing your perception from the constraints of memory. And that's a place of dancing. It's a place where memory itself is updated and if you trust someone

and you and you express that sense of wonder in the confines of that trust then you are in fact oh you are in fact participating in the process that reveals the underlying complexity of the world to you and then does literally inform you and you feel that i've been very interested technically in the instinct of meaning because what is meaning and is it illusory because that's the fundamental question in some sense it isn't even is suffering real it's is the meaning that keeps suffering at bay is that real that's a more fundamental question and the answer to that is it's not only real it is the most real thing and you have an instinct that signals its presence to you and part of that manifests itself as wonder it's the openness to transformation because it isn't even the new ideas that are redeeming it's the process of continually opening yourself up to

the transformation of new ideas. And that's signaled by wonder. When you're talking about ignoring all the things around you, it made me think about sensory deprivation tanks. I don't know if we've ever discussed this before. I don't think so. Have you ever done that? Yes.

What did you think? Well, I thought a bunch of the things that we just talked about. You know, what happens is that in a sensory deprivation tank, you become increasingly sensitive to less and less, because there's almost nothing going on. So the threshold for perception, you get more and more and more sensitive as you're trying to pick up signal where there's no signal.

And that can open these gates of imagination for example you know you know this already because to some degree imagine you you want to go figure something out you usually go somewhere where you can be by yourself you're not flooded by sensory information maybe go for a walk maybe go sit on your bed you kind of shield yourself from outside input and And then by concentrating, you open yourself up to this internal revelation that's otherwise blotted out by the external world. And that really happens to a huge degree in the sensory deprivation tank or can. And I think that is akin in many ways to us. And people have made this case many times is that it's analogous to a psychedelic experience. And I think that's technically true. It certainly is, because if

that experience was achievable through a psychedelic, I think it'd be a very popular psychedelic. If the experience of having no sensory input and being able to be alone with your thoughts, like completely without the influence of even gravity on your body and the seat or the floor on your feet you don't feel any of it so yeah you start to get because you're you're you've eliminated all that external stimulation you allow yourself to become aware of things happening that would otherwise be in the background jung believed for example because carl jung that we're always dreaming always we just don't perceive it because the outer world blots it out.

And there's definitely truth in that. So daydreaming, fantasy... Well, even... It's even deeper than that because, look, there's a thread of meaning that guides this conversation. And neither of you know what it... Neither of us know what it is. We know when it manifests itself

because we get interested right think oh that's interesting and then you know you i say something you think it's interesting you nail it with a bunch of words and then i pick up some of the words and i think that's interesting and i nail it with a bunch of words and but there's this thread it's the golden thread that leads you out of ariadne's maze by the way and that's part of the redemptive process, is by following that manifestation of spontaneous interest, truthfully, we participate in this process that revitalizes our perceptions. And that's technically true. That's what's happening.

And then what's even more cool than that is that there's nothing we can experience that we would rather do than that if it's happening intensely. And that's because that is the best thing we can do. That's the logos. That's the logos. When you have done... By definition. When you have done sensory deprivation experiences, how many have you ever done? About six.

Six of them? Yeah. Recent? No, it's been 10 years probably. Do you think you would benefit from that? It would depend on how I did it. I mean, even just- Conceivably.

Why haven't you tried to incorporate that into your life? I have other things I do that are probably partial substitutes for it or reasonable substitute. I do kundalini yoga in the morning. Oh, do you? With my wife. I have for 20 years, not every day, but I'd say a third of the time and often for months on end. And I've learned what that means. So when you do those yoga poses, that's not yoga. That's training for yoga. It's like, imagine that you go to a dance studio and they teach you moves. That's not dancing.

Dancing is what you do on the stage after you've written your jokes. And yoga is what you do with your body after you've mastered the poses. Because it's all spontaneous. And so when my wife and I do kundalini yoga in the morning. It's a series of flexion exercises and breathing. But mostly what it is, is so maybe one is rotation of the head like that. And then, but you're paying attention. It's like, okay. Oh, my back hurts there. Okay. I'll move my head back and forth a little bit. Relax. Move my head. Relax. Okay. It doesn't hurt anymore oh that hurts oh gotta explore there let that go let that go and you go through your whole body it's like oh i'm cramped there oh that

hurts and what's so cool it's like massage you know if if you're hurting and someone massages that the pain goes away what the hell's going on there? Facilitation of circulation, removal of toxins from that locale, but also the drawing of your reparative attention to that spot. Well, yoga is like that. It's like, oh, I'm out of alignment there. Oh, I'm out of alignment there. So what you're doing, and this is akin to stacking the chakras, which is the same as a musical experience,

is imagine that to get that process of optimal self-revelation right, you have to be aligned. Atoms aligned with the molecules above them. The molecules aligned in the cells. The cells aligned in the musculature. the molecules aligned in the cells, the cells aligned in the musculature, the muscles aligned in the body, the body aligned with the environment, broadly speaking, all stacked up.

That's the cosmic tree, by the way. That's the tree the shaman climb up and down in the psychedelic experience, that cosmic tree that unites levels of being. We can climb that with our consciousness. We do it all the time. If you're writing a book, you concentrate on the word or the paragraph or the whole chapter, you know, and when we're conversing, I could concentrate on each word or the phrase or the sentence or the context, or I could look around the room, up and down these levels of analysis.

In yoga, you're trying to get your body psychophysiologically aligned so communication between all those levels isn't interfered with unnecessarily and then that opens you up in some sense to the possibility of speech emanating from the depths that would be one way of thinking about it one of the things that people who do kundalini talk about is that they are able to achieve psychedelic states and psychedelic states that ordinarily are achieved through drugs. I have many friends who have done Kundalini and for whatever reason I never have, but they have said that through it with long-term commitment to practice, they can achieve these bizarre states where they have hallucinations. Have you ever had that? No, but what I would say is that this process of alignment makes everything

into the equivalent of a psychedelic experience, like everything, because part of the manifestation of the truth is a consequence of the alignment of these levels it's like that's what we mean when we talk about someone having integrity or being authentic it's like they're the same all the way down and not only that they're where they are completely so not only are they aligned internally they're aligned with everything that's happening around them and then and you know this perfectly well, but you're a master at it because otherwise you wouldn't be where you are. The fact that you can focus your attention almost completely on the current conversation means that the conversation becomes deep. And that's obviously manifesting

itself in a psychedelic way in your existence it's like what the hell joe you're you know who the hell are you you started this podcast just talking to people zero production value you don't edit it you talk to people for three hours well what kind of stupid business model is that that's insane yeah and look what's happened. Yeah. Yeah, it's pretty insane. No, it's completely insane. It's completely, utterly. It's insane for me.

It's not me. Like, people think I planned this. That's what's hilarious. Yeah, well, what's so cool about that, I think, is that, well, the best laid plans of mice and men, we all know that. But, so, there's a doctrine in the Sermon on the Mount. It's often viewed as a hippie sort of doctrine, right? The problems of the day will take care of themselves

Don't worry about the future that is not what that sermon says at all not even a bit not a not a bit It says Align yourself firmly with what is the highest. So that's what you're committed to. So what is the highest? Well, we can argue about that, but we don't have to argue that much. Beauty? Okay.

Yes. Truth? Sure. Why not? Courage? Yeah, that's a good one. How about love? What's love?

The desire that everything will flourish, rather than the desire that everything will suffer. So you aim at that. Aim at the highest good you can conceive of. So we'll call that God. Because we've got to call it something. And it's the integration of all things good. That's by definition. Do you believe in God?

Do you believe in the good? Well, the integration of all things good. That's the superordinate thing. It's ineffable So that's God aim at that and Then concentrate on the day And you'll get not only you won't even get what you want because what the hell do you know? You'll get way more than you could possibly imagine And that's right. That's the adventure of the truth you'll get way more than you could possibly imagine.

And that's right. That's the adventure of the truth. It's like, you won't get what you want if you tell the truth. But how do you know that you're right in what you want? You don't. So how do you operate when you don't know if you're right in what you want? And the answer is, tell the truth. Why? and the answer is tell the truth why well not least because it's the adventure of your life like think of think about it this way imagine

you conduct yourself in deceit you lie to yourself you manipulate other people to get what you want that's a form of lie it's instrumental manipulation it's psychopathic machiavellian it's like well that's how you should treat people it's's like, no, you shouldn't. Why not? You won't get what you want. Yeah, but you don't know what you want. Okay, so given that. Well, doesn't that entirely depend on what your endeavor is? I mean, there's a lot of people in business that do lie and manipulate.

Yeah. And that's how they become successful. No. I'm not saying they should. No, I also don't think they become successful. You don't think that there's a lot of successful business people? No, I think they drive around in their like $60,000 Corvettes

and their flashy blonde thinking about when they're going to cut their throat. You don't think that Donald Trump has you don't think he's engaged in deception? I didn't say that people don't engage in deception. I said that they do not become successful by engaging in deception. That doesn't mean they don't

make a lot of money. But there's a long history of businessmen who are total sociopaths, who've achieved immense wealth. No. No? No. You don't think so? Psychopathy, no. I wouldn't say I think that. Okay, what about oil sheiks that have had slaves and have treated people like total garbage,

had people assassinated for criticizing them, heads of state of these bizarre countries where you do have these oligarchs that are running the military and they're in charge of massive amounts of currency. Yeah, well, that's the postmodern question, in some sense, in a small way. But dictators. Yeah, I know. Look, I'm listening, man. I get it.

Don't you think that dictators, like we don't even have to name them. Partly why I'm obsessed with the story of Exodus. But don't you think that there's many examples of quote-unquote successful dictators today? No. You don't think so? No, because I don't think they're successful you don't think Kim Jong Un is a successful dick only if you think that ruling over hell constitutes success and you might say and this is what's Milton Satan did

say better to rule in hell than to serve in heaven hmm Kim jong-un shot fine yes he's a ruler what's his domain hell you're a psychopath you're successful you're ruling over hell i see what you're saying so not not not successful in that he doesn't engage in love and camaraderie and he doesn't have a full yeah that full and balanced yeah but he's got lots of money he's got lots of terrified people into kowtowing to him good you want that go ahead man that's how you define success i see what you're saying. But success in that he's able to maintain that position.

Yeah, we'll see, man. Hey, here's an example. This is a prime example. So our hierarchy is dominance hierarchy. So one of my graduate students, I used the word dominance hierarchy for years. He took me to task, former student, brilliant guy, slow to speak, but never says anything he hasn't thought through for like five years. So when he talks, I listen. He said, stop using the term dominance hierarchy. Shocked me because it's like a term used in biology

everywhere. He said, why? He said, it's full of implicit Marxist suppositions. I thought, okay, I'll think about that for a while. He said, here's the dominance hierarchy. I strip you naked, put a choke chain around you, and lead you around on the floor. It's like, that's dominance. That's not what's happening in most human hierarchies, and you know that, because you have comrades you joke with, you play with. You said that organizations that are functional aren't based on power.

What are they based on? Well, not power. So not dominance. It's like, okay, I thought about that for about two years. It's like, oh, that's a really fundamental criticism. And I didn't realize that implicit Marxist presuppositions had been structuring biological thought. And that's exactly right. And so what's the proper hierarchy constituted by?

It's not the expression of the will to power. That's basically the admission that satanic forces rule the world. It's the same idea. Well, what rules? Well, satanic forces rule hell, and yes, you can be successful as a hellish ruler. Now, whether you can maintain that, Franz de Waal, world's greatest primatologist, studies chimpanzees. They're tough, and they're male-dominant, unlike bonobos. They're male-dominant,

so they're patriarchal hierarchies. Okay, rough, tough chimp, can pound everybody flat, maintains his highest power, maintains the highest power through intimidation. He's got preferential sexual access to the females. He does that by chasing away the subordinates. It's like heaven. He's dominant. What happens to him? One day he has a bad day,

and two subordinate males that he hasn't really been attending to and has been harassing quite a lot jump him, and they castrate him, and they tear them to pieces. That's what happens. But it doesn't always happen. Ah, yes, it does. Genghis Khan.

It depends on what you mean by always. Like, it's a time frame problem. I mean, that guy... Yeah, yeah, I know. He's like progenitor of a third of the human race. Yeah, I know. I understand. I mean, he was successful being a dominator guy yeah yeah i know he's like he's like progenitor of a third of the human race yeah i know i understand i mean he was successful being a dominator for his entire life and was responsible for the death of somewhere between 50 and 70 million people yeah he changed the carbon footprint

of the planet earth during his lifetime because he killed so many people yeah well let's not underestimate the utility of oppression as a means to ruling hell. We can agree on that. But, I mean, you're asking an absolutely germane question. In the book of Exodus, the Pharaoh is a tyrant. But he's up against God. And the Pharaoh loses. And you might think, well, what does that mean?

Well, it's complicated. It's a complicated story. That's why it's been around for like 3,000 years and why it's the fundamental narrative for example, it was the narrative that black Christians really identified with in the United States which is something that's really worth thinking about the fact that that's the case. The Pharaoh is tortured by God. Well, what's God? Well, we said already, at least to some degree,

God is the amalgamation of all that is good. I'm not speaking religiously when I say that. I'm speaking conceptually. God is the union of all things that are good. Okay, but that's not conceptual exactly, because that's also something that you exist in a relationship to, and that you act out. it's not just an idea okay so God is that that spirit that calls to Abraham to have the adventure of his life instead of languishing in his father's tent so it's called to adventure it's truth it's the burning

bush it's the psychedelic experience it's god against the pharaoh the pharaoh is a totalitarian and he keeps imposing his edicts running contrary to freedom promoting slavery let's say well the kingdom fractures and crumbles continually continually continually and he might say well time frame time frame is a problem man maybe you can be a successful tyrant even over the course of your lifetime. But maybe you doom your country to death. You doom your country to hell. Is that success? It depends on what you mean success is because these things do depend on definitions.

But all countries collapse. All of them. Every civilization that has ever existed it's falling apart no I don't think so which one's still around ours yeah but we haven't been around that long I don't know you can trace we're falling apart right now you can you know this Joe you can trace the religious experience the religious revelation the central religious revelation back at least 25,000 years of continued transmission.

25,000? Really? Sure. All the way back to the Stone Age shaman. For sure. For sure. Is that 100% proven that they were experiencing altered states of consciousness and that they were imparting these lessons in a form of a religion

100 a lot okay for sure i think i think i can only say what i have concluded by looking in as many places i could possibly look ranging from the theological, through the literary, through history, through the scientific, the biochemical, all of that, trying to stack all that up. So it's multiple. It's called a multi-method, multi-trait construct analysis. The idea is if something's true, it will manifest itself in multiple different places with independent methodologies. So it's like your senses do that.

Is this real? Well, I can see it, I can hear it, I can touch it, I can taste it. Five things say it's real. Is this cup there, Joe? Yes. Okay, now you said it's real too. Okay, real.

Now, is that finally real? No, but that's a different question. It's real enough for the purposes. Same thing here. I think the idea that, like Jack and the Beanstalk, the magic beans climbing up the magic stalk to heaven, that's a shamanic tale. We know some fairy tales are 15,000 years old. That one's 100,000 years old. Is it really? We don't know. Right. But that story, like Mircea Eliade wrote a book called Shamanism. He's a great historian of religions. And he looked at the commonality of shamanic experience across multiple cultures. It's very stable. He thought that psychedelic-induced shamanic practices were a corruption of the original tradition? I don't think that's right. I think it's wrong.

We had a conversation before the podcast started about Brian Murawski's work in The Immortality Key, which is an amazing book. And we were talking about that sort of field of study that has emerged in Harvard now because of Brian's work, and that they're now. And Ruck, right? Yeah. Yes. And Gordon Wasson.

Yes, Gordon Wasson. And all these crazy bastards. Mexico from the 50s, right? It was Life Magazine. Hey, let's discover psilocybin mushrooms. Yeah. Oops. That is now being really, it's not fringe anymore.

Yeah, it still is. It is sort of, but. Yeah, wait till it's not, man. what yeah it still is it is sort of but wait till it's not man yeah well it is right and that there's a lot of people that still aren't aware but at least at least in academia and at least in harvard it's now being pursued roland griffith's work has helped that a lot too work he's done with psilocybin in the lab which is like really solid scientifically that's john Hopkins, right? Yeah, yeah. And also who did the DMT work, Rick Strassman. Yes.

Poor Rick. I love that guy. He had to stop doing it, really. It's like, uh-oh. Look what's happening. What do you mean? All these people get shot out. Well, he didn't know what to do with it.

He's a really traditional biological, psychological researcher. And he said he said well we'll measure people's heart rate and we'll check their psychophysiological responses and you know we'll see what this DMT does it's like and then all these people came back from the experience and said hey I got shot right out of my body and I went into a domain where I met alien beings it's like you were dreaming no no you don't understand I've dream. I've dreamt before, and this was not only real, it was the most real thing I've ever experienced. He said, well, that's a Jungian archetype. He said, well, no, it was, you don't get it.

It was more real than reality itself. And every single person came back and said that. And so I read The Spirit Molecule, which is a very interesting book, and by the end of it, Strassman is, well, he kind of got shell-shocked, like our whole culture did when it discovered LSD. Well, he had to be very careful in his depictions, too, because he can't talk about personal experiences because he wants to be taken seriously as an actual researcher.

And good for him because he should be treading lightly in that domain, just like the Johns Hopkins teams does. They're very careful. But it's such a tragedy that you can't talk about it. Yeah, well, we're talking about it more than we did 10 years ago. Yes, yeah. And much more carefully than we did in the 60s. Yeah, well, there's no Timothy Leary guy that's telling everybody to tune in, turn out, and

drop out. I had his old position at Harvard. Yeah? No kidding. Yeah, no kidding. Isn't that something, position at Harvard. Yeah? No kidding. Yeah, no kidding. Isn't that something? Wow, that's pretty wild. Yeah, that's for sure. I knew people there that knew him. Yeah, it was really something, I thought. Oh, he taught personality at Harvard. He had the same position as me. The whole Kesey thing and the Merry Pranksters, and I just think it was such an upheaval. That's Electro-Kool-Aid Acid Test. Man, that's a great book. It was such

an upheaval of the current state of culture in the 1960s. It's like the very definition of upheaval. Instead of bringing people along, so many people were opposed to them. Yeah, well, tune in. Yeah. Okay. Turn on. Yeah.

Okay. Be better. Yeah, that would have been better than drop out. Yeah, a lot better. Yeah. A be better. Yeah, that would have been better than drop out. Yeah, a lot better. Yeah. A lot better. But I think they felt like... That's why the hero, in the hero's journey.

So imagine you're taking psychedelics. It's like you're the hero. Out there into the unknown to gather new information, to confront the dragon, the terrors of your imagination, to bring back the gold, to acquire the gold. Now what? You got the gold. Right.

Now what? Share it with the community. Right. That's so when the Hobbit comes back from his great trip, and that's also a retelling of the oldest story we know, the Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit. And Tolkien knew this. I'm not making this up. And he talked to C.S. Lewis a lot, who is a radical and extraordinarily well-informed

Christian. All of this is lurking in the background of that. That's why that book had captured the imagination to such a degree. It reintroduces shamanic-level religious preconceptions back into popular culture. That's why it has that power. Because how else do you account for it? It has religious significance. That's why everyone read it. It's the definition of religious significance, that it was attractive enough that everyone read.

Well, when The Hobbit comes back, it's like all the heroes who come back from that journey share what they have with the community and integrate it. It's the opposite of dropping out. Timothy Leary let his political, his unformed political preconceptions contaminate the sacredness of his experience. And he warped the entire culture in doing so

and pretty much put an end to psychedelic drug research for like 50 years. Drop out? No, no. Man up. Get your act No, no. Man up. Get your act together. Get your act together. Because you get an intimation in states like that of the first of all the fact that things are

infinitely more than you could possibly realize. Including you. Like really. Like really. And that's unbearable in some sense. Don't you think that it was in response to the rigidity of the times, though, that you're dealing with this? No excuse. I'm not saying it's an excuse.

Yes, it was. The 1950s were, I mean, and then also dealing with the Korean War and then Vietnam. There was so much to oppose from their perspective that society was almost impossibly flawed. I got a good story for that. So I went and met Guy Ritchie when I was in the UK. So that was real fun. Yeah, he's so hospitable. He built these huge barbecues.

He's manufacturing these bloody things, same size as your table here. He makes barbecues? Copper top, yeah. Really? Yeah. He wants everybody to gather around a fire so he can be hospitable. So he built a bloody barbecue. Like, it took seven years to build the prototypes properly.

They're worth like $50,000. He's marked, it's such, and he's so hospitable. Where do you buy a Guy Ritchie barbecue? From Guy Ritchie. Come on. Yeah, there you go. The gentleman. Get the fuck out of here.

Yeah, so there's these braziers on both sides. Outdoor grill table is now available. You sit outside in the cold in his tent, and there's cloth braziers on both sides. Outdoor grill table is now available. You sit outside in the cold in his tent, and there's cloth around the outside of the table so you can put your knees underneath, and a stove in the middle so it keeps you warm. Yeah, well, that's where we were. So it's a whole structure.

Yeah, and then he was roasting these huge steaks in this charcoal brazier and cutting them up and feeding them to us. Wow. And he wanted everybody to gather around the fire. He's such a fucking interesting guy. He is, man. You know, he's a legitimate Brazilian jiu-jitsu black belt. I didn't know fire. He's such a fucking interesting guy. He is, man. You know, he's a legitimate Brazilian jiu-jitsu black belt.

I didn't know that. There's not a lot of them. Do you know that his- I mean, there's quite a few of them now, but there's not a lot of them that are like a successful movie producer. Right, right. Director. Well, it's like UFC fighter podcast geniuses. He's not just a Brazilian jiu-jitsu black belt.

He's a black belt under Henzo Gracie. It's like one of the most esteemed schools in the world. It's like the lineage is like from the the original source of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. I mean he's from the Gracie family. Right. It's a very respected black belt. You know his characters in the movies they ad ad-lib that dialogue. What? Absolutely. I talked to Matthew McConaughey about this first. I said, Richie, and then I asked Guy Ritchie about it.

He sets up the scenes and he has the story in mind, and then he pays real attention to the context and he lets the actors ad-lib. Well, that makes sense because it seems so organic. No kidding, and the dialogue is so sharp and witty and on point. So I watched King Arthur. And it's a chaotic movie. He's trying to do a lot of things at once. And I don't think that technically it's one of his most successful movies.

But there's parts of it that are extremely interesting. And so one part is this is very, very cool. So when Arthur first grips the sword sword he's blown off it now he can pull it out of the stone because he's the guy he's the long lost son of the rightful king long lost he said well wasn't everybody opposing the tyranny of the times it's like yeah welcome to the world man welcome to the world we're all longost sons of the rightful king, and the king's now a tyrant. And don't we have to deal with that?

And the answer is, bloody well, right, we do. So Arthur, who's got his eyes open, and he's born in straightened circumstances and has to grow up street smart, and his friends are all funny, and they engage in witty repartee, and he knows the world from the ground up. Grabs the sword, he can pull it out of the stone.

But he's blown right off it. He can't wield it because he has visions of his evil uncle who conspired with feminine forces of chaos and killed his father, murdered his father and his mother. So his uncle's a murderer. His uncle's a murderer. is your uncle so is my uncle that's our historical guilt that the lefties weaponize all the time it's like this soil we walk on is soaked with blood and Arthur can't wield the sword that's his rightfully because he

has visions of historical atrocity it's like welcome to the world man it's like how do you know your masculine ambition isn't part of the world destroying force because yes it is so so then why when i accuse you of racism and so forth and and your white privilege and your masculine privilege like why don't you just wander off in a corner and feel terrible and apologize? And the answer is, you probably will, because most people do. You don't, but most people do, and I know why.

Partly because they're reasonable. If 30 people come after you and say, you're a racist tyrant, and there's 30 of them, you go home and you think, 30 people think I'm a racist tyrant. And like, I got my flaws, man. And I might be a little racist

because we all have in-group preferences and I shoot my mouth off sometimes and I haven't always been the way with women that I should be. And maybe I've mistreated some people and maybe I did it too much and sorry. And then you're a shell, right? Another mob comes for you.

It doesn't work at all. Do you think that this is a factor of this new way of communicating where everyone's communicating all at once? It's not just these small groups of people that you're familiar with that are in your tribe or that you interact with from other tribes. This is like unprecedented volume of human beings. I think, I think that's part of it. I mean, I've stopped,

almost stopped reading Twitter comments. Almost? Yeah, well. Still hanging in there? Yeah. Yeah. And I'm not exactly sure why.

Some of it's like pathological curiosity. I don't think it's good for you. No, I don't think so either. for you. No, I don't think so either, but in any case, Twitter really can be a cesspool, and people say things to me on Twitter

that they would never say to me face-to-face. They certainly say things about you that they would never dare to say face-to. And they certainly see things about you that they would never dare to say face to face. But I mean, not only because probably it wouldn't end well if they said something like that face to face. That's part of it. But also partly because people just don't do that face to face. Well, you know what it is? It's talk.

So if you are working on an assembly line and you're next to some other guy. And, you know, he brings up Ricky Gervais and you're like, fuck that guy. That guy's a piece of shit. And he starts saying all these horrible things about the guy. That's just talk, right? Well, this is just talk, but it's written down. The first person to say that to me is Louis C.K. He was talking to me about the way people talk on Twitter because it's just talk.

People talk like that all the time. But now when you see it written, you think it is different than just talk because it's not the way they would talk to you. So if Ricky Gervais visited that assembly line and he was talking to those guys, then they would have to reflect on the fact that he's a human being. He's right in front of them. You would never say the things that you even if he's not an opposing threatening person but you would never say the things that you would say to that

guy when he's not there you say the same thing if you're in your car you know and somebody cuts you off that's different son of a bitch well it's kind of the same because there's a barrier between you but you know why do you know why that why they're so accelerated it's because the speed the car's moving your reactions have to be very quick. So you're in a heightened state. It's a completely different... People always want to say that... No, if people were stationary and they were in cars

and they looked over at each other, they would never talk to each other the way they do when they're driving fast. Yeah, that's true. It's a physiological condition. Because you're reacting to potential emergencies. You're going 65 miles an hour. You're like, hey, hey, hey.

Ah, you fucking idiot. What are you doing in front of me? It's natural. It's natural. Yeah, that's a good point. You have to learn to manage that. And that's not disgust or talk to people. People say don't get road rage.

But they don't tell you why you're getting road rage. A lot of your getting road rage is just your physiological response to the fact that you're going fast and your body's required to make very quick movements. Yeah, yeah. Fair enough. You're in a heightened state because of the speed. That's very different than talking shit about Ricky Gervais if he's not next to you.

Right, but it might be akin to what's happening on Twitter because everything is happening very, very fast on Twitter. It is, but it's also because people are addicts. The real problem with a lot of what's going on on Twitter, and there's a bunch of people that I follow on Twitter. It is, but it's also because people are addicts. The real problem with a lot of what's going on on Twitter, and there's a bunch of people that I follow on Twitter that don't have anything to do with me. They're just negative people. And I don't even follow them, follow them. I bookmark their page and then I go visit them because they're so fucking crazy. And I see them 12, 13 hours a day tweeting. It's straight madness and it's 100% in addiction and the amount of

Interactions that they have that are negative the amount of expressions. They have that are negative are Overwhelming that is an addiction. It's an outrage addiction. They're addicted to Recreational outrage and the response to their recreational outrage. It's constant and consistent. It doesn't vary. They're not learning anything. They're not growing and expanding the way they communicate with people and becoming better human beings and more kind human beings. They're addicted to outrage.

Imagine you do get a kick from that sort of spontaneous outrage. But when you manifest that in the real world, there's a cost. Yes. And the cost is, look the hell out because maybe you said it to the wrong person. Well, you also can't get that many interactions in the real world. So, so one of the problems, I like that. I think that's, I think that's very interesting that there's a hit because the thing about anger, anger is a mix of two emotions. It's negative

emotion. Yes. But it's also positive positive it's approach because if it wasn't you couldn't fight when you were angry let's talk about your own comments when you read your own comments you could read many comments like thank you jordan that book is really aligned to help me and then one will come in and go you transphobic piece of shit yeah you know you're responsible for the death of thousands of children who've killed themselves because they can't express their true gender identity and you'll see that one that won't have an effect on you. That's the same as these other people. These other people that are interacting, we are designed to seek out danger. When danger comes our way, we're prepared to react to danger in a much different way than

a friendly smile or a casual compliment. Casual compliments and friendly smiles are nice, but danger is something you have to pay attention to. That's the addiction of Twitter. So the kind of comment that you described where someone will say, I don't agree with your views and you're hurting all these people, those comments don't make me angry. The misrepresentation of your position. Yeah, that doesn't really make me angry. What makes me angry is like, I think it's something like, it's like casual insult. That makes me angry. And it's because I think, that's a tough one, man. It's just shit posting. Yeah. But it's, it's the problem with Twitter is, is that the price of being a prick has fallen to

zero. Yeah. Okay. But that's not true in real life. And so the question is, if someone's being a thoughtless prick to you on Twitter, I mean, maybe one, and maybe this is the proper answer, is that you should just ignore it. Yes. But the thing is, ignoring psychopathic behavior does not make it go away. Well, it goes away to you. Yeah. That's all that's important, Jordan. You can't control the interactions of the seven and a half billion people on earth,

but you can control how you interface with them. Yep. That's the difference. And if you continue to interface with people who one out of 10 is going to say something fucked up to you, and that's going to hurt your day. It's going to hurt your feelings. I have friends that will go on Twitter all day long, comics, and they'll read comments about them, and then you'll see them at the club. They'll be a fucking wreck. Yeah, yeah.

And they'll be like, hey, bro, stop reading that shit, and I'll tell them. You know, I'll do podcasts with comics, and they'll say something that's fucked up, or they'll go a little too far, or they'll talk over people too much, and I'll tell them afterwards, like, don't read read the comments just stay the fuck out of the car they never listen they never listen it's impulsive you want to know you look at it you gotta learn

well it's also the case that people you know it's not all bad that drives people to that too because someone who's immune from social criticism is a psychopath. And so you want to be open to feedback, you know? And so I'm not discounting what you're saying. And Twitter in particular is hard to deal with. I read YouTube comments, thousands and thousands of them. But that's a different game. It's more men. Well, it's also way more.

It's also almost all the comments on my YouTube channel are positive. Really? It's like 99%. That's interesting. Unless we're talking about political issues. I found that YouTube comments were the first things I stopped reading because they were so negative sometimes. angry about takes on certain subjects and the way they would exaggerate interactions with people and make it seem like these were horrible, aggressive exchanges when they weren't. They were just casual disagreements between people that sometimes are clunky.

Right, right. Well, I've been fortunate with the YouTube channel in particular because it has become a very, very positive place. And so I'm very happy about that. I'll give you an example. I was going to say something, but let me finish my thought. Because what I was going to say was what I realized is I don't need to read those. And those don't necessarily represent truth. But what they do represent is someone having a clunky reaction to my clunky reaction.

And maybe they've drawn all sorts of conclusions and they've decided to look at it in the least charitable way. And I can choose whether or not I let that affect me. And the best way to not let that affect me is to not read it. And the best way to make sure that i'm not immune to criticism is my own self-criticism which is ruthless i'm very introspective and i'm a horrible you're also talking to people all the time so so that and if you if you don't i mean if you don't manage that properly you're going to be punished in the discussion yes and you're going to be punished afterward because people won't listen to it. Well, also I'll be punished because I'll hate myself.

Right. I'll be angry at myself for my poor handling of any sort of verbal situation. But in doing that, I have become much happier. I've become much nicer because it's made me think of all of my interactions, like the way I interact with people, all of them are person to person. All of them. All of them are face to face.

Even though this podcast is reaching fucking millions of people, all of my interactions with people are face to face and it's a much healthier way to communicate with people. All the interactions I have with people face to face, I might as well say all, because I've had like, I don't know how many interactions with strangers in the last five years, but it would be at least, it's at least 75,000, like at least. It might be way more than that, but it's definitely at least it might be way more than that but it's definitely at least that there's been three that weren't positive and weirdly enough there's there's only been three that weren't extremely

positive they're so positive that it's almost unbearable because one of the things that's very strange now i don't know i don't know what happens to you when you're out on the street what happens come with me tell me what happens the street. What happens? Come with me. Tell me what happens. We're out tonight. We will. Fucking wild. Yeah, so tell me what happens to you.

I get mobbed. It's weird. Okay, and how often have you had a negative interaction? Very, very, very, very rare. Most people are friendly. Even most people, if they didn't like me before for whatever reason, they say hi, I say hi to them. Yeah. And we're usually like, usually oh he's just a person

just a person and i'm a nice person i'm very nice i try to i go out of my way to be nice it's something i practice yeah like i practice martial arts i practice being nice because i think it's valuable it's not just valuable to me i think it's valuable to the people i encounter oh i think i have a responsibility to the way people react to me yeah and if I misstep, it bothers me a lot. Well, the other thing about being in a position like the one you occupy is because people know you in a way that you don't know them when they approach you. And the reason they approach you is because you're an idol of sorts, because otherwise they wouldn't hold you in esteem. And that is even the case if they're negatively attracted to you in some sense, right?

And so the problem with those interactions is that if you make a mistake, that person will never forget it for the rest of their life. And they will tell everyone about it. Well, more importantly, like the way they feel could have been avoided. Yes, absolutely. You could have done a better job in interacting with them. And then, you know, sometimes people come up to you and, look, one of the things that I've done when I've met famous people that I really admired is I've been awkward and clunky.

Yeah, yeah. Very likely to be the case. And if you're awkward and clunky, especially when I was younger, and you catch someone who's tired, maybe someone who's jet-lagged or hungover, you can have a bad interaction. You bet. And then you're like, ah, that guy was a dick. And then it's fun. It's fun to say that guy was a dick. Oh, yeah. It's fun. It's exciting. Yeah. Well, it's also an expression of your profound sense

of betrayal. Yes. Because you're kind of hoping when you go up to the person that they're the real thing. Yes. And then you get burned and you're really betrayed by that. Like it's a deep betrayal. I spent a lot of time in my clinical practice working with people who are socially awkward. And so analyzed social awkwardness at the level of detail. And one of the things I do when people come up to me, because they're often awkward, and they'll say things like, oh, you know, I'm fanboying or something like that. And I always shake their hands and I always look at them and I always ask them their name. And no matter how awkward they are, they can almost always remember their name. And so once they say their name and they look back at me, 95% of that awkwardness goes away.

Yeah. And then, so I can put them at ease instantly, and then we can have a little, a real interaction. Not long, because otherwise I would only be doing that. And that always goes wonderfully, and it's amazing. But I think it was hard on me. It's hard on me in a way, because a lot of the people who come up to me are emotional. And so it's weird. My life is so weird because wherever I go, it's like being surrounded by old friends

because I'll go down the street and everybody says hi, you know, or they come up to me in this friendly way and open, eh? Like there's no defenses. Right. They come up to me like they're people I know, which is very weird. Yeah, I'm sure it is. Same exact thing. Yeah, yeah.

And so you really have to handle that carefully because they have made themselves vulnerable in that moment. And you've had an impact on their lives. Yes. I'm sure your work has shaped a lot of the people that are very happy to see you. You've had a personal impact on their lives. Yeah, and it's been a positive one. And so wouldn't I be the ultimate bloody fool to do anything to put any sort of twist in that at all? Because wouldn't that be a catastrophe? But human interactions are messy and sometimes things go clunky. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, my wife has got good at this and I have a good team around me and they help me manage this.

And so, because we try really hard to make sure that all these interactions go as well as they possibly can yeah and that's and that's it is really wonderful because it's really something to be received as a friend by strangers everywhere and you think this is back to this idea of success you talk about these successful power mad psychopath types that is what happened when they walk down the streets like people are plotting murder or they always are lying to them like everywhere they go it's literally hell you bet you bet or stalin who got hyper paranoid everyone's a liar everyone's a liar well yeah everyone lies to you everyone right you have no friends they are terrified of you

not a single word every anyone has ever said to you for the last 40 years was honest. He's got a bias control group. Yeah, yeah Yeah, and he created it. So how's that for hell? What was it like for you? Because you have a very weird experience in life. You were It's very weird There's not a lot of people like you where you were a university professor and then all of a sudden you were famous. And you were famous in your late 40s. And really famous. Like not just famous, but famous as like a worldwide.

Depending on who you ask, either you're a voice of reason and rationality and personal responsibility. and, you know, personal responsibility, or you're a voice of intolerance and bigotry and anger and hateful. Sexual oppression. What did Michael Eric Dyson call you? A mean, angry white man. Yeah, and a mean, angry white man. Hilarious. Yeah, yeah.

You're not mean at all. That's what's dumb about that statement. You're not mean at all. I am white. dumb about that statement. You're not mean at all. I am white. Actually, that's a lie, too. I'm kind of tan. And he was actually not black. He was sort of brown.

What am I? Because I'm darker than you. Yeah, yeah. That's ridiculous. But neither of us are white. Well, I'm Italian. And he was brown, not black. Well, isn't that weird?

Yeah, it's really weird. The black and white thing is so strange because the shades are so- Tan and brown. There's such a spectrum of shades of people. Unless you're talking to someone who is like 100% African from the darkest place where they're not wearing any clothes all day, and they've developed all that melanin to protect themselves from the sun. Even the term black is weird. And when you use it for people that are literally my color, it becomes very strange.

Yeah, yeah. You know. This is true. So you were asking me what it was like. What is it like to be you? Like, what is it like to, and then I know, you know, you've gone through a lot of shit. And this latest thing with getting off of the benzodiaodiazepine that to me was a real shocker because first of all i had no idea that you were taking it and then to find out that it's that

difficult to get off of and then to hear from other people that have tried to get off of it how difficult it is and then to realize how many people around me have an issue with that stuff xanax is a motherfucker and I didn't know what a motherfucker it was until I talked to a friend who is a counselor at a drug rehab center. We were saying that that is one of the ways that people get locked back into drinking and doing drugs is a psychiatrist will prescribe Xanax and sober people who get on Xanax all of a sudden start drinking. He said it's super common. He said that it's one of the most difficult drugs to get off of. He said, and this is something that Dr. Carl Hart, who's, I love him to death. He's brilliant. He speaks so

openly and honestly about drugs. And the guy's a professor at at Columbia he said that there's two drugs that will kill you when you get off of them he goes it's alcohol and benzodiazepine those are the two that if you just quit you'll fucking die and or you wish you would meanwhile they're handing those things out like tic-tacs yeah well they were regarded as a safe substitute for barbiturates and you could easily overdose on barbiturates, especially with alcohol. When did they know? When did they know? When was it in the literature, the difficulty of detoxing yourself from these? Very recently.

Really? Yeah. Jesus Christ. And when did they start being handed out? 20 years ago. Fuck. More. So what happened?

People just stayed on them? Often. I have one good friend that takes it every day and takes it oftentimes with alcohol, which I know you're absolutely not supposed to do. There's not a damn thing I can do about it. This is a friend that I love to death, and I just go, I put my hands up, and I go,

there's nothing I can do. And he's been on it for more than 10 years yeah well I started taking them because I was ill yeah you know and it they helped because I couldn't sleep I couldn't sleep at all I don't know I don't know what I still really don't know what happened you couldn't sleep and so an anti-anxiety medication do you think that that any, this is one of the things that I want to talk to you about. This is why I brought up the fame thing. How much of the pressure of being attacked by all these different people and having these people write these horrible articles about you and I know you read that stuff which is different from me I don't read stuff about me and I think that's helped me tremendously and that like my gauge of how I deal with people is like Tucker Carlson doesn't read things about him either you could tell you can tell by the way he communicates he seems free you know there's a burden that people carry around when they read things about themselves like Eric Weinstein has that burden sometimes.

You know, when people read. Yeah, well, part of the reason, so did I read things about me? Well, yeah, but that wasn't what was stressful exactly. Although it was. But it's a multitude of things. Well, what was stressful when I first got, I've had a history of depression and that runs in my family. And that's probably stems back for me right to the time when I was a kid. And, and I think when I really got sick in 2016, it was partly a manifestation of that.

But at the time my job was threatened, like actually. Yeah. And my clinical practice was threatened. And the Canadian Revenue Agency was after me all at the same time. And they were after me because of a mistake they had made, which they admitted three months later. And the college was after me because of a vindictive client who came after me with a pack of lies, but because they were so... And basically, I emerged from that unscathed, but that was by no means obvious that that was going to be the case. I was accused of sexual misconduct.

And the evidence? When I was dealing with this client, I would turn my wedding ring around. You'd spin it? Well, I'd play with it. Right. And that was sexual misconduct? Yeah. Well, to her, it was a signal of some dark underlying desire that I wasn't, that was polluting our therapeutic relationship.

I've been doing that with you the whole conversation. Yeah. I have this silicone wedding ring. Yeah, well, I'm going to report. I'd report you if you had. Stick my finger in there. Yeah, exactly. I do that all the time.

Yes, well, there you go. It's really bad. And if there was a college that governed the behavior of reprobates like you, I would definitely report. No, don't do that. That's terrible. I stretch it out. No, that's Freudian to the extreme.

Although I don't know what turning it means. How could stretching a silicone wedding band be Freudian? Well, you're putting your finger in the little hole. It's rubber. What kind of vaginas are you dealing with? Rubber is, you know, that's good. Anyways, we don't have to go there. So that was all you had done was play with your wedding ring.

Yeah. And I really helped her a lot. Well, unfortunately, when you're dealing with people that are extremely troubled, oftentimes they look for external reasons why they're troubled and they find oppressors.

Well, she was also angry with me because when all this blew up around me, it interfered with my clinical practice and she had come to rely on our weekly meetings. Oh, yeah, I disrupted them. And so she was, she was angry about being abandoned. And it was really sad because I didn't want to abandon my clients, but I had to stop my clinical practice, which was also very upsetting to me because I had like 20 clients and I knew these people, man, like they were, I knew these people, you know, I'd fold them through

thick and thin. And then all of a sudden, so many things piled up around me that I found when I was in a clinical session that I was distracted. So you can't be distracted in a clinical session. Right. And so anyways, what emerged from that, and it was in the middle of the winter, and I have seasonal affective disorder, I couldn't sleep at all for quite a long time. And I went to my doctor, and I said, I can't sleep. And he gave me a sleeping medication and an anti-anxiety drug. And I took a little bit and I said, I can't sleep. And he gave me a sleeping medication and an anti-anxiety drug. And I took a little bit of the anti-anxiety drug and I could sleep. And my life was pretty stressful. And I thought, okay, I'm much better. I'm just going to leave

this be. This is working. I'm not going to muck with it because I could barely go back to work. And was it a low dose? Yeah, yeah. I couldn't even feel it. Of Xanax? Really? Yeah, it was a low dose? Yeah, yeah. I couldn't even feel it. Of Xanax? Really? Yeah, it was a low dose. So it alleviated the anxiety, but it didn't affect your cognitive performance or it didn't affect the way you- Well, it didn't affect it as much as how sick I was. That really affected it.

So sick meaning depressed. No, no, no, no. You mean when you say you're sick. No, no. When it hit, if I stood up, my blood pressure was really low. If I stood up, I'd faint. I was fainting five or six times a day. When are we talking about here?

2016. Okay, so this was when all the pressure from all these different sources was coming at you. Yeah. And that was making you sick. So it was physically. No, yeah, that was part of it i think i think what it did was it it stressed me enough so that i was susceptible more susceptible to whatever was wrong with me in the first place so there's a lot of immunological problems but this was also when you got on this diet which

has been very beneficial right when did you get on the diet yeah i was around the same time 2016 17 and that seemed to be weird life yeah the cure to a lot of your woes was to eliminate processed foods and eliminate sugar and bread and pasta and all those different things which i hate to talk about it because i don't i don't i don't really recommend this to people you know because i'm not a dietician and i'm not really that interested in it in a sense you know yeah because i'm not a dietician and I'm not really that interested in it in a sense, you know, partly because I'm not an authority. But it's your personal experience. Yeah, yeah. Well, your personal experience and just this.

Well, my wife has a lot of immune problems and some of them are quite serious and I have a number of immune problems and some of them are quite serious. And our daughter got both of them and was really affected by it. And like she was, she told her mom, it and like she was she told her mom there's Michaela she told her mom when she was starting to come out of the bit she said Michaela was only staying awake six hours a day when in her late teenage years and the only reason she could stay awake was because she was taking Ritalin because otherwise she would have just slept like all literally all the time Jesus and and uh she said, you know, Mom, I was dying.

And slowly, you know, which is not a pleasant way to die. As a teenager. Yeah, it was terrible. I mean, she had to have her ankle replaced as a teenager, right? Yeah, and then re-replaced like three years ago. And this is all... No general anesthetic. This is all because she can't be on general anesthetic?

She didn't want it to... Yes. Spinal, but they still had to do all the hammer and sawing while she was... I had my knee done that way. Yeah, yeah. I watched it. Because I figured I was only going to have one knee surgery. I should see it. That's not true. I had three, but I thought it was true at the time. I thought I was only going to have one knee surgery. I should see it. That's not true. I had three, but I thought it was true at

the time. I thought I was only going to have one knee reconstruction. Yeah. Yeah. So I started getting better in September and I'm not sure why. So, but, but let's go back to this. So the, the, the meat diet, the all meat diet, you lost weight and that alone, getting rid of excess body fat, it oftentimes will help with a lot of things. But also, you eliminated all these inflammatory foods. Well, I seem to have recovered from all the inflammatory conditions. So I had very bad gum disease, which is not good for your cardiovascular system. What is gum disease? What do you mean? Well, your gums recede and they bleed. And it happens when people age. That's the theory.

But, and I had three surgeries to control it because, you know, your gums will recede all the way and then you lose your teeth. It's like, it's not good. And plus you're way more likely to have heart trouble because of it, because it indicates a systemic infection. Yeah.

And so I had that for like 20 years and that's incurable and it's completely gone. Completely gone, meaning the gums came back? No, because they never quite grow back, but there's no inflammation and no bleeding. That's all gone. And no irritation. Interesting. So that's interesting.

And I had psoriasis and that's gone. And I had peripheral uveitis, which caused my right eye to be full of floaters because there's inflammation on the bottom producing like a tissue, uh, production. And that would fill the aqueous liquid in my eye. And I could see all these floaters all the time. And that's pretty much gone completely. And, um, I lost 50 pounds in seven months and now I weigh exactly what I weighed when I was 23. And I don't have an ounce of excess body fat. And I'm, what else? The sides of my legs were quite numb for like two decades.

Sides of your legs were numb? Yeah, yeah. Were you having back pain? No. No back pain? No. None at all? No, no back pain.

But that went away. So now they were hard. They got hard and rigid and kind of old because you see that in older people that their muscles start to rigidify and so forth. And that's all gone completely. That's completely flexible again. And you've been on this diet now for five years? Five years. Yeah.

And it's just meat? Yes. Although there were times when I was eating some other things, but that didn't seem to work very well. What other things were you trying? Low-carb vegetables, primarily. Like greens, mushrooms? Did you eat mushrooms? No, it was mostly greens.

Any fruit? Some, yeah. I miss fruit a lot. I miss a lot of things, but c'est la vie. So when you introduced fruit, that was an issue? When I, I was still really sick in August and I was eating some more things because I thought, oh Christ, I'm so goddamn sick that I'm, I don't care. I'm going to get some, something positive somewhere. Right.

So I started to eat some other foods, but my daughter convinced me to stop that entirely again. And another number of other things happened, and I started to feel better. In the mornings when I woke up for like two years, it took me like four or five hours before I could stand up. Like it was awful. And this is coming off of benzodiazepine. It's hard to say. I don't know what happened because like I said, I was sick when I started taking them. So do you think

a lot of this is pressure? That certainly going off them was, I really don't know, Joe. When you get sick and you don't know what it is, you actually don't know. But it seems like stress, right? Yeah, my mother and my sister were worried when I decided to go on tour again. We decided to plan this tour back when I was still literally so sick I couldn't stand up. And we thought, we're going to live like this is going to come to an end. So we planned this tour. My mother and sister were quite worried about it because they thought that the tour, the last tour was part of what stressed me out. But I don't believe that.

I really liked it. I thought it was a really affirming experience. And like it was intense, but I'm not interested in sitting around relaxing. I don't even know how to do that really. Even if I have time off, I don't relax. Well, enjoyment and stress, they're often the same thing. Not if you're doing what you love. But even if, no.

I know, it can be too much. Even if you're doing what you love. Yeah, but what do you do instead? What do you do instead? Like, relax? What does that mean? I have a pontoon boat. I go out on my lake.

We look at the sunset. I love that. I'm not saying you should do anything different. I know. But I'm saying physiologically, enjoyment and stress often come hand to hand. Yeah. Because some of the things that you enjoy doing are challenging. And challenging things create physiological stress.

Yeah, they don't. They don't? No. In fact, there's a whole literature on this. Imagine that you... Challenging things don't... Not if they're voluntary. Not if they're voluntary.

Okay, what if you like to fight? Okay, one of the things that I noticed when I was young, when I was competing, is I was always getting sick, even though I loved doing it. I loved fighting, but I was always nervous. Yeah, but you're taking a fair bit of physical. No? No, that's not what it was. It was stress.

Look, an excess of anything can push you beyond your limits. I'm just saying that there's a tax. There's a thing that you're doing, right, when you're interacting with thousands and thousands of people. You're expressing controversial viewpoints that are often criticized. You're reading articles that are written about you. There's a stress that comes with doing this thing that you love that's undeniable. Yes.

And I've had to parse that apart carefully to decide what was particularly stressful that I could let go of and how and maintain the rest of it. And hopefully Tammy's helped me with that. Oh, my whole family and my friends, everybody around me has helped me with that a lot, tremendous amount. And hopefully I'm more and more able to separate the wheat from the chaff. And I do more artistic things now than I had been for a long time. Like what?

Oh, I've been writing a bunch of music. We recorded a bunch of music. Five songs. Really? Yeah, yeah. Do you sing? No, I do character voices. Character voices?

I wouldn't call it singing. What does that mean? Yeah. Want to play some of it? Well, the music is very dramatic. Do you want to send this to Jamie and he'll? Well, the music is very dramatic. Do you want to send this to Jamie and he'll play it? The music is very dramatic. I could give you a taste of it.

We need a taste. Okay. Okay. I'll give you a taste. So I wrote these books. I thought I should get drunk before I do this. I wrote these books called An ABC of Childhood Tragedy. Oh, boy.

And they're really dark poems. For children? No, definitely not oh absolutely 100 decidedly thoroughly comprehensively not for children right they're very dark and i had my illustrator for beyond order who i really like juliet Fogra, Julia Fogra, Juliet, who's an Eastern European, got a dark side, brilliant, brilliant artist. And when I was really sick in January and trying to figure out what I could do, Tammy said, you remember those poems you wrote?

And they're the sort of poems you read, they're like four stanzas long. You read them and you laugh and then you hate yourself for laughing. And so, and I wrote them when I was in the midst of pretty intense clinical experiences. Could try to,

I'm not sure exactly why, to blow off some steam. But there was more to it than that and I don't know all of what it is. I'm kind of working at the juncture between black comedy and beauty. It's a weird space. and Yulia's drawings are unbelievably beautiful and deep. She's so good at this and so I sent her

these terrible poems I wrote that are comical and horrible and I said, Tammy thought it would be good for me to, because I thought about getting them illustrated, said do you want to take a look at these and see if you're Tammy thought it would be good for me to, because I thought about getting them illustrated. I said, do you want to take a look at these and see if you're interested? And then she sent me back these stunningly beautiful illustrations. And then she produced one every three days for like three months.

And these, I'll show you, I'll show you them. And maybe you can post one if you want. And so, and then we thought, well, that's fun. That was fun and very worthwhile. And then, like there are all all these Depression-era children, and they're all beautiful, beautiful children. And they're all pathos. Her drawings are full of pathos and sorrow for their suffering.

So they're very deep and dark and beautiful, all of that at once with these terrible black comedy poems. And then we thought, well, it'd be fun to figure out how to market this, which is just communication. Well, why don't we write some music? And so it turns out I can write verse. I wrote a whole screenplay, which we've also recorded three songs for it called The Water of Life, which is a fairy tale. And I want to make a musical out of it. And so that's quite fun. And so we've written and recorded three songs for it already. So this is what you were doing when you were recovering from this?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was great because it really worked out nicely because when I was so ill, I had something to look forward to because I knew Yulia was going to send me a beautiful image and I didn't know what it was going to be. And then we assembled it into a book. And then I started working with this musician, Marshall Tully, who I really like and who's a good arranger.

He can play all sorts of instruments, and he's got a great musical sense. And so we started working on music together. So he'd write the music, and I wrote some of it, but he wrote most of it, and he played almost all of it. And we had a band involved for one part, and we'll do that some more. And so he'd write the music, and then I'd write the lyrics. And then I'd write the lyrics and then I'd send them and then we'd record it I'd send the music and lyrics to Yulia and she'd generate a bunch of images and so then we made a bunch of videos out of it set to music which will release on YouTube in like fall of this year and and uh you know that was part of marketing for the book but then it

turned into its own complete enterprise and so we're going to put out an album of all these songs. And so that's, I love that. It's so fun. So that helped you just having some sort of a creative expression. Oh yeah. Helped you. Yeah, it helped a lot. How long did it take you to recover from the benzos?

Well, when I finally, two years and I haven't fully recovered, but, but I finally, two years, and I haven't fully recovered. You haven't fully recovered? But also, I was also sick. No, my left hand is quite numb and was way more numb. Both hands and my feet were, like, completely numb. And I was in, like, excruciating pain for two years. Like, pain at levels that I didn't even know was possible. All the time or on occasion? No.

This is one of the things that was terrible about it is that it was really, really bad in the morning. And did it start right after you got off of the Xanax? No, but it got way worse. So it just started showing up eventually. Yeah. And then it was... It started to get worse about the same time that Tammy went into the hospital,

but because she was fighting her way through, you know, catastrophic cancer at the same time when this started to happen. So this was additional stress. Yes. And that heightened everything. Well, it didn't, it certainly didn't help. Right.

I think it made me, again, it made me more susceptible to something that was already happening. So whatever this illness has that's plagued my family, my father, my grandfather, multiple cousins, and a lot of immunological problems on my mother's side too. I have a cousin whose daughter died of immunological problems, the same ones that Michaela had. And this is all mitigated somehow or another by this only eating meat diet? I don't know. It certainly is for Michaela. And for you as well?

Well, I don't know that for sure. I know what the diet has done. Explain this. You were telling me about this study that was recently done oh yeah yeah well Michaela was invited to Oxford to do to debate and that was fun because I was invited about the same time so we got to go there and speak on the same night which was really cool you know because how unlikely is that right does she have a background in nutrition no well yes but yes because she's done her research, but not technically, no.

No, she had a background in trying not to die, and trying not to be in agony, and trying not to have all her bones deteriorate, because she had 38 of them. So why they would ask her to go to Oxford to debate? The topic was, we should move beyond meat. Right, but why her? Well, because she's become a well-known advocate i

suppose of a carnivorous diet as an investigative tool for chronic untreatable disease and that's a good way so imagine here's the rationale joe imagine there's something really wrong with you like really wrong and and nothing's helping okay what might be causing it well something complex you don't understand okay what complex things are you doing you're eating a lot of different things okay so how about elimination diets do this how about you simplify it so Michaela tried a bunch of elimination diets but they were dope dopey. It's like, why eliminate this and not this? There was no rationale. And so she wanted to find out how much can I eliminate and still survive? How can I bring it down to the simplest possible thing? And it turns out that you can pretty much live on

meat, weirdly enough. Not just live, but thrive. Well, you know, people debate about that, but certainly some people seem to thrive compared to how they were. What about supplements? No. No. No vitamins? No. Does that seem ideal? Because I would feel like you don't have to do that.

You don't have to just eat the meat. You can eat meat and get all of your micronutrients and all of your minerals and vitamins. It seems like you don't need them. It isn't even obvious you need vitamin C. Now I'm going to get killed for that. Apparently, there's some indication that you only require vitamin C if you eat carbohydrates. Really? Well, you know, don't take anything I'm saying as gospel, because what the hell do I know? But does she eat organ meat? No.

Because that's the healthiest of all meats. No, she eats lamb. That's it? Yes. Just lamb? No. Salt. But lamb and salt.

Lamb and salt. Not beef anymore? No. Okay. No. Tammy eats only lamb too. Wow. Why lamb? It's more of a game meat.

They both seem to manifest fewer immunological symptoms if they only eat lamb. Hmm. Yeah. Tammy has some serious immunological problems as well. But they're very well controlled. Now, how did the Oxford debate go? Oh, God, I hope they release it soon. Yeah? Oh, she did very well, but she wasn't the star.

She did very well. And, oh, yeah, just before she debated, a study was released that was published by Harvard epidemiologists. I think they were epidemiologists. They did a retrospective analysis of 2,400 people who were on the carnivore diet for six months. And it was the only scientific paper I've ever read. It was published by Oxford University Press, by the way. It's in a high-quality medical journal.

The study's no joke. And you might argue about the validity of retrospective self-report, but if it's carefully done, it can be valid. And it's a good initial foray into investigation It's not a definitive study because you need a double you need at least a randomized trial. That's harder. But anyways It's the only scientific paper ever read where the surprise of the authors was evident in the manner in which they wrote Because what they showed was that radical weight loss first

So that was pretty much experienced by all the participants 90 reduction in all self-reported disease symptoms all all enhanced well-being and decrease in suffering and uh yeah that pretty much covered the territory. So she introduced this during the debate? Yes. So when did it come out? The week of the debate? It came out two days... Two days?

We encountered it two days before the debate, but it had been published very recently, like within the last three weeks or something like that. Did she have time to go through the entire study and get all the relevant information? Yes, time enough for her section of the debate. She only spoke for about 10, 12 minutes. There were three people on her side. But I really am hoping that this debate is released soon, because one of the people on the other side who was rallying against meat delivered the most preposterously, unsaturizable, politically correct rant

that I'd ever seen anyone deliver anywhere by a factor of about five. She just about made me convulse. And part of it was sympathy, you know, because it was so over the top. It was so utterly miraculous that anyone could and two of her compatriots were sitting in the audience and she said things like every hamburger is served with a side order of misogyny which is a really good line you know they crafted that line it's a pretty good joke but you know she said because she associate she associated the oppression of women with the oppression of farm animals which is like it's a dangerous cow? She associated the oppression of women with the oppression of farm animals,

which is a dangerous territory to wander into, that analogy. And she said that she compared the husbandry of animals to slavery, which is also a place that you wander into with real care when you choose your metaphors. And she said the reason we're bombarded with images of sexy chickens and sexy cows is because we feminize our farm animals before devouring them. Hold, please. Are we bombarded with images of sexy chickens? Because I am.

Oh, sexy chickens and pigs. It wasn't cows. Well, pig cows, you know how sexy they are. So that's forgivable. Miss Piggy? Is Miss Piggy? She's our only one. Is that bombarded? Is this forgivable. Miss Piggy? Is Miss Piggy our, she's our only one. Is that bombarded?

Is this woman on a Miss Piggy rampage? Sexy chickens is like, I thought. What fucking sexy chickens are there? Hey, man, you tell me. But I did feel. That sounds crazy. Oh, you wait. I'm praying they'll release it.

This will go viral. This is like Kathy Newman on steroids. Like, I mean it. It was something, man. it was something man i was sweating i was really really really it was like being hit and then in the end there were two people who helped craft her speech and they were sitting in the audience and while she was on this unbelievable rant it was just jaw-droppingly miraculous and they kept yelling genocide it's like they're sitting in the audience and she'd make a point about meat

and how appalling the human race was, especially the men, especially the white men, the oppressive, patriarchal, racist, white, supremacist. Meat is a white supremacist exercise, by the way. Where was she from? Was she English?

Yes, yes. She'd written a book on this and that's why they invited her. But then I get the English accent with it, too. Yeah, yeah. And then her compatriots were randomly yelling, genocide, it's like, genocide, genocide. It's like, what? Yes, we think that's bad.

We think that's bad. We've already established that. But that was so, it was like theater of the absurd. It was so, it was one, it absurd it was so it was one it'll be a if they release it i think it will it'll be a cultural moment because it was the point at least it was the point in my life where the politically correct argument reached an apogee that cannot be exceeded it was like that is as absurd as it can possibly get in every possible way in 10 minutes. It was theater of the surreal. And everyone, well, the audience was full of vegans,

and so they were on the side of the anti-meat people. And so they kind of gave her a pass, although a lot of people walked out during her, whatever it was she was doing. But I did feel bad for her while I was convulsing, because I really did did because I thought, oh my God, you're so crazy. You're so utterly crazy. And there's no way that you can bring

that set of presuppositions to bear in a real human relationship and have it go anything but terribly wrong. And so that means that you're completely isolated and all your so-called friends are never offering you any corrective feedback whatsoever right they're just feeding into this terrible ideological mess you've wandered into and so it was painful at the same time which is partly why it was sweating but it was yeah it was

something man i think i discovered yeah that's it that's it pornography of meat yeah well there you got your dancing hamburger there eat me oh my god late night menu friday and saturday oh my god but i defy you i defy you to find a depiction of a sexy chicken so where are the sexy chickens at yeah see if you can there are the sexual politics of meat. Yeah, that's her. Oh, so this is what she writes. So it's like all sex and meat. Yeah. So living amongst meat eaters. And look at the woman in this sort of sexy pose here. Yeah, but she's surrounded by plants, Joe,

and so that makes it okay, apparently. Okay. Yeah, that was her, all right. And yeah, it was something, man. I tell you, I'm not exaggerating this. I've never heard a speech like that in my life. In its own way, it was like an ultimate work of art. It was just something beyond comprehension.

Every trope, every politically correct trope you could possibly imagine was magnified beyond its normal range of reference and then applied in this utterly scattershot. It was like she brought every ideological tool in the playbook randomly to this issue. Imagine if it's all performance art. At the end of the day, she's like, I was just fucking around. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, then it would be funny and remarkable. Well, she's like, I was just fucking around. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Well, then it would be funny and remarkable. Well, that's like Titania McGrath, right? Yes.

But Titania McGrath couldn't have held a candle to her. She would have demolished. No, no, no, no. No, they weren't even in the same league. No, Titania at least has a facade of reasonableness. Have you met Andrew? Yes. Yeah, he's great too.

He is. I really like him. I love him. Yeah, yeah. He's very,? Yes. Yeah, he's great too. He is. I really like him. I love him. Yeah, yeah. He's very, very funny. He's brilliant. And very, very smart. He's fucking so good.

And multi-talented. That character is so good. It is. It is. But she's obsolete. She's obsolete. Yeah. So how did the vegans react to the pro-carnivore position?

Oh, it was very civil. It was very civil. Although it was stacked to some degree because a couple of the people on Michaela's side damned the freedom to eat meat with faint praise. And I have my suspicions that it was staged that way. How so? Well, they basically said,

every reasonable person thinks that eating meat is bad and immoral, but we should still let people do it. It's like... On her side? Yeah. Why would they say that? Why would they say it's bad and immoral?

What about having the argument that monocrop agriculture is immoral? Yeah, well, that was part of Michaela's argument. That's responsible for so much death. I mean, it's just not natural at all. And in order to cultivate... Yeah, and Mick talked about sustainable agriculture and made that case as well, that our relationship with animals that we devour

can be made as humane as possible, and that's acceptable and perhaps even desirable in a broader moral framework. And a woman, I wish I could remember her name, autistic professor at the University of Chicago who revolutionized the treatment of animals in the slaughterhouse industry, she made the case that the animals that we eat don't suffer a humane death in nature. They're all torn apart by carnivores. All of them.

None of them died of old age. Yes, yes, yes, yes. And so I've been working on these books. I have some other projects, too, that I'm working on. I have a new book that I'm working on called We Who Wrestle With God. And I outlined some of the ideas we talked about today. And I'm interested in the weaponization of guilt and how to deal with that,

why it's possible, and how to protect yourself against it, and what we should do in face of the fact that we walk on soil soaked with blood. You know, how do we atone for that? Because we have to, or we get guilty about it, and then we're exploitable, even by ourselves.

And I have an app coming out in a month or two, hopefully a month, called Essay. And I've been working on that with my son Julian and some other people for four years. And it stemmed out of our project to sort of universalize the university, which was too big for me to manage when I got sick. And sort of we narrowed it in scope because we wanted to teach people how to write. And that's really hard to scale because you usually learn to write by having people write, read what you've written and critique it. And that's very labor intensive and expensive. So we built a writing program, like a word processor that has built in conceptual tools that aid in the conceptualization of an essay so imagine when you're writing first of all you have to pick a good question because

you want to answer it it has to be a genuine intellectual enterprise and so the people kids have never taught that and so pick something important that you want to explore. And then, okay, so what are you doing when you're writing? Choosing words. Forming phrases. Organizing them into sentences. Sequencing the sentences and paragraphs. Sequencing the paragraphs into the chapter and then chapter into books if you're going that far. But so it's a hierarchical enterprise.

And so when you write, you have to get the word right and the phrase right and the sentence right and the sentence order right. And you shouldn't do all that at once because you can't because it's too hard. So you write a rough first draft that's twice as long as the thing you're trying to write, and then you edit. You shorten the sentences, you pick the right words, you pick the right phrases, you rewrite the sentences. So we built in tools to guide people through this process to help them conceptualize their essay

at the level of the word and the phrase and the sentence and the paragraph and to build those ideas of multi-level editing into the process. And then we've tested it on a lot of people and we have a nice elegant user interface and we're hoping that because i because one of the things i've learned is that words are power no wrong words are authority words are a legitimate authority and so without having your words in order you have no legitimate authority and that's the last thing you want unless all you want is irresponsibility but that isn't going to work out for you anyway and so the pathway to success for virtually everyone is facilitation of their capacity to communicate and so we're hoping we really we really want to pull young men

into using this product because they're the hardest market to target with such things, and the most in need of it. And part of that is engaging them in an honest dialogue about what exactly writing is. It's like, there's no difference between writing and thinking. And there's no difference between thinking and not failing. So, you let your thoughts die instead of you. That's thinking. You test everything you do before you implement it that's thinking and writing is a massive aid to that process and so if young men in particular were taught properly about writing and thinking they would come to view those as like arrows in their quiver so or shields in in their in their combat or the means

by which they aggregate their allies or even more importantly the the means by which they serve themselves in the world properly and like really not no no moral overlay on top of this well you know you're a communicator like you're a comedian you're, you know, you're a communicator. Like, you're a comedian. You're a master of words. You're a master of wit. You're a master of listening. That's why you're successful in this weird, radical way that's completely unpredictable. And it's also the pathway to adventure.

Get your words in order. And so that's essay. And like I said, I think if you go to my website or to essay.app, SA.app or to my website, you can sign up for that. We're going to do a beta release, test it broadly to make sure it doesn't fall apart under use pressure and before we release it completely. But we're very excited about that because how to teach people to write is a really hard academic problem to solve. is a really hard academic problem to solve. And the idea of building the writing tools into the software, if we got it right,

maybe could at least in part address that problem. It's a massive problem. It's a massive problem, right? Most people come through university now without learning how to write. And that means they don't know how to think. And that means they don't know how to talk. It's not good.

So there's that and uh it's the book and the music and the screenplay and this essay app and oh yeah i'm i'm going to be chancellor of a university uh ralston college and char in savannah and i also started this thing that we're going to launch called the peterson, where I'm going to get all the great lecturers I know to make courses. That'll be a free, that'll be a universally accessible university. It won't be free because I run things on a for-profit model for all sorts of reasons. Efficiency not being foremost among them. I recorded two courses for this when I was in Nashville, one on Jean Piaget, nine hours. I got way deeper into his thought than I'd ever been able to at the university. And then I recorded an updated version of my Maps of Meaning course.

I compressed it from 40 hours to nine, which took me like 40 years to do. 40, 35 years to do. And I got way deeper into that too. I realized some things about the Exodus story. There's a scene in there in the Exodus story where God sends poisonous. This is so cool. It's so stunning. I'll tell you a little bit about it if you don't mind. It's so cool, Joe. I can't believe it can possibly be true. So Moses leads his people out of the tyranny, right? But weirdly enough, they don't go to the promised land this is very weird they go into

the desert well why well we're all say prisoners of our own tyrannical misconceptions and misperceptions psychologically and socially so let's say we we free ourselves from those well then we're nowhere at least we were guided by that's why people have nostalgia for tyranny it's like at least we had enough to eat then at least we knew who we were then it's like out of the tyrant's grasp into the desert and so you think why don't people want to challenge their own preconceptions it's like yeah it's out of the tyranny into the desert and the worst the tyranny the worst the desert So if you've been tormenting yourself with tyrannical

Preconceptions and totalitarian obligations and you decide to drop it or maybe you're shocked out of that by trauma You don't go to paradise you go to the desert. Maybe that's even worse So no wonder people don't do it so now the Israelites are out in the desert you think why are they there for 40 years and maybe it's because it takes three generations to recover from tyranny you're in the desert man and so the Israelites start worshiping idols it's ideology it's the same thing and that's why because they don't have anything to orient themselves, because they're not tyrannized anymore,

and they get all fractious, and they fight with themselves, and Moses has to spend, like, all day judging their conflicts, because otherwise they're at each other's throats. And anyways, they turn to false idols. And so God isn't very happy about this, and he sends poisonous snakes in there to bite them. So it's like, out of the tyranny, into the desert. Now we're fractured by ideologies. Now the poisonous snakes come.

And so the poisonous snakes are biting them and biting them and biting them. And they finally break down and go to Moses and say, look, you want to have a chat with God and get him to call off the damn snakes? And Moses says, yeah, okay. And so he goes and talks to God. And God says, this is weird.

This is one of those impossibly weird stories. You think this is either insane or it's true because that's the only options. It's not boring. It's not predictable. It's either insane or it's true. Because that's the only options. It's not boring. It's not predictable. It's either insane or it's true. Okay.

And maybe we can start by thinking it's insane. But whatever. Moses talks to God and God God could just call off the snakes, right? That's what you'd expect

him to do. But that isn't what happens. He says go make an image of a snake in bronze and make an image of a stick, like a staff, and put the snake on the staff and then stick it in the ground. And then have the Israelites go and look at the snake. And then the snakes won't bite them anymore. And you think, what the hell is...

That's the same symbol physicians use. Why do you think that that would be insane or true? Well, what does it mean? What the hell does that mean? Like, what's he up to? What does many of the stories from the Bible mean? Well, that's what we're trying to figure out. Jesus coming back from the dead.

Yeah. Walking on water. Moses partying in the Red Sea. No, we're not. We're not going to be able to get all there, but we can get to this one. Okay. Okay, so... The caduceus.

Yeah. Yes. Same symbol. do you know the little the links to that and mesopotamia yeah the ancient sumerians yeah yeah and it's the snake that sheds the skin yeah i know it's a symbol of transformation they also think it might have had roots in the double helix of dna that's what the the wacky conspiracy theorists yeah i know they go deep down the rabbit hole i talked about that rich. I know, I talked about that. Richard Dawkins stripped my skin off when I went to Oxford to talk to him about that. He said, you said that under some conditions shamanic people might be able to see DNA.

It's like, that's complete nonsense. Yeah, he doesn't know. The problem with Richard Dawkins is he's had zero psychedelic experiences. If you have psychedelic experiences, you see all kinds of iconography from ancient Egypt. You see hieroglyphics. You see geometry. Yeah, but is that true or insane? But it doesn't matter if it's true or insane.

It's repeatable. You could have it over and over. I mean, people who take mushrooms and people who take dimethyltryptamine have these kind of images. They happen all the time. Yeah. It's not uncommon.

So the idea that it's impossible for those people from thousands of years ago to actually see the double helix pattern of DNA says who? Well, I'm glad you said it and not me. Me, I'll say it. Okay. Look at Richard Dawkins is a brilliant man. Yes. But he stands on this foundation

Of a lack of experience The lack of experience of psychedelics And he's been tempted to do it before Under clinical settings And he's talked about it But he's never done it So the idea that that's preposterous Everything when you're on psychedelics

Is preposterous But they're real Not real in the sense of you can put it on a scale But real in the sense of if I give you DMT You will fucking go there You will go there just like everybody goes there And if you try to hang on, good luck You're going to get shot through a cannon to the center of the universe

And that's just how it goes And so you can either have experienced that or you're talking out of your ass so if you say do you think those people thousands of years ago could have had a shamanic experience where they saw the double helix pattern of dna yeah yeah and you can too you can too And it's not just because you know what the double helix pattern of DNA is, because you can also see souls. You can also see the very components. You're talking just like the conservative that everyone thinks you are.

Yeah, that's me, bro. Let's go back to this story. Okay. So the snake, the staff. You have to go look on the snake. Yes. Okay. Here's the doctrine from all fields of psychotherapy.

Okay. Look at what you're terrified of, and you will get braver. Unless what you're terrified of is a pack of wolves, and they're going to fucking eat you. Yeah, well, look, it's not like there aren't real dangers. But look, if you're threatened by a pack of wolves, and you go out and study them. You'll realize you're fucked. Unless you have guns. Okay.

So the classic therapeutic treatment for terror and the poisoning that terror induces is exposure, voluntary exposure. Okay. So the pattern there is face what you're most afraid of, and you will be free. Okay. Okay. That makes sense. Voluntarily.

Yeah. Now, that's a doctrine of psychotherapy now. Right. Okay. So, now, that's weird. That's weird. So, God doesn't chase away the snakes. He makes everyone braver.

Okay, because that's better than being safe. Bravery is better than safety. It's a more reliable cure for terror. Okay, now, that's a snake first on a stick. And Christ is comparing himself to a snake on a stick? Okay, so what can this possibly mean? Well, I was thinking about that in relationship to imagery of the crucifix and the story that surrounds it. So Jung thought that the passion story was archetypal because it's a limit story, like this debate at Oxford.

You cannot write a more tragic story. It's impossible, technically. Why? Well, because it's a story of the aggregation of everything that people are afraid of. So there was no death more painful than crucifixion. That's why the Romans invented it. It was to punish political miscreants. It was the slow agonizing death by suffocation, essentially, and dehydration and exposure. It's extraordinarily painful.

Okay, so that sucks. That's pain, man. Plus, you know it's coming. That's part of the story. Plus, your best friend betrayed you into it. Plus, you know it's coming. That's part of the story. Plus, your best friend betrayed you into it. Plus, your people turned against you. Plus, they're led by a tyrant who doubts truth. Plus, you're a victim of the Roman Empire. Plus, you're completely innocent. Plus, everybody knows it. Plus, they choose a criminal to be released from this experience instead of you, even though they know he's a criminal and they know you're innocent.

So, and you're young, and you've done no wrong, and all you've done is help people. So it's a limit story. Okay, so then you think, we've been looking at that limit story for 2,000 years, in the image and in the story. What are we doing? Well, you're supposed to visit the stations

of the cross, let's say. Okay, here's the idea. You hear the crucifixion story and you play with it. Who are you? Maybe if you're female, you're Mary. And why is that? It's the pieda, because you have to offer your children to the destruction of the world. That's female courage. That's the mother that doesn't hold her child back. It's like, go out. To what? Eventually your death and destruction. Go out. Leave me. Be in the world. That's feminine courage, man, to let her baby go. You're a pilot. You doubt truth, but you'll go along with the crowd. You're Judas because you betray your best friend. You're the mob. You're the criminal.

All of that, that's you. You look on all those things that you hate and are terrified by. That's not a snake. It's like the worst of all possible snakes everywhere. That's what you're looking at. What do you see? You see death. You see destruction, pain, terror, tyranny, frailty, betrayal.

Look harder. Look harder. Look harder. What do you see? The death and resurrection. You look far enough into the abyss, you see? The death and resurrection. You look far enough into the abyss, you see the light. Well, that's the story. That's the connection between those stories.

And this unbelievably strange thing is, is that connection exists. It's like, there's this strange story of the serpent in the desert, and we know that story's 3,000 years old, something like that. We know that. And then we know perfectly well that Christ said that he was allied, that his image was allied with that snake.

That's written down. And even if you don't believe in the historical reality of Christ, someone still made that connection. And did they know everything we were talking about today explicitly? Well, no. What do you think they did know? What do you think? I mean, we were talking about today explicitly? What do you think they did know? What do you think? I mean, we were talking about this before, that the roots of these religious experiences

almost certainly come from some sort of transcendent experience. Well, when Eliot mapped out the shamanic experience, he laid out the shamanic experience he he laid out the pattern so shaman die they're reduced to a skeleton they're reduced to dust and then they climb the axis that unites heaven and earth and enter the kingdom of the ancestors and the gods, they have a paradisal experience and they come back and share it. That's a death and resurrection. That's what they experience. So what does that mean? I don't know what it means, but that's what happens. And then we know from Murrescu's book, people can read it and make up their own bloody minds.

Do your investigation. It was probably the origin of democracy. It was the origin of Greek culture. The Eleusinian mysteries. And was that a psychedelic experience? It's like, come up with a better hypothesis. Good luck. Well, there's physical evidence now.

Yeah, yeah. Because of Murerescu. All these ethnobotanists. Yeah, they know. And botanical archaeologists. Yeah, you know, finding the ergot. Yeah, they know. And botanical archaeologists. Yeah, they're messing about with ergot. Yeah. And psilocybin.

God only knows how long. I mean, how long have they? And then there's DMT in the Amazon. I mean, there's a massive shamanic tradition, and it stems back way into the Stone Age, and that's its pattern. back way into the Stone Age and that's its pattern. Well you know the universe was it what university was it in Israel in Jerusalem that made the connection between the burning bush and Moses and DMT because of the acacia tree the acacia tree which is rich in DMT and they made this connection like most likely. We don't know what was in the Ark of the Covenant.

Right. We know that the people who were going to approach it purified themselves before they dared do it. You know, we know that a good psychedelic experience will drag you through your sins. That's known as a bad trip. Yeah. so what do we make of the fact that the shamanic experience which is replicable cross-culturally and which dominated the human landscape for at least 20 000 years we know that it involves a death and a resurrection and an entry into paradise and and a reunion with the ancestors and so what does it mean who knows man this is man? This is way past my knowledge, but I know that connection that I just told you about

between the story in the New Testament and that story in Exodus. That took me like 30 years to figure out. Because there's also the idea that the hero goes into the abyss to rescue his father from the belly of the beast. But that's the same idea, right? You go down, and I thought, I knew this the last time I went to lecture too, is like, you look into the abyss long enough and you see the spirit of the benevolent father manifesting itself. That's the case. That is the case. If you look into the depths of evil and suffering what you see is not the

finality of evil and suffering you see the the victory of the spirit that obtains victory over that and then you might think biologically well how could it be any different joe that's the spirit of life life is mortal suffering it's like but we live what's the spirit of life. Life is mortal suffering. It's like, but we live. What's the spirit of victorious life if it's not the benevolent father who overcomes the catastrophe of suffering? Like, what else could it possibly be? Even if you think about this just as an instinct.

It's like, you're threatened by what's worse than death, and there are plenty of things worse than death that you can be threatened by. And yet you have a revelation that enables your transcendence of that. Well, what could it be other than the spirit that overcomes death in some fundamental sense? Now, how fundamental? Look, think about it this way. Maybe we're running at 10% capacity us human beings I don't mean

we use 10% of her brain that isn't what I mean I mean we're not fully committed to the enterprise so let's say here's the enterprise let's make everything better and better as fast as we can for everyone like full flat bloody out 100% committed no resentment well what is what's stopping us from being committed to the enterprise like when you say we're not committed to the end is that what it is really oh some don't you think it's like individual desires for achievement instead of like thinking in terms of the greater good of the group well no no no i think that i think that can be that's a minor impediment in some sense.

But we're not working in cooperation. Well, that's—yes. But that's individual desires for their own personal achievement versus the greater good of everybody. Yes, but I would say that's not the worst problem. But isn't that like the origins of the good concepts of socialism, the good concepts of people working together? Like, that's the origins of it. It's like if we all just work together, if we all just share, what it doesn't take into account is human nature, right? Yeah, sure,

that's fine. And I also think that, look, if you have kid A and kid B on the playground and they're both selfish, they don't play very well together. Right. And so you could say, well, their selfishness, which is like a narrow self-centeredness, makes it impossible for them to cooperate. And then they can't even play very good games, because it's actually more fun to play with other people than to play with yourself. Even sexually, for all you pornography addicts, by the way.

Oh! Yeah. So in any case, it's a form of... But at least the people who are selfishly achieving value achievement. You can get way, look, I'll tell you a story. Someone wrote to me two months ago, and Warren Farrell wrote The Boy Crisis. We had a conversation about boys who aren't encouraged and how bitter they can become for all sorts of different reasons.

And somebody wrote us who was planning to shoot up a high school. And he'd written a 53-page manifesto. And he was in touch with the last person who shot up a high school. They were corresponding, because it's a competition, you know, that shooting up high schools, that's a competition. It's a very, very dark competition. You have to do a lot of brooding over evil before you want to emerge victorious in that competition. That's like months of pathological fantasizing that you nurse and

nurse. And it's all resentment driven. And so that's way worse than just a bit of a warped desire to achieve. It's like Heath Ledger's Joker. He wasn't a criminal. Criminals you can trust, man. It's like they want your car. So do you. You've got lots of common ground. It's the guy who wants to burn your car that that's a whole different level of mayhem. And you think, how do people get there well their lives have no

positive meaning abuse resentment resentment rejection but also see when god when cain slays abel when cain uh cain gets jealous of abel in the biblical story and no wonder because abel is like he's everybody's golden boy it's good looking he, he's successful, he works hard, he's a really good person. He gets everything and deserves it. The Harvard students were very annoying in that way when I was there. It's like, they had these positions of privilege, let's say. It's a very terrible way of conceptualizing, but we'll give the devil his due. And it's like, you'd hope that they'd be

whiny, spoiled, self-centered, narcissistic brats, because then at least you could hate them in good conscience for their success. But they weren't. They were smart, attractive, hardworking, talented, athletic, like polite, cooperative. They were great great and so how annoying is that if you've rejected all of that how annoying is that well so that's Cain and Abel so Cain goes to God to crab and complain you know what's going on Abel makes these sacrifices and you reward him. I make a sacrifice and I don't get anywhere. And that's the complaint of everyone bitter. I made all these sacrifices and God rejected them.

It's like, yeah, that sucks. Well, so God says to Cain, I had to look at a bunch of different translations to kind of get this right. God says something like, sin crouches at your door like a predatory, sexually aroused animal. It wants to have its way with you. And you invited it in and let it have its way with you. And it's this great metaphor because that kind of evil is that

that's creative. That's creative. It's like inviting a vampire in. It's like, invite that in. Say, inhabit me. Then you toy with it and toy with it. And you let the fantasies of revenge build in your head until it inflates you into something that's indistinguishable from demonic.

You read the writings of the Columbine kids. If you want to find out about this, I mean, it's crystal clear. They're the judges of the human race. They want to eradicate being itself. They are out for revenge against God. Like this stuff is biblical. They're also on psychotropic medication. Yeah, yeah.

Well, there's all sorts of, there's all sorts of problems. I'm talking specifically about this, but lots of people on psychotropic medications don't shoot up high schools. Right, but under the right conditions, people that are on, I mean, I don't know what kind of psychotropic medications they were on, but some of them act as, there's a way where you take them where it makes everything okay. It alleviates consequence. It alleviates the feeling of whatever you're doing being wrong. Yeah. That didn't happen in the Columbine case. They knew it was wrong. No, no. No, no.'t happen in the Columbine case. They knew it was wrong.

No, no. No, no. What are you saying? No, no. They were doing it because it was wrong. Right. They didn't just know, but that's different, right? But wrong is the wrong word then.

No, no, it isn't. It's exactly right. They were out to do the maximal amount of harm in the minimal amount of time. But they felt it was the thing to do and they didn't think that there was something that they shouldn't do. No, no. No, no. No, no, no. Because they did it.

It's like the Joker. Right, but they did it. He burns the money. They thought it was something they should do. No. But they did it. Yes. So they thought it was something they should do.

No. What are you saying? I'm saying they decided. Listen, but they wanted to do it. Yes. And they did it so it's something they should do no they did it because it was the worst thing they could think of

right which is what they should do because they wanted to do the worst thing they could do yes they wanted to do we can agree on that but I'm saying being under the influence of psychotropic drugs it's like the question of causality it wasn it's like it was a question of causality it wasn't because their conscience was alleviated by the drugs they knew they knew

that what they were doing they'd already planned to die right well so then here ask yourself this if you plan to die why not just save everybody the trouble and die first because you're angry because you yeah well you want yeah you angry. Because you want revenge. Yeah, well, you want, yeah, you want revenge. But you want revenge against the innocent. Do these drugs that change your state allow you to do things that are impossible to do without them? No. Some horrific acts that you don't think so.

No, I don't think that was. So is it, there's a question. Yeah. This comes up, this is why I'm asking you this. And So is it... There's a question. Yeah. This comes up. This is why I'm asking you this. And you're a good person to ask this. The question of whether or not it causes something or the fact that they're on these drugs because they've been so tortured by life that they needed these drugs.

Yes. If these drugs are not causing these actions. Right. Yes. That's what you think? Yes. In all cases? No.

Because never, something's almost never all, you know? So, and people will react idiosyncratically to all sorts of medications in somewhat unpredictable ways. But there's no straightforward pathway from the use of such drugs to that level of atrocity. But you know that there's a direct correlation that almost all school shooters are on psychotropic drugs. Yeah, but they're all depressed, so that's not surprising. And they're not exactly depressed. They're nihilistic.

And they're not exactly depressed. They're nihilistic. They're nihilistic in a way that manifests itself as a kind of depression that would elicit psychotropic medication. But it's not depression precisely. I had a friend who was on, I think it was on Zoloft. And their take on it was that they lost a whole year of their life where they just didn't give a fuck about anything. And they just felt like nothing mattered. Everything was fine.

Nothing mattered. There are people who report emotional blunting of that sort on antidepressants. If you are tortured and angry and furious, then you're put on something where it doesn't matter. Nothing matters. I don't give a fuck. You think it'll alleviate conscience? Yes. No. No way?

Like I said, zero of anything is pushing too hard. So I wouldn't rule out the possibility of idiosyncratic responses, but these drugs are extraordinarily widely used, antidepressants, and the proportion of people who commit atrocious acts on them is infinitesimally small. Right, but the proportion of people who commit atrocious acts on them is infinitesimally small. Right. But the proportion of people who commit atrocious acts while they're on those medications is extraordinarily high. Right. But I don't believe that that's involved in the causal pathway. Is that because you have personal experience with these drugs? That would be part of it, but that's not the primary. I say that's a tiny fraction of

it because I wouldn't generalize from that. Do you still have personal experience with these drugs? No. Are you on any kind of medication? Yes, a small amount of one medication. What is it? I'm not going to discuss that. Okay. But no, I don't believe that that's, because these crimes, these particular crimes we're talking about, they're a very specific kind of crime. No, I'm not saying that the drugs cause those crimes. You're saying that maybe they dampen the voice of conscience. Yes. Or also alleviate the anxiety of committing them. Yeah.

Alleviate the anxiety of following through with something. No, it's not obvious that that's the case. If you look at the effect of these drugs on motivation and emotion has been pretty well delineated and they do dampen negative emotion. And so, but for most depressed people, that's really good because they are suffering from a pathological excess of negative emotion. And some of that does manifest itself in the form of harsh super ego like conscience analogs so a depressed here's how a depressed person would think um maybe they have an argument with their wife about about who's supposed to take out the garbage. Trivial, in some sense.

It's like, oh man, I didn't take out the garbage again. I never do anything around the house properly. That's just an indication that I never do anything at all properly. People who do nothing at all properly, they're not very good people. I've never really been good at that sort of thing in the past, in the present. I'm probably going to keep fucking up like this into the future. I'm a terrible person. I should die.

That's too much negative emotion, right? It just blows every level out. And they go right from the trivial mistake to the suicidal thought. to the suicidal thought. And one of the things that antidepressants do is bolster their resistance to that propagation of catastrophe. Because that's like, that's hallmarks of depression. And you're talking specifically about SSRIs? Yes. Yes. So no, I don't believe that they make, there's no evidence, for example, that they make psychopaths worse or that they tilt people into kind of psychopathic behavior because they decrease negative emotion. I know no literature that indicates that. And people are very interested

in such things. It would be studied. Yeah, people are interested in that correlation. Yes, but that doesn't mean that there's no single person to whom that ever happened. Right, got it. But that's not a behavioral consequence of SSRIs or even of serotonin itself. Because then you'd also have to say that raising someone's serotonin level, which does make them more calm, by the way, like less prone to negative emotion, because as you move up a hierarchy, you produce more serotonin. And the consequence of that is that threatening things become less threatening. Well, they should, because the higher you are in a hierarchy, the less dangerous it is. Right. Right. And so,

and so partly you can destabilize people by threatening their position in the hierarchy, because you dysregulate the structure, you dysregulate their claim to valid occupation of that position and then you destabilize their nervous systems. That's partly, say when, let's say you see this in academia a new, a young

faculty member comes in for a job talk and lays out his theory and a upstart graduate student puts up his hand and pokes a hole in the idea. You might say, well, the professor on stage gets taken aback and is destabilized because his theory has been challenged and he uses the theory to protect himself against anxiety. That's kind of a terror management idea. That isn't what happens. Not exactly. It's close, idea. That isn't what happens. Not exactly. It's close, man. It's real close. What happens is the young faculty member comes in using his claim to valid knowledge as an indicator of his suitability

for that position. So I'd say, I know a bunch of things that are useful that I can use in trade. know a bunch of things that are useful that i can use in trade and because of that i i'm it's i'm justified in occupying this position and so then the student stands up and says you're a fraud you don't deserve that position and it's the specter of the loss of the position the hierarchical position that's destabilizing not the threat to the integrity of the position, the hierarchical position, that's destabilizing, not the threat to the integrity of the belief system. Now, there can be some of both, right? Right. But the reason that people don't like to lose faith is because it undermines their moral claim to their position. And people hate that. And no wonder, because that is really a severe threat. You're a fraud.

To have that revealed means that the system could validly take away your position. Well, the terror management theorists regard your theory as a defense against death anxiety. But your position is actually a defense against death. Not just death anxiety. But your position is actually a defense against death, not just death anxiety. It's like, that's your space in the culture. That's why people don't stone you. That's why you're a valid member of society. That's how you make your living. That's not an illusion. That is actually the structure that defends you against catastrophe. And part of what the mob does is come up to people continually, especially from the left, but the right can do it too. And part of what the mob does is come up to people continually, especially from the left, but the right can do it too. And they certainly have done it,

if you look back at any reasonable stretch of history, but the left comes up and says, you're a white supremacist, racist oppressor, part of this patriarchal system. You have no moral claim whatsoever to the position you occupy. Well, that just strips people, you know, especially if they're good people. They think, oh, I need a moral claim to this position. Well, it's also often disingenuous because all they're trying to do is silence you. All they're trying to do is defuse you. No, no. They're also trying to hurt and destroy you.

Destroy you. But they're also trying to stop you from being a valid member of the conversation. Oh, definitely. And they're trying to undermine the idea of merit itself because maybe they're not living particularly meritorious lives. Most likely. And so the light shines on them in their darkness.

Yes, most likely. Yeah, yeah. We are four hours in here. So I think we should probably wrap this bad boy up and bring it home. Tell everybody where they can – your website is jordanpeterson.com. jordanbpeterson.com. jordanbpeterson.com. Yeah, and you can look up the essay app at essay.app or on my website.

And if you go to my website, you can find my list of recommended books. There's 100 there. Don't tweet it, Jordan, because he's not going to read it, right? Yeah, I hope not. Yeah, I hope not. And your podcast is still available on YouTube. Yeah, and Spotify. And Spotify.

Okay. Yeah, yeah. And yeah, there's lots of good discussions on YouTube. If you like long form discussions, I find people that I want to talk to and they'll say yes. And then we have as interesting a conversation as I can manage. And maybe I share that with Joe in that that's our intent.

Yes. And it is our intent. And it's a pleasure and a privilege to do it. And we try to live up to that responsibility. And thank you, man. Thank you. It's so good to see you. Always.

Always good to see you. I'm looking forward to dinner too. And also, congratulations on your success. see you. Always. Always good to see you. Looking forward to dinner, too. And also, congratulations on your success. Thank you. Like, I've had senior political figures in Canada now tell me, this is so awful, that they cannot say what they have to say in our current political situation because they cannot find a single media source in the entire country that they regard as

trustworthy and reliable and these are these aren't fringe political figures like these are people who've had stellar political careers and that's what they tell me point blank and the same thing is happening in the united states and you're an antidote to that all by yourself. I know you have help. I know you have help, and you have people around you, but it's a testament to your integrity, man, and good for you. It's something.

So keep it up. I will. It's something. So keep it up. I will. It's something. It's an odd place, man. I know. It's all by accident. That's the oddest part about it. Yeah, well, sort of.

I know. It's not by design, but it's not by accident. Well, being where I am is by accident. Yeah, that is by accident. It is not by design. It is by accident. Yeah, that is by accident. It is not by design. It is by accident. I could not have imagined a world where just talking to people about whatever subject matter, you know, is their area of expertise and asking questions and being curious could be that

popular. It's very strange. And then also- Yeah, but wouldn't it be something if that was the way it is? Yeah. Well, it wouldn't be so unique then then i wouldn't or maybe there'd be just more unique everywhere that would be nice yeah yeah everybody else pick up the slack way yeah yeah well i i've had visions of that sort of thing you know is that we each called to a unique destiny and then it's not unique it's like well the world's inexhaustible. And so we could each have a unique destiny. Well, one thing that does happen that I hope does happen, and I didn't, um, mean to set out to

create a kind of a format or to pioneer a kind of a format. But what I do hope is that the people who enjoy it, and I know this is the case, they're starting to do their own thing that's similar. You bet. And that will, and I'm sure that- I've met some unbelievably impressive young men who are doing this, and one of the things that just stuns me about interacting with them is that they're very articulate. They don't say like, they don't say, you know, they don't say um.

They weigh their words. They're witty they listen intently and they're aiming up and it's so and they're just lights you know it's like oh man you're going places you're going places well intellectual curiosity is now because i think of long-form podcasts it's attractive where it was thought of as something akin to daydreaming or mental masturbation. You bet, you bet. Impractical. Effect intellectualism.

Exactly. Yeah, yeah. It's the opposite of that, man. It is in many ways the opposite of that, and it's also a viable opportunity for a career. Yeah. And all you have to do is be interesting. Yeah. It's the only opportunity for a career in any real sense,

because even if I tried to teach a friend of mine this, and he eventually committed suicide for a variety of reasons, and he managed it now and then, but finally was overcome by the demons that possessed him, let's say. You know, he was a very smart man, but he hadn't made much of his education, and so he was in positions he felt were beneath him. And I tried to tell him that the idea that those positions were beneath him was his own blindness, because there was an infinite amount of possibility everywhere. So, like, I worked worked in restaurants and I had lots of working class jobs, like 30 of them, like lots. And I really liked working in restaurants. I was a

dishwasher. I loved it once I got good at it. And the reason I loved it is I was a kid, 14, and I got treated as an adult because I worked hard, you know, and I loved that, man. That was so great to be treated as an adult legitimate contributor you bet you bet and then because I worked hard and was interested the cook in the first restaurant who was a German chef he taught me to cook it's like then I was a short order cook and I was like 15 and so that was really fun because it was fun to work in the kitchen and and the place was full of jokes and tricks all the time. And I learned how to cook and I learned how to handle the domestic environment and clean and put things in order,

but also to work with people. And I had really good friendships with those people. And that fostered all sorts of opportunities for me. There was an infinite amount of possibility in that dishwashing job because I wasn't in a bloody box with people pushing dishes in through a slot I was in this dynamic environment where people were trying to be hospitable which is really really hard you know on a mass scale under a lot of pressure because restaurants can be high pressure jobs because the rushes that go with it there was there was everything in the world was in that restaurant. If you had eyes to see it, like dozens of my friends,

I think it was literally dozens, came to that restaurant to get a job as a dishwasher and every single one of them quit. So it's like they were in the same restaurant. Yeah. I had a very similar experience when I was young. I worked at a place called Newport Creamery. I was a short order cook.

Yeah. And a lot of my friends would get. Yeah. I enjoyed it. I made friends with the people that worked there and hung out with them. We had fun times together. And it was also like it taught you that, you know, like you had a long shift. Yeah.

It taught you the value of hard work like you had a long shift. Yeah. It taught you the value of hard work. There was something to it. Yeah. Scrubbing the grill and, you know, all the shit that you had to do and clean up before you could leave for the night. Yeah, because I was little, man. I was little. The bartender from next door, I was really mouthy and he'd come over now and then and he'd say something and I'd mouth off in some like spectacularly horrible way. And he used to stuff me in the ice machine and I

could fit. It was so annoying because I could hardly get out, you know, but they also used to drop me behind the, uh, the big grill and to clean out the grease behind it. Like that's one filthy job, man. That's a filthy job. And I was the only one who could fit.

And so I was off. Yeah. Yeah. So, but. There's value in shitty jobs. There really is. There's value in struggle. You learn.

You learn and then it sucks at the time. Well, and you know, those working class jobs, they were fun in a way. Now, I had fun with my colleagues at Harvard. They were fun. They joke. We had fun in our faculty meetings. That was back when you were allowed to joke?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But those, I liked those meetings because the faculty at Harvard at that time, at the 90s, they had a good attitude towards meetings. That was back when you were allowed to joke? Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I liked those meetings because the faculty at Harvard at that time, at the 90s, they had a good attitude towards meetings. That was pre-internet. That's why. It was like,

we're here to get this done as fast as we possibly can. And if you have something intelligent, say it. And if you're funny, that's okay too. But otherwise, shut up. And if you object, we'll put you on a committee

and you can do the work outside the meeting. I bet it's a lot different now. It certainly might be. I bet there's a lot of self-indulgent nonsense going on. So Ellen Langer was there at the time. She was a famous social psychologist and she had a vicious wit. And Ellen's role was the meeting would progress and then she'd say something completely outrageous and everyone would laugh and then we'd have the meeting some more and then she'd say something else completely outrageous. And there was a real sense of humor and among my colleagues uh jill hooly and richard mcnally and and brendan marr who knew timothy leary we had

meetings of the personality and psychopathology subdivision and it was really fun it was fun and i didn't experience that much in the intellectual realm once i was a faculty member, but I did there. But in those working class jobs, like that humor and camaraderie- Gets people through. Yeah. Well, and it's so core to it and it elevates the entire experience beyond the relative basicness of the job. Yes. For sure. And I look, when I look back on my adolescent life, there wasn't a lot to do in this small town when it was 40 below for like three months of the year. And a lot of what we did was pretty dissolute. A lot of those teenage parties were pretty goddamn dim places, you know, in the dark. The music so loud no one could talk.

Everybody too drunk. Kind of nihilistic to the core. A lot of drugs. Not so fun. But going to work, that was fun. It gave you purpose. And it gave me a community of productivity, you know? So that was good.

And that's there in front of you. You have a lowly job. It's like this. Hey, man, people are boring. Everyone I talk to is so boring. It's like. Maybe it's you. No, no, for sure it's you.

If you listen to people, I learned this in my clinical practice. If you learned, listen to people, they are so goddamn interesting. You can hardly even stand it. And so if you're surrounded by people who are dull, try listening more. They start telling you their story. People are so weird. Even the, even so-called simple people, it's like, think people are simple. You try building one. They're not so simple.

Even people that, you know, wouldn't register in some sense on any normal social barometer. You sit one of those people down and you have them tell you their life story. Oh, my God. It's so interesting that it's like it's traumatically interesting. I got to wrap this up. All right, man. I'm very sorry. But we have a short time.

Oh, you gave me four hours, Joe. It was a lot of fun. More. Four and 15 minutes now. All right. Thank you, Jordan. I appreciate you very much. Hey.

Thank you. The feeling's mutual. All right. Bye minutes now. All right. Thank you, Jordan. I appreciate you very much. Hey. Thank you. The feeling's mutual. All right. Bye, everybody. See you.