The Joe Rogan Experience - #952 - Thaddeus Russell
Episode Date: April 27, 2017Thaddeus Russell is an author of A Renegade History of The United States. He is currently visiting faculty at Willamette University and the founder of Renegade University. Check out his new podcast ca...lled Unregistered on Spotify. Family Friendly.
Transcript
Discussion (0)
I'm not interested.
Five.
Four.
Three.
Two.
One.
Yes!
We're live, Thaddeus Russell.
You're going no headphones.
You're a radical.
Well, you knew that.
Dude, I'll take the headphones off with you.
I don't give a fuck.
Let's go.
Bring it.
It's on.
I feel better.
I feel liberated.
Now I know what the real sound is.
Dude, you look slim and healthy.
What have you been doing?
Thank you.
I got back in the gym, and I'm doing boxing and kickboxing still.
You look active.
Yeah.
Well, you know, I'm in Oregon a lot, so the meth is awesome up there.
Oh, they do have good speed.
It's great for weight control.
I would think that Oregon would be more of like a calm down type of state as far as drugs.
I was just there for 420.
Yeah, I emailed you.
Yeah.
I love it up there, man.
I love it.
I would live there.
The winter is so goddamn depressing, but I would still do it.
Yeah, this winter has been just ridiculous.
It's rained for nine months straight.
There were like 500 inches in my county this winter.
But beautiful green.
Oh, God, it's so lush.
When you get out of the PDX airport,
you smell pine trees.
As soon as you walk out of the airport.
I mean, it's amazing.
And after being in LA,
which is just basically like this giant desiccated turd,
I mean, it's like, it's just so nice.
Yeah, that would be like the best place to live.
Like if you had a place there and a place here,
you go back and forth,
you deal with total dry and total wet.
That's what I'm doing.
It'll kind of balance itself. I think you nailed it, Mr. Russell.
Thank you.
I think you've nailed it.
I'm commuting every week and people say, don't you get sick of this? I actually love it so far.
So far, yeah. So my son is here. He goes to school here. In fact, he goes to school right
near where we're sitting. And so I have an apartment here and then a house in Salem,
Oregon, and I love it. It's great. Going back and forth.
I'm kind of like a shark.
I need to keep moving.
I feel claustrophobic and the world is passing me by if I'm sitting in one place too long.
Have you always been like that?
I'm digging it.
Yeah, always.
I always need to be doing something and moving.
I am literally claustrophobic.
Yeah?
Yeah.
Have you ever done an isolation take?
Oh, my God. Can't my god. When you talk about
that, I'm like, that's my worst nightmare.
Whoa. And I'm also a little bit afraid
of the dark.
I knew you were going to laugh at that.
You going to call me a girl
again? No.
Nothing wrong with being a girl, by the way.
How dare you? We'll get into that, Joe.
We'll get into that.
No, I mean like pitch black.
That freaks me out.
Really?
When you can't see anything, I can't stand that.
I don't mind a very dark room as long as I can see something.
But if it's pitch black, I freak the fuck out.
You know what freaks me out?
Night vision goggles.
Well, that's what I want, right?
Then I'm cool.
If I had those all the time.
No, they just seem so weird.
You put them on, you feel like you're in a horror movie.
Or you're in one of those scenes in one of those stupid Ghostbuster shows where they're down in the basement and they always have night vision on.
Yeah.
Have you tried them on?
Yes.
Oh.
Yeah, I have some.
Oh, of course you do.
Of course you do.
For like nighttime boar hunting or whatever it is you do.
That is one of the reasons why they use them.
Yeah, but actually for them, it's scopes.
They have night vision scopes where you see the infrared version of the pigs moving around
It's very weird to look through them. Yeah, but people often mistake other things for pigs like deer and
I haven't tried them on but I like that idea, but you know like so spelunking is definitely out for me, you know
Claustrophobic and afraid of the dark what is spelunking caving? Oh?
Like the idea of being like in a tight one of those tight little caves
You have to like squeeze your body through and the dark, and then your headlamp goes out.
I was just listening to a podcast about this family that owns a ranch in Texas, and they had these small caves that these kids would explore in.
And then they allowed some cavers, some local cave explorers, to go and check it out.
And they crawled through this really small, like three-foot diameter hole, like literally crawled through it and found two football field-sized caves inside and then found out
that there's literally miles of cave systems in there.
Oh, yeah.
No, it's incredible.
I wish I weren't terrified of it because I love all that other stuff in the outdoors,
you know, backpacking and camping and hiking.
I do all that.
I love it.
But going underground is the worst thing.
Do you only backpack and camp when it's a full moon?
No.
I'm cool with the stars.
That's good enough.
Good enough?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Headlamps?
Like I said, only pitch black
when you can't see your hand in front of your face.
That freaks me out.
And I don't understand why other people don't freak out about that.
Like I'll wake up in a hotel room and I forgot to, or there's no light at all on for whatever reason.
I'll freak out because I don't know where I am.
See, look what I'm already admitting to millions of people.
I just got here, man.
It's okay, man.
I'm already like a girl.
You're opening up.
You're opening up.
You keep saying girls if it's like a weak thing.
It's very problematic.
It's just that that scarred me the first time I was here.
You called me a girl.
It stuck with me.
I'm sorry.
No, it's cool.
I don't even remember doing it.
It's cool.
No, you just said you sounded like a girl just then.
Really?
What did I say about?
I can't remember.
Do you remember what it was about?
I can't remember.
Something good.
Probably something really good.
Pretty girlish.
Pretty.
So up in Portland, the Portland area, what are you doing up there so you're teaching right my
girlfriend who i live with is a vice president at willamette university and i teach part-time just
for the hell of it at willamette but mostly i'm developing all these other things uh and i'm
mostly just enjoying oregon so because man you can you can afford a hell of a house in salem oregon
for what you were paying in la let me tell you So we're just living a lot better. First time in my life I've been in a house that I enjoyed being in. Oh,
that's nice. Yeah. And so it's great. And it's given me a base to do these projects, my new
podcast and Renegade University and write my book. It's great. I have my own studio in the house and
I have my own office in the house. So it's like kind of the command center up there.
Yeah.
Nice.
Yeah. So it's been, it's been pretty awesome lately.
I think it's fascinating how some places,
like some cities have like a mindset.
There's like a feel that you get from the city.
And I like the feel that you get from Portland.
I mean, it's like a, it's a aware city, you know,
and it's not a dumb city, but it's a small city.
They're aware.
Aware?
You mean like woke?
They're woke?
They're woke as fuck.
Yeah, but it's like a white woke.
White woke.
Whatever white woke is.
They're a little pretentious.
I think somewhere along the line, Portland became like a place that pretentious people
gravitated to because they wanted to identify like, I'm white and I have dreadlocks.
Here I am.
Right.
You know what I mean?
But they make really good food. Thoseentious people their food cards are coffee yes
yeah yeah they make great food and those food trucks are out of this world totally totally
portland is a great city except have you noticed they hid all the black people there's four or five
of them i saw you've seen i've only seen three so far yeah mountain lions i keep waiting to like
come across the cage where they keep them in the one corner of the city. Cause then it's amazing, especially
in like the core of Portland, you know, the main part, all the, I, you do not see any black people.
You don't see Mexicans. You don't see Japanese people. You just, it is just white people,
dudes with beards. That's like a Pacific Northwest selling coffee. You see more of it in,
you definitely see more black people in Seattle. Seattle is pretty diverse.
Not fully, but a lot of Asian folks.
For sure.
But yeah.
Portland?
I mean, not even Latinos and Asians.
I'm like, how do you do that on the West Coast?
Where do you put all those people if you're on the West Coast? They just pass by.
They just go, let's keep going.
Vancouver's right up the street.
Let's just keep going.
Hey, you?
You took a wrong turn.
Keep going.
Just keep walking.
Let's just keep going.
Go north. Yeah, it's a keep going. Hey, you, you took a wrong turn. Keep going. Just keep walking. Let's just keep going. Go north.
Yeah, it's like, it's a small city.
I mean, I don't think Portland has more than a million people, right?
Does it?
Nah, I think it's like half a million.
Is it really?
I think something like that.
Yeah, it's small.
No, the lack of diversity actually is the only problem I have with it.
And it's a fairly big problem.
That's an issue.
But otherwise, it's the best city in America.
Really?
I think.
Really?
It's my favorite city in America.
Yeah, I should say.
It's pretty goddamn good.
Lawrence Krauss lives there.
Oh, yeah?
So there you go.
Yeah.
There's two of us.
Two cool people.
Two cool, smart people.
I don't live in Portland, right?
I live in Salem, which is an hour south.
But we're still in Portland a lot.
So it's kind of...
Is that because of the university?
Yeah.
And because it's way cheaper to live there.
And it's also really is that because the university will yeah, and because it's way cheaper to live there and it's also
Really beautifully centrally located. So we've got we're an hour and ten minutes from the coast, which is gorgeous Have you been to the Oregon coast? Yes, amazing
Yeah, and then we're an hour and a quarter from the Cascade Mountains on the other side and then all around
Salem is the Willamette Valley which is like Napa Valley and Sonoma County meet Vermont. It is so beautiful.
Just incredibly beautiful farmland all around there.
They make a lot of wine up there, too.
Incredible wine.
The Pinot Noir is the best in the world.
Yeah, but it's really pretty just driving through there.
So, man, it's, yeah, I'm telling you.
Also, Salem has Mexicans, so we do have a little diversity.
Oh, really?
Because of all the farm workers, yeah.
Oh, that makes sense.
There's a substantial population of Latinos.
You have legit Mexican food in Salem?
Damn.
Not like here.
We're working on it.
We're working on it.
I mean, Salem has been like a dumpy town for a long, long time until just recently.
And now it's starting to pick up.
We've got some stuff going on.
And even now, we've got a good MMA gym there and a boxing gym just opened.
In Salem?
Legitimate.
Yeah, like Team Quest people, former Team Quest people.
Who's the trainers?
Nick Gilardi.
He actually came up with Chael and Randy Couture.
He was trained as a wrestler by them when they were doing wrestling only when he was a kid.
And then he became a champion wrestler, and then they went into fighting.
And he was like, okay, I'll do that with you.
And he's a major sort of Northwest MMA fighter. Now he's like coach of the year in the northwest oh great
he's my coach we have a little it's really good MMA gym in uh in Salem called impact that's awesome
impact jiu-jitsu so your knee is we're talking about this before the podcast your knee feels
like it's good enough I'm I really would love to start grappling I never have and I'm scared of it
because of all the take especially the takedowns, you know, and the leg locks and all that.
Right.
So I don't know. But I'm doing, I'm still doing just stand up boxing and Muay Thai, kickboxing.
Have you ever done any yoga?
Yes. Yes, it's great for me.
Do you do it now?
I don't know if it's going to help my knee.
It will definitely help your knee.
I guess so. I mean, stretching, it's gonna help my knee. It will definitely help your knee. I guess so I mean stretching it helps just strengthening and strengthening
Yeah
I mean just holding static positions like static yoga positions for your back and for your knees and your feet and just does
I'm a broken record with this shit. So I'll stop right now. I love people people listening to this podcast like Jesus
He's gonna fucking talk about yoga again. I love it. Yeah
So we don't we don't have to talk. No that anymore. No, no, I'm all about that.
Why are you drinking Gatorade, man?
Because I'm a...
This is not good for you.
It's got sugar in it.
This is terrible for you.
You might as well be drinking it.
Because I get dry mouth around you.
You scare me.
I'm sorry.
I'm just kidding.
You're scared of the dark.
You're scared of memes.
I'm scared of a lot of shit.
You're scary.
Look at you, Mr. Muscles.
Listen, now that you're all leaned out, you're scared of muscle people?
Yeah, no.
So Salem's an interesting place.
It's a truly sort of like it's Trump country.
It's like the heart of Trump country.
It's like it's dudes with beards who are not hipsters, you know, who drive pickup trucks for real and have a lot of guns.
And they don't give a fuck, basically.
And it's sort of a,
it's not really a conservative,
socially conservative place.
It's more of a kind of a libertarian thing.
It's basically, this is my land.
Don't mess with me.
So it very much-
Well, Trump was the libertarian option.
Kind of, kind of.
Kind of.
Most libertarians hated him.
Well, they would be better off with, you know,
someone who's an actual libertarian,
like Ron Paul type character. He's, the only reason libertarians were attracted, would be better off with you know someone who's an actual libertarian like yeah ron paul type
character he's the only reason libertarians were attracted well there's two reasons but the main
one was that they were attracted to him because during the campaign at least he was saying things
that sounded like he was a non-interventionist in foreign policy right and that's why i was
at least interested in him i thought there was a possibility there. Of course, he would like, you know, for 30 minutes,
he would talk like Ron Paul about foreign policy.
And then the last 30 minutes of his speech,
he would sound like an old Republican
about how he wanted to bomb the shit out of people.
So who knows?
But now, of course, I think what's happened
is that the generals have taken over.
I think the establishment has just taken over.
Well, it seems like there's no way one person can run every single facet of being the president.
And especially not him.
Yeah.
And he's got 100 different businesses worldwide that are constantly ongoing right now.
Well, he doesn't know anything about the world.
Right.
So, of course, he's going to rely on experts.
And he also, we all knew this all along.
He loves generals.
He loves that thing.
And it's pretty clear that Mattis came in there and just took over his mind
And he said okay. Yeah, I guess yeah, I was right about all that shit. Let's go
Actually said I'm gonna get out of their way and let the military do their job exactly and like I know guys that are like
Reenlisting because they're pumped they think that the military like Tim Kennedy UFC fighter
He's really listed reenlisted because he believes that the UFC, or the UFC, he believes that the military now has the
backing and the support from the president and that this is going to be great and they
can do their job now.
Does Tim Kennedy want to serve in combat?
Does he really want to?
Yes.
Really?
He wants to go kill and possibly die.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
He's doing that right now.
Because he believes in the cause.
He's back over there.
Does he believe in the cause?
100%, yeah.
Where?
Which part?
You haven't talked to him about it.
ISIS?
What does he want to do?
Yes, he wants to kill ISIS.
He's about ISIS.
Oh, dude, he gives his address out to ISIS.
Puts his address on the internet and says, fuck ISIS, come get me.
I'd love to talk to Tim Kennedy.
Yeah, it's a long conversation, though.
I bet.
You would want six hours.
That's fine.
I'll do it.
You would want to take pee breaks and drink water and let's get into this from top to bottom I would
don't want the smoothed out CNN seven-minute presentation in between two
talking heads on either side you don't want that you want the long form right
who is Tim Kennedy and why why does Tim Kennedy feel this way and that's what I
experience that's my podcast actually unregister way? That's what I'm doing. That's my podcast. Exactly.
Unregistered podcast.
That's what we do.
And it's kind of a, yeah, that's precisely what we do.
I'm interested in people's personal histories and how it's connected to their current ideas, right? The roots of their political ideas, where do they come from?
So it requires people who are self-aware about themselves.
And a lot of people aren't.
But so far, my guests are people who really have a sense
of the connections between what happened in their childhood and their early development and
and what they're thinking now it's a really interesting thing if you can get people to do
that to connect those things yeah to weave them together so if tim i mean tim kennedy might know
uh where his ideas about serving in the military come from other than you know my dad did it or
whatever it was but that's what i'm interested in doing so and from other than, you know, my dad did it or whatever it was,
but that's what I'm interested in doing. So, and this form, like what you're doing here,
the long form, I love it. It's so much better. I, I think this is why I've, you know, a lot of
people who know me, I'd say most of the people who know me, know me from my podcast appearances
here and elsewhere. I've been on a lot of podcasts and I just, I I'm just more comfortable with it.
I just think it's the best way to go go I hate being on cable news where it's like
You know two minutes or 30 seconds and get this complicated idea out right then and that's it and even radio
I've done a lot of radio which just sucks, you know, same thing 20 seconds sound bites
Even 20 minute interviews. I always find frustrating either as an interviewer or as a guest even hour-long interviews
And you know totally I did an interview with Ron Miscavige,
who's the father of David Miscavige.
And we only did an hour and a half,
and I was like, man, if we did three or four hours,
I'd probably get deeper and deeper into this dude
and find out what-
Yeah, that's what you do.
I mean, so you go kind of,
you're always going in and out
of people's personal histories and their psychology
and then into their ideas and into big abstract stuff and then history and philosophy and science, right? You're going in and
always back and forth and in and out, connecting those things, weaving them together. That's,
I love that. I think it's the only way to go. You get the deepest understanding of people.
And it's, it sort of makes it impossible to do what most people do is, which is just put people
in a little box and throw them away. Right. Right. Dismissed. Right. You know, oh, he's a libertarian.
little box and throw them away. Right. Right. Dismissed. Right. You know, oh, he's a libertarian.
Oh, he's a socialist. He's a whatever. Gone. Right. So, you know, he's Joe Rogan. Oh, he's the UFC guy. Gone. Right. I'm sure people do that to you all the time. Or he's Joe Rogan, the masculine
macho dude. Not interested. Bye. Right. Right. Everyone's so complex. Most people are. And most
people are not the same person who they were if you're pulling a quote from them from two years ago
Or five years ago or whatever. Oh, it's not just not that person anymore
everybody evolves exactly and you can box someone into some sort of a corner by like
Not not to defend it, but the grab them by the pussy speech from 2005 great example
It's it you're boxing a guy in a corner
Who's trying to make another guy laugh on a bus right and he's just being gross great and then you take that and go is this the guy you want for president right
yeah we could talk about that a lot i mean i'm with you on that one i heard you talking about
that the other day but um yeah it's trump i have a lot to say about that but um it's um
so anyway i think the podcasting thing it's changing the game and it's it's so great well
it gives people something to do while they're doing other stuff totally the map I
think we're like 90% audio only downloads versus YouTube somewhere
somewhere in round so most people are either listening during their commute or
while they're at the gym or a lot of people even at work they put on
headphones while they're you know doing mindless bullshit but I think what it
does is it humanizes people.
Yeah.
Right?
You get, you get not the full humanity of a person, of course, but you get much more
of who they are really and the complexities of them.
And so people talk about how we are all being siloed now because of the internet, right?
That we just go to the websites that agree with us.
There's a lot of that for sure.
Certainly. But I think there's, I actually think the overall effect is just the opposite.
I actually think that we have much deeper understandings of people who are not like us because of things like this, right?
I mean, because of the podcasts and because there's just much more exposure to people's ideas and personalities.
And there's more people talking in public, by the way.
I mean, just imagine that, right?
And there's more people talking in public, by the way.
I mean, just imagine that, right?
Like in the 1970s and 1980s, when you and I were growing up, there were three broadcast networks that all said the same thing on the news shows.
There were three all said the same thing because the FCC wouldn't allow any competitors to come into the market.
I mean, they just wouldn't allow it.
And Rupert Murdoch broke that open, right?
And then since then, it's just been flooded.
So now we have how many channels, how many networks, how many podcasts. And so when I was coming up as an academic in the 90s,
if you didn't, if your book didn't get reviewed in the New York Times, or if you were an author of any kind, and your book didn't get reviewed in the New York Times, you were not going to make a
living as a writer. That was it. You had to get reviewed in the New York Times and it had to be a positive review. That was the only gatekeeper to success as an author. Now, the New
York Times is one of, you know, a hundred different places or a thousand different places that matter
when you're writing books. My book, Renegade History of the United States, was ignored entirely
by the New York Times. And I know why, but it didn't really matter. People, why? Oh, because it says all the things you're not supposed to say. If you're a good liberal, left liberal,
bi-coastal elite person from university, like, like, um, Martin Luther King was a conservative
and hated black culture, you know, like, yeah. Um, yeah, he was a very conservative person
culturally, and he was basically an opponent of black culture. He, he didn't, he was a very conservative person culturally, and he was basically an opponent of black culture.
He didn't he was opposed to rock and roll.
He didn't he didn't even mention jazz until the 19 late into his career.
And only once he thought black people should sing classical music, European classical music or or gospel, you know, very respectable, very Christian, very good citizen kind of stuff. And he hated the flamboyant black preachers who were whooping and hollering in their churches
and speaking in black dialect.
He wanted all black people to speak correct American English.
He was opposed to a lot of dancing that was going on.
Just all the stuff that we love in black culture. Martin Luther King was
opposed to it. It wasn't because he was just an uptight puritanical prick. It was because of his
strategy and his objective, which was to seek full citizenship. Right. And he understood, right.
In a way, it wasn't his fault entirely. You have to prove yourself always in this country,
historically, that you are just like white people to get all the good stuff to get the vote to get equal protection under the law so
that's what his mission was assimilation assimilation has always been the ticket
to full citizenship man it's just it sucks that that's even a thought that
the only way to achieve quote-unquote full citizenship is to ignore all the things that make black culture special like
comedy like jazz like rap like just
Just slang just all the cool shit that black people have figured out like the things to say that white people have
Ruined like bro
Bro used to be like a cool thing
That black people say to each other and now it's like
an insult for a dummy like a frat dummy's a bro now well just think about like just think about
america now if black people had never been here what would it be like which i'm not sure i'd want
to live here we wouldn't even have blues so like what kind of music would we have blues is the
roots of all pop music but all pop music comes out of blues.
Everything that's pop music that's not European classical music comes from black people.
I mean, the original roots, basically.
Of course, whites were involved in it.
Of course, all that music.
But all that stuff, the roots of it are in the slaves.
Well, even European rock, like Led Zeppelin.
Sure.
Well, they borrowed it.
They stole a shipboat.
Ask those guys.
Ask the Beatles.
They talked about the Stones. Of guys ask the beatles they talked
about the stones of course the stones they were they talked about it all the time they were like
you know we're not we are not the rolling stones without muddy waters of course elvis yeah this
said it too yeah all of that sort of stemmed from black it's fascinating when you really think about
so that's the whole history of that's that's african-american history actually is ordinary black people who aren't interested in being just like white people and doing their thing, you know, since slavery, just doing their thing and being called niggers by whites.
And also, and this is what people don't know, civil rights leaders since slavery, like black political leaders who wanted citizenship, attacking them for their culture,
just as harshly as the Ku Klux Klan did. And I'm not exaggerating. If you look at what
Frederick Douglass said about slave culture, if you look at what W.E.B. Du Bois sometimes said
about slave culture and black culture, then Martin Luther King, A. Philip Randolph, Jesse Jackson,
Al Sharpton, all the way through, they are saying the harshest, nastiest things about black working class popular culture you could imagine.
But again, it was for this reason.
They wanted to convince whites that we are just like them.
So they'll let us in.
They'll let us sit at the table of America.
They'll give us the vote.
We can then become president.
And so guess what happened? They finally,
a guy came along who was black looking, but who, who lived in this perfect nuclear Christian family,
wife, two kids, didn't drink, didn't do drugs. He smoked, but he stopped smoking pretty quickly. Right.
Very dignified, spoke perfect English. Right. And guess what happened? He became our first
black president. So Obama is absolutely the apotheosis is a good academic word.
He's the pinnacle. He's the, he's the full achievement of that long attempt by civil rights leaders, black political leaders to assimilate
blacks. And they won in that way. They got a president, but what else did they win?
Right. And doing that, not much. I mean, race relations now, are they better now?
Not really. Do black people still say stuff in their hip hop songs that is not respectable, even more than ever.
And white people are-
I don't think black people are thinking when they're doing their hip hop songs, they're
not thinking that they're representing all black people.
They're thinking they're representing their vision.
They're representing what they see on the street, what they see in their neighborhoods.
That's always going to be the case, right?
This is the thing.
I mean, people who actually are from those neighborhoods, you know, where there really aren't any white people, you know, if they're from the projects or they're from, you know, these poor black neighborhoods that are famous, right?
I mean, by and large, and we know this from what they say in their art, you know, don't give a shit about what white people think about them, right?
They're not interested in citizenship.
They're not interested in being good Americans. They're doing their thing. As you just said,
I mean, they're interested in represent, seems to me, they're interested in representing their aspirations and they're interested in having a good time, which sounds trivial to a lot of
people, but it's actually revolutionary, right? If you just, if you're interested only in having
a good time and pleasure and, and succeeding and achieving things for yourself, that's actually not American because you're not interested in America.
You're interested, interested in yourself. So that's a person who's very unlikely to volunteer like Tim Kennedy to go serve in the military.
Right. Right. It's very unlikely that that person will become a cop.
It's unlikely that that person will obey the laws, will obey the actual laws, and then the
cultural laws. They're not going to be good Americans. They're out for themselves. And I think
that's actually always historically, for more than 200 years, provided this alternative for
white people. We've always looked at that with this sort of split lens. Part of us says,
God damn, look at those primitive black people.
They do, they're doing the bad stuff. We're not like them. We're better than that. And always
simultaneously, most or many white people have looked at it and said, Hmm, that looks, that looks
more fun than what we're doing. Maybe we'll do that for a while. Well, certainly young white
suburban kids that grow up in these safe shelter sheltered environments always adopt that sort of radical,
badass, black rapper sort of listening to their music, wearing their pants low, like
sagging, doing all that stuff, co-opting various aspects of black culture that seem to be dangerous.
You know who you just described?
Who?
My son.
Oh, no.
No, don't say oh, no.
It's good.
Is he sagging?
I'm saying I'm pro-wiga.
Do your son sags?
Is he sagging?
No, they don't sag anymore.
The new thing is these ripped jeans.
That's the hip-hop style.
Oh, they ripped their jeans.
It's the ripped jeans.
I'm so behind the times.
They're kind of like fitted.
They don't sag, but they're like just shredded.
Almost like an 80s look.
I said to my son, I said, you know, back in the 80s, like we laughed at those jeans, but for a totally different reason.
And now that's the coolest thing that black people wear.
So he's doing all that.
He is fully immersed.
He studies rap lyrics.
He knows all that stuff.
How old is he?
He's making beats.
He's 15.
Get him into martial arts quick.
See, why?
Does he train?
No, he refused.
Really?
I tried to get him in there a couple times.
Good for discipline.
He met Joe Schilling, and I think that scared him.
Scared him?
Yeah.
It scared me when I met Joe.
Joe's a scary dude.
Understandable.
That was my first gym, and I walked in the first day, and I had never done anything like that.
And I walked in, and there was Joe.
And I was like, okay, if people like that are going to be doing this, I'm not having any part of this.
Because he was just terrifying.
But when you get to know him, he's a teddy bear.
He's awesome.
Big old sweetheart.
Great coach.
Great guy.
Yeah.
I love Joe.
So I just think for a young boy, like it's a great way to sort your head out.
I think life is so.
If I didn't find martial arts when I was that age, who the fuck knows what would have happened to me.
I started when I was.
I was just thinking about this.
I started when I was 41. Wow. Yeah. That's amazing. I took my first boxing arts when I was that age, who the fuck knows what would happen to me. I started when I was, I was just thinking about this. I started when I was 41.
Wow.
Yeah.
That's amazing.
I took my first boxing lesson when I was 41.
Wow.
How's your double jab?
Church Street.
Really good.
Can you hook off the jab?
Oh, yeah.
Really?
Hell yeah.
And you started at 41?
Hell yeah.
You got some speed to it?
Yeah.
Pop, pop.
Yeah, I got a good jab.
Really?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Interesting.
I'm told this.
What are you, a tall guy?
I got some holes in my game. What do you think about Klitschko Joshua this weekend? It's a big fight. Boring. I'm told this. What are you, a tall guy? I got some holes in my game.
What do you think about Klitschko Joshua this weekend?
It's a big fight.
Boring.
Those guys are boring.
Joshua's got nice power.
Joshua is not boring.
He's got great power.
His technique's okay.
He's not great.
I think Klitschko's got a nice jab.
He's a gold medalist in the Olympics.
Klitschko's put people to sleep, Joe.
This is why the heavyweight division, no one cares about it, right?
Put people to sleep the other way, by being boring.
Yeah, being boring.
Yeah, yeah.
You don't mean by knocking them silly. No. But Joshua puts people to sleep the other way by like being boring yeah being boring yeah you don't mean by like knocking them silly no but joshua puts people to sleep
joshua knocks people out which is fun to watch and i'm into that but it's not i like i just love
technique like i'm a student of it so you're like a lomachenko guy so thank you for bringing
him up thank you for bringing him up we got to talk about this god forget my career podcast
history fuck people who don't know please go online right now and Google Vasily Lomachenko.
He might be the best boxer that's ever lived.
He might be.
I was worried that we were going to fight about this, but I think we're on the same page here.
He's on such another level with his footwork and movement.
I just can't come up with a comparable.
I mean, there's been some amazing boxers way back to Sugar Ray Robinson and Willie Pepp,
and all those guys paved the way.
But I feel like everything evolves, right?
Every combat sport, even art and music evolves to the current state it's at now,
which you get the best of the best right now, and you go, wow,
they've learned from Ali and Sugar Ray Leonard and Roy Jones and
Bernard Hopkins and Lomachenko is in my eyes is the best the way he moves is insane yeah and he's
super aggressive he's not like Floyd Mayweather who is arguably the best ever you know multiple
time world champion in multiple divisions 49 and 0 only only been hit solid maybe seven, eight times his whole career.
I saw him once when he got a little rocked by Shane Mosley.
Shane Mosley, yeah.
Once.
And then Maidana cracked him once.
But that's over the course of this spectacular career.
But much more defensive-oriented, brilliantly defensive, very economical with his approach,
but brittle hands hurts him
hurts his hand breaks his hands a lot not a lot of power lomachenko is on you like glue stands
right in front of you and you can't hit him and he's going left and he's going right and he's in
and he's out and you don't know where the fuck he is and he's lighting you up so what is this
here's why vasily lomachenko is now the number one pound for pound fighter in boxing what's that in
forbes damn so technically he can't be because his record.
He hasn't really been tested.
He's got eight fights?
No, no, no.
I'm with you completely.
I'm just saying technically he doesn't have enough fights.
I don't give a fuck.
To be number one.
I know.
He's the best.
So let me just say, so here's my history with Lomachenko.
So like four or five years ago, I thought Gary Russell Jr.
was the greatest thing since sliced bread.
And I still think he's just phenomenal.
Incredibly fast.
The fastest hand since Roy Jones, easily.
And maybe even faster.
And technically just perfect.
I thought he was unbeatable.
I thought he was the next thing.
And he's still a great, great, great fighter.
I love him.
He fought Lomachenko.
And I was like, who's this Russian dude?
I didn't even know he was Ukrainian.
Never heard of him.
And he tore, he took Russell apart.
Yeah, here's a highlight reel.
Look at it.
He stands right in front of people, man.
He just has such brilliant movement, man.
I mean, he's like the perfect example of like new wave.
Like this stage.
So that right there?
Yeah.
Sidestep movement.
Yeah, he does this
he does this it's a hop actually he hops inside and he'll throw a body shot off of it when he
gets inside on you but he's basically standing at your side boom like right there he did it again
well he's not like a brutal puncher he'll step in or hop in and you know the funny thing so i've
been hopping around gyms lately boxing gyms look at Look at that. He did it like three times in a row.
And here's how I know.
Here's why I think that he is the next Ali, which is that just in the last year, every boxing gym I've gone to, people have taught Lomachenko's moves, like as a standard part
of classes.
Interesting.
Right?
Meaning that he's changing the game.
Right.
It's kind of what you were saying.
Well, you know Mike Tyson did a lot of that too, by the way.
People can't ever punch as hard as Mike Tyson. Right. You can actually do some of this stuff.
Of course, he's a phenomenal athlete, Lomachenko is, and not everyone can do this.
But there are some things here that you can do that have never been done before.
Yeah. Like in particular that little hop step. It's actually, I had a coach call it,
I think it was called the Lomachenko jump or something, but you can do that
You can what you can just step in like that really quickly, but people for some reason just never did it
Well Tyson did do it Tyson learned it from custom on Oh custom on Oh was teaching this way back in the fucking 50s
Yeah, but his his style was it's Mike Tyson style was so much different because he was throwing howitzers at you
It's a Lomachenko is not knocking anybody out with one punch was Mike Tyson's style was so much different because he was throwing howitzers at you.
Lomachenko is not knocking anybody out with one punch.
He's hitting you with multiple barrage of punches.
But the thing about, they dropped him with a liver shot,
but the thing about what Lomachenko is doing with this steady barrage is very similar
to what I've always said about jiu-jitsu.
If you want to really learn jiu-jitsu,
learn jiu-jitsu from a small man
because small men can't use strength and weight and all the physical advantages.
They have to use perfect technique.
So if you deal with guys like Eddie Bravo or Hoyler Gracie or Barrett Yoshida,
like the really little guys are the guys who have this stellar technique
because they don't have the physical strength.
With Lomachenko, you see the same thing.
He's not a one-punch guy.
He doesn't have like some Tommy Hearns knockout ability or Mike Tyson type power.
So he's forced to have this brilliant movement and footwork, which is complete next level.
The footwork, I think, is the best of all time.
And now he's literally embracing the whole idea of him being in the Matrix.
He has Matrix shorts on now.
See, I like the Matrix comparison.
I think of him as the Nightcrawler.
He's just teleporting around you.
Nightcrawler from X-Men?
Yeah, X-Men.
He just shows up suddenly right next to you, right?
Oh, it's genius.
He disappears and shows up right next to you in a different location.
I mean, just right there, that little movement and the anticipation of the counter and already being two, three steps ahead of you.
That last fight against Sosa yeah
Yeah, I saw that that was even better. Yeah, even he improved like he was even better
I was like this is getting crazy like yeah, so amazing everyone should watch him
Yeah, he's on another level man. I love it on a complete another level so yeah, this is a guy like him in kickboxing
Who Giorgio Petrosian?
You've seen Giorgio Petrosian fight? Yeah, he's the best, for sure. Yeah, I love Petrosian.
He's some next-level shit, too.
Definitely, yeah, I think so.
But he did lose one fight by knockout a couple years ago.
Yeah, badly.
Yeah, he got caught.
Andy Ristie.
By Daniel Alunga?
No, Andy Ristie.
Andy Ristie, that's who it was, yeah.
Well, Ristie's a brutal knockout puncher.
He knocked out Van Rismullen, too.
Yeah.
Same year, I think.
Well, it's one of those things where a guy like Andy Ristie has so much power,
if he catches a human being on the chin. Yeah. Not great. Not perfect technique,
but man. But nasty, nasty power. Yeah. I wanted to talk about Jermaine Durandamy. Oh yeah. Talk
about her. I mean, cause it's funny that we're talking about fighting. I'm so happy.
Well, this podcast really, you know, I don't know. It's not real format to it.
We've all noticed Joe. Millions of us't know. It's not real format to it. No, we've all noticed, Joe.
Millions of us have noticed.
That's what is great about it.
What was I going to say?
No, I mean, it's funny.
I think the first time I was on here a couple of years ago, I said at the end that I wanted to be a surfer deep down.
You know, like I love what I do and being a historian and all this stuff.
But deep down, I wanted to be a surfer.
Now, I don't want to be a surfer.
I want to be a boxing coach.
Really?
Yeah, I really do. Yeah. Well, a lot of people that are intellectuals, a lot of people
that live almost like a sedentary lifestyle because you're constantly in front of books
or computer screens, they long for this sense of adventure. I want to be a backpacker. I want to
go to Nepal. Most academics, and maybe this is one of the reasons I had to leave that profession,
or I'm trying to leave that profession, is that I've always been a physical person too.
I've always been, you know, just in touch with my body in various ways.
I've always been into sports, playing them and doing stuff. I just, you know,
and most academics I'd say,
or at least a lot of them seem to be completely cut off from their bodies.
They just don't care what's below the neck. They don't care what they wear.
They don't care how they feel. They certainly don't care how they look many of them and they don't care what's below the neck. They don't care what they wear. They don't care how they feel.
They certainly don't care how they look, many of them.
And they don't talk about the body.
They don't talk about things like this ever.
And, well, they look down on it.
Yeah, that's the problem is the looking down on it.
I think that's very short-sighted.
Like this conversation right now we had about boxing,
if you just took that clip that last 10 minutes and you put that in front of
and you sent that to every historian in the country,
I mean, my reputation would be done.
No.
I mean, it's already pretty much done.
Really?
Are you serious?
Why wouldn't they just think that you're a guy who appreciates boxing?
I love talking to people who aren't from that world when I tell them about these things
and they're like, oh, of course that couldn't be.
No, it's that bad.
Well, what a silly world that is then.
It's that bad.
They would think less of me.
Wow.
But yeah, no, I want to be a boxing coach.
Really?
I definitely, yeah, yeah.
I mean, I don't know if I can really make it happen professionally, but you know at least on the side, you know
We'd have to have a couple fights. Don't you think that's what I'm wondering? I don't know
I mean, I certainly can't coach pros, right? But I mean I'm talking about people sort of like at my level
Yeah, I'm all people who spar maybe maybe some amateur fighters
I mean, I'm working like a little bit with a guy in my gym who's trying to be an amateur boxer now but i'm not his coach i'm just saying i'm sort of like
trying to cook because he's brand new to the sport um and i just love it i love it i love teaching
i love teaching and that's the thing about academia that i've always just loved and that's
why i entered it because i just felt like i was it was just natural for me teaching people things
teaching is fun man if you're good at it but most. Yeah. Right. So when you teach jujitsu, right. I mean, what you're doing is, and this
goes for anything, if you're teaching how to fix a bike, right. You take, you're taking all these
complex ideas and this is what you're a master at. Uh, you take all these really complex ideas
and you package them, you, you break them down into little bite-sized components and then hand
them over to the person, right. You give them so that they can consume it and understand it instead of just saying,
you know, oh, that's a Japanese necktie.
Go ahead, do it, right?
Which is what you'll see a lot of teachers do.
Here's how you do a Japanese necktie.
Now go ahead, do it, right?
But you're like, okay, no, the elbow goes here.
I mean, a lot of jujitsu instructors do this too, of course.
But like, you know, the elbow goes right here, an inch down there,
and then the knees here, and then the right.
But it's just like what I do. I mean, you take these really complex, abstract concepts, you know, the elbow goes right here, an inch down there, and then the knees here and then the right. And so it's, but it's just like what I do. I mean, you take these really complex abstract concepts,
you know, that, and you give them back to people who are completely new to them.
Right.
You have to, you have to package it, not, not dumb it down, but distill it, right? You have to like
bring the essential components down and get rid of all the extraneous stuff and then just hand it
over to them in this very clear, simple way.
And then you can give them the next part and then you connect that and then you connect that.
And next thing you know, they have this new radical concept of Martin Luther King or they can do a Japanese necktie.
Right. That's what separates someone who's a really good teacher versus someone who has maybe some real skill at something,
but isn't good at communicating it. Like breaking it down into a system, like a step-by-step
progression system. Yeah. Yeah. My coach I was talking about in Salem, Nick Gilardi,
I got to give him a shout out because he's awesome. He's one of the best. What's that?
I said powerful Nick. Yeah, he is. Oh my God. Yeah, he is. He, um, he's one of the best coaches
I've ever seen. Cause he, he's really a coach's coach.
Like, he really cares about coaching and teaching.
He really cares about teaching.
And that's what he does.
Like, he'll stop.
Well, he said he was a Team Quest guy.
Yeah, he comes in.
Yeah.
So, Robert Follis, who is also an awesome coach.
I don't know.
He started out with them, and now he's an extreme couture now.
Yeah.
He's worked with a lot of, like, top-level guys.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, that's when the sport was being invented
They sure yeah, so he was at the beginning of that as a kid. Well, Dan Henderson Matt
Leland, you know Randy Couture. Yeah, but I think it's just didn't I don't think it's about his context
I think it's about who he is as a person just like me
It's like it's not no one trained me to be a teacher
Right like when I was in when I was taking when I entered college
I had no idea I was gonna be a teacher but I remember
I was in, when I was taking, when I entered college, I had no idea I was going to be a teacher, but I remember sitting in these college classes that kind of weren't very good. And I
remember that I spent a lot of my time thinking about how I would teach this differently than
this guy was teaching it. And then I realized, Oh wait, I just, I realized I'm actually studying
the teaching more than the subject itself, how to communicate these ideas I was studying more
than the subject itself. And then
I just, it dawned on me finally, it's like, oh, well, that means you probably should be a teacher.
And when I finally started doing it in graduate school at Columbia, I was teaching, you know,
philosophy actually. And yeah, I just, I've loved it. It was just my passion.
Do you find that you teach things that it helps you better understand them too,
because you go over them from a real fundamental perspective? Precisely. Precisely. Right. So you don't, and that was the first thing I learned when
I started teaching was that I thought I knew Plato really well, you know, until I started,
until I knew that I had to teach him the next day. And I was like, oh, wait a minute. I didn't quite
actually get that connection there between those two ideas in his book. You know? Yeah. You have
to, I tell my students this all the time. I said, you need to be as comfortable, so comfortable with this text that you can teach
it to your roommate who's never read it before. That means what that means is you have to think
all the way through the ideas. You have to go all with your mind all the way through the ideas and
then come back through them. Right. It's just just like it's like martial arts or anything else yeah you have to actually do the
Japanese necktie all the way through and come back all the way through it and
then you can teach it all the way through my master it Taekwondo career I
taught I taught at Boston University I taught my own school I taught classes
like I taught the entire time it's one of the way I made a living I didn't know
that and it helped me tremendously it helped the entire time. I didn't know that. It's the way I made a living. I didn't know that. And it helped me tremendously.
It helped me understand it.
And I didn't realize how much it helped me until I started doing jiu-jitsu.
And I watched other people who started teaching jiu-jitsu just jump ahead by leaps and bounds from where they were.
A good example is my friend Brent.
He was like a purple belt.
And he was always at a certain level kind of a static level and then
Not static, but you know improving, but nothing crazy
He was like everybody else right with jiu-jitsu is hard takes a long time to get better
Yeah, and you're around other people that are also getting better, so it's hard to look really measure
Oh, yeah, you know but then he started teaching and like teaching full-time
And then all of a sudden I would roll with him
and I'd be in great danger. And I'd be like, Jesus. And I had a conversation with him once
after training with him. Like, dude, I don't know what the fuck you're doing, but your,
your game has jumped like four or five steps ahead. Like, I feel like I'm the same as I was
six, seven months ago. And he was like years ahead. And he said, it was all just teaching.
And, and I remember now that that was the first time I really felt confident as an
intellectual,
you know,
as a,
when you were teaching the subjects at once I had taught them,
it was like,
Oh,
now I actually feel I was always,
I mean,
everybody's racked with insecurity,
especially in graduate school about these things.
You know,
everybody feels like an imposter because we all,
there's all,
all of us have,
you know,
500 books that everyone else has read that you should have read that we haven't read. Right. Because we all there's all all of us have, you know, 500 books that everyone else has read that you should have read that we haven't read.
Right. And I came from this little dipshit college in Ohio and I was like a C student in high school.
So I had extra insecurity. But once I started teaching it and forcing myself to, as you said, like learn the thing all the way through it and master it and then teaching it, that's when I felt, oh, yeah, I belong here.
through it and master it and then teaching it that's when I felt oh yeah I belong here I get it I really do have some solid understanding of Plato now and I really I really can do this thing
you know it's interesting that you're saying that because that's a big issue with comedians too and
and like as they're becoming successful especially they feel like frauds like everybody I know says
that I've said it everybody I know that's sort of like started to make it like as they're like starting to headline and go on the road places and do
Television sets and things along those lines you feel like a fraud when you're successful. Yes
Yeah, like a fraud you like I'm you know because you look at yourself
And then you'll look at you know Dave Chappelle or someone else Chris Rock, and you're like look. I'm a fucking fraud
I'm a fraud. I'm not that guy. I'm a fraud. I'm not that guy. I'm a fraud.
I'm not Richard Jenny.
I'm a fraud.
And then it takes a long time before you feel like comfortable enough to like say, I know
what I'm doing.
In academia, it's called the charlatan syndrome, right?
We all feel like we're charlatans.
I think it exists in everything and everything difficult.
I'm not surprised.
And I think it's also probably a hallmark of someone who cares.
Absolutely. That's what makes you better. Yeah. Yeah. I don't think every academic has that,
but I think those who do are the ones who are interesting and get better.
Well, I think the worst would be the opposite. Someone who's like super confident way before
their time. Yeah. That's what I mean. Yeah. Right. They're going to suck.
There's a lot of that too, though. Right. Yeah. There's a lot of weirdness in academia, man.
No kidding.
I can't imagine the stuff that you guys go through politically.
Oh, my God.
Because just you saying that you couldn't talk about boxing because you would be thought of as a fool.
So that's the thing.
I know you're really interested in this, and I am too.
And there are some misconceptions.
Well, I shouldn't say they're misconceptions. I would say that there's a distortion of what's going on. and there are some misconceptions and that,
well I shouldn't say they're misconceptions,
I would say that there's a distortion of what's going on
and this is not to say,
it's actually to say that it's worse than you think it is.
So what most people who are outside of academia
think is going on is not quite what's going on.
What do you think we think?
It's something worse.
Well I know because I've heard you
and lots and lots of other people talk about it
and it's not your fault at all because you're not there and all you do is get the media reports about it.
So I think what most people –
Well, I get it from Gad Saad and Jordan Peterson, too, who are professors.
They – and they, if you listen to them, actually, they will – they themselves will talk about it a little differently.
But people still consume it differently because the news, right, is all about the crazy thing that the 18-year-old said.
Right.
At Wesleyan or whatever whatever or it's not the
18 year old it's the 45 year old and then sometimes the 45 year old yeah okay but here's the so that
stuff that really sort of loony stuff you know that you hear coming out or um protest you know
people saying that they are um gonna die because you said a word. That happens. It does. It's all true. It's all there.
I've seen it, but I've seen it maybe at most one time a year in the colleges where I've been,
maybe not even less than that. Okay. What is, and if it were just that, that's not actually a big
deal. It's much worse than that. What's what is that there is a self-censorship going on
that's universal and profound, constant, omnipresent. Like, for instance, I never talk
about my love for boxing around academics, or I'm very careful if I do, but it's not even that. It's
that we know that there are certain things that can't be said on a college campus,
and so we just don't say them.
Therefore, there's no need to police us.
There's no need to yell at us and scream at us and protest.
And what's the motivation?
For which?
For the people that are holding back on thoughts
that maybe they would normally express, but they don't.
Well, here's what I think it is.
For the senior faculty who have tenure,
meaning lifetime appointments, cowardice's what I think it is for the senior faculty who have tenure meaning lifetime appointments
cowardice
That's all it is. I think they're cowards
Yeah
If you are an adjunct like me with no job security or if you're an assistant professor up for tenure
And if you don't get tenure you have no career. I don't blame them. I get it. That's what I've done, too
I've pleased myself because you have to, to stay in the game. If you have tenure, lifetime appointment, you're a senior professor,
you make the decisions there on curriculum, hiring and firing and tenure. The faculty make
those decisions and you don't challenge these crazy ideas in any way. Or if you police yourself,
you stop yourself from saying things that you, you think are right, that you believe in.
You're a coward.
I'm sorry. Those people are cowards. I've seen it. It's just overrun by cowards. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
No, I mean this. They are very though. So here's the thing. I can't prove this. This is just,
I'm just saying this is, this is my belief, but I think it's pretty well informed because I've
been around these people a long time. And in part, I share this. I think the worst fear of all
those people is being called a racist or a sexist publicly. I think that is their version of being
in a cave, crawling on their bellies in the pitch black. I think that's their worst fear.
And it's not entirely irrational, right? You can, you know, you will be publicly
shamed. You will, the whole campus will think you're a racist, even if you're not. Um, it might
even make the media and then pub and then the whole world thinks you're a racist for a minute,
but you're not going to lose your job if you have tenure, you know, you're, unless you actually did
say it did say something that's truly racist.
It's just cowardice.
I think that's what we need.
We need those professors, the ones with the power.
And I'm talking about they have absolute power on these campuses, right?
These aren't even like politicians who have to go up for a vote.
They're there forever.
Unless they basically kill somebody.
They need to stand up now. People like Jordan Peterson and I have major differences with him on sort of the content of his ideas, not about academia, but on academia.
He's right completely. And I'm totally in solidarity with him, what they did to him and what they're doing to him.
We need more people like him standing up and saying, no, I'm going to say what I want in my classrooms and on Twitter and
because that's people have been punished for that too well they're trying to get
him to stop doing his YouTube lecture I know which is fast I know because
they're very measured they're long form he gets to expand on his thoughts as
much as he likes he's very very informed I mean I again I have major disagree. What is the disagreement disagreements with him on?
Gender and post-modernism, I think he's completely off
But you know how so on Jen so so he and I know you agree with him on this
I think well, maybe I don't know. I'm not sure but you know, it's this idea that there just are two genders
That's it, and they're no Good. Okay. No, it's this idea that there just are two genders. That's it. And they're attached to biology.
Good.
Okay.
He seems to think that.
I think there's a spectrum of humans in every single aspect of being a person.
I should say I heard your conversation with him.
And I could see, and this was interesting to me, it was exciting,
because I could actually see you moving in a direction that I found to be much more interesting than his,
which is closer to mine, which is, yeah, this.
It's fluid.
There's feminine men. There's masculine women. closer to mine, which is, yeah, this. It's fluid.
Well, there's feminine men.
There's masculine women.
Go to Thailand.
Yeah, for sure. Go to Thailand.
In fact, here we go,
merging all these topics together.
One of the top Muay Thai fighters recently,
I don't know if she's still fighting,
is a lady boy in Thailand.
Well, once she got the operation,
her performance dropped off pretty radically.
But that's just the lack of testosterone. And I know your thing about Fallon Fox. Yes. So I agree off pretty radically. But that's just lack of testosterone.
And I know your thing about Fallon Fox.
Yes.
So I agree with you there.
So here's the thing.
It's a different story.
I totally agree with you on that particular thing, right?
Whether she should have been allowed to fight.
Well, it's not that she should have been allowed to fight.
I think she should be allowed to fight.
Women?
As long as the women know that she used to be a man.
That's fine, too.
The problem was for the first two fights, she didn't disclose it.
Right.
Because she said it was a medical procedure and she didn't have to give up the personal details of her medical procedure.
I say that's bullshit.
Right.
I say, well, you're dealing with a chromosomal issue.
You're dealing with the fact that you have a different bone structure.
Yes.
Different mechanical advantages.
Right.
And 30 years of testosterone in your body.
It's just not the same.
Exactly.
But as long as someone knows,
like I'm fine with Jermaine Durandamy.
She knocked down a man.
I don't know if you ever saw that fight.
I did.
Do you think she's juiced?
She's not juiced, is she?
No.
She's just fucking badass.
Awesome.
Yeah, she's just awesome.
She's just fucking badass.
I mean, I don't know if she's taken anything
in her entire career.
It would just be pure speculation.
She doesn't look like she has,
but that doesn't mean anything either.
Right, right.
But she's so fucking badass and so technical and so tough
I know she's fought men
But she knew they were a man going in she made a decision just like I think you should be allowed to skydive
Just like I think you should be allowed to ride bulls
I don't think it's smart right, but you should be able to do whatever the fuck you want to do
I'm all for freedom of expression of
Participation in any sort of dangerous activity.
My issue, 100% was that people are trying to pretend
that there's no advantage whatsoever.
And that's crazy.
That's silly.
So the thing is what they're,
so within that framework,
within the rules we are operating in, right?
Whether it's in fighting or whether it's in, you know,
this particular society.
Or the wrestling girl in Texas. Yeah, I read all about that too.
Exactly.
So that's a particular rule.
You are agreeing to play a particular game.
Right.
Right.
And you're just breaking the rules.
That's all.
I mean, you have a body.
Well, right.
They're letting them break the rules.
The rules are not.
And I think a lot of it is people worried about being called transphobic or homophobic
And I think a lot of it is people worried about being called transphobic or homophobic or in any way prejudiced where they're allowing
Certain people to compete in these like this woman in Australia the trans woman in Australia They just broke all these world records in weightlifting because she was a fucking man her whole life
Oh, it all sudden became a woman is just killing everybody and there's a lift
Yeah, the runners, and I think they're from Kenya or South Africa. No, the one from South Africa in particular.
I forget her name.
What do you mean?
The one that's like a hermaphrodite?
Well, I don't know what she is, but she's broken every record by like, you know, huge, insane amounts.
I think she's just a woman with an abnormally large amount of testosterone.
I think they've actually done chromosomal tests on her.
I don't know.
When I saw her in the Olympics, it just jumped out at me.
Pull that up because I'm pretty sure that that woman actually has been tested. And then there
was a real issue behind it. And she felt terrible about it because it was just the way she was born.
Really? Yeah. Yeah. Well, again, the spectrum, look, there's men that have tremendous amounts
of testosterone. There's men that have like almost none. That's actually the major point
we need to talk about. You're totally on the right track there. I totally agree with that.
That's the most important thing, which is that there's a spectrum, right?
And so to say that 50% of the world is male and 50% is female.
Nonsense.
Or man and man.
Right.
Thank you.
That's black and white.
Nonsense.
I say to my students, I say, okay, there's 7 billion people in the world.
Okay.
Imagine in your mind lining all of them up, you know, naked in front of you.
How many sexes do you see? Right? this is what i want you to do right get a picture of yoel romero and put it next to a picture of andy dick tell me they're the same thing tell me this is
even they're both men tell me it's even it's nonsense i mean right it's chaos yeah you know
it's like have you ever heard a guy on the street say, man, that's a lot of women?
Yes.
Well, that suggests there are women who are less women to them.
Sort of.
Yeah.
That's exactly right.
There's a spectrum.
And there's also a spectrum in sizes.
I mean, that's why there's weight classes.
So let me ask you this.
Okay, so let's push it a little further.
Okay.
So, so far, you're doing very well.
Oh, in your eyes.
Some people are screaming at their fucking computer right now.
Oh, believe me, I know.
Fucking commies. Believe me, I know. Fucking commies.
Believe me, I know.
Robin's going homo.
So that's, well, no, I think you already are.
I think you already went all the way, actually.
I mean, so what, there's two things.
There's the Jordan Peterson view.
I don't think he has that view.
Hang on.
Let me put it out there.
Okay.
What I think he's saying, which is that gender
is fixed and
biologically determined.
I'm pretty sure he does believe that.
That's what I would call
sort of the traditional conservative
conventional view.
Those are both men.
Yeah, exactly. Or not.
Or you know what?
There's more than two categories in the world, right?
And so Andy Dick would be one and Yul Romero would be another.
Well, sexually.
And where would you put me there?
I mean, I'm neither one of those guys.
You're in the middle there.
I'm neither one of them.
Well, see, the deal is both of them can procreate with women.
Okay?
So technically they're both male.
But a whole lot of people who are called men cannot procreate with women.
A whole lot.
What do you mean?
You mean trans women?
No, no, no.
Trans men?
They can't.
It doesn't work.
Oh.
So they don't develop sperm?
Yeah.
Really?
Of course.
Is that really common?
Yeah.
Weren't you tested when you were trying to get pregnant?
No, I just knocked her up, dude.
Come on.
Well, maybe I wasn't either.
But anyway, it certainly was a thing.
Just shot him in there and watched the fireworks.
Yeah.
See, there you go.
See, you're more of a man.
You've just proven yet again that you're more of a man.
There's the woman.
Yeah, Jesus Christ.
Well, when you see, yeah, that's not a great picture.
It doesn't give you a sense of how different.
It does, though.
Look at the thighs and the bulge.
Yeah, the she.
Look at the bulge.
Well.
Three times as high as most women.
Whoa.
Okay, so reports leaked out.
That doesn't really mean anything.
I don't think she's ever really been tested.
I believe she has.
See if she's been tested.
What does the test say?
But it leaked.
She was subjected to sex verification test after she won the world championships in Germany.
And what does it say?
Yeah, leaked.
Okay, so the results were supposed to be confidential but reports leaked out that
she had testosterone levels three times as high as most women other intimate
details about her anatomy were also reported yeah a Samaya became targeted
Samaya Samaya yeah how brutal your first name is see the purse party name is
semen semen yeah became targeted with abuse on social media.
But what does it say?
So is it saying that she's a hermaphrodite because you're talking about her?
You know what this is?
The clitoral size.
It's the equivalent of pretty much every article written about Trump by The New York Times.
You know, a report, a report was leaked by, you know, senior officials said, where's the actual evidence of any of this stuff?
I don't see it.
Yeah, what is it?
It doesn't say anything.
Doesn't matter.
So she passed the test.
Doesn't matter.
She must have passed the test.
Doesn't matter.
Here's the thing.
I think if I were a woman athlete, right?
Yeah.
I would want rules established.
Yeah. I would want rules established.
It's like I would want rules established defining the physical characteristics of any of my potential opponents.
Right. So it could be whatever bone density, muscle mass, you know, testosterone levels, you name it.
You could probably speak to this better than I could, but I'm sure there's all sorts of ways you could actually define that pretty precisely. And you can test those things and you can say, okay, you get to be in this. It's like weight classes and fighting. It's no
different really, right? I mean, you're not allowed to fight someone who's 30 pounds lighter than you
are. And so you could do that in any sport. You could say, right, if you're above a certain height
or above a certain weight or have this much muscle or that much testosterone, you're not allowed in this category.
And there's nothing wrong with that.
There's nothing sexist about that.
There's nothing anti-trans about that.
It's just a different category.
But that's all that matters, right?
The problem was that Fallon Fox had, as you said, more muscle, more testosterone, all these physical characteristics that were fundamentally different than all of the other women fighting in that category in that particular game.
That's all you got to do.
Well, the problem is that you can do damage to the person.
I know.
It's not as simple as playing basketball against someone who had more testosterone.
It's terrible to do that.
But there's also like there's a type of thinking that's involved in discussing this where you have to follow a line of thinking.
And if you don't follow a line of thinking, you're transphobic, you're a hateful person, you're a bigot.
And that line of thinking is not science-based.
It's just not.
When you talk to board-certified endocrinologists or they talk about trans people,
one of the things that they talk about is the fact that when you take estrogen, it actually maintains bone density. It's the reason why they give estrogen to women who have osteoporosis. So
this idea that your bone density decreases when you go from being a man to a woman, it's
bullshit. You're taking testosterone, your bone density is going to stay the same or
get thicker. But if you're taking estrogen, your bone density is also going to maintain.
It's going to help you maintain.
So when you remove the body's ability to produce testosterone on its own, there was a whole article in Bloody Elbow of MMA by this board-certified endocrinologist, Dr. Ramona Krutzik.
And what she did different than everything else, all these other articles, is she's not a gender reassignment surgeon.
All these other people that are commenting on this have a vested interest in it being completely neutral.
There's all these people that are trans people that are commenting on it, and they're doing it from a very biased perspective.
Because we're not talking about mountain biking, which there was a woman who used to be a man who dominated mountain biking,
and it became a giant issue with people.
They first supported her, and then she was winning by such enormous margins.
They were like, well, what the fuck?
Same as the woman in Australia that's the weightlifter.
This is different.
This is fighting.
And I think fighting uniquely—
Fallon Fox almost killed that woman.
She beat the shit out of a few girls.
But then she lost to Ashley Evan Smith, who is a biological female.
So you can beat someone like that.
Of course.
But again, Ronda Rousey probably beat the fuck out of most 135-pound men in the world that she meets.
Of course.
It's just a matter of skill level.
It's no different than PED, like banning PEDs.
We want to do that, don't we?
It's the same thing.
It's altering the body's chemistry, its abilities, right?
And so you don't want to compete against someone who has
that difference. Unless you know.
Unless you know.
Or unless you're allowed to do the same
thing, then it's all fair.
But you couldn't. The woman would have
to take testosterone and balance it out
and then you'd have to find out how would you balance
out 30 years of your body
naturally producing testosterone, increasing your ligament strength, increasing your tendon strength.
You also have the mechanical advantages of male hips are very different when it comes to kicking, when it comes to certain types of movement.
Women's hips go out and then their legs kind of come in at an angle.
And it's not the best for kicking.
It's not the best for a lot of different activities.
Right.
It's not the best for a lot of different activities. Right. It's different. So I would just say that a trans woman is absolutely, in my view, a woman.
Fine.
You know, I don't.
That's their identity.
And I respect that.
However, they want to identify.
Because the category of woman, as you said, is so fluid.
You know, I'm not going to say there's any absolute about that either, that it can change.
And it's, you know it comes from her ideas.
But still, I respect that and I'll call you a woman.
I'll treat you like a woman.
But that means we have to change the sports, right?
And we have to have just different categories.
Instead of woman sports and man sports, we need to have women and man categories in those sports.
We need to have different categories that are about people's physical composition, what you're made up of, right? So just like weight classes and PEDs, there's no
difference to me. Well, or there could be the argument that a person, a trans woman is a woman,
but when you're talking about athletic competition, you're talking about a very
biological thing. I'm saying if you take, you might have to say that someone has to be a
biological female to compete against females. But I'm saying if you take the gender out of the sport, right?
If you stop calling these gendered names, then it's definitely not a trans issue.
It's just about what your body's made up of.
So, for instance.
So instead of just weight classes.
Like Jermaine Durandamy is probably, I don't know.
Well, Ronda Rousey, more likely, is probably made up just physically more like closer to a man, closer to Yoel Romero than Andy Dick.
How dare you?
She's going to find this and she's going to find you.
Gosh, I hope so.
Someone likes to be hit.
It really choked out real fast.
Yeah, so that means I would just say, you know, there should be a category, you know, in the sport, you know, for people who are made up of that composition.
And that could be people that the society identifies as men and
who identify as women or whatever I mean that's a that's a slippery slope why
there's a lot of work there yeah because like what I mean how would you define it
what parameters would use bone density well you know a lot of african-american
women have similar bone density to white males so does that mean you should be
able to fight black chicks?
Maybe yeah, it depends right so well no actually they kind of are doing it and well this thing with you up
Just think oh man. I'm not messing man. Well even though. She's like what 60 years old she gets
50 you could crush me
No, but I mean they are doing it in fact. We just saw this with what's her name caster Saman Samania
Oh, what are they doing with her?
Well, it's the thing about testosterone levels.
But what are they doing? Are they making her?
No, there's a number for testosterone that you have to be below, right,
to compete in that sport as a woman.
So that's what I'm talking about.
Just add more categories, not just testosterone.
You have to have, that's what this says.
Okay, it says right here.
If your testosterone goes above a certain level, you're not allowed to compete as a woman.
So I'm saying have that category and add more categories like that.
And don't call it woman and men.
Just say it's category X.
You get to compete in this category if you're testosterone, androgen, whatever.
Yeah, but do you see what they're saying?
Certain levels.
But it's so ridiculously loose.
It's saying a female with hypoandrogenism who is recognized as a female in law shall be eligible to compete in women's competition in athletics provided that she has androgen levels below the male range.
Like, all you have to do is just be, like, a couple notches below the male range, which is way above.
But I'm saying that's all objectively determined.
You can do that.
They're trying to get her to take suppression medication or that's what I'm
saying okay this is all proving my point that these are objectively determined
making her tone it down we have numbers right we say if you hit this number for
this category you don't get to compete here but this is so it's so rare I mean
she has a disease essentially where she produces too much testosterone.
But it would apply to trans people is what I'm saying, right?
So if you—
But would it?
Because even so, you're still dealing with the mechanical advantages of the male frame, the wider shoulders, especially when it comes to hitting.
We could do that, too.
We do it with weight.
We do it with weight already.
Why not?
Wow.
Height?
Sure.
Boy.
In fact, I've thought about that.
Right.
Well,
look,
I'm sure you have to like in weight classes,
right?
Like I have a huge advantage.
I always use it.
I'm six,
one,
one 65 and I have really long arms.
So like most of the time people can't get inside my jab.
Like I just put it out there.
They can.
And it's just a thing.
It's like,
but it's like,
I often feel like this isn't really fair in a way.
You know, I don't have to be as good as they are.
I can be looser.
And it's true for a lot of fighters.
But once they get inside on you, they have an advantage.
Like, Mike Tyson used that advantage of being 5'10 on a lot of fighters.
I don't know if it was an advantage.
I think he just was really good at overcoming it.
Hmm.
I think there's an advantage in fighting and having shorter arms and being lower.
He did the peekaboo past the jab.
He maximized his style.
Really, really well.
He did that thing.
As did Rocky Marciano.
And then he had a really good way of slipping the jab and moving constantly until he was
inside on you.
And then he would crush you with his huge left hook.
But once he's there, he doesn't have an advantage on you.
He's just there.
And he's Mike Tyson.
But you don't think it's harder for a guy with long-ass spider arms to punch a guy who
is in tight on you with short arms and is throwing shots to the body like Tyson would
do?
I don't think so.
I don't think so.
I don't think so.
I think there's advantages as long as you're physically competent.
There's advantages in particular movements and positions to all sorts of different body
styles.
It's very true in jiu-jitsu.
Guys with long arms and long legs in jiu-jitsu
have massive advantages with chokes.
You guys can get darses and guillotines
and triangles easier,
but you can also get armbarred easier.
There's mechanical advantages in armbarring you.
There's some weird advantages
to being like a Husamar Paul Haras,
stocky short guy.
Well, how about basketball? There you go. Oh, it's all advantages to being tall, right? And Paul Haras, stocky, short guy. Well, here's basketball. How about basketball?
There you go.
Oh, it's all advantages to be tall, right?
And in fact, there are leagues,
actually there might be professional leagues,
which are six feet and under leagues.
Really?
Yeah.
Many leagues.
Oh, many.
Many people.
This is very common,
because most people are under six feet tall, right?
So who could never play in the NBA,
even though they're amazing basketball players,
but they just don't have the arm length
and they don't have the height and all that.
That's interesting.
So we just need more divisions.
The UFC should have like, you know, welterweight should be, there should be heights within
it too.
Isaiah Thomas was only 5'9".
This is a current Isaiah Thomas.
He's a really good player for the number one team in the East.
He's a great player.
A lot of guys that are under six foot though.
He's a great, great player.
Or around six foot.
They get listed higher too.
Yeah.
They cheat.
Interesting. So he's sort of the exception that proves the rule. He's 5'9", but he's a great great player around six foot they get listed higher too yeah like they cheat so he's sort of the exception that proves the rule he's five nine but he's really well you remember successful yeah he's five three five six or something like that three five three
mugsy was five three and dunked yes he did five seven no i'm pretty sure pull it up jamie james
can't wait to see you in this. This is my wheelhouse.
You're in Jamie's wheelhouse in a big way right now. I'm pretty sure he dunked.
He may not have been a super clean
dunk, but it was a dunk. Let's see.
Let's see if he dunked.
We'll go with a video.
That's my life goal was to say, pull it up, Jamie.
Okay, this is about Webb.
Here's Muggsy.
Does it have a video of him dunking?
I don't think so.
I've never seen it in my entire life.
You're going to want to Google Muggsy Bogues dunk.
Yeah, I would have seen it in my life.
Google Muggsy Bogues dunk.
He did Google that.
Boom, right there.
Crazy Muggsy Bogues dunk, Jamie.
Number two on Google.
Let's see.
I've got to watch this.
I've never ever seen this in my entire life.
Dude, he just flew through. That's not real. That's in a video game. That's probably not real. That've got to watch this. I've never ever seen this in my entire life.
Dude, he just flew through you.
That's not real.
That's in a video game. That's probably not real.
That's in a video game.
But he really did.
I promise you.
That's an NBA life.
My memory is that it wasn't a clean, super clean dunk,
but he did get the ball above the rim with his hand on it.
We're going to get to the bottom of this, ladies and gentlemen.
Jamie will get to the bottom of this.
This is pretty essential.
If we don't solve this, this is a failure of a podcast. There's a big difference I think between team
sports where you know you could have an advantage of having a spud web or a muggsy bogues, a very
mobile agile kind of guy who can set plays up versus a guy like Shaq, big giant guy who can
you know get in the way of things and I think there's all sorts of advantages and disadvantages
at size. When you're talking about individuals against
individuals that's where things get weird and then when you're talking about
combat sports that's where like people have just true there's some people that
just have these tremendous advantages like you know Paul Daly is mm-hmm
ridiculous power mm-hmm like almost unfair like he hits guys and just
obliterate yeah but you know that's not just strength
Static yeah, yes. Yeah, mm-hmm, and it's it's also geometry body geometry. Yes, right
Yes, a lot of skinny dudes like me have power
Some yeah lot yeah, right and a lot of big Tommy Hearns is the best example a bunch of them
But he's also like this wide and then his waist is like this and this angle just right.
I've actually thought it's shoulder width.
Yeah, that's what I'm saying.
Yeah, you get that torque.
This wide and then the waist like this.
So the shoulders like that, the torque.
Yep, exactly.
I mean, it's crazy.
You have more to swing that way.
Yeah.
Oh, for sure.
Wide shoulders.
To rotate around the spine.
Yeah, exactly.
Oftentimes equate, especially when they learn striking sports at an early age,
they learn how to develop that snap and fluidity to their strikes.
And a lot of muscle-bound guys don't.
Don't, right.
Or if they do, they have it for like 30 seconds.
I want you to go talk to Dana and get this going.
We need height divisions.
We need testosterone divisions.
It's too complicated. Testosterone-level divisions. We're not going to have that. Estrogen- testosterone divisions. It's too complicated.
Testosterone-level divisions.
We're not going to have that.
Estrogen-level divisions.
I think we are literally one generation away from being able to use CRISPR and all these new genetic engineering tools to make people whatever style of person you want.
I think you're going to be able to develop 6'4 super athletes that look like Anthony Joshua or Vitaly Klitschko
Or Vladimir Klitschko you're gonna be able to make those now what I would give for bionic knees right knees are fucked up
That never well, they're not they're okay. They're they're problematic that I can I can function fine, but they could go out in any time
Yeah, you know I mean if you never worry about that. Mm-hmm. You never had to worry right?
Can you imagine well if you could just redo it
But I'm telling you what they were talking about before the podcast what they're doing now with stem cells with soft tissue injuries
It's tremendous. I mean, it's really a maze
It's never happened before what they're able to do to people that have meniscus injuries is literally
Shoot stem cells in there and you regenerate meniscus tissue
I mean that's just never happened before and I think that this is steps. I think what we're at right now is really, really young. I
think 20, 30 years from now, because 20 years ago, they didn't really use it at all. 20 years from
now, I think it's going to be insane. I mean, they regenerated a woman's bladder using her skin
tissue. They built her a bladder. She had bladder cancer. They built her a bladder she had bladder cancer they
built her a bladder and then reinstalled it in her body now she has a functional
bladder that came out of her own body they're regenerated yeah I think you're
gonna be able to do that with tendons and ligaments and all sorts of tissue I
believe it and hopefully this is really promising they're gonna be able to do
that with brain tissue so people that have had brain injuries people that have
had CTE they're hopefully gonna be able to do that with brain tissue. So people that have had brain injuries, people that have had CTE, they're hopefully going to be able to use some of these therapies to regenerate brain tissue.
Wow.
Yes.
That's huge.
Neuroregenesis is like, that's the promised land.
God bless them.
You know, I don't know anything about science.
I'm just a complete idiot when it comes to math and science.
But, man, just go for it.
And by the way, as far as universities, you know, I'm, I am the harshest critics of universities generally, but mostly what I'm talking about is
actually the humanities and social sciences. When I do that, what goes on in the biology building,
the chemistry building, the physics building, I don't know, but I know that what comes out of them
is a better life for me. Right. And all of us, they're making this stuff that you're talking
about. And so go for it. And so, you know,
renegade universities, not, we're not going to do no science. We're going to let, we're going to
let Harvard and MIT keep going, have at it guys, you know, because you're doing great stuff. I have
no critique of that. As far as I know, there's nothing going on there that's wrong, but it's
just the humanities and social sciences that are utterly corrupt. Well, we got way off the track
here. What we were talking about initially was Jordan Peterson what we disagree with him when it comes to gender and what you agree with him when
it comes to the suppression of expression of professors and all the
people worried about being called racist and sexist and anything else stifling
free speech so what he's facing is even worse than what goes on in the United
States in a sense in that it's, it's now legal
persecution. He is actually, you know, it's, it's against the law to not use these gender pronouns
in your class. Um, which is that suppression of speech, that suppression of academic freedom.
It's a complete violation of those things in fact. And that's, that's totalitarian. I mean,
there's nothing, no two ways around it. My uncle at Canada has these these laws. Yeah. Right.
And they have a Human Rights Commission, I think it's called or Human Something Commission, Human Rights Council Council.
And they it's like a body of people who sit there and decide who should have a Web site or not.
And my uncle, this actually happened to him about 10 years ago.
He was accused of being a Holocaust denier because and I don't even know exactly what he was saying on there.
because, and I don't even know exactly what he was saying on there, but he's a Ukrainian. And I think he was sort of just defending these Ukrainians who were accused of being Nazis
during the World War II. I don't know. It doesn't matter. Even if he were a Holocaust denier,
he should have his website, right? The Canadian, you go to that URL, it's shut down. And in fact,
they put a banner. Now it says, this is now like controlled by the Canadian government or something.
Whoa.
Oh yeah. No, they have no free speech in Canada
I mean, there's no there's no sort of doctrine legal or otherwise in Canada of free speech
It's bad and that's what Jordan Peterson's facing. It's because he's Canadian. This would not happen in the United States until of course, you know
The sociologists take control and then they will have these laws, but we don't have them here. So he's actually could go to prison
That's what's that's what's happening he actually could go to prison. That's what's happening.
He could go to prison for not saying zur in his class.
There was an article that Vice published that someone linked to me today about this that I did not read yet
because I announced that Jordan is going to be returning to the podcast,
and someone was saying that his interpretation of these laws is greatly exaggerated.
See if you can find that.
It's a very recent Vice article.
I'm pretty sure it's illegal.
And illegal means you can go to prison ultimately.
I don't think Jordan's wrong.
And I don't think he would exaggerate.
No, no, no.
I looked into this.
It's illegal.
Because that matters a lot to me.
Of course.
Yeah.
So I am 100% in solidarity with him on that.
And he's completely right that the state, no one should
be telling him what to say in his classroom. And certainly he shouldn't be going to prison for it
or being threatened in any way legally, even if it's just a fine. A fine, right? People don't
understand this. It's incredible how people don't understand that everything the state does is
enforced by the threat of ultimate violence, right? So my mother even said this recently.
She said, oh, it doesn't,
there's no violence with parking tickets.
They just send you a fine.
I said, oh, really?
So if you get the fine and you don't pay it, what happens?
Oh, we get another notice.
And then another notice, right, mom?
And then another notice.
And then finally, what happens?
Corinne Gaines, this black woman in Maryland
a couple of years ago, this is exactly what happened.
She got a bunch of traffic tickets
and she refused to pay them. And ultimately, what happened, the SWAT team came to her house
and she pulled a gun and they shot her in the head. That was over traffic fines. Okay. That's
what happens. That's what it means to make something illegal. At the end of the day,
for it to be meaningful as a law, the state has to use lethal violence to enforce it.
Or the potential for lethal violence.
In other words, if you don't pay your taxes, even if it's $100 in taxes, ultimately, otherwise the law is meaningless, right?
Right.
They have to put you in prison or kill you.
Well, that was what was most offensive about that Sandra Bland case when you got to hear the interaction between her and the cop yeah she did
nothing wrong and this cop is dragging her out of the car and then ultimately
she died and they don't know how she died and there's she was pissed off she
talked back because he pulled her over we told her to put out her cigarette
right and she's like because she was being disrespectful exactly yeah she
wasn't if you listen to the the actual recording no no she just wasn't
Following him to the like she wasn't treating him with respect that he felt he deserved hold on there
I think she was being disrespectful, and that's why she's my hero. I mean because really you think she was disrespectful
That's why she's a hero
But I don't think she was because you shouldn't be, you shouldn't respect
that authority. I mean, it's dangerous. And that's why she's a martyr. I wouldn't, I wouldn't
recommend it to people. I wouldn't tell my son to do that, but he deserved no respect.
The law enforcing that law in that way, treating her in that way, in that moment was deserved no
respect whatsoever. And that's to me why she's the hero
not that she was a victim she was a victim but to me what was great about her was that she said no
i'm not gonna put up my cigarette and why did you pull me over for this this is bullshit well i mean
you have no reason to pull me over and do this to me right now i'm on my way to someplace i'm trying
to get someplace what was she getting pulled over for i think it was a i think it was a it was a
taillight or something she like didn't turn i think it was a turn signal okay it was a I think it was a it was a tail light or something didn't turn. I think it was a turn signal
Okay, it was something really trivial. Well, I don't think he has the right to tell her to put out her cigarette
So like that's not a disrespectful thing. I think he's overstepping his boundaries. I don't think you do they do in your car
Smoking a cigarette in her car. They have the right they have the right and I think in some
Municipalities the obligation because you are supposed to—here's the thing, Joe.
I mean, this is the other thing that the law rests upon.
It rests upon us respecting legal authorities.
Right.
If we don't, there ain't no law.
Yeah, but there's no legal authority for you to stop you from doing a lawful act.
Like, if she has a cigarette lit in her car, when she gets pulled over, the cop says, pull your cigarette out. What he's doing is just controlling her. I don't think that's a lawful act. Like if she has a cigarette lit in her car, when she gets pulled over,
the cop says,
pull your cigarette out.
What he's doing is just controlling her.
I don't think that's a law.
They give them latitude.
They give the cops latitude
in determining who is obeying their orders and not.
So if this could be,
I'm sure this-
Really?
Yeah.
I'm not defending this.
I'm saying this is the problem.
I'm saying that in court,
I would bet you anything,
he would say that showed
that she wasn't listening to me
She wasn't obeying my orders
I think he told her to like put her hands on the car or something and she had a cigarette in her hand so
She had to take the cigarette out of her hand to do what he was asking. You know, I'm saying that's all
Worthy of disrespect. I'm not defending it at all, right?
the other thing though about this and this is something I've been working on lately and
all right the other thing though about this and this is something I've been working on lately and I've been doing some work with some people at free think
media about this but is I think and I've changed my mind about this this has been
a new thing for me I've thought about race my whole life basically really
really hard and this is I've changed my mind about this when things like that
happen Sandra Bland Mike Brown Eric G Eric Garner, even Walter Scott,
the guy who was shot in the back in South Carolina.
What if the guy where they planted the taser?
Well, that's again, hold on there.
So I, like everyone in the country, pretty much saw those things and thought,
A, that's horrific.
And B, that's horrific, and B, that's racist.
And what people do overwhelmingly is they focus on what they believe is the racism of the cop, the individual,
that that's what caused those cops to shoot those guns in those moments.
I think that's a mistake.
For one thing, we will never know why they chose to pull the trigger in those moments. I think that's a mistake. For one thing, we will never know
why they chose to shoot to pull the trigger in that moment. We will never
know that it was racist. There's no way to prove that. There's no way to
demonstrate it. And there's nothing we can do about it. You can't... what can you
do to change people's ideas about race or black people. You can't. Certainly not anytime soon.
What all those cops were doing in all those instances, and this is why they got off,
they were following the law and they were following police procedure, which actually
obligated them to do those things. So Walter Scott, and believe me, I was convinced that was a racist cop, that that was clearly a bad killing.
And it was a bad killing, but not for the reasons that people are talking about.
I have no way to know whether that cop was racist, and that's why he did that.
But we do know, and people have done work on this, that he, it is very reasonable to assume that he was doing in that moment what he was obligated to do by law, which is if you look at the video carefully, he very well could have thought that Scott was still holding his taser because Scott grabbed the taser and then dropped it immediately.
But if you look at where the cop is looking, he may not have seen that.
We're talking about a different thing then, because I'm talking about the cop that shot the guy and then dropped the
taser near his body.
We're talking about the same thing.
So the guy grabbed the taser before that?
Here's what happened.
Okay.
Walter Scott grabs his taser.
He grabbed the cop's taser.
I thought he just ran.
No,
pulled the taser out of his holster and had it for a second and then,
and then started to run.
And as he's like turning to run,
he drops it immediately.
And he's running away and he gets, you know, a good whatever, 10, 20 yards away and the cop shoots him in the back.
So according to South Carolina police procedure and according to Supreme Court decisions,
the cop not only had the right but the obligation to use lethal force
because he could have believed in that moment that Scott
still held the taser in his hand. If a person takes a police officer's weapon, police are
obligated to use lethal force to stop them. So if you look, you just have to, there's a, there's a
video, there's a documentary about this. It's called frame. I forget the number. I think it's
three 94. You might be able to find it, Jamie, but, um, and it's plausible. It's called Frame. I forget the number. I think it's 394. You might
be able to find it, Jamie. And it's plausible. It's not definite that this is what happened,
but it is plausible. If you look the way, where the cop was looking, he may not have seen that
the taser was on the ground. I'm super confused because I thought that the cop dropped the taser.
Hold on. Let me finish. So he's like, so Scott's running away, 20 yards, shoots him in the back.
Okay. Then the cop walks over to him. During that time, he does see that the taser's on the ground next to him, next to the cop.
He picks up the taser. The cop does, walks over and drops it on the ground next to Scott momentarily and then picks it back up.
So who knows what was going on there? He he may have been and sure he may have been trying to cover himself in that moment but actually he didn't need to that cop you know what happened with that trial it's a hung jury
he's he's free huh because of this because i'm sure we don't know for sure but i know this was
the argument made by scott by the cop's lawyer was that it is totally reasonable to assume that he believed he had reason to shoot him legally.
So that's one part of that story, right?
Which is that the law is the problem, okay?
Not the cop.
Stop focusing on that cop.
You'll never find out.
You'll never be able to prove that he did it because he's a racist.
And even if we did, what's that going to give to, what's that going to get us?
That's not going to save anybody the next time this happens, right?
But what will save people is if we, if we change those laws, here's the worst law that
really made the whole thing happen in the first place that no one's talking about.
The whole thing started when Scott was driving through North Charleston, right?
The cop, I think it was a suspended license plate or something, or a taillight, taillight.
I think it was a taillight, something trivial, pulls him over.
At that time, Scott was in arrears on child support payments,
right? And you go to, here we go. You go to prison if you get behind on your child support
payments. And he had been, I think, put in jail a few times in his life for this.
You get put in prison and there's a whole bunch of men right now as we speak in prison for that
very reason. And these child support payments
by the way are set by judges often in a system that re that massively favors the women the
mothers that whole system you've never been divorced right i have you know as soon as you
enter it you see right away that the whole thing is stacked against us and it's this is you know
it's just you look into it if you don't believe me I believe you you have
basically no many friends and I went through the mildest divorce I mean my
ex-wife was as as easy on me as you could be but nonetheless I ended up
paying a lot more child support than she really deserved and very but not a lot I
mean but it was but a lot of men oh in fact you do have a friend this happened to, I think, right?
Yeah.
Yeah.
You go into these courtrooms and it's basically down to a judge.
I have a friend who has to pay alimony for the rest of his life.
Yeah.
He was married for 12 years.
He's been divorced for 14.
He still has to pay his ex-wife.
He's married to a new woman.
He has a new family.
He didn't even have kids with this woman.
That's.
He has to pay her forever.
Yeah.
Forever.
Imagine if she dies.
Imagine if they had kids. He fucked so hard. She can't work anymore forever
How about that that's that's a crazy lot to say about that, but yeah
But that's a crazy law when they have when there's kids involved right forget
That's a very sexist law by the way because that's laws implying that this woman is incapable of making it on her own
Thank you by definition. It's anti-femin. By definition, it's anti-feminist.
Yes.
It's anti-feminist and it's sexist and it's patriarchal.
Right.
It is totally patriarchal.
Women who support it, they're supporting it because they don't like men.
I mean, that literally is what it is.
Well, who knows?
Well, listen, if you're supporting a woman never having to work again because she married a guy for a certain amount of time,
like relationships come and go.
People get tired of each other.
People have the right to change. You shouldn't be financially obligated to take care of someone
for the rest of their life just because you were married at one point in time. That's crazy.
I completely agree with you.
Especially in today's day and age where my friend is 54, I think he is now. He could live to be 100.
So what the fuck? He's got to pay for her for another 46 years. That's insanity.
It's phenomenal
Yeah, but again when yeah, that's I agree with you completely
But what you said just then about it being sexist it is that's a radical concept that
Hasn't even I think registered with most people and if many people heard it
They would think you are a sexist yourself for saying it, but you know what it is
inescapable
That that's what's going on.
Sexism against men is very common.
It's sexism against women too. That's what we're also saying. And that's the radical part of this,
right? It's actually patriarchal in the most fundamental sense, which is that the court is saying that the man should be the provider. I'm going to tell you a story. There's a woman
in Florida who is a bit in my act that I'm doing now. It's a true story. There's a woman in Florida who is a bit in my act that I'm doing now. It's a true story. There's a woman in Florida who was a cop.
She was 25 years old.
She pretended to be a high school student.
And she's an attractive woman, made friends with this boy.
He thought it was his girlfriend.
And she talked him into selling her pot, and then she arrested him.
That only works when you have a 17-year-old boy and a 25-year-old woman.
If you had a 25-year-old man throw a dick at your 17-year-old daughter
and then he gets her to sell him pot and then he arrests her,
there would be people lining the fucking street with torches to kill that guy.
But people are sexist against boys.
They feel that boy should just keep it in his pants.
That boy should know better.
And you know as well as I know, when you're 17 years old,
you are a
baffled bag of hormones with a boner just
Running through the world trying to figure out what the fuck's going on and you're 12 months away from being an adult
It's chaos. It's craziness to and to think that this young boy
Should be able to think clearly in that moment while this 25 year old woman is manipulating them is insane
But they allowed it and this kid has a felony on his fucking record right now.
Yep.
This is the root of the issue with feminism that is current feminism.
It's current incarnation.
I am a feminist, by the way.
How dare you?
We can define that.
Leave now, sir.
How about just being egalitarian?
Can you do that?
Well, yeah.
Son of a bitch.
Well, that's okay.
I'm not that either.
I'm not an egalitarian, but, um, you're not, no, hold on too many topics.
I'm sorry.
Go ahead.
Jesus Christ.
We go off a lot of branches here.
I know.
I love it.
Um, where was I going?
Oh, this, so what you did was you identified, and I think actually we, I talked about this
the first time I was here, which is that, which is that this is what's to me at the heart of, this is the appalling irony at the heart of contemporary feminism as practiced by self-defined feminists.
I'd say certainly it's the dominant strain right now, which is that it is at its heart patriarchal, which it treats women as vulnerable, weak, powerless, incapable of making their own way in this world.
And it treats men as the not just forget about the men.
Forget about how they treat men.
It's how they treat women.
That's sexist. It says that they need protection from the state, which is run by usually men. But it's also this other institution or, you know, college presidents need to protect these women from 19 year old boys who, the state, by men. It is patriarchal
and sexist right at the heart of it. And same thing with family court and divorce law and all
that stuff. That's how they get treated. They get treated like they're the ones who need to be taken
care of by a man. It's like 1950s sexism. It's like madism that's what that's what most feminists are calling for now
well, I disagree when you're talking about child rearing because I think that
Child support is it should be absolutely mandatory and it's very important
And if a woman is the only one raising the kids on their own not only does she need the money for food and housing?
But also probably
for someone to babysit her kids.
There's a lot of factors involved.
I totally agree.
And if the man's not in the scene, like yeah, he owes money for sure.
He has a responsibility.
And as a father, at the very least, that's what you should be doing is contributing financially.
I totally agree.
I totally agree.
I'm not opposed to paying child support. But my problem is alimony.
Alimony's weird.
Yeah, that makes no sense at all.
It's weird.
Well, I don't think it's a bad thing if someone, like, say, how about this?
Say, let's turn around.
Say you had a wife who was wealthy, and she was taking care of you while you were going
through school, and she promised that she was going to fund you
all the way through your PhD program. She was going to give you money so you didn't have to
worry about anything but your education. And then once you got out, then you guys could share income.
But somewhere along the way, she decided she was done with you. And then you're fucked,
but you're in the middle of this program that you have to pay for. I don't think it's unreasonable
to say that she should give you until you could figure your own system out so you don't have to quit your PhD program and go get a job
somewhere and get an apartment and a car I don't think that's that's it I don't
think that's unreasonable what's unreasonable is saying that because you
guys were together for a certain amount of time she has to pay you for the rest
of your life sure that's insanity sure and that's current And that's current. I agree. That's real.
I agree.
That's sexist.
But should that be legal though?
Should that be legally enforced?
Should courts be deciding how long the alimony is paid?
Yeah.
That's crazy.
That's the situation.
I don't know.
How has that happened?
Like what, what's the motivation behind that for the courts to succumb or to give in to I just explained it to you.
It's sexism.
It's patriarchy.
It's, and the feminists are playing along with it.
That's it.
It's this idea that women can't make...
It's the courts, though.
I mean, isn't the courts like a...
Aren't there a lot of men involved in those courts?
I mean, why are they allowing all this to happen?
Yeah, and most of them think basically like feminists,
or at least they are expected to behave
and make decisions like feminists.
Feminism has become dominant in that way in our culture.
It's been going on for decades. Yeah, exactly. These laws have existed like long before in that way in our culture. But this has been going on for decades.
Yeah, exactly.
These laws have existed like long before feminism was prevalent in our culture.
That's my point.
It went from sexist patriarchy, those laws.
Oh, I see what you're saying.
So feminism is basically continuing that stuff in its name.
Piggyback on it and just switching up the definitions.
Let me say really loud and clear.
There have always been feminists who hate this stuff as much as you and
I do. Camille Packley type feminists. Many of them. Okay. And they have been loud and clear about this
for a long, long time. And I love them and they're my heroes and I've learned from them. This is,
I've learned these things from them. Okay. But the ones who really are, you know, powerful and
dominant in the media, the ones we hear from, the public intellectuals, the academics, government leaders, the people who end up in the White House.
Obama's staff in HHS, Health and Human Services, and the Department of Education
became very clear to me that all these sexual assault laws and rules that came out of there,
they were coming right out of colleges.
And they were really of that.
They were of the sort of college feminist movement. They were the ones who set that letter in 2011 that
made it basically mandatory for colleges to set up these kangaroo courts for sexual,
sexual assault cases. All the nonsense you and I talked about here a couple of years ago. Yeah.
Um, yeah. Anybody interested review those or earlier podcasts about your college about
Occidental? Well, yeah, there's many college about occidental well yeah there's
many colleges yeah but you know there's a whole backlash now right there's a huge it's all turning
back and i knew it was going to happen right now they're completely being decimated there's
hundreds or maybe even thousands of men who are suing in court and many of them are winning right
now for good reason because there was no due process right because they weren't allowed to
you know ask questions well that poor boy, the mattress boy,
where that girl put a fucking mattress on her back
and dragged it around campus
and then took her graduation speech with a mattress.
They went on stage with a mattress.
I mean, the whole thing was so fucking crazy.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, there's this fantastic sex worker activist
named Christine Pereira who's in Vegas.
She tweeted something like, when that happened, she said, fuck you, mattress girl.
For those of us who have really been raped, you're a fucking disgrace.
Oh, she went off.
It was something like that.
Yeah.
And it was.
Yeah.
But that girl seems pretty crazy.
That mattress girl.
Yeah.
That was an extreme example.
That boy is suing that school.
Yeah.
They're all suing.
And many of them are winning.
And I don't know what happened in those cases
I don't even know what happened to Mattress Girl for sure for sure
I know that there's all kinds of evidence that sure looks like it didn't happen the way she said it did
I don't know for sure and I never will
We will never know you can't know but what we do know for absolute sure is that there's been
Terrible or no due process right in those cases right and so that's the problem. I mean that basically
Right in those cases right and so that's the problem. I mean that basically
The accuser gets to win every time imagine if that was our legal system writ large, right, right?
Joe you stole a million dollars from me yesterday. All right, put him in jail, right? That's basically what's happened exactly. Okay? Yeah
Well, I mean it got so crazy that even Rolling Stone
Printed a false rape case that that gang rape case, the UVA case. Astonishing.
Which is just how did a company that's been in the journalism business
as long as they've been, how did they fuck that up?
That was the turning point, I think, when that came out that it was completely made up.
I think since then it's started to turn.
Do you think that's good that things like that happen so that you realize why it's important to have checks and balances and that people, it reaffirms this idea of real journalism is important to have your facts in order, to have checks and double check things and make sure you know what the fuck you're printing.
I think it's good for society.
I think it's terrible for John Doe.
All the John Doe's out there, all those men who were accused and expelled
and had their names ruined and their careers ruined, college careers destroyed and all that
stuff. Right. I think, but yes. And also, even if you're exonerated, the emotional turmoil that you
go through, there's no way they can reward you for that or compensate you for that rather.
So that, but that is part of that whole thing, as I said before, is part of this sort of ironic feminist patriarchy
ideology, right? Which is, you know, we need protection. We can't, we can't, because it,
because it's, we can't say no to men. We can't stop them by saying no. We need, you know,
we need help just there. We need to, we need the college president to save us or the cops or
someone. It's incredible.
Well, then there's also this thing where two people are drinking.
And if the two people are drinking, the girl is getting raped.
There you go.
Same thing.
Whereas the guy's not getting raped. Because women are incapable of controlling themselves when they're drunk.
It's sexist as hell.
Exactly.
Because the man's drunk, too.
But somehow or another, it doesn't matter.
Even if they're both sending texts back and forth, do you have condoms, like the Occidental case.
It's patriarchal.
It's women are children.
They're daughters.
They need to be taken care of by dad.
And the sons are men.
Yeah.
Even though they're just the same age and they're boys as well.
Yeah.
They have full agency.
It's sexist.
The women are daughters.
Yeah.
It is sexist.
It's incredible.
Yeah.
So, okay. gender, Jordan Peterson.
So I'm completely, absolutely with him, you know.
When it comes to that.
When it comes to policing of language.
Right.
But he, as I said, I could be wrong about this, but it sounded to me, and I've listened to him on your show, and I've listened to him elsewhere,
and a lot of people have pointed him to me and vice versa because they think we agree on these things and we don't.
Which is that he thinks, seems to me, that gender is biologically determined, that there are two genders, they're fixed in nature, and that's the end of that discussion.
I don't know if he's ever said that.
I really don't think he has.
I really don't think he has.
I think he's said that when it comes to gender
identity, that he doesn't believe that we need more pronouns.
No, he thinks it's just wrong if you think you're a woman when you were born with a penis.
It's just sort of absolutely wrong.
I think you would have to find him saying that before you could say that.
I'm really glad to hear you say that because I wasn't sure where you stood on that.
No, I mean, look, man.
That's a big deal.
People, I think- That's a big deal. People, I think.
That's a big deal.
It can get super weird when, okay, how about Rachel Dolezal?
She identifies as being black.
Great.
Yeah.
She's transracial.
How do you feel about that?
I think she's correct.
Not, now hang on.
Let me tell you what correct means there.
Okay.
She's transracial.
Not in an absolute way, right?
Not in a scientific, objective way.
Right.
But it's just as true as anything else.
Meaning that because, so race, and here comes Sam Harris now, and I'm sure Jordan Peterson's in this boat too.
But I know Sam Harris is because I just heard him talking about this with Charles Murray.
He believes there are races of people.
He thinks that race is a real thing.
He's definitely subtle about it and nuanced.
He says, you know, the divisions between races and the lines are blurry.
But he believes there's a biological basis to race.
He's very clear about that.
And that is is to me
absurd and completely unscientific and it's easily disprovable by according to
his own standards and by scientific standards but anyway a black guy from
Kenya you see a white Chinese guy from China uh-huh what's the difference no
difference well here's here's the answer you tell me right which is that so
historically mm-hmm the differences between them have changed. That we people, human beings, have said different things, have created different categories, and filled those categories with different characteristics.
Those have changed constantly. Right. And my first time I was on here, we had a long discussion about what's in my book, Renegade History on Immigrants, the Irish and the Italians and the Jews. When they got here to the United States here and in Europe, they were largely considered to be Negroes. Right. Right. And now they're as white as anybody. Right.
anybody. Right. So what are they? At that time in the early 20th century, it was not like when I say common belief, I mean, it was taught in schools, the following taught at Harvard, the following
that Europeans were made up of three distinct races. There were the Nordics in Northern Europe,
the Alpines in Central Europe, and the Mediterranean in Southern Europe.
And they were very different biologically.
The Nordics were rational, intelligent, disciplined.
They were the ones who made civilization.
They should run the country.
The Alpines were okay.
They could be decent farmers, but they're never going to do algebra and they certainly can't run a government. The Mediterranean's were basically either like
Negroes or really close and therefore should be slaves or just peasants.
That's my people.
Yeah, I know.
Yeah. Maybe you're talking about a long time ago.
No, we're talking about a hundred years ago, which historically-
That's a long time ago if you're holding your breath.
But you know, you love ancient history. I mean, if you look at the whole sweep of human history, that's five years ago, which historically- That's a long time ago, if you're holding your breath. But you know, you love ancient history.
I mean, if you look at the whole sweep of human history, that's five minutes ago, right?
It is, but it's still a long time in terms of how we address it today.
But if we address it today, if you're looking at someone from China, or you're looking at
a dark black man from Kenya, there's something different about them.
Do you think it's just melanin?
Sure.
Of course, there's something different about them.
Right. Many different things. So where do you draw the's just melanin sure that's course there's something different about them right many different things there's no where
do you draw the line about around races though right so look at take all the
people in Kenya mm-hmm okay which ones are Kenyans and which ones are they all
Kenyans and what makes them Kenyan or are they all Africans well you know you
can do they all black right so those of all passed on someone and find out where
their their origins are.
You can find out how much Irish you have in you, how much South African.
You can do all that.
You can go all the way back to your family lineage through genes.
I get that.
Totally fine.
Well, if you want to go all the way back, we're all African.
Sure.
Well, there you go.
That's another way to disprove this whole thing, right?
Right.
But is it disproving it because these branches-
It's not disproving it.
Sorry.
That's a bad word to use here.
It is calling it out as a fiction, as a social construct, which is that these lines have been drawn all the time in all kinds of different ways over the centuries by human beings who just look at all the people in the world.
They line up the seven billion people, right, in their mind, and they draw lines.
They say, oh, these people over here, this side, those are the Negroes. And over here, these are the
Mongoloids. And over here, these are the Asiatics. And over here, these are the Nordics. And over
here, the Aryans and the Jews. And those change all the time. But these are just categories we
invent, right? So who's black? Is Jimi Hendrix black? Well, Jimi Hendrix has a mixed background, right?
I mean, wasn't his mother white and his father was black?
Joe, what's his race? Is he black or white?
It's a good question.
There you go.
Got a lot in him, but there's a big difference between someone like Jimi Hendrix and someone that is like very, very dark.
Okay.
Comes from a specific part of the world where everyone around them is very very dark
Let's do that. They have very obvious and repeatable characteristics. Let's do that. So okay, Congo these knives come from sure go
Okay, the people there they're pygmies actually. I mean, that's an even more just a group, you know
What do we need to do West Africans? Okay? Okay, we're slaves where the West where the Western slaves American slaves come from
and Just across the continent not even that far away,
you know, there's Somalia.
You know what Somalians look like, right?
Yeah.
And Ethiopians, right?
Think about them and how they look
and think about how, you know, West Africans look.
Are they the same race?
Well, very different physical characteristics.
Very dark.
Somalis look
different than everybody right clearly right you know a somali immediately right same continent
same pigmentation basically very thin yeah their facial structure very different uh why are they
black why are they the same race is that the same race? I mean, we're talking about Somalians.
Like, would you consider Somalians the same as, like, Ethiopians or as the same as Egyptians, which is also Africa?
My thing is let's get rid of these categories.
These are all silly, made-up categories.
There's no reason to do it.
They're all arbitrary.
Okay.
Lines have been drawn between groups of people arbitrarily over the centuries.
So you're arguing against something that Sam Harris said.
So what did Sam Harris say specifically? Well, it's not just him.
It's a lot of people.
So you don't agree that there is any race at all?
I'm just saying it's a fiction.
It's made up.
Right?
Well, is it a fiction or is it a way we're trying to define the variations between human groups?
Because there are variations.
Oh, that's definitely what it's been about.
That's definitely been the motivation, right?
And think about what the consequences have been.
Okay, but that's—
It's never been good.
Just because there's consequences for variations or recognizing variations doesn't mean you should stop recognizing actual variations.
But then you make—but they always make claims right after that.
Like?
They don't have to.
That's a straw man, isn't it?
I mean, you don't have to make a claim that Chinese people are different because they
look different.
No, but then it's just.
But you can say, well, this is what a Chinese person.
Sure.
Generally, they have these very stringent characteristics.
They don't have blonde hair.
They don't have blue eyes.
They're not tall and skinny.
They look like Chinese people. Sure. But then again, Chinese people all look the same. I mean, there's. You don't have blonde hair. They don't have blue eyes. They're not tall and skinny. They look like Chinese people.
But then again, Chinese people all look the same.
I mean, there's obvious.
You don't have to say that.
Right.
But again, what makes.
But there's clear characteristics.
What makes.
The difference between a Chinese person and a black person is very clear.
Not really.
Well, an ethnic Kenyan.
Not always.
Someone who lives in Kenya, who was born and raised multiple generations deep, and their parents are Kenyan, their grandparents are Kenyan, someone who lives in Kenya, who was born and raised multiple generations deep,
and their parents are Kenyan, their grandparents are Kenyan.
There's a very big difference between them and someone who lives in Shanghai, who was
born in Shanghai.
Their parents are born in Shanghai.
They go all the way back many, many generations of being pure Chinese.
Right, but there are infinite variations even among people who have lived only in Shanghai.
Right?
Physically. But what do you want to call those variations?
Nothing.
But you're talking about something that's clearly identifiable.
Are you just going to ignore it?
I would say that there's, of course, there are genes that run in families.
And I completely agree that, you know, genes determine in large part how we look.
Fine.
So you can certainly say this person is likely because of their genes connected to that
person, last generation to that generation, to this, you know, in this family lineage. Sure.
Well, what does that give you? I don't know. Nothing. I mean, it's the thing is that people
have taken that and they've said, oh, well, these particular characteristics are human beings. We're
talking about complexity in human beings at the beginning of this, right? People are infinitely complex, right? Okay. So the thing is, what people have
done historically is they've just picked certain characteristics among people and said, ah, that
is what determines your race. Is the issue, the word race is maybe the issue, like there are
obvious physical characteristics, the difference between someone who is a Mongol
versus someone who is Brazilian versus someone who is... There's some pretty obvious physical
characteristics for geographic areas. Would you agree? Or common physical characteristics
for some geographic areas? Sure. You could say on average,
people in China are shorter than people in Polynesia.
Well, here's a place where you could do it.
Canada.
Like try to find a Canadian.
Like you don't know what a Canadian looks like.
They could be English.
They could be American.
They could be anything.
I was trying to entertain your strongest argument.
Okay.
So like China, right?
You could certainly say that people in China are on average, on average,
shorter than people in Polynesia, right?
Well, they look different. Yeah. On average. I mean, that's one way in which they look different right you talk about facial you're talking about physiognomy facial
features that bone structure yeah Polynesians find to be like really stout
people I suppose you could say you know the the width of their eyes is narrower
or whatever on average in China whatever sure okay okay so what
that's it I mean what did we okay so they they are likely to be in lineage
from that part of the world fine that's cool I got no problem with that but what
else do you want to say the thing is Joe no one stops there they always go on to
that they always go on from there and they start to make all these other claims.
Oh, well, that race is really good at math.
Their IQ is higher.
This is what actually Sam Harris and Charles Murray were just saying.
They can do the coding for Google better than other people can, whatever, right?
They are more scrupulous.
They smoke cigarettes more.
Whatever it is.
They used to be accused of being more easily addicted to opium.
You name it, right?
Things change.
But that's the problem is that once you start there, people have used those differences for other reasons almost always, which are nefarious and injurious and have done terrible things to people.
Your problem is recognizing those characteristics and those differences and calling it a race
and then attaching all sorts of other claims to this category.
Precisely.
Okay.
Yeah, that's exactly what Sam and Charles Murray, this is Charles Murray's thing,
although it's actually, it's only a small part of his work and he gets accused of it being central and it's not. But anyway, he does still nonetheless believe
this and so does Sam Harris and so does other people that there are differences in IQ among
races. Okay. Now on the surface level, they are completely correct. There's no question. Meaning that IQ scores among people that we identify as
African American have been lower than among the people we define as white American. Totally true.
Totally true. And they are right that that is suppressed, that we are not allowed to even talk
about that data, which is there. And it's, I have no problem with that. I'm sure that's true. Here's the thing, though. How do we define African American? And how do we define white? First, that's the first problem. Those, as you know, definitions have changed over time. So Jews used to be in the African American group and Italians used to be in the African American group
Well, no, no, they were never called African American. Yeah, they were they were called Negroes
Well, yes, they were Jews were called me there was a book written
This is in my book renegade history in night in 1911
There was a book written by a scholar and this was one of many the title of which his name was Arthur Abernathy
The title of which was The Jew is a Negro.
That's the title of it.
That's hilarious.
This was common.
This is what people.
This is what year?
This is all through the late 19th and early 20th centuries, from about the 1880s when the Jews started coming over in big numbers, from the 1880s into the 1940s.
This is what was taught in college classrooms that Jews were of a different race And there was some difference of opinion about whether they were black or whether they were just some other kind of inferior race
But they certainly weren't white that was that was widely agreed upon
Until World War two basically all right, so how do we define African American is Jimi Hendrix African American?
Does he you're talking? There's a big difference isn't there in the term
African-American versus Negro right because like...
No, it's the same thing it's just a different name for the same category.
Yeah but it's from Africa they knew that these Jews weren't from Africa.
So the one drop rule?
It's just a continent.
Oh no no they believe that they they believe that the genes and they're right about this right the genes came from Africa. Yeah
So that's you know, and they're right but so do all of our genes, right?
Right, so that was part of their claim and that they were from you know
Part of Europe that was a bit closer to Africa. This is what they said about Italians in particular Sicilians, right?
They're like look where it is
That's why these people you know are fucking all the time and having babies and true
And they're lazy and can't work and fight in the bars and get drunk and right right so so how do we define these terms?
What does white mean that's totally changed, but how much of it is great the real guy is how much of it is cultural?
So there's that hold on and then and then IQ
well
I think it does measure something. I think that's real. I do. I really do. I think there is something called this is a G factor, which it tests, it measures. G factor is this thing that was invented, this concept. like math like writing scholarly essays you know I'm sure my g-factor is higher
sort of than other people's although I'm terrible at math so that's yet another
problematic wrinkle for these people but yeah I believe that IQ measures that
stuff that kind of thing but is that what intelligence is and only is?
Clearly no.
No.
No, there's a lot of variables that IQ doesn't test for.
What do you think IQ tests test, right?
They test all kinds of intelligence?
Do they test emotional intelligence?
Do they test the intelligence of Jimi Hendrix?
Do you think he was great at calculus?
I don't know.
I sort of doubt it.
Was he smart?
Was he intelligent?
Clearly.
In different ways. He was clever with a guitar, that's for sure. Was he smart? Was he intelligent? Clearly. In different ways.
He was clever with a guitar, that's for sure.
So then how do you define intelligence?
Right. Well, creativity is unquestionably some sort of measurement or expression of intelligence.
We separate that off, though, and we always have as a society.
We shouldn't.
That's why you don't do well unless you're really, really, really good.
If you're just creative in the way we define that and not intelligent in the way IQ tests define it.
There's a, so it's all problematic.
And just, all it does is ask questions.
It just keeps raising new questions.
It never has answers.
And so the attempt to, there's this thing that goes on where like certain people just need to keep finding
racial differences that are innate biological fixed that can't be changed it's like first of
all you've never done this because it's so fluid and you're always you're never really answering
it and then what if you did finally prove it what are we going to do with that information
you know we just recognize that there are variables. Like when we're talking about Polynesian people, we're talking about people from Tonga, very
stout, strong people.
Samoans tend to be very stout, strong people.
I mean, that's a characteristic, actually a positive characteristic that's attributed
to people from that area.
Do you ignore that?
How do you address that?
No, of course not.
I would say that people from Polynesia are I would say people from Polynesia are more likely men from Polynesia are more likely to be offensive linemen in the NFL.
So your issue is calling it a race itself. Yeah. And then attributing other things to it. All I'm
saying is guys from there tend to be bigger. Yeah. Hell yeah. No doubt about it. But so what?
That's the end of it. Is there a part of the world where people are generally thought to be dumb?
That's the end of it.
Is there a part of the world where people are generally thought to be dumb?
Yeah, Africa.
The continent we've been talking about.
That's the history of this country.
That's the history of Europe. That's the history of the modern world is the belief that people from Africa are dumber than whites.
Well, isn't the problem with that that Africa is also where the pyramids were created?
That's what justified slavery.
That's what justified colonialism. That's what justified colonialism.
That's what has justified all sorts of things, right?
So that's the problem here,
is that these attempts to define people by race
and, by the way, by gender,
have done nothing but terrible things.
Nothing but terrible things.
And you can't do it anyway.
It's scientific bullshit.
It's total superstition.
It's utterly arbitrary.
The lines are always being redrawn by the people who do this stuff. So why are you still doing it,
guys? Like it's, where do you draw the goddamn line? All the people in Africa are black? Really?
Egyptians are the same race as people from the Congo, as the people from South Africa,
as the people from Somalia? I mean, how are they the same race?
Because it's pigment, skin pigment.
Is that the only determination?
Well, it's a fascinating thing when you call people African-Americans
or call them Italian-Americans,
because Italy isn't actually a country,
whereas Africa is a continent.
Fantastic point.
It's weird to call people continent Americans.
Who's an Italian, right?
Yeah.
Because guess what?
Italy didn't even exist until the 19th century, right? I mean, it was just a bunch of city states until then. And
there was no such thing as an Italian. People who lived there didn't call themselves Italian. It
wasn't a concept. It wasn't a name. It was nothing. And then they made it into this nation state that
they called Italy. And ever since then, every, sorry, but every dipshit Italian-American is like, really proud that I'm Italian.
Well, that dude, that has no meaning, really, in the deepest history.
It has some meaning, sure.
But they talk about it as if it's like rooted in nature.
Like it's biological.
People love it.
They love being a part of that stupid team.
Yeah.
It's Sopranos.
I blame the Sopranos.
It's tribalism.
Yeah.
It's tribalism.
It is tribalism.
And it's stupid.
And if it were just stupid, I wouldn't care.
It's that it is, as I said, it just leads to bad stuff.
And it has historically.
So is this a popular opinion?
The idea that there are no races?
Oh, okay.
So, you know, I'm Mr. Anti-academic academic, but this is where academics have actually done their best work, I think.
So, and this is the second, my second disagreement with Jordan Peterson. He thinks that all the stuff in college campuses that's crazy is
because of postmodernism and he doesn't understand postmodernism. What's going on in college campuses
is people making all sorts of truth claims about things like race and gender, right? I'm black,
therefore I will always be this, that, and the other thing.
You're white, therefore you are this, that, and the other thing,
no matter what, right?
That is actually old, modernist, scientific racist thinking.
That's what these old racist geneticists, eugenicists thought back in the day.
It's amazing.
Again, SJWs are actually really, really conservative
and ultimately racist. Social justice warriors, folks.
Sorry, I thought your listeners must know that. Some people don't know the abbreviations.
I just assumed that was a shorthand to use. So post-modernism, this is where Jordan Peterson
makes me want to like throw chairs when he talks about this, comes out of French philosophy in the 1960s and 70s and 80s.
Michel Foucault is the most famous example of a French postmodernist.
And they get dumped on all the time.
But the central argument that was made by Foucault and postmodernists
was that none of these things are biologically determined, that there
is no natural essence to anything, that everything is a social construct, which means that we
now are free to choose our own destiny as individuals, right? Prior to that, prior to the 1960s and 70s,
it was the dominant belief
that if you were born a woman,
you were going to be a wife and a mother.
And if you weren't,
you were doing something unnatural, right?
That if you were black,
you could never be the head of a business
or the president, right?
You could never do math, whatever.
If you were white, you know, you should do all those things, right?
Everybody's destiny was determined at birth.
And everyone believed that.
Most people believed that.
Okay.
So postmodernists came along and said, guess what?
You know what we found looking at history?
We found just what I said.
I just gave you the whole postmodern argument right there we looked at history we saw first of all
that all these categories have changed over time which tells us that they're
just inventions they're just inventions that get reinvented all the time okay
and second of all they have served the purposes of ruling elites because they
get to put people in their boxes and control them more easily, right?
Oh, those people over there, those are black.
Therefore, they should be our slaves.
So it's okay for us to have them as slaves.
Those women over there, we don't want them, you know, working for NASA.
So we will have a rule against women working for NASA, whatever it is, right?
So postmodernists said, none of this is biological.
None of this is inevitable.
You are now free to do what you want as an individual. It was a liberating moment. It has
become the dominant way of thinking in academia. And I have to say, in my view, it is the supreme
achievement of academics ever. That's it. That's it. But it's huge, huge. So if you think about it, look how the world has
changed, and particularly in the United States since then, right? We no longer generally have
those ideas. At least we don't operate as such. So black people are allowed, mostly, into places
they weren't before. Women are allowed, very much so, into places they weren't before. Women are allowed very much so into places they weren't allowed before.
The whole world has changed,
and I think principally from that idea.
So that doesn't mean...
Now, the problem is that these social justice warriors,
so-called, on campuses,
have used some of that language
and taken a shit on it.
So the trans movement, for instance, right,
that started from postmodernism. That whole idea, right, is that, you know, if you were born with a
penis, you're a man and you should do X, Y, and Z with your life, right? The trans movement needed
that, needed postmodernism to make that intervention and say, no's not true right you can actually be a woman because because woman is an
invention it's a social construct what trans much of the trans movement now is
doing which makes me so sad is that they're saying that I am biologically
essentially naturally you know in my core a a woman. No, no one is. No one is. You can't,
the whole point of this movement used to be that you get to choose your gender or choose not to be
a gender. You get to move around. Your destiny is not determined for you. What a lot of the
trans movement now is doing is a good word, reifying. They're making these ideas, these
abstractions real again. They're making these claims that are similar to Sam Harris's claims
and to old racist claims and to old sexist claims that if you're born a
particular way biologically this is who you are right because you've heard a lot
of trans people say this right I was born a woman. That's what they often say. What I'm saying is no one
was born anything.
Well, you're losing me in a huge way.
You don't think that women, that some women are born women and some, you don't think you're
born a man?
No.
What are you born? Why are you a man?
For all sorts of reasons.
For all sorts of reasons. None of them being biological.
We just decided. None of them being the XY chromosome. None of them being biological. We just decided.
None of them being the XY chromosome.
None of them being you have testicles.
None of them being you have a penis.
None of them being the fact that you generally gravitate towards male activities like boxing, kickboxing, aggressive things.
We just went through this whole thing.
No, you didn't.
Yoel Romero and Andy Dick.
Yeah, but you.
Why are they both men?
But you.
You.
You're a man.
Yeah.
Right?
We're not talking about the broad spectrum of masculine behavior. We're talking about no one is born a man
You're not born a man. I'm not born I'm saying I'm saying that no I think we're getting silly hold on here
I think it's the category of man becomes meaningless
Does it yeah, we just did this man. No we didn't we didn't you well Romero and Andy Dick are a broad category
We definitely didn't do this. Yoel Romero and Andy Dick are both put in-
It's a broad category.
Lines get blurry at the ends of the spectrum and I think they cross over.
The male-female lines do cross over when you get to that Kenyan runner and Andy Dick.
Yeah, but that's what I'm saying.
You do.
It's so broad that it becomes, to me, pretty damn meaningless.
Well, the numbers are incredibly small at those crossover marks.
You're talking about a very, very small percentage of the population.
Neither Andy Dick nor Yoel Romero are trans people, right?
Andy might be.
They are so different, though, physically in every way.
Okay, yeah.
But we both put them in this silly category called,
man, what the hell does that mean anymore?
Andy has children.
He made them.
What does that mean anymore?
He impregnated different women and got babies from them.
And there's a lot of people called men who don't and can't.
Can't.
Okay.
Yeah.
Can't.
But that's rare.
They were born that way, by the way.
But that's pretty rare.
Not that rare.
Oh, it's very rare.
It happens.
Most men, when they have sex with a woman and they put sperm in their body, they can make a baby.
So that's one characteristic.
But hold on a second.
You're making it as if it's a really common thing.
When you're talking about a small fraction of the men can't make babies, an incredibly
small fraction.
So an incredibly- The vast majority of males with the XY chromosome
who have penises are capable of impregnating a female with an XX chromosome.
I mean, and the male was born a male, the female was born a female.
Right.
So what do you mean when you aren't born a man or you aren't born a female?
Right. So there are many, many characteristics, right, that we assign to the category of man,
many of them. That's one characteristic. Okay. So why, why is that characteristic in the man
category? If in particular that there are some men who don't share that characteristic?
But which ones don't?
That's the aberration.
The aberration is the ones that don't.
Why is it an aberration?
Because they can't get a woman pregnant.
They don't produce sperm.
You're talking about very, very rare cases.
Yeah.
Same for race.
Same thing happens with sickle cell anemia.
This is what everybody invokes when they want to claim that race is real.
Only black people get sickle cell anemia.
Well, guess what?
The numbers there are about the same as the number of men who are infertile.
Why then are people with sickle cell anemia definitely black?
Why is that definitely a black thing?
Same thing.
It's, you know, again, why are we, there's all these characteristics.
Why do we draw this line called man around all those different people?
Well, why do we do it with animals?
When you have a male dog and a female dog, isn't there a male dog and a female dog?
You don't believe there's a male dog and a female dog?
I'm just saying it's inventions.
Now, hold on.
So before you get-
But it's not an invention.
Yeah, no, it is.
Of course.
But it's not an invention.
One of them has a penis and testicles.
It's a male. The thing we see, we call it a penis. Sure. I get it. No, I, yeah. No, it is, of course. But it's not an invention. One of them has a penis and testicles. It's a male. The thing we see, we call it a penis.
Sure, I get it.
No, I get it.
And that's the world I live in.
Absolutely.
So I operate in this way, by the way.
A dog penis world?
You and I would agree on all the things in the world that are dogs.
Right.
Okay.
I'm not going to walk around and be like, oh, no, that's not a dog.
So with humans, you're making a distinction that there are certain feelings and the way you interface with the world that may be more or less masculine or feminine.
But it does apply to dogs, my point here, which is that we did draw a line, right?
Do all dogs look alike?
My God, there's a huge variation there, too.
We're not talking about race, though.
We're talking about gender, right?
Either way, it doesn't matter.
It's the same principle.
Okay, let's just say Dobermans.
Uh-huh.
Male Dobermans and female Dobermans, right?
Sure. Either way, it doesn't matter. It's the same principle. Okay, let's just say Dobermans. Uh-huh. Male Dobermans and female Dobermans, right?
Sure. Like, if you go to buy a male Doberman, and the guy gives you a female Doberman, he goes,
oh, but she identifies as being a male.
It's just an invention, man.
This is a male.
She's a male.
You can't disrespect her by saying she's not a male.
You would say that guy's crazy, and you'd want your money back.
Are there any two females who are identical?
Two female what?
Anything.
I mean, if you have a really good breeder, you female what anything I mean if you have
a really good breeder you can get pretty goddamn close if you're talking about
dogs no no there's no there are no two into organisms that are identical
certainly not down to the hair technicality but still categorize them
as XY or X chromosomes and I'm not saying we shouldn't categorize anything ever
because we must do that to live in this world what are you saying what i am saying is we should
probably stop applying certain categories to human beings in the ways we have done like how so because
they're also male and male and female because there are certain inventions certain social
constructs that do nothing but bad things that do no good and they, certain social constructs that do nothing but bad things, that do no good, and they're only social constructs like race and gender.
Well, tell me how race and gender –
I'm not worried about Dobermans too much.
Especially gender definition. Let's look at gender definition and tell me how it's only bad. Why is it only bad to define men as men and women as women?
Right, because – well, if you say it's about making the biological claim, the biological connection there.
Well, making a definition, like saying a guy who is born a guy who gravitates towards male
activities, likes females, all those things, by saying that that's a man, that this is
a born man.
And you're saying, no, no one is.
So if you're saying if those characteristics are naturally determined, then all of us guys who don't do those things are unnatural.
Which things are those?
Be attracted to women.
Whatever it is that you characterize as being male.
But that's so common with males.
What is?
Being attracted to women.
Oh, really?
Engaging in sex with women.
Oh, really?
Yes.
Have you heard of gay people?
Yes.
It's a small percentage of the population of men.
Is it 1%?
Is it 10%?
Yeah, I guess.
One out of 10?
I mean, it's certainly a lot of people, isn't it?
It's a lot of people when you think about the 350 million people we have living in America.
Sure.
Take all the men.
Let's do this.
Take all the men who are straight up homosexual, always have been.
Hold on.
But you can classify them as gay men. I know. Hold on. So just take that, whatever that is. Okay. If it's
one or two or five or 10%, whatever it is. Only been homosexual, a hundred percent, never been
attracted to a woman, period. Okay. Okay, fine. That's still a really significant number. I'm not
done. Hang on. Then take the men who don't identify as homosexual, have had sex with women,
have been attracted to women but have fucked men
Hmm prisoners pretty damn big number there pretty damn. Oh wait a minute
How many guys do you think that are treated acted to women but still fuck men?
So Kinsey the Kinsey study sure in the 1940s and 50s mm-hmm found that it was I think 30%
What yes 30% of men fuck men reached orgasm in a sexual experience with another man.
Yes.
30%?
Yes.
Yes.
It was a very large number.
Kinsey was hanging out with freaks.
Yep.
That's what I think.
There were different numbers for women and men, but they were both very significant percentages.
Not majorities, but very significant percentages.
Well, I don't know what to say to that.
I've personally known many men who you would consider
straight who identify as straight who have done something with men either given them a blow job
gotten a blow job had full-on sex jerked each other off jesus i'm surprised this is news to you
well it's news in that we're even if they did do that you're talking about individual sexual acts
between people who are male or female, right?
You're still talking about a man.
Still talking about a man that's having sex with other men.
You're defining it such in that way.
You're literally saying a guy.
You are.
No, you are saying you know guys who've sucked other guys' dicks.
A guy who's done it to a guy.
You're saying a man do it to a man.
Gotcha.
I gotcha.
I gotcha.
No, I'm saying that people who are identified as men
He didn't buy society. That's what I meant people who are identified as men
By society have done these things that society considers to be unnatural for men
But when they were doing that weren't they a man doing it to a man and look what happened to those guys historically?
Not so much recently but certain but still today, but it's certainly
We can't keep going back to a hundred plus years now. Let's talk about like right now What happened to those guys historically? Not so much recently, but still today, but certainly historically.
Listen, we can't keep going back to 100 plus years from now.
I'm talking about.
Let's talk about like right now.
I am.
You're still talking about a man who's having a sexual exchange with another man.
Like you can be sexually attracted to another man.
It doesn't mean that you're both not men.
So do you think homosexual men are men?
Sure.
Why?
Because they're male.
They have a penis.
They have XY chromosomes.
They can get a woman pregnant if they wanted to. They can donate their sperm to their lesbian pals and they can all have babies together.
So then you just eliminated one of the characteristics that you previously said was male.
No, no, no, no. Most men, most are attracted to women, but a good percentage of them are gay. This is not like complicated stuff. They're still men.
of them are gay. This is not like complicated stuff. They're still men.
Yeah. I mean, I don't know where to go from here. I mean, I think I've made the argument.
It's funny because I thought you were totally with me for like an hour and a half. And now it's like,
I feel like you're not there. I don't know what to say. I'm definitely not there with that. I think there's a giant spectrum of people,
but to say that a guy isn't born a man
or a woman isn't born a woman,
I think is disingenuous.
Uh-huh, yeah.
So it's where the, so, okay, Thailand.
Thailand, I think in India,
and I think there's several Polynesian countries,
there's several countries where there is a legal and cultural and social category that is neither man nor woman, nor male nor female.
Like in Thailand, the lady boys.
Right.
And there's other countries to have this.
You can look it up.
It's easy.
Sure.
Right.
OK.
You know about this.
Sure.
OK.
What about that?
What about those?
There's that, too.
What do you.
Oh, I think there's that, too.
So.
Oh. OK. I'm saying people can be born a man. What about that? What about those there's that too? What do you think there's that too? So oh
Okay, I'm saying people can be born a man But if you people can be born a woman or you can get these Andy Dick you owe Romero weird
Variations, but Joe Joe take the ladyboys from Thailand. Okay and move them here to this country now
How will they be considered?
What do you mean how will they be considered? What do you mean, how will they be considered?
Americans don't have those categories.
Okay.
We have only two.
Don't you think there's a lot of variables in Thailand also that you're dealing with
like really young sex workers?
There's a lot of weird shit that goes on in Thailand, a lot of abuse.
So is the lady boy category real or not?
It's certainly real.
It's just the trans category is real.
So there they consider that real and here we do not.
But if a trans category is real, and I think you agree it's real, and I agree it's real,
right?
Trans people, I mean, there's absolutely people that feel like they're born in the wrong gender.
Well, sure.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So why isn't a man real?
Why isn't a woman real?
Oh, okay.
They're real too.
If you want to say they're all equally real, I'm down.
Yes.
I'm there.
We're good.
That's what I'm saying.
Right.
It's just that those categories have no absolute biological meaning.
There's not a meaning that they're fluid.
They're basically arbitrary.
Sorry.
I mean, that we invent them.
I'm not saying it's useless.
I'm not saying we should never have any categories.
I'm just saying that those categories have changed, and they change depending on where
you are in the world.
That's why I'm disagreeing with you.
You kind of did say that a man isn't born a man and that a woman isn't born a woman.
And for sure, a lot of them are.
For sure, a lot of people that have your stereotypical classic female characteristics were born female. And for sure, there's a lot of men who have classic stereotypical male behavior and patterns
and desires.
They're born men.
And then there's trans people.
And then there's asexual people that also need to be considered.
There's people that just don't have any desire to fuck anybody.
They don't want to.
They don't want to be a man or a woman.
They can call themselves queer.
They can call themselves whatever they want.
They don't want to be a female.
They don't want to be a male. They just want to be human.
Here's the deal.
Let's make a deal.
If that's what you have to say about it and you want to not get in the way of people doing those things and making those decisions for themselves and let them do what they want to do, I am totally with you.
And that's true.
For sure.
I don't want to get in the way of anybody making – I don't want to get in the way of furries.
That's awesome.
If you really identify with being a giant squirrel. That's awesome. That's great. And that's really what
matters. I'm just saying that claims, and I want to end it here, claims about these essential
characteristics that it's biologically determined, right? You know, are the things that reinforce
getting in the way, laws, policies, cultures, ideas, norms that get in the way of people doing what they want to do with their own lives.
Right?
Yeah, for sure with some people.
Well, the variables are so extreme and the spectrum is so broad.
So after I was on your show the first time, got a whole bunch of comments from people calling me a fag and a pussy and a sissy and a this and that.
You can't read those.
Feminizing me and it's not your fault for calling me a girl.
But you can't read those.
Oh, no, I know.
It's whatever.
No, I mean, people like came to Twitter and whatever.
Yeah, you don't read those.
Oh, no, I know.
I stopped.
I learned.
Oh, yeah, I stopped.
I don't do anymore.
It didn't matter.
I didn't care.
This didn't bother me at all.
I just thought it was interesting, actually.
So in other words, and a lot of them, what they were really saying, and some of them elaborated on this, was that I was not really man enough.
I was less of a man for whatever reason.
I don't know.
I don't care.
It's fine.
I liked it.
It was funny.
But it really proves my point is that these things are very fluid.
So they kind of were kicking me out of the category of man.
And I was like, cool.
Please.
I think they were just insulting I'd rather try to get a
rise I don't think you could make a rational argument dealing with internet
trolls no of course not I'm saying it's just one example of what goes on
generally which is that we do this all the time right yeah but they're not even
human like when someone's interacting with you like that it's lacking all of
the characteristics of human interaction you're not there with a person you're
not looking at them.
If someone was in front of you like that,
oh you're a fag, you'd be like, oh my god, I'm in danger.
This is a crazy person.
I might have to defend myself against this person.
Because if someone is treating me that way,
insulting me, looking me in the eye,
we are so close to violence.
Like anything can happen here.
Like this is a person that's not rational.
It is amazing, isn't it?
It's crazy.
I was just talking to my son as we were driving over here because, you know, he reads, he read all the comments when I was on your shows.
And he was like, it was so funny.
I was like, Toby, don't read that shit, man.
It's just, he just thinks it's funny.
But it is remarkable how many people do that, right?
And it's not just that they have these thoughts about you.
It's that they go out of their way to write it in public to do something they want to hurt your feelings yes that they'll go on their way they'll actually sit
down that's what boggles my mind is that someone will actually like take the time and energy to
like sit there and write this thing on youtube or whatever you know about you know this or that
about me it's it's phenomenal well sometimes people have good points you know i mean sometimes
they're not even when they're insulting, sometimes they're making points while they're insulting you.
It's just hard to separate the wheat from the chaff.
It's a weird way of interacting with people that didn't exist.
I mean, there was never a time in our past where you could, with real time, instantaneously,
send something to someone and then they read it right away and they could be rude and all
they are is a Twitter egg with a bunch of numbers and letters and they call you a homo.
It's the real downside of the internet, which otherwise is a miraculous boon to humanity.
I feel like it's an adolescent stage.
I feel like we are finding our way through this inescapable new technology, this connection that we're sharing, which is just, well, it's one of the
reasons why I think it's important to have one-on-one conversations with people. And one
of the things that I've noticed from doing this podcast is how many interesting people there are
out there in the world like yourself that I could talk to, but also how bad most people are in the
world. We're just talking to each other. We don't ever have
long conversations. Everybody's checking their fucking phone. Everybody's watching a television.
Yeah. I worry about that because I'm very pro technology and all this stuff, but that does
worry me. I, when I go into a restaurant and I see people sitting at the same table, all looking at
their phones. Oh yeah. Like seven people. You'll see like a group of seven. And I have wondered
about the quality of conversation generally.
Just what you're saying.
Yeah.
I've been wondering and thinking it might actually be declining, the quality of our conversations.
I definitely think it is.
I find myself continually disappointed with very smart people that I meet that don't have real conversation.
They talk over people.
They're not listening. They're not responding to what you're saying.
They're waiting for you to stop talking so they can talk.
And it's like this self-centered sort of way
of interacting with each other
that seems more prevalent than not.
I'm used to that because I'm around academics a lot,
because they're used to lecturing
and they're the smartest person in the room.
And so all their job is to do is to tell us what's true. Right. So they're they're very comfortable with that.
I was always amazed when I'd watch these really important, famous professors at Columbia, you know, give these lectures to a hall of 500 people.
And it seemed to me they didn't even know that there were other people in the room the way they were talking.
Like it didn't matter what the reactions were, whether people were asleep, whether they're reading the newspaper, they just didn't care. They just kept going. They
kept talking, talking, talk for two hours straight ahead. You know, I just, I can't do that. I'm the
exact opposite. I panic if I feel like the person I'm talking to isn't listening to me. That's good.
I panic. Yeah. And so when I see, if I'm lecturing to 200 students, I see one kid kind of just get a
little distracted. I freak and I feel like I have to up
my game right then. And I have to go directly address them. That means you care. Yeah. I mean,
whatever it is, I care in a particular way. I mean, it's some, it's another form of narcissism,
I suppose, but I, I really, I do think that's what makes me a good teacher because I,
I have to have interaction. Well, you want to connect. Yeah. I need to know what you're hearing.
Right. Right. I need to know what you're hearing from me. That's the thing. And then we can really talk. And then I also, I'm really curious.
I'm just a curious person and I want to know what you're thinking and let's do this, you know,
and then let's have that, that chemistry that happened just now, which got hot, you know,
but like, that's, that's where life is. That's where real personal relationships are.
Yeah. Comics kind of do the same thing too, because they're used to being the one who's talking on stage.
Or if they do a podcast, they're used to being the one who's talking all the time.
But the ones who do crowd work, right?
Amazing, if you think about it.
You know, the ones who interact have a whole part of their act where it's crowd work.
But even most comics, I mean, they definitely have interaction with the crowd.
It happens a lot.
I mean, you're dealing with people drinking alcohol in a social environment. And it's dark out, and it's nighttime, and they're having fun, and they're laughing.
And especially when you're talking about controversial opinions and subjects, people always chime in.
And you feel it.
I mean, all the comics talk about, you know, you feel the room, you feel the reaction.
So that is interaction.
I'm saying, I'm talking about these professors in their tweed jackets at Columbia.
I swear to God, it didn't matter what happened, what was happening in the lecture hall.
There's a certain amount of arrogance that I'm sure you must get after being a professor.
It's a particular narcissism.
They live entirely in their heads, right?
They just sit in their study and read books and they go out and then give a lecture and then they come back and read the book.
It's a weird narcissism I can't relate to. But do they interact with other professors and go over their
work together? You know, I am stereotyping and generalizing. This is not everybody, but I did
see this a lot and I still do. Yeah. There's some interactions, but again, it's mostly through,
you know, you write a paper and then you send it out to the journal and then some other professor
reviews it, right. Anonymously often and sends it back. It's, it's all very weird, passive
aggressive shit too.
Like that's the other thing about academia I can't stand is that they are allergic to direct conflict. Like the argument you and I just had, that's pretty much not allowed except through
writing. They'll do it through writing, but they won't do it head to head.
Well, that's a real problem because it takes too long to work out an idea that way. Yeah. Like real debate. See, when I went to college, I had this idea that it would be
the really smart people, like professors, like more than one would be in a room and they would
have one major issue and they would debate it, that there would be argument, right? There'll be a conflict of ideas about an idea. No, it's not that. It's never that.
I have been in and around college campuses for 32 years. I have never really seen a head-to-head
debate like you and I just had. That's insane. Person to person. I mean, here and there a little
bit, but not like that. Not where we were really, really going at it.
I don't think I've ever seen that.
I mean that.
And I mean among faculty.
Some students do, but faculty don't.
They're scared of it.
I'm telling you.
There's a problem with cowardice.
And one of the real tragedies with that is that, as I said, there's no real conflict of ideas,
which is reinforced by the tenure system, the accreditation system.
It's this monolith where there's one, and this is why you get this uniformity of ideas on campuses.
It's all this monolith that actually has its head at the federal government.
Do you know about the accreditation system? It's the mafia. People don't even know this.
system? It's the mafia. People don't even know this. To get accredited as a college or university in this country, you have to be accredited by an agency that is authorized by the Department
of Education in Washington, D.C. The Secretary of Education has to authorize your existence
as a legitimate legal college or university.
That's it.
So Renegade University, people were asking me.
They wanted me.
Some people wanted college credit.
And I was like, oh, let me look into this.
And so I did.
And I quickly found out that it's the fucking mafia.
That I couldn't get accredited.
Because they have all these standards.
You have to have a particular number of buildings,
a particular number of professors.
You have to have a library with a particular number of books in it.
You have to have a gym.
You have to have all these things.
And if you don't have those things, you're not in.
You don't get that.
You don't get college credit.
So what if you did?
So if I gave you five credits for taking one of my courses,
no other college and university would recognize it.
If you wanted to transfer, like you wanted to go to graduate school or go somewhere else,
no employers would look at it and see that it's not an accredited university where you got those credits from.
So how do those degree mills, how do they do it?
Right.
So there's two different systems that the Department of Education controls.
One is for the so-called elite prestigious schools.
Those are regional accreditation agencies, again, all authorized by the Department of Education.
And the for-profit colleges, there's a separate accreditation system called the National Accreditation System,
and that's also controlled by the Department of Education.
But everybody knows within it that if you get accredited by one of the national accreditation systems, you're a bullshit for-profit degree mill.
So those credits, you can't transfer them to Harvard or Occidental or any of the elite, so-called elite schools.
So they're completely kept separate.
But can you, like, if you get a degree from, like, Phoenix University.
You can't.
You can get 5,000 degrees from Phoenix University, you know, you can't you can get five thousand degrees from Phoenix University
My degree is I can't take anywhere and I'm talking about even
Even community colleges won't accept those credits
Huh? Yeah, that's interesting. It's the Mafia
So think about that right the Department of Education one person federal government decides who is in, who's out.
And then inside that system, there's tenure, lifetime appointment.
Those people control the curriculum, what is taught.
They also control who's hired and fired.
Faculty control all the hiring and firing of faculty and tenure.
They ultimately control that basically.
Right.
And they're there forever,
like dons in the mafia. Seriously. So you wonder why when you walk into any college classroom in
this country, you hear basically the same shit being said in sociology classes and history
classes. That's why it's astonishing. And I didn't even know the full extent of it until I started Renegade
University and people started asking me about this. If someone allowed you to come along,
if Donald Trump said, Thaddeus, I love your work, what could you do to fix that? What would you
offer as an alternative? We have to change it. No, there's nothing I can do. I mean, meaning
if he wanted credit, like college credit, right now there's really nothing I can do. I mean meaning if he wanted credit like college credit right now
There's really nothing I can do I can certainly give him a certificate and maybe an employer will you know?
Think it's meaningful because my name's on it. Is it less and less valuable to have a degree today?
I'm saying I'm just completely outside the system. I understand. Yeah, but like if you if you
Admired me and my work right and you saw and I had and he had a certificate
saying admired me and my work, right? And you saw, and I had, and he had a certificate saying,
this guy's great. And he took my course. He was an employer. It would actually help. Sure. And then in that case, it would be meaningful. My credits. I'm just saying that's completely
outside. It means nothing inside the system of the thousands and thousands of colleges and
universities. And for most employers, right? Most employers abide by this. They think that if you're not accredited, you're bullshit.
Right.
So we have to change it.
And Betsy DeVos, for whatever her problems are, seems to be the first secretary of education maybe we've ever had who could be willing to challenge this.
Really?
Yeah, because she's about deregulation and privatization and all this stuff
and choice, school choice.
And we need a movement right now before she's gone
to get her to abolish the national accreditation system.
It's with a stroke of a pen, I think.
And maybe a congressional act.
Probably takes a congressional act too.
But she herself, I think could disaccredit
Yeah, I'm pretty sure she could disaccredit all those agencies right now
So you think there's just this inherent bottleneck that it's existed for so long and that these people have been in charge of saying
What is true and what's not true? What should be taught? It's a monopoly
It's a monopoly ultimately controlled by the federal government and that it's also not universally agreed that they're correct
Correct in what way correct in what they're they're teaching that it's also not universally agreed that they're correct. Correct in what way?
Correct in what they're teaching.
It's not like there's an absolute standard for what needs to be taught
if someone wants to get a degree in English.
No, no, there are.
I mean, there are absolute standards.
That's what I'm saying.
You have to have this, that, and the other thing on your college campus
to be accredited.
No, but that's not what I mean.
I mean, in terms of what constitutes a master's degree in literature, right? Like, is there an absolute
standard? Yeah. For the, yes. Well, they're pretty absolute. I mean, the accreditation agencies
mostly agree on those things. Right. So why couldn't you just reproduce that in an environment
where you're being taught by someone who obviously has a mastery of that particular subject? Guess
what, Joe?
Right.
That's what I'm doing.
Yeah.
That's what we're doing.
Well, that's what should be done. It's not just me.
Right.
I'm, you know, one of the pioneers, but it's happening.
How many other people are doing what you're doing?
A handful.
I mean.
But it's becoming a new, Jordan Peterson is actually looking into doing this as well.
I hope so.
When I heard him talking about that on your show, I said, go for it, man.
Yeah.
Well, his grant was.
You know what he said?
He was, and there's no criticism at all.
I didn't know this either until recently. He had he had this idea. What was it about accreditation?
He thought it was possible somehow to get accredited, but it's not, you can't, we have
to start an entirely separate parallel system. Is it a different issue in Canada? Oh, possibly.
That could be, that could be, I don't know. Maybe he'd be accredited in Canada. That's possible.
But anyway, regardless, I am all for him doing that. I hope he does. I will. Well,
he was recently denied a grant for the first time in his academic career.
I'm sure.
They're not playing around.
They're not playing around.
This is their castle.
This is their castle.
They're not going to let the knaves in.
Well, what's interesting is because of social media and because of coming on podcasts like mine and his YouTube presence,
he's actually got a large movement of people that are interested in his
ideas. He had a disastrous fucking conversation with Sam Harris. I don't know if you heard it.
I did. What in the fuck was that all about? Well, he's holding onto God. Well, the first one wasn't
even that it was about truth. That was God though. It was, yeah. Cause, cause Jordan,
he's religious and he believes in God. He, he's religious. So he wants to hold on to this idea about...
What is truth being valuable for humankind
versus what is truth like one plus one equals two.
Right.
Moral truth.
Moral truth versus actual truth.
I was kind of on neither side in that one.
It was so verbose.
There was too many words.
It was tough.
It was like, you guys got to fucking edit this down.
That was tough.
Well, Jordan had to boil it down. and they did a way better podcast the second time
Did you hear the second one no much much better much more concise much clearer?
But that again is I think there was a certain amount of heel digging on both sides
They dug their heels in they stood their ground this one really preposterous issue
Which is like you know you're listening to this, like Jesus fucking Christ guys,
you're just talking about truth for an hour and a half.
Like what is truth?
Here's what's true.
Fire burns paper.
That's fucking true.
Okay.
Like take a piece of paper, light it on fire.
Joe stop.
God damn it.
You're gonna make me go again.
I don't wanna have this conversation.
No, it's really important, but let's leave it there.
Yeah.
And so I did agree with them, Sam and Jordan,
that it is really important. I just disagree them about what what's going on but anyway
um the definition of the word true but you know what should be they should have had more leeway
on both sides with that yeah anyway so either way here's the thing he's a fascinating guy totally
i have major disagreements with sam jordan but they're still heroic and I'm totally with them
because they are doing this.
I mean, Sam's not doing it formally,
but he's essentially part of this movement.
You're part of this movement.
You know what the election was about?
It was about a civil war in this country
that's been going on for a long time
that finally came to a head in November,
which is a war between the people who went to college
and the elite colleges in particular,
and who are of that culture that's created in those colleges and those who are not of that
culture. That's what that, that's what that election was about. I think there is this,
this schism between those two groups in this country. And that finally, the people who are
not of the elite college culture won something and it caused the elites to freak completely out.
So if you look at like, I was looking at the top podcast cause you know, I just started a podcast
and it did get ranked and so I'm excited, but I'm looking at it a lot. And like, you can really see
it clearly. Just look at the top 200 podcasts right now. It's like 60 to 70% are like NPR,
cookie cutter, same shit, coastalal, elite, liberal, bland.
You know what it is.
Tone of voice, what they say,
who their guests are, all the same.
You know exactly what it is, right?
It's dominated by that,
but then there's you in there.
You're not that.
There's Sam Harris, who's sort of that,
but not really.
There's Dan Carlin.
There's another one, right?
He's part of this movement. He doesn't have a
school, but he's teaching people history.
He's teaching people history.
A lot of people history. More people than
any Harvard professor
will ever teach. I would argue more than any historian
ever. Way more. He gets millions
of downloads. What history
lecture is anybody
in numbers like millions
producing? Is he a serious historian? I've
listened to him. I'm a professionally trained historian, Ivy League PhD. Hell yeah, he is.
You know, I don't agree with everything, but it doesn't matter. He's doing serious academic,
professional, important history, and he is changing the landscape. I agree. Okay. He's on there. So
there's some of us we're either some
of us we're making we're making it happen but you can just see it's such a
divide like there's just such a divide between like who who's on your podcast
and who's on the NPR podcasts is hardly any crossover yeah but that's just my
choice interesting I could know those people there's a lot of people that I
get that are on right NPR podcast that my point, is that there's sort of two different cultures that's happening right now.
There's just that culture.
And this is kind of a problem my girlfriend and I have, because she's of that culture.
Most of the people I know are NPR types.
That's what they want to hear.
It's comforting.
It's soothing.
Whatever.
It makes them feel good.
I don't know.
But they're really, that's who they are fundamentally.
It's like their identity.
but they're really, that's who they are fundamentally.
It's like their identity.
And then, you know, when they hear your podcast or my podcast or anyone's,
it's like punk rock to an 80-year-old.
It's just hard.
It's just a different culture.
It's like a different language, different way of behaving,
different ideas are questioned, different questions are asked.
And there's this resentment, too, because the elites, the NPR types, I believe have basically looked, not basically, they have
looked down their noses at those who didn't go to college, who don't speak the way we speak,
who don't talk about these ideas, who aren't aware of these ideas, right? Working class people,
like people in Salem, I know, right?
People who, oh, you know, Meryl Streep said it best, right?
About MMA, right?
That was it right there.
They clearly see all those people outside this elite bi-coastal culture as doing bad
stuff, inferior stuff, and they shouldn't be allowed to run things.
Well, what she said was so inherently ridiculous and also ignorant because she was also claiming
that if you take out the immigrants, you're left with MMA.
MMA is 80% immigrants.
Sure.
Like literally.
Well, what she said was, it was stupid, ignorant, and more importantly, I think classist in
that way, right?
It's like, you're not smart enough, but you're not good enough.
She's so wrong. Like there's a lot of Americans that engage in MMA for sure
But there's so many great fighters that are immigrants. I mean a massive massive amount
It's not a small amount. Yeah, she was saying take out all the immigrants you left with MMA. That is so dumb
Yeah, you know what those people do with the the immigrants who do things like MMA
They ignore them.
They pretend they don't exist.
They pretend they don't exist.
It doesn't fit the narrow narrative they're trying to promote.
What they want is the immigrant, who also very much exists,
they want the undocumented mom with the kid who got stopped at the border and sent back,
who breaks my heart, too.
Yeah, mine, too.
Absolutely.
But they want them only to be what?
Victims.
What's the solution to that?
That they can save.
What is the solution to illegal immigration in this country?
Do you just let everybody in?
I'm an open borders guy.
Yeah.
Open borders.
Just let anybody in who wants to come in.
Speaking of inventions and social constructs that have done great harm to humanity.
Borders.
Borders.
Yeah.
I agree that eventually that's going to be a thing of the past.
I think it'll be looked back.
When we look back at history,
it'll be thought of as one of the most barbaric ideas.
Right? Can you imagine?
It's barbaric in the way that it used to be that you had a tribe and then you invaded another tribe
or they invaded you and you had to put up a fence and guard your border. And then these things became
like larger communities. Those communities became cities, became countries, became... And then, you know,
go back a few thousand years,
you're dealing with these countries
invading other countries.
And so you have these immigration policies,
especially now,
where we have border patrols
and this idea that you have to have your paperwork
and you have to have passports and numbers
and otherwise you were born
in the wrong patch of dirt, sir.
If you were just born 30 miles north, could have been in in Texas but you're
in Juarez you fuck so you stay over here it's it's silly speaking of social
constructions and social constructions that have changed over time right damn
telling a Mexican they can't come here are you crazy like this was Mexico five
minutes ago you assholes who the fuck are you? I mean, it's astonishing the arrogance of Americans who think that Mexicans have no place here.
I mean, there weren't no white people here a long time ago.
Well, not only that.
I mean, you just got lucky.
You were born into this, like, economically promising area where you got better opportunities.
Sure.
And you're looking at these people that are born in a shit spot and you're like well you're in that
shit spot forever you can't come over here and take my good spot it also works
against us right because then it becomes harder for us to travel elsewhere yes
then they have borders right they don't like Americans because of what we do to
them when I go to America Mexico you know I just like I love it there and I
keep thinking man it's amazing that you're treating me this well because Mexicans are so kind generally, you know, when you're down there.
And I'm like, God, you should hate Americans.
What we've done to them in terms of the border, immigration and the drug war.
I mean, yeah, the deaths, the poverty that we've inflicted on them through these laws.
For shitty policy.
My God.
I mean, they have every reason to hate our guts, and they don't.
Yeah, well, no, Mexicans overall are very kind people.
My parents live in Mexico.
Really?
Yeah.
I didn't know that.
Yeah, I love Mexico.
I love it.
I go to Mexico all the time, man.
Incredible place.
I try to go.
It's one of my favorite places to go on vacation, for sure.
And I know a lot of people, I have a lot of friends here, they're scared.
They're scared of Mexico.
They think Mexico is all gang violence and all that
I'm like what read about Chicago. You're not scared to go to Chicago
Chicago is fucking murders every day. It's a good point. I want to Trump Chicago
Mexico violence, you know what he was saying about these illegal immigrants being violent and criminals and stuff. He wasn't wrong entirely
Here's what here's what people are
ignoring that it's true that the cartels have moved into the Midwest. You know about this in
particular, Chicago, El Chapo and others too. They have moved into the Midwest. They're in Kentucky.
Do a Google search for like Mexican cartel and pick like a town in Kentucky and Ohio, Indiana.
They're all over the Midwest and they're competing.
They're kicking out the old gangs. And that's why there's all this violence on the streets.
A lot of those black kids in Chicago who are shooting each other are working for one of those cartels basically. So Trump was right about that, but he's totally wrong about the answer to it.
And what liberals do in response to it is even worse, which is pretend it's not happening.
Yeah, no, people are killing each other, but why? Why? Because drugs are illegal. Yes. Because drugs are illegal and
we want them to be illegal. We vote for those laws. Well, I met a guy in Chicago who was a cop
and he explained it to me in great detail. And he said essentially what happened is they moved in
and they arrested a lot of these drug lords, these local people that were in charge of whatever areas and they were running whatever criminal organization.
They arrest them and they created a power vacuum.
And the way he was saying, he's like, it's no different than when we remove a dictator in some foreign country.
Bad people move in and then it creates violence.
You get ISIS.
Exactly.
Exactly.
Yeah.
So, but you don't hear people talking about this.
Right.
It's incredible.
That's what's going on. Yes, the cartels are here. Yes, Trump's- Because drugs are illegal.
Trump is too goddamn dumb to make the full point, and he's also beholden to these asshole Republicans like Jeff Sessions who thinks that marijuana is dangerous.
He wants to bring back just saying no.
So he's not saying the pro- he's not- he has no idea, or at least he's not saying what the actual cause is, right?
And liberals are sort of abetting him by ignoring it by saying, oh, no, there is no violence.
It's like, no, fuckers, there is tremendous violence.
And the cause is your laws against drugs.
Right.
Right.
So the answer is really simple.
Legalize drugs.
Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah, but because our government is just a fight between this moron, Trump, and these morons, the Democrats, who refuse to address this stuff, there's no discussion about it.
But if you do legalize drugs, how do you do that?
Say if the United States just decided we're going to decriminalize all drugs, and that's not good enough because someone's going to sell them.
You can't just decriminalize them.
But that just keeps people from getting arrested, which is a great step, a good move in the right direction.
There's some insane number of people in America that are in prison right now for nonviolent drug offenses.
It's a nutty number.
That's a side note, but a really important one.
There is now a debate among academics who study this stuff.
a really important one. There is now a debate among academics who study this stuff. And a lot of academics who are actually more or less on the right side of this are arguing that the drug war
and making drugs illegal is not the major cause of mass incarceration. Because the number, the
percentage of people, it is big, but it's something like 10% who are nonviolent drug offenders who are
prosecuted and convicted of just drug offenses. That is a relatively small number.
But what they're not taking into account is all of the other crimes that stem from drugs being illegal.
Right. So look at murders. Take all the violent. Take all the homicides in this country.
Right. I want to see a number, but I'm sure it's really high of how many were committed by a gang member.
OK. And how many of the gangs in the United States basically started by selling drugs.
There's that. Homicides. Assault. Gangs. Drugs.
There is larceny. Theft. People who are hooked on drugs. Who are broke.
In large part because drug prices are so high.
Why are they so high? Because they're illegal, right?
Right. They have to get them on the black market, always raises prices. So they're forced to steal
because they're poor people, right? So a huge percentage, and they don't track this because
the convictions are, you know, if it's, if it's a junkie who steals from somebody to score,
they don't count that as a drug crime. They count it as
just larceny. So we don't know, but I am sure, and this is what social scientists need to do
right now, is start to make that, do that work and find out exactly how many people
are in prison for some reason related to the fact that drugs are illegal. And I'll bet you
it's a huge number. Yeah, I bet you're right. It's also like these gangs, if they don't sell drugs, they have no other method of income.
Unless they're just knocking over trucks filled with equipment and then reselling it.
Like, what are they doing?
They have no income.
They have no power.
Exactly.
Right?
Yeah.
So, I mean, the mafia in the 1920s was enormously powerful.
Right.
Hugely powerful.
Why?
Because of this prohibition.
100%.
So, you take away...
I've said
this to people like um what was um the great netflix series was about him the huge drug 13
no in columbia oh yeah um narcos yep what's his name yeah escobar escobar yeah so escobar so take
make drugs you make if drugs were legal how many people did Escobar kill? None or two or one or something, right?
I mean, he killed thousands of people.
Right.
Right.
But if they're legal, here's the deal.
Like, who's profiting off of those, right?
That's where it gets really slippery.
If you make drugs legal, and then there's got to be, like, right now, the people that are selling them are criminals, right?
If you make it legal, they're going to still sell them.
Like, they're just going to sell them legally?
Like, how do you make this transition between drugs being legal and then people being able to sell them?
Like, how does that work?
Like, how do you do that in an orderly way?
How do you preserve sanity and humanity and civilization?
What do you mean?
1933, they ended prohibition.
Yeah, but alcohol was something that...
Well, you know what they did, though?
What's that?
They regulated it heavily, which created new problems.
Right.
And it caused the state to be all up in our business in all sorts of ways.
So, like, you had to get licensed to sell alcohol, right?
Right.
And what that meant was an inspector from the state came to your bar or your restaurant or whatever
and looked around and asked you questions and checked on who you were hiring, who worked there, who your customers were, what kinds of customers.
And if you didn't fit all the rules of polite society or, and this was true, great histories have been done about this, if you had the homosexuals coming into your bar.
Oh, drunk homos.
You don't want that. Or the prostitutes.
Or the prostitutes coming into your bar.
Or even women who were a little bit loose with their morality.
You didn't get a license.
Really?
Yeah.
Loose women could stop you from getting a bar license?
Absolutely.
Boy.
I know.
What kind of world we live in.
I'm telling you.
So just decriminalize.
We will be fine.
But if you just decriminalize, who's selling it?
Right?
It's still going to be illegal to sell no right decriminalization doesn't
mean legalization in terms of like profitability like Mexico do you know
that all drugs essentially are decriminalized in Mexico including
mushrooms acid these yeah so the debt those definitions change according to
the industry which is a pain in the ass. But so sometimes decrim means just no laws at all, right? None. Legalization usually means, not always, but usually means regulations.
Like what happened with- Taxing.
Right. Taxing. So like with weed, weed got legalized-
Well, that's where the money comes in.
Weed got legalized and it's heavily regulated, et cetera.
But it also, it's not that heavily regulated in Colorado. It's pretty easy to get.
I thought it was.
While the regulation comes in the banking.
The banking's weird because the federal government still has it classified as a Schedule I substance and it's illegal.
So there's a huge issue with people having to accept cash only.
So they hired a bunch of SEALs and MERCs and all these fucking guys that would have probably worked for mercenary organizations.
Now they're fucking carrying around drug money from people selling pot
And then they have to take it to the bank and put it in safe deposit boxes and deposit into these accounts and right weird
Ways it's very fucking it's really problematic and that keeps a lot of people out of the market out of right
But it's good because it hires soldiers
You know something peaceful employment program. Yeah. That's what we need more hired killers
Isn't it true that they give them jobs? You don't want them not having jobs
That's true. Once you teach people how to kill people be nice to them
I certainly would rather them do that than killing Iraqis. Yeah, I thought they also
disallowed people with prior felonies from
Participating in the industry. Is that true in Colorado?
I don't know.
I've seen this and that meant it's all white.
I do not know.
That all the...
Well, there's a lot of black people that don't have felonies, you racist bastard.
How dare you?
Did you hear what he said?
Dude, that was a complete like Huffington Post item I just gave you.
I know, right?
Yeah.
And you called it racist.
Wow.
I don't know what to do now.
It's more a salon.
It's kind of a salon.com.
Yeah.
Oh, man.
All right, man.
We just did three hours.
Damn.
No way.
Flew by.
Look, it's 430.
Yeah.
Time flies when you're having fun.
Yeah.
Totally.
Tell everybody what your podcast is.
Yeah.
Tell everybody where they can get it.
Cool.
Yeah, I got a few things going on.
But yeah, the Unregistered with Thaddeus Russell, the podcast.
And what else?
It's at thaddeusrussell.com.
There's a page for the podcast.
It's on iTunes.
It's on iTunes.
I believe it's top 50.
It's top 50 in news and politics right now.
And then I got Renegade University.
I got an event coming up in Massachusetts in August, Joe's Old Stomping Grounds.
Salem, Massachusetts, August 4th through 6th.
What are you doing out there?
It's a weekend.
Besides burning witches.
That's all they do out there.
It's a whole weekend seminar.
I'm talking about history and theory and politics.
Okay.
A whole weekend.
And I've already sold out the VIPs, but there's more.
The general admission is still on sale.
And then I'm doing that with a great group, which I meant to mention, School Sucks Project,
who is actually one of the very first pioneers of this whole movement I was talking about
to just overthrow the whole educational system and replace it with actual thought and ideas
and debate.
Who's running this?
His name's Brett Vinat.
Great guy.
He's just running a podcast.
He was a teacher in New Hampshire.
And he was too smart for that system and got sick of it.
And he left and said, I'm just going to do a podcast.
He had no platform.
You know, not a celebrity at all.
And it grew and grew and grew.
And he's got this huge following.
Connect me to him.
I'll have him on.
Awesome.
I'd love to have him on.
Brett is amazing.
And he's got this big following. And me to him i'll have him on awesome i'd love to have him on brett is amazing and he's got this big following and he's had me on the show a lot so he and i are co-producing renegade university and school sucks project are co-producing
presenting this weekend in salem in august 4th through the 6th so you can go to school sucks
project website or thaddeusrussell.com website to get all the details and buy the tickets there and then I have a seminar actually in LA just with me just 20 people for four weeks talking about
renegade history of the United States four weeks four nights Oh over over four
weeks oh it's for yeah for okay Thursday night for four weeks that's it right
here in LA West Side renegade history the United States but just with me and
20 people.
And that starts next Thursday.
Excellent.
And then, yeah, my website's got a bunch of stuff.
But that's it.
I'm busy, man.
I'm really busy.
Good.
But all in good ways.
Sounds awesome.
Thank you so much. All right, stop getting hit in the head.
Okay, I'll try.
Don't be sparring with people.
I'll be smarter next time.
All right, beautiful.
Thank you, brother.
Appreciate it, man.
Daddy, it's Russell.
Ladies and gentlemen,
we'll be back tomorrow with Everlast
from the House of Payne.
Holla!