The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - 304. Infamous: When Comedy Exists Outside of Agenda | Andrew Schulz

Episode Date: November 10, 2022

Dr. Peterson's extensive catalog is available now on DailyWire+: https://utm.io/ueSXh Dr. Jordan B. Peterson and Andrew Schulz discuss the formation of the comedic premise, the necessity and power of play, how self esteem and the internet have helped fuel our modern world and fragmented woke-ness, and why Schulz decided to release his hit special on his own, despite mainstream interest. Andrew Schulz is an American stand up comic, podcast host, actor, and producer. Schulz began his standup journey in college at the University of California, where he also earned a Bachelor's Degree in Psychology. From there he both hosted and appeared on numerous MTV shows such as Guy Code and The Hook Up. In 2015 Schulz starred in the IFC series Benders, and appeared as a recurring character in Amazon’s Sneaky Pete up until 2017. That same year, he released his first comedy special, 4:1:1, on Youtube. He followed this up in 2018 with the special 5:1:1 which went on to top the charts on Amazon, iTunes, Apple Music, Google Play, and Billboard. He has released multiple comedy EP’s, as well as produced and hosted multiple podcasts, such as The Brilliant Idiots which he co-hosts with Charlamagne tha God, and Flagrant 2 which he shares with fellow comics Akaash Singh, Mark Gagnon, and the video editor known as AlexxMedia. Most recently in 2022, Schulz released yet another free-on-Youtube comedy special, Infamous, which he infamously chose not to release on major streaming platforms, despite express interest. —Links— For Andrew Schulz: Twitter: https://twitter.com/andrewschulz?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5EauthorYoutube: https://www.youtube.com/TheAndrewSchulz4:1:1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hYvObiM09E45:1:1: https://open.spotify.com/album/6ADcVchw7TBEeANobTDPVQInfamous: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rCZkp023MdY  - Sponsors - Birch Gold: Text "JORDAN" to 989898 for your no-cost, no-obligation, FREE information kit Black Rifle Coffee:Get 10% off your first order or Coffee Club subscription with code JORDAN: https://www.blackriflecoffee.com/ Hallow:Try Hallow for 3 months FREE: https://hallow.com/jordan  — Chapters — (0:00) Coming Up(0:51) Intro(4:00) Saying “no” to the biggest streaming platforms(8:00) Fragmented woke-ness(11:20) Crenshaw, Kanye, the reactionary right(15:00) Andy Ngo, Antifa(17:55) Acting for the right reasons versus self preservation(21:49) The jokes they wanted to cut(24:30) The truth in comedy(27:45) Extreme notoriety accompanies success(30:58) Why Jordan Peterson has leaned conservative(33:15) Self esteem, breaking out, and creativity(39:40) Education, the internet, and echo chambers(43:55) Resentment, discourse, the Daily Wire(47:19) Schulz on Jordan(50:55) Finding community online versus in person(55:10) Hard arguments and the creation of a comedic premise(1:00:45) Curse words are an insight into culture(1:02:22) Frustration over censorship, the choice to go it alone(1:08:14) The power of story, the lens through which we see the world(1:13:31) Why rules are enacted through story(1:15:10) Why Hollywood films are more and more disjointed(1:21:32) Making fun, the power of play(1:25:41) Playing with death, catharsis by fire(1:29:19) The collected poetry of Donald Trump(1:30:42) Scaling your dragons, when tyrants rule(1:33:49) To gaze upon what terrifies us(1:41:26) The spirit of play, hard topics, Judaism(1:45:50) Kanye, genius, and the hierarchy of cool  // SUPPORT THIS CHANNEL //Newsletter: https://mailchi.mp/jordanbpeterson.com/youtubesignupDonations: https://jordanbpeterson.com/donate // COURSES //Discovering Personality: https://jordanbpeterson.com/personalitySelf Authoring Suite: https://selfauthoring.comUnderstand Myself (personality test): https://understandmyself.com // BOOKS //Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life: https://jordanbpeterson.com/Beyond-Order12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos: https://jordanbpeterson.com/12-rules-for-lifeMaps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief: https://jordanbpeterson.com/maps-of-meaning // LINKS //Website: https://jordanbpeterson.comEvents: https://jordanbpeterson.com/eventsBlog: https://jordanbpeterson.com/blogPodcast: https://jordanbpeterson.com/podcast // SOCIAL //Twitter: https://twitter.com/jordanbpetersonInstagram: https://instagram.com/jordan.b.petersonFacebook: https://facebook.com/drjordanpetersonTelegram: https://t.me/DrJordanPetersonAll socials: https://linktr.ee/drjordanbpeterson #JordanPeterson #JordanBPeterson #DrJordanPeterson #DrJordanBPeterson #DailyWirePlus

Hello, everyone who's watching and listening on YouTube and on the podcast platforms. I'm speaking today with comedian Andrew Schultz, who's also an actor, producer and podcaster. One of the biggest and most influential names in comedy today, the business savvy Schultz has been credited with helping disperred democratization in comedy. He has proven that comics looking to retain ownership of their material by self-releasing on platforms like YouTube can achieve equal or greater success,

both financially and in terms of the building of an audience in comparison to those who strike deals with streamers or networks, Schultz recently sold more than 150,000 tickets as part of his 10 month sold out infamous tour, which he capped off by selling out the 6,000 seat radio city music hall in New York twice. He premiered his subsequent special infamous exclusively via the live streaming social media platform

Moment House in July before releasing it for free on YouTube where you can watch it as I did this morning. While Schultz has self-released multiple specials, including his first titled, 4-1 in 2017, he's also managed to find success through more conventional channels. Having created, written, performed, and executive produced, the four-part comedy special Schultz saves America for Netflix in 2020.

The next project he's involved in as an actor is Kenya Barris' remake of the classic street ball comedy, White Men Can't Jump for 20th Century Studios, which has him sharing the screen with Laura Harrier. He will also appear in Netflix's romantic comedy, You People, Cop line by Eddie Murphy. That must be a thrill for him. Jonah Hill and Julia Lewis-Draifus, which Barris will direct from his and Hills script. Shultz will then rejoin Barris for MGM Sports Comedy underdogs alongside Snoop Dogg. So there'll be a lot of marijuana involved in that.

Past credits on the TV side include HBO's crashing, prime videos, sneaky Pete and IFC's benders. Shultz's podcast, flagrant, is listened to by two million devout fans weekly. He also co-hosts brilliant idiots with Charlemagne, the God, looking forward to talking to Andrew. I'm ready. I'm ready. Let's do it, man. All right.

All right. talking to Andrew. I'm ready. I'm ready. Let's do it, man. Also, my mom discovered you this week. So she's an absolutely huge fan. And she says hello. And she would be furious if I didn't say hello for her. What's your mom's name? Sandra Cameron. Sandra Cameron Schultz. Aha.

Well, say hello to her for me. And I'm really impressed that it only took her a week to become a huge fan. That's. It's always good to know that someone's mom likes me. Yeah. So tell me, hey, tell me about your YouTube special and how that came about. You decided not to stream it. You put it on you instead.

So I want to know the whole story, how that come about. Okay, so short version of the story is I was originally gonna do it with a streamer, right? And then they were unhappy with some jokes. I think the climate changed a little bit and they were quite concerned how the jokes could reflect on the brand, which is reasonable. I think that like a private corporation has the right to make those decisions for themselves and then see how things go for them after that. Now sometimes those decisions could be the wrong ones.

You could maybe become too woke in your content and then end up losing money. But no, that could never happen. Too woke? How could that possibly be too woke for comedy? Yeah, I can't even imagine that's a thing. No, but okay, side note, I want to get back to the special, but there is something interesting that I've learned from like being in Hollywood a little bit more now,

is that like, I used to have the perception, you know, I think we all create these perceptions where it's like, there's this like group of organized individuals that are like coming together and making decisions on like what is palatable and what isn't palatable and then inserting those into culture in their like different fields like Hollywood one of okay all the movies this year are gonna be about non-binary or whatever it is and after being in it a little bit more I think that

It's way less organized and more about self-preservation. So it's like, how do I not lose my job? Well, I worked with middle managers for a long time when I was selling personnel evaluation technology to corporations. And I did that for about 10 years, rather unsuccessfully, we found one company that used them extensively. But I learned very rapidly there that the fundamental motivation of virtually every middle manager

in a corporation is, how can I not get blamed if something goes wrong? Yes. That's it, man. There's no ambition. There's no desire to grow the company. There's nothing but I don't want to stick out if there's a mistake I don't want it to be on me.

I hope I don't get blamed for anything. I'm not gonna do anything dangerous ever. And yeah, yeah, yeah. And the idea that people are organized enough to have a conspiracy is that that's just so rarely the case. But I was part of that belief a little bit because you see it and it looks so obvious. You're like, why is every single movie the same, every single TV show the same, but they

sat in the same values. But then after, like I had a moment on a show a while ago where a guy got fired, a white older man got fired because he read the N word, like he read the script and it had the N word in it. And like the whole cast was kind of like, well, the people I spoke to on the cast, even the black people in the cast were like, yeah, I don't, I don't think it's that offensive. But the companies involved were thinking what the middleman was thinking what you just said, which was, okay, I don't want to be responsible for this. How do we,

how do I get this blame off of me? Okay, maybe if we just remove this person, it'll be a sign that we are, we care about the people there here and we don't want them to be offended, et cetera. Now, I don't think, I don't know, I don't believe that the guy did it out of malice. And the black people I spoke to on the cast were like, yeah, I don't think he was being malicious at all. But it was one of those things where everybody was fighting for the ability to continue working and they didn't want to take that responsibility. And because of that, they made a very woke decision.

Yeah. So now, you know what I'm saying? It made me look at the industry a little differently. Like, everybody, it's like maybe the more desired the job is, the more willing the middle managers will be to be extremely liberal in their values so they don't lose that opportunity. I don't think that exists on a construction site

because the guys there are like, look, I can get a job doing drywall somewhere else. So I'm gonna say whatever the fuck jokes I wanna say on this construction site. So I think too though, there's a complicating factor there, which is it's something like this. So, you know, each of us carries a representation of systems of ideas in our imagination, in our mind. And those ideas are active within us. That's one way of thinking about it.

And nobody is a 100% repository of all woke ideas. But so there's fragments of the woke net of ideas in any given individual. But if you get 20 people who have fragments of those ideas in their head altogether in a room, then you have the whole goddamn woke catastrophe operating. And then it'll look like a conspiracy. And then you can take 20 different people, each of whom have fragments of the woke nonsense in their head and put them in a different room. They'll come up with the same decisions. There are the webs of ideas that,

and in some sense, each of us acts as a neuron in a neuronal web when we're together in a group. And so then things look conspiratorial, but it's a consequence of the working out of the internal logic of systems of ideas. And so, and then it might be that each individual actor is fundamentally only concerned with not being held accountable for ever making any kind of mistake, which is a hell of a way to live your life. Certainly, no way to live your life if you're a comedian or a man for that matter on maybe not even a woman, you know, not even. Yeah, yeah. That should make people happier. Yeah, yeah, it was just,

it was an interesting thing for me to see how it kind of manifested. And I think that there is like an opposite version of that because now I've seen like the conservative woke pop up. Have you been, are you familiar with this? Or what are you referring to? I don't even know if I call it the conservative. It's a really interesting thing. I would almost call it like the counter-culture brigade, which is like people who I think have been, I think they work all conspiracy theorists

and now they're kind of like searching for a home. I think a lot of the support for Kanye even right now is he's just tapping into very niche beliefs and a bunch of them at the same time that people have no representation for. And now he's the most famous person tapping into those groups, right? So he's like, Jordan, he's like, George Floyd really died offent and all.

And now all the people that are anti-black matter, black lives matter, they just and hate the idea that there's anything else that killed him but his own choice to do offent and all are like, okay, Kanye's got it. And he also did a thing, as you know, the Jews are on the banks, the Jews run all these things. So he's tapped into all these niche groups and now he's become like their representative. But what I've noticed about these groups is that like they're so scorned by maybe being lied to by the mainstream media or whatever it is that their personality or identity has almost become the rejection thereof.

Yeah, well, that's always a threat that exists on the conservative side. You know, the left wingers always accuse the conservatives of being reactionary. And they're reactionary because they keep saying things like, you guys on the left, you're going too far, you go to slow down, you go going to stop doing this, you're going too far. And that is reactionary in some sense because they're always reacting to the excesses of the left. The conservative types tend not to want to change things.

And you know, that can be their downfall too because sometimes things have to change, although intelligent conservatives sure know that. But it's hard for the conservatives to come up with a vision and to unite themselves, because, well, first of all, they tend to stand for tradition, and it's not that easy to articulate traditional norms. And second, they do get reactionary, and that can turn into kind of a demented populism,

too, because the reactionary conservatives can go out and find the disaffected people on the right, and there's plenty of them now, and then capitalize on their resentment. Being Trump was pretty good at that in many ways, and continues to be so. And that's, I haven't been targeted particularly by the right, although I have to some degree years ago, you know, when I first rose to whatever degree of notoriety I have now. A lot of the disaffected types on the right were also hoping that I'd be their guy. And the same thing happened to Dan Crenshaw, the congressman, because he kind of looks, he's got that evil right wing super villain appearance.

If you, you know, in some sense, and they were kind of hoping he'd be their man. And he wasn't, and he actually gets targeted more by the conspiratorial right than he gets harassed by the left, which is quite the accomplishment on Crenshaw's part. And he's a perfect example, because it's almost like this group of people who have felt so rejected by everything. I'm talking about the extreme conservative. We need another term for it.

Like, I don't like how liberal and conservative it's too binary because I don't even see like the extra woke thing to say. Yeah, right. Now we're talking good work. Good work, Matthew. Yeah, you're seeing you fell right into the clutches of that system. I know, I know. It's too non-violent. They get me, they get me.

But it's like, because I've seen the way that they went after Crenshaw when he disagreed, I think about like gun rights or something like that. He was their champion as long as he said everything that they agree with. And the second he diverted from their beliefs, he no longer was useful. And this happened to me. I didn't even know that this cluster of people existed in this organized way, but I did a rant where I went after Kanye,

and I thought it was a pretty easy thing to do. Here's a billionaire that said some awful things. I'm gonna roast him with jokes. This is what I do. I think we can make fun of billionaires. I think they're okay to make fun of. And there was this onslaught of comments about people saying you got it wrong, you know,

it's fentanyl, it killed George Floyd, you got it wrong, the Jews do, right in the banks, they do these things. And I'm like, who, what is this group of people? And why are they so organized? And hateful, why is Kanye their new guy? And I started DMing some people that were like, trashing me.

And I was just like, explain like what you're upset about. I don't understand, like we're just making fun of like a really rich guy that said some awful things. And the reaction that every single one of them said was so funny, they're like, look, Kanye is an idiot. But he's right about these things. And they're basically saying, anybody who agrees with me and is famous, I'm going to ride for as long as they agree with me.

And the second they divert. The problem with social media is that you have to hear from people like that. You know, let me tell you a story. I was talking to Andy Nol, the journalist who covers Antifa. Yeah. And I had been talking to some prominent Democrats about Antifa and they said it doesn't exist. And I said, well, what do you mean it doesn't exist? It promoted riots in multiple American cities.

There's people in black masks and uniforms that call themselves Antifa. How do you mean it doesn't exist? Say, well, there's hardly any of them. They're not really organized. They're not an official group. And they're a tiny, tiny, they're such a tiny minority that they're negligible. And I didn't really appear to me that they were negligible,

but these were respectable people, and they weren't stupid. And I thought, okay, they probably have a reason for thinking this. So I asked Andy, no about this, because he knows more about Antifa than anyone else in the world. And I said, how many Antifa cells do you think there are cells, so to speak, in the United States?

And he thought, well, maybe 40. And I said, well, how many full-time equivalent employees do each of these cells have, so to speak, right? How many people in each city are devoting their lives to being antifa, whatever that means. And he figured 20. And so that's 800 out of 300 million. It's one in 400,000. And so like that's none, right?

In a city, the size of Halifax, city many Americans probably don't know about, but it's a city of about 400,000 in Canada. You'd have one person. And like, in some ways, that's zero people, right? It's just no one. But the problem is, is that a very tiny number of people can cause a tremendous amount of problems, a tremendous amount of trouble. And maybe enough trouble to bring down a whole civilization.

Maybe it only takes one in 100,000 to do that, especially if they're organized. And now with social media, well, they're always organized because no matter how peculiar you are, you can find another hundred dimwits exactly like you on the net. And then you start to think that, well, you've got something there. And, you know, in some ways, that's a plus because disinfected people can find a community. But man, it depends on who the disinfected people are and exactly what the community is up to. And then you know, you're in a situation where you're putting out content to hundreds of thousands or millions of people and you also,

you get feedback, but it's a dimented and strange feedback because it's not representative of the normal population. It's, it might be that subset of people who had a really bad day for reasons you don't even understand and that are deciding to take it out on you behind a mask of anonymity. There's something very pathological about the democratization of public discourse on social media. It's really warped and demented. Now, my question to you is, why do you think that those Democrat leaders didn't acknowledge that this was a problem? Do you think they truly didn't think it was a problem based on the data, or do you think that they were also acting in terms of self-preservation? Well, I think they were much more concerned with 4chan and the conspiratorial right, which

they regard as truly real. But that's self-preservation, right? Yeah, I know. I know. I criticized the opposition and not lose votes. But that's also just a big idea. But that's also just a big idea and further own beliefs. Of course, of course, but like, I actually admire what Crenshaw did, is he knew by taking

that stand that he was going to reject some of his base. I admire that. That's a balsy brave move. Stand up for something you believe in despite pissing off people who may follow you and support you. He's not acting in terms of self-preservation. He's doing what he genuinely thinks the right thing to do is.

Now, in politics, this is middle management, right? You have to support your constituents if you want to stay in office, if you truly care about holding onto power, if you truly care about making change, you're going to piss off your constituents by rejecting Antifa because the opposition is going to, or your, your maybe democratic opposition is going to position you as someone who is not empathetic to the liberal play. Yeah, well, you know, the easy way out of this as far as I can tell, well, easy. The only real way out of this conundrum is just to say what you think. Like, you don't have to say everything you think all the time, but you have to decide at some point whether you're going to pander to the short-term demands of your hypothetical

constituents or whether you're just going to say what you believe to be true. And the thing is, is that I watch politicians, and this is a particular terrible thing that's happening in the political arena right now, is they use opinion polls to sample the consequences of their actions. But most of that's just rubbish. And the reason I'm saying that, there's technical reasons for that, is that if you want to find out what people think, say even one person, it's extremely difficult because first of all, people don't know exactly what they think and they can't articulate it that well. And it's a mystery even to them. And so you have to spend a lot of time listening to find out what anybody thinks about anything, especially if you're not just going to go for the immediate clichés. And then if you're going to sample a whole population and try to get their opinion about some political issue, then you have to formulate the questions with unbelievable

care. It really takes to find out what people think about any given complex issue would probably take a team of reasonable researchers two or three months to formulate the questions accurately enough to get a reasonable response. And yet opinion pollsters claim that they can just tell you what people think by coming up with some questions. And so then the politicians judge the results of their actions by the opinion polls, which don't really represent people's views at all. And then we're led by this idiot, Wim of the mob.

And the real leaders go out and listen to people. And then aggregate their concerns and then act on principle, and not essentially what Krenshaw did. And to tell the truth is to act on principle and not essentially what Krenshaw did was. And to tell the truth is to act on principle. And I think with regard to the medium to long term, rather than the short term, immediate popularity payoff, which is a bad way to conduct your affairs. I don't think it's a good long term strategy.

Imagine if you were a comedian and your rule was, I'll never make a joke that offends anyone. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'd be a very different comedian. I'll tell you that. Yeah, I think pretty much every joke in your last special would have been caught. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, so back to that, you said the streaming service that you were working with wanted to, yeah, they wanted to add a said the streaming service that you were working with one and two. Yeah, they want to daddy your show And how in the hell did they decide what was the hierarchy of offense because I watched your special this morning

And I thought every goddamn thing you said was offensive. So how do they decide what to cut what to keep? That's a great question, you know, I'm sure that they have there Everybody has their like list list of what is right and wrong, and I think that list is so malleable, and I think that's, for me, that's the most fun part of stand up, is I like finding the divisive topic, and then seeing if there's like one kernel

that we can all agree on, and sometimes that thing that we all agree on is the opposite of what everybody would like to present themselves as. So like, I'm trying to think of even, I know I had a bit about abortion in the special, but I'm even thinking about abortion right now, which is a very divisive topic, right? I don't know how you feel about it, but I've been like really thinking, I'm like, what is the truth on how people feel about it, but I've been like really thinking, I'm like, what is like the truth

on how people feel about abortion? And I think I've gotten to it, which is, okay, everybody has a number of abortions, where if you go past that, it's too many. So it's not really, even if you're liberal, it's not really your body, your choice. It's like your body, your choice up to like three, and then all of a sudden people are like, what's going on over here? Nine is a softball team, like that's a lot, right?

Like that, usually people, even the most liberal person will be like, all right, we'll teach you how to put on a condom or something. Like, what the fuck is going on over here? And then the most conservative person, their number is one. They're like, one is too many. But we all agree that there's a spectrum of when it's too much. And I think, like, for me, that's where a joke begins, right?

I go, okay, there's a whole group of people in this liberal San Francisco audience where I may perform at or a super liberal New York audience. What if I can get every person that even the women that are super pro-choice to be like, yeah, nine is a lot. You know, nine, I think it might be the government's choice at nine. You know, like how can I get you to see the other side

without being a politician about it going, this is how you must live your life. How can I do it, we all laugh. You know, I think it was like Oscar Woes, like I said, like if you wanna tell some of the truth, make them laugh, if not, they'll kill you. And I don't think all comedy has to be truthful and all that kind of stuff.

I think comedy speaks to feeling. It doesn't speak to what is right or wrong. It speaks to genuinely how you feel. And it does tend to speak to truth in some real sense, because when you laugh, when an audience laughs, they laugh spontaneously, right? The laughter is truthful. But the laughter is truthful because it taps into a feeling, but just because you feel a thing doesn't mean that that is right or wrong.

And I think that's where a lot of times comedians get in trouble when they start going, I'm speaking truth to power, I'm telling you it's right or wrong. And it's like, buddy, don't put the cape on. Just, if you tell people, you're just out here telling jokes, you're just having fun. Now you're not going to be positioned with the responsibility to tell the truth every time. I want to tell jokes. I want to say messed up things. In order for me to do that and have the freedom to create in that space, I can't be Superman. You know what I mean? I can't say that I'm the arbiter of truth. I'm gonna get it right every single time.

What I'm gonna do every single time is make you laugh. I think also that actually, what would you say? It subordinates comedy to something lower. You see this happening with entertainers very frequently, probably most often with actors. But sometimes with musicians, sometimes with other, let's call them entertainers, it's a bad term, creative artists, is they, they get possessed of the

idea at some point that what they're doing isn't good enough, and that because it isn't good enough, they have to do something truly good, and that's usually something in the political arena. And what they don't understand is that there is almost nothing in the political arena that's anywhere near as good as what works in the creative arena. So you're immediately subordinating what's best to what's lowest. And so when you see a Hollywood actor go on a political rampage, you think, well, you're already doing a lot of good

for the world with your creative actions. And now you're a second-rate politician, even though you were a first-rate actor or comedian or musician. And I've gone to a lot of artistic shows in recent years and had them polluted by political discussion. And you get pulled into the performance and then halfway through, there's something politically correct often, because that's generally the case now. And you think, oh my God, I got suckered here. I was coming to hear someone great, do something great. Now I have to listen to the same half-wit political opinion that I could have not paid for and listened to any undergraduate spout.

It's like, well, thanks a lot for that. You think black lives matter. Well, that doesn't make you special. Yeah. Anyone who's not an outright bloody Nazi thinks that. And so it's just not just not elevating. And it's a very sad thing to see that creative artists are buying the idea part of this rat's nest of ideas we were talking about earlier that politics is somehow morally superior political opinions are somehow morally superior to creative endeavor.

That's definitely the case on the comedy front. Yeah, I wonder if it... Yeah, I think it's hard. I think with success and notoriety, well, it's twofold. It's like with extreme criticism. For example, you went through extreme, extreme criticism. It's hard, I would imagine, to stick to your guns when you know that you could easily back into the comforts of the people supporting you, right?

It's the brave move is despite the criticism, continue saying and feeling the things that you feel for lack of a better way to describe it, but like to continue being consistent on how you feel and expressing that. It's very easily to get like this onsite of criticism from the left and then just go, all right, the right likes me. I'm going to go right wing. All my opinions are conservative, et cetera. It's much harder to piss off the left one day, piss off the right the other day because that's who you are as a real person. Nobody is 100% in that way and feeling that thought every single time, like what I what I tried to, I guess, express in a lot of comedy, like I have an abortion bit in the special, to this day nobody knows which side I am on the abortion issue, right?

And both sides think that joke represents them. That's designed on purpose to do that. Like if you even look at the comments, both of them are recognizing like the faults in their side and also the support of their side. And to me, it was really cool to put out a piece like that that wasn't going, you're an idiot for not believing exactly what I believe, especially a device of topic like that. I just think it's, I don't know, like, did you have that moment where you were getting this onslaught of criticism and people were calling you the next thing, Nazi diss and then you're the the muse for like movie villains? Was there ever a moment where you were like, this? I don't

need to stay true to myself. Let me back into the comfort of the people who love me. Yeah, well, it's hard to say, you know, because a lot of that's pretty subtle. If all the attacks are almost all the attacks are coming from one side and almost all the support is coming from the other side, it also puts you in a position of having to wonder

just exactly who your friends are. And one of the things I have found is that for me, for whatever reason, and I don't think that this is unique to me, it's a lot harder for me to talk to people on the left. And the reason for that, and it didn't used to be like that, not 10 years ago or 15 years ago, in fact, if you'd talked to me 15 years ago, I probably would have thought that I was at least moderately on the left. And so, but in any case, I always feel like I have to walk on eggshells. I feel like I have to watch what I'm saying. And I don't really like talking to people around whom I have to watch what I'm saying.

I actually like to talk to people, and I can just say what I have to say, especially if it happens to be funny, which now and then is the case. And so, and then it is difficult not to identify with people who support you, especially if that goes on for years. And so, who knows how that changes? I definitely have become more conservative in my thinking. And I would say, I think there are intellectual reasons for that primarily, though, because one of the things I've understood more deeply, recently, and more explicitly, I've been putting this together, is that the definition of sanity that's generally implicitly held among the psychological community is probably too individualistic. And what I mean by that is that I don't think that sanity is something that you have in

your head. It's not part of your psyche, it's not part of you exactly. It's more like harmonious interaction with the hierarchy of social of social arrangements that you have with other people. So, well, imagine this, for example, neighbor I knew on my street said to me once, you're never any happier than your most unhappy child. Right, so that's a good one. But so you imagine, well, you're a pretty sane person and you're married and your marriage is terrible. It's like, well, then you're not that sane, are you? And if you have a terrible marriage and you're not getting along with your kids, then you're also not very sane. And if you're in a terrible marriage, and you don't get along with your kids and you're fighting with your siblings and your parents, then you're even less sane.

And so you imagine that sanity, you're sane if you have a relationship that's working. If you have a relationship with your family that's working, if that family isn't nested inside a community that isn't too fructious, you know, and there's something musical about it. It's like every note has its place. And so I think, yeah,'s something musical about it. It's like every note has its place. And so, I think, yeah. You see what I mean? And it's also, I see what you mean. But if I can give some pushback,

I would say that like the person that has the miserable marriage and unhappy kids but is still seemingly happy, that person is insane to me. The person that has unhappy kids in an unhappy marriage and is unhappy is sane. Yes, that's exactly the point I'm making is that, yes, because the thing is that if you

aren't reflecting the structure of the social communities around you, then you're off calibrations. Well, here I was talking to a woman named Jean Twangie yesterday, and she's a research psychologist. We were talking about self-esteem. And one of the, the self-esteem movement in the school system in California was absolutely dreadfully devastating and appalling. It basically posited that you could teach kids how to be narcissistic to overcome their negative emotion and neuroticism.

And that's so preposterously appalling that you couldn't invent something stupider. So we were talking about self-esteem, whatever the hell that means, because it's a very badly defined term. But here's one way of determining whether you have the appropriate amount of self-esteem. You might say, well, everyone should feel good about themselves. It's like, well, if you're a miserable, rady, lying, deceptive, narcissistic prick, then probably you shouldn't feel that good about yourself. And how do you know that? Because you should feel about as good about yourself as people on average do around you about you, right? So you're, do around you about you, right? So you're, and we even know this technically because you have a little counter, so to speak,

in your psyche that ranks you in terms of your social standing. And the higher you're ranked, the less negative emotion you feel and the more positive emotion you feel. And that's because your brain is indicating to you that you're well situated in a social community and you're secure with opportunity. And so your self-esteem should, that's exactly how it works. It's a very, so what happens to people who get depressed, technically depressed, is that that counter goes astray and they start thinking less of themselves than

their situation would indicate. And so then everything around them falls apart. They feel that their past was a catastrophe. They feel that their present is hopeless and that the future isn't going anywhere. But it's because this really, really low level counter that utilizes serotonin has gone astray. And sometimes antidepressants can help deal with that. Now, that's not someone,

that isn't someone who has a terrible life. That's someone who has a good life, but something's gone wrong with them psychophysiologically often, so the counter is out of whack. In any case, you should have about as much self-esteem as other people are willing to grant you. And that's kind of a conservative idea as well in some real sense. Enough self-esteem as others are willing to grant you.

Yeah, it's like, well, imagine, you know, if everybody in the company assumes that you're an average performer, you should probably assume that you're an average performer. You shouldn't be running around feeling good about yourself in excess of that because your attitude towards yourself should be a reflection of your actual situation in the social environment. So my pushback on that would be, if your self-esteem is defined by how the people around you treat you, how can you break out when you're in and especially when you're in an industry of narcissists that are really only concerned with how they're doing, what they want, like how do you separate

yourself? That's a great question, man. That's the trick that presents itself to everyone creative. But the answer maybe is, and this is, I don't know if we support this, but this might be the truth. There is a reason why narcissists tend to break out because their self-esteem is not limited by the views of others. That is true.

That is exactly true. Well, in fact, in that regard, so you put your finger on something that's cardinally important because it is generally the case that your view of yourself should reflect the views of those around you. But the problem with that is now, and then the social situation gets so pathological that that's no longer reliable. Now, when that happens, you're really in trouble. That's the first thing we should point out, because if society has got so

demanded that its feedback can no longer be trusted, then everything's going to hell in a hand basket pretty quickly. But that is when you get the necessity for people to call on whatever it is within them that makes them true moral agents to, let's say, say what they believe to be true with great caution. But I would say even in no circumstances,

like I've been fortunate when I've been doing that to the degree I've been able to do that because I have friends around me who are giving me accurate feedback, I would say, and careful feedback despite the mob pressure. I don't know if anybody could really do that alone, you know what I mean? Maybe you could.

100%. And 100%. I just know, and I'm sure you felt this as well, is it like, at least when I'm running my business, and I have my friends and the guys that I work with and build with, I personally feel most creative when I have support, right? So when there is a momentum, when the ball is moving, when there's an avalanche, that's

when these explosions of creativity happen to me in a conversation. When I'm talking to someone or other people who value what I have to say, all of a sudden I have tons to say. I'm excited to share. When I'm talking to someone who thinks that I'm to say, all of a sudden I have tons to say. I'm excited to share. When I'm talking to someone who thinks that I'm an idiot, I'm questioning the things that I have to say. So in my mind, I'm trying to foster an environment where everybody here feels the confidence

to access their genius, right? Now, if they're genius in one zone is a six, that's fine. If they're genius, another zone is a 10, that's fine. If they're genius in another zone is a 10, that's fine. But let me get the best version of you. Now, that's not saying we're buttering people up. But at the same time, we're not treating it like, I don't know, I think like creativity is not a football field, right? Where it's like, you can only run as fast as you can run.

I can yell at a player. He's still going to run a 40 in five seconds. I can say he sucks. He's going to run a 45 seconds. I can yell at a player, he's still gonna run a 40 in five seconds. I can say he sucks, he's gonna run a 45 seconds. I can say he's great, he's gonna run a 45 seconds. But with somebody who's coming up with a creative idea, funny idea, the more I build his confidence up, the more willing he is to go into those deep, weird concepts that might produce something incredibly creative.

Yeah, well, you do a lot of that by listening and attending, right? Yes. And, yeah, because people will manifest themselves more fully in precise proportion to the degree that they're being attended to and listening to. I was thinking too about the calibration issue. You know, one of the values of a real education is that you start to spread the community that you identify with over vast spans of time. In the humanities in particular, at least

in principle, there was a golden thread of conversation that's been going on at least from the time of Socrates, between great minds moving forward that have been adjudicated as great by the consensus of the entire educated community, let's say. And now that's all, of course, parodyed as patriarchal oppression, but we'll leave that aside for the moment. And then maybe when you're called upon to speak carefully and truthfully, despite mob pressure and despite your otherwise laudable

willingness to abide by the judgment of the group, the group starts to expand across time. And so the pathologies of the moment can be ignored in favor of the, what would you call it, the wisdom of the group stretching across thousands and thousands of years. And you see, that's also, in some sense, a conservative idea in the deepest sense, because the idea would be that there is a fundamental spiritual tradition that manifests itself philosophically and theologically that has to be attended to despite the vagaries of the moment. And so, and that seems to be right, you know, I mean, I think what you do when if you

go to university and you get a real education, you find a peer group, the peer group of creative and truthful thinkers, and their thought in some sense exists outside of time. It's eternally valuable, and it doesn't matter what the situation is, and then you can judge your the people who standards most resemble yours. Well, not necessarily, not if you're really getting educated, you know, because then you get exposed to a lot of people who didn't necessarily think the way you thought. Well, this is, this is why it's so important. It's like, huh, and this is why the internet is amazing, but also dangerous. It's just like university in this way. Okay, before the internet, there was college.

And that's how I described it. In high school, you talked to some people that had rough experiences in high school, especially people are younger than me. And I said, hey, just wait till you go to college. You're going to be dealing with way more people, and you'll be able to be yourself because there's some other people that actually feel just like you, right? And you're going to really like this college experience because you're going to find a friend group that just didn't exist in your small 100-kid per grade high school, right?

Right. Right. The internet is that on steroids, right? Now that little four-person group that really likes gaming and wearing masks and doing all those other shit is four million globally. You get to feel part of a big group and you have all these people that like what you have to say. But what I think that the internet can often do and it's something that like I try my hardest to not let it do is it dulls our sword. You know what? We don't have to communicate outside of the echo chamber, right? We know if we want, we can say the things we believe to the people who also believe them.

And now there's no more nuance. One of the great things about getting on stage and doing stand-up comedy show when people don't know I'm gonna be there, right? I've been very fortunate to go sell out in the biggest theaters in the country, right? This has been awesome. But one of the really cool things about going up

to a show where people don't know I'm gonna be there, is there are people who may disagree with me, hate me, not know me, and also love me all in the same room. And it keeps my tongue sharp. I have to communicate to those people, ideas that they might disagree with, in a way that's funny enough for them to listen.

And then project laughter. I fear and I sometimes fear that like you've experienced so much king undeserved hate from the left that it's positioned you as with some resentment, which is reasonable. I don't know how you're even still having like the common debate and discourse. Like if most people in your situation, they would just say damn screw them whatever, but your information is more important to the people who don't agree with you than the ones who already agree. You know what I'm saying? Like explaining the value of, let's say God, I'm not someone who's raised with religion,

but I believe in the power of it. And so explaining the power of God to someone who is not religious is more important to the than to the believer. Because if that person can get something from it, it's so powerful. But if you've only ever explained it to your congregation, you're not going to be able to communicate it to me or another person or a person who is a, maybe there's even an atheist,

there's no way they're gonna be able to digest it. Yeah, well that was part of the potential danger of joining forces with the daily wire, because they're obviously a conservative enterprise. And my family and I thought long and hard about that. I mean, first of all, I like working with the daily wire. They've been extremely good to work with. They've left me alone, not only have they left me alone

to do whatever it is that I want to do, they've helped me do things I wanted to do that I wouldn't have been able to do otherwise. And I also felt that it was appropriate and wise to find some allies on the social media front because while I got banned off Twitter and YouTube hasn't harassed me much, although they've demonetized my daughter several times for reasons that are completely opaque and God only knows what will might happen on the YouTube front. I know they've demonetized Yon Mi Park many times, the North Korean dissident him.

That's because Yon Mi Park objects to North Korea. And you think you'd be able to get away with that, given that it's after all North Korea, which is like the worst dictatorship anyone's ever managed to produce, which is really saying something, right? Because there's been some pretty bad dictatorships. And so, and obviously the daily wire is a conservative enterprise, and I was worried that that would compromise my ability to communicate with the very people that you were just discussing, especially about the things that I want to talk about, but you know, also I would say, I don't exactly know what to make of this. You also find your friends where they're willing to have you, you know, and I get pilloried quite often for not talking to enough people on the left.

And a huge part of the reason for that is that most of the time they won't talk to me. I spent years trying to find Democrats who would speak to me, you know, actual politicians who would speak to me on my YouTube channel. And although I have a couple identified now and potentially lined up for years, the answer to that request was there's no way we're going on your channel. And so, you know, how the hell can you talk to people if they just say no? Why should they? Why should they go on their channel? You're going to lobotomize them. Like, I don't think the answer is speaking to politicians. Like, I remember, I remember first engaging like with your content. And what I think is so powerful about you

is that you're such a thoughtful thinker that you can really almost, I don't wanna use the word weaponize, but you can weaponize arguments for the average person that has feelings they can't articulate. And I think what's so powerful about that is that you're giving a voice to someone that doesn't feel confident enough to express themselves, right? And it's a really, but what's really great about it is that it's articulated in a way

in which the other side understands and accepts. And I think it's one of the reasons I was probably drawn to you is because I like doing this with comedy, regardless from which side I'm fighting for. I would never take a political side because that's my ability to dance. I can't dance once I say I'm on one. I don't want you to know where the joke is going. But what I loved is you delivered this information and it was so hard to refute it.

And I don't care whether you're on the daily, whether you're on CNN plus or whatever that shit is. It doesn't matter to me because as long as your thoughts stay true to you, then that will be communicated. Maybe less people on the left will digest them because you're on the daily wire and that's their con bias, which is stupid. But I do want your ideas to get to them and I want them to get to them in a way where it's not coming with resentment because nobody listens once they're told they're

an idiot first. You know what I mean? Like if you're going to listen, you have an idiot. Here's why you're a Canadian. I already shut now. You know what I'm saying? Like, because you said you want to fight me. You didn't say you want to teach me something. And I wonder if when you were teaching in the university level, you were almost, you were almost, it was like the comedy club with the strangers. You don't know who these kids are, where they're from. Well, it was also, you never, it was never political, you know,

I mean, none of the things I did at the university until I objected to some Canadian legislation, wherever political. And I didn't really expect things. Politics ruined everything. I wish we could just talk about it culturally. I don't know. Politics creates this divide, and they're these people that it's just like we were talking

about before, but they're just trying to preserve themselves. They just want to keep their job. They want to win their next reelection, and they're using you in some gotcha strategy. And I hated seeing it happen. But there's certain realms that once you enter, you deal with the onslaught. There's like institutions. Like you with banking, you enter, you deal with the onslaught. There's like institutions like you with banking, you banking, people are going to take you out.

You politics, people are going to take you out. And there's probably like another one as well. And but for me, it's like what are these cultural conversations? Like it's important, the messaging that you get across. And I know it. And you do something and I'm not trying to compliment myself here, I'm just complimenting you, but like for me, when you express a viewpoint or a feeling

and my 75 year old mother likes it and a 19 year old kid likes it, you're speaking to core, primal, human instinct. Okay? That is what jokes do. If I see, when I see generations of people at one of my shows, when I see a father and his son both laughing together, like one, I get emotional almost because I'm like, I love those moments with my dad.

But two, I'm like, I'm hitting, in core, I'm hitting who you are. I'm not tapping into this like community you're supposed to be a part of. I'm tapping into something primal. Yeah, well, so, you know, you talked about people's ability to find community online and the analogy between that and the colleges. I think the difference is that when you go to college

and you find people who have your intellectual and creative interests, let's say, you also do that under the tutelage of older people. So there's an apprenticeship element, and you do it while you're being introduced to the great thinkers of the past. And so there's, again, that's a conservative idea in some sense. It's like you get this new freedom, and you get to expose yourself, so to speak, to new people.

But you do that within the confines of an intellectual tradition. And so that stops it from going seriously sideways. Let's say into the realm of ideology or propaganda or conspiratorial thinking, which are pathologies that you might associate with that emergent group identity. And a lot of that slacking online, obviously, all greasy. Yeah, I hate how, I'll be honest, like I hate how the right has been bastardized. I hate how the left has been turned into like a bunch

of like pussy little cocks. Like I think that there's these extreme versions, right? Like the extreme right is not like a Romani conservative. You know what I mean? Like the extreme left is not like, I mean, Clinton is, you know, embroiled in controversy obviously, but like when my parents were growing up and they were like Clinton Democrats, you know, or even Obama, if you want to say it, like these things are so close, yet the parties are defined by their extremes. It's almost like soccer clubs.

You know, when you look at like these soccer teams, they're like defined by their hooligans a lot of times. It's like the hooligans are five, nine to five percent of the people even go to the games, right? So what I would love is the discourse to come back here. Yeah, well, and part of that, I really think I was talking again to this gene 20 the other day about what's happening online to facilitate that. And this tiny percentage of bad actors goes without punishment online. And that's a huge problem. If you're a real trouble-making prick

in person, someone's going to give you a SWAT. And that's going to keep you down. And sometimes that doesn't happen appropriately. And sometimes it does. But generally speaking, people watch their tongues pretty carefully when they're talking face to face with actual others. And the narcissists and the Machiavellians and the psychopaths keep themselves pretty well in check because of that pressure. But online, none of those sanctions exist, plus the social media companies capitalize on the agitation they produce, and they literally capitalize on it because their algorithms

drive people's attention towards the polarizing influences. And so we're in a situation now where that 3% because it's probably no more than that holds disproportionate influence over over political discourse online and I have the suspicion that that's tearing us that's really tearing us apart because it's yeah It's obligating the middle right the reasonable middle. Yeah, it's also the case. I think that the people in the reasonable middle It's also the case I think that the people in the reasonable middle, because they're reasonable and because they're just going about their lives, aren't that good at articulating the values of the middle, right? Yes.

Because I always think about this in relationship to marriage. It's like, you know, some radical can come up to you and poke you and say, justify marriage. And the typical person is just going to be sent back on their heels. It's like, well, I don't know how to do that. We agreed 50,000 years ago that marriage was a good thing. I can't come up with a philosophical justification for it. Why, you know, the, the, the ideas that bind us that are deep, they don't, they're not generally, they're not generally articulated. And so when they're challenged, those who hold them have no idea what to say. And like, here's another like here's another example.

I like to use this on people who are radically left. It's like, why is slavery wrong? I think, well, God, it's obvious that slavery is wrong. It's slavery is just wrong. It's like, okay, fair enough. Why? Well, as far as I can tell, it has to do something. It has to do with the fundamental sanctity of the individual.

It's basically a religious claim. Yeah, you're removing their freedom. Yeah, and their freedom is, the freedom is an appropriate part of them because they're a part of divine providence. It's something like that, that's the axiomatic claim. Well, if you dispense with the entire religious underlay,

which is certainly what you do if you're on the radical left, it's like, well then why not just use power? If I can make you do what I want you to do, why the hell not do it? This is how jokes work. It's like, yeah, but why is it wrong? But this is how jokes work. Isn't it beautiful?

It's like you find a way to get a person who is an atheist, doesn't believe in religion, thinks the religion is the worst thing in the world, to agree that religion has immense value, by getting them to agree that a thing they hate, slavery is wrong, and then you attach why slavery is wrong, too, the thing that they also think is wrong. And now they have to choose one or the other.

And that's not a hard choice. So why did you just compare that to a joke? I think you're right, but why did that connection occur for you? Because you're making people choose, well, for me, that's how I would enter anything. I would go, okay, there's a person who is not religious. Or we can even use, like, let's, let's, person is not religious. I would like to convince that person

that religion is valuable, right? So, and I have bits that I've done about this, right? So, what do they hold true? What are their other values? Maybe they're very liberal. Maybe they don't believe in, I mean, I don't think you have to be liberal to not believe in slavery.

We should all not believe in slavery. But here's another thing that they would hold true. They disagree with slavery. Okay, now if I believe that the reason why man has the right to their, I guess independence and their freedom is because I'm a God-made individual and God would never make somebody chained, then that person has to accept that God

is the reason why slavery is wrong and therefore has to leave. Right, so, okay, so there is something definitely there because a punchline, so there's a whole line of psychological. We need a punchline still. We need a punchline still, but that's a premise. Right, yeah. The punchline is what drives it home.

You know, and one of the things that I have found, I think that what I do on stage is most analogous to what stand-up comedians do. And the reason for that is that when I do a lecture, for example, or try to answer a question, there's usually an investigation, but it has to build up to a punchline. There has to be a culminating moment where it's driven home and that's a moment of insight.

And what it does is it takes a bunch of information that's sort of been scattered around and brings it together. And everybody goes, aha, and that's very much like the climax of a joke. And it's part of insight. And so there's a psychological literature on insight. And insight seems to develop when a number of things that weren't linked together are suddenly linked together. And you go, ah-ha, that's how all that fits together.

And I mean, comedians are doing that all the time because they were explaining the world. And sometimes we're explaining the world in ways that don't really make sense, but they're funny connections. You know, I had a, one of the earlier jokes in my career that worked was, you know, we were talking a lot about like the oppression of women and I'm like, okay, maybe it'd be funny if I could find a justification

for the oppression of women. So I said, you know, the oppression of women is horrible, you know, countries that treat women horrible, I mean, that's just awful, but they have the best food. So, might just, like nobody's ever said, let's go out for a Canadian tonight, right? So, to me, that's the more equal country the worse the food is, and then the more oppressive a country,

the better, I think one of the lines was, the more countries like stay in a kitchen, the better the food comes out of the kitchen. Now, these are absurd concepts, but a really funny connectivity, right? Right, I'm justifying something awful, but now all of a sudden, everybody in the room is kind of agreeing like,

holy shit, like yeah, I'm not a fan of Swedish food, I'm not a fan of, you know, I really love hummus. You know what I'm saying? I mean Norwegians eat fermented shark. Jesus, that's an argument against the equality of women right there for fermented sharks. And that's just not a good idea. So this is the cans of that stuff.

I think it's called surstrunging. You can't fly on airplanes with cans of that because they explode. So that is not a food you should eat. So to me, now I don't have the responsibility you have, which is to be true, flow, and right. So I can dabble in the wrong and the wrong is so funny. But for me, like, I don't know, I just love this.

I love the wrong. The wrong is great. And it allows us to explore ideas. Like, I got a boxing coach, right? And not for anything else other than exercise, I just love to do this part, right? But, and he's from Egypt. And he was speaking to me in Egyptian Arabic.

And I thought they're like, curse words are a great way of organizing a society's hierarchy in values. Like the different curse words that they use, right? And he was telling me, he'll call me different curse words. He called me a mithnaka, right? Which means prostitute. Sorry, sorry. Mithnaka means a slut, actually, for lack of a better word. And then he goes, Sharcutta, he calls me, which means prostitute. He goes, now listen, outside of here, don't say Mithnaka to anybody.

That is a horrible word. Okay, you cannot say that. Do not, he's basically, don't call anybody a slut. He goes, you can call people Shardmuta, that's not that bad. I go, women, you're saying slut is worse than prostitute? And he goes, well, sometimes you have to, for money, that makes sense. But just, for pleasure, what is wrong with you?

Go, your boyfriend, there's something. And I thought it was like such a beautiful look into culture. Do you know what I'm saying? Like, like, there are dire circumstances that made it more reasonable to have sex for money because you needed money to survive, maybe you needed to help your family. And that was forgiven culturally.

It was like, understood. It was like, you don't wanna do that, but at least you're doing it to support your family. Yeah, well, just curse. The curse words always touch on taboos, right? And so taboos would be the worst thing in a society. The, in Quebec, all the curse words are church related. That better than that.

Yeah, exactly. How do you know that? Why do you know that? That's my job to know these things. So let me ask you again about your special. So it was gonna be edited. Did you know how heavily it was going to be edited? Yeah, they told me certain jokes that they didn't like.

And again, I don't necessarily have resentment for companies that are trying to protect themselves. You have that right as a company. I disagree because I don't think it is the protection that you want. I think the ultimate protection is putting out great content that I love. Right, exactly.

That's how you develop the mode. But I think it's very easy to just go like, you as one of sensor blah, blah, blah. It's like, yeah, I get it. You have a family of kids in private school. You don't want that, maybe your responsibility of putting out the thing that got your company in trouble. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

So I don't have personal resentment. It was frustrating. So basically long story short, what I did is, I bought the special back, right? And they could have said no to this, but I was able to buy the special back, which I'm very grateful for. And I put it up on my own,

I put it up on moment. Moment is this platform where you can stream content. So basically pay for people to buy a ticket to watch the show and then own it in perpetuity. So I first did a window there kind of like a movie, right? Like you go see Batman in the movie theater. That's how I was thinking about it. You go see Batman in the movie theater. It's there in the movie theater for a couple of months.

And then a few months after that, it's on cable. So I was like, let me try this for comedy. I put it up here and you know, fingers crossed. And it does unbelievably well. And I made way more than I would ever make on the special itself. It was the most money I've ever made in my life to be used to. And that was moment.

It was with moment, yeah. So like moment, yeah, moment world is now, but it was moment house when I did it, but moment, it's just great company. They've been doing these livestream events. They do it for bands, they do it for comedians. And I'm hoping that this is another pathway for comics to put their content out and have a window where they can monetize it. I mean, the beautiful thing about putting your stuff out on YouTube is it goes to the world, but you're not able to monetize it in the same way. And in order to create a

special, like the one that we created, I mean, it costs $400,000 to shoot the specials. So, right. You have to be able to generate money to do something that can compete with a Netflix, compete with any of these other NHBO, any of these platforms. I want to be able to create that content and put it out there. So we put it behind this window and people came out, they supported, it was amazing. And then a few months later, I put it out on YouTube. And that, I think, we're at 8 million views in a month or something like that. So now I get all the new people,

all the people who weren't familiar with me, all the people that didn't know who I existed and the friends can share it. But I was also able to give it to the fans who really have rode for me from the beginning and give them this experience. Also the YouTube version, I put some ads in. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I watched it this morning.

Well, what did you charge for this special on moment? 15 bucks. And how long did you have it up there before you switched it to YouTube? I did two, two week windows. So I just did two weeks, and then so many people are asking for it that I put it back up for another two weeks a week later.

And why did you decide on those time periods? I wanted to create urgency. I think one of the issues that just having, you know, like it up is, I'll get to it. I think that's one of the problems with content in general. Like I think, yeah, I think, I think there's this idea with it streaming. You're, oh, I'll get to it.

I'll get to it. And then you never get to it. And there's just so much that you have to get to. And I think that if you create urgency, like a boxing match, is we have to watch this tonight. An MMA fight, we have to watch this, a sporting event, we have to. So knowing that there's this two-week window

where you could watch it with no ads, and this was the way it was going to be, you know, also there was no telling when I put it on YouTube if they weren't going to take it down. So like, this was the only time was gonna be. You know, also there was no telling when I put it on YouTube if they weren't gonna take it down. So like, this was the only time that you were 100% sure that you could watch it in its entirety. And it also created this time where

everybody, well not everybody, but a lot of people watched it at the same time. Right, right, right. So we had a live viewing. And it created this communal feeling which we want. Like, I love watching House of Dragons, you know, the Game of Thrones reboot.

I love watching it on Sunday with everybody else, and then going on Twitter and seeing how people are reacting to it, and taking part in this massive group of experiments, and hearing their live real-time reactions. To me, this is awesome. So I wanted to create that for a comedy special, and it was awesome. We were able to do it, man. Yeah, this is awesome. So I wanted to create that for comedy special. And it was awesome. We were able to do it, man.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I'll have to look into moment that sounds extremely interesting. And I'll connect you with them. Okay. Okay. Good. You doing one of your lectures, for example, on moment, like creating this moment, having this moment for all these people to all check in at the exact same time. And they've got some other really cool features too. Like you can sell merch while you're watching it. Like there are all these different things that are like easy to access.

People can comment real time on it, which is also cool. But like having this place where all these people who want to experience this thing with you be it live or pre-recorded. But before it goes out to the world and people want to support it, that's the other thing I learned. Like I've given out so many hours of comedy. to support it. That's the other thing I learned. Like I've given out so many hours of comedy. I've given, there's so many people that hit me up. And they're like, listen, like you've made me laugh

through really dark times for years. Like there are people when I put it up on YouTube started donating money. I didn't even know that that was a thing that you could do. But they feel guilty. Yeah, well, you know, the first thing is, people don't really want something valuable for nothing.

They want to contribute their part, generally speaking. That's why giving away things for free in some real sense is a bad pricing decision. And so because it does deprive people of the opportunity to reciprocate. And they want to be able to reciprocate. Yeah.

So now you're having, I think, more success on the movie front. That's correct. Yeah, I've been able to do some small roles and some films, and I guess those are all gonna come out. I don't even know when they're gonna come out, but I wanna make a film. So, yeah, to be honest, it's, yeah, well, I guess, I don't know, here, I wanna make a film. So, yeah, to be honest, it's, yeah, well, I guess,

I don't know, here, I wanna make a film, I'm really excited, but I'm really getting into story now and the power of story. And I know I have this theory that like, I think stories, I think we have a biological reaction to stories in the same way that we have to music. You know, like, I notice when I'm hanging out with my friends that I've known for decades, we will retell the same stories that we were all a part of.

And every single time our eyes light up and we get goosebumps and we laugh and we get excited and the stories morph and change and we get to like relive them. In the same way when a song comes on, it was a song you absolutely loved or we were going through something, you get to feel all those emotions again, like you tap towards them. And even when somebody tells a story in a group, it's different than when someone has a hot take or a premise.

It's like, hey, this thing happened. Everybody shuts up. And all of a sudden we're like, around the campfire for some reason. Yeah. So, I'm, I'm, I'm curious, you're taking what that is about us and stories. Is it like our earliest version of digesting information? Well, I think, I think we, this, I'm writing a new book called We Who Ressel with God and that's really what it's about.

It looks to me like, I think it's incontrovertible in some sense that we see the world through a story. And so if you're out with your friends and you're telling a shared story, then you're literally building the, you're literally building the shared set of assumptions that constitutes the friendships. And so think about the, think about the leftist take on the world. So the leftist take is something like the fundamental story is one of power. And the relationships between people are structured as a consequence of power. That's true for marriages, it's true for history, it's true for

the Western canon, it's true for economic interactions, it's all about power. Well, that's a story. It's not a very good story, by the way. And it's also for economic interactions, it's all about power. Well, that's a story. It's not a very good story, by the way, and it's also not a story that unites or reflects reality in an accurate manner, because social relationships are only predicated on power when they become corrupt. So well, if you have to force someone to be your friend, that's just not working very well. If you have to force your wife to pay attention to you, then the bloody situation is degenerated. If you have to force your children to listen all the time, then you're

not mutually acting out a very good story. And so, the question is, what's the story that's the antithesis of power? And I think the antithesis of power is playing. If you're, if you're ensconced in a good story, then what you're doing is playing. This is one of the reasons it's, I really like watching comedians because they're playing all the time. And I think, I think that play, the spirit of play is actually the antithesis of the spirit of power. Let me tell you something that will prove your theory.

And I have to give credit to my podcast, co-hosts and just creative partner and so many things, Mark Gagnon. But I took him to this thing called Burning Man this past year. And his reflection on Burning Man was, he goes, it's just adult play. I go, what do you mean? He goes, think about the whole thing is adult play.

Now, to tap into the power thing, Burning Man is what happens when you remove power. There's no currency. You cannot buy anything. And there's no restriction in terms of your ability to enter once you're there. Every party is welcome to everybody. Every party is welcome to everybody. Every place is welcome to everybody. You can't even buy things. You just give.

So you remove traditional power structure and hierarchy. What is left for humans? Play. Dress how you want to dress. Dance how you want to dance. Party how you want to party. Be silly. Prank one another.

But play is the absence of power. Wow, that's kind of cool. Well, look, look at what, look one another, but play is the absence of power. Wow, that's kind of cool. Look, look at what happened. I used to go work out with a couple of my friends in Boston, and we used to try to make each other laugh when we were bench pressing, because as soon as you laugh, you lose all your muscular control. It's obvious that play and humor are antithetical to power because as soon as you laugh, you're powerless. You could. I think I talked to Theo Vaughn about this, the comedian.

His mother had a very strange condition. If he made her laugh, she would actually fall asleep. Yeah, she'd lose so much muscular control that she would fall asleep. He said he used to try making her laugh when she was driving. Yeah. Yeah, which seems like, you know, not the wisest thing to do, but he apparently wasn't the wisest child, at least by his own admission. Well, he was curious.

He was playing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, so this is a very lovely thing to know, I think, is that, and then the right story to tell is one that enables people to play along. But that's, and that's the beautiful thing. It's like when I hang out with my friends, like when we have those moments together, that is what we're engaging in. We're engaging with this ball-busting, we're engaging with this play, and we're engaging with these storytelling that these stories always share something about who one of us is or who we all are.

You know, blah, blah, blah, love's big girls. Remember when we were doing this and he had that girl? Man, she wasn't that big, blah, blah, blah. And now eat, it's like, I'm not going to make a parallel to the Bible, but like, there's a reason why the Bible didn't just say, just do these things. There's a reason why they put them in story, right? Because it's far more impactful to listen to this story. And I wonder if like through osmosis, the behavior in the stories kind of get locked into

our long-term memory, where if you just tell someone a rule, it's short-term and then might be fleeting. Well, the thing about having the rule embodied in the story is you see how it's acted out. So, and then that's much more convincing to watch how something's acted out partly because then you also know how to act it out, right? If it's just a rule, you have to translate

the rule into action. But if it's a story, then the actions are laid out for you. You know, and they say that every story has a moral, and in some sense, that would be the rule of the story. But it's not necessarily always that easy to extract out the rule, but you can still understand the story. Yeah. Yeah. I'm really, I want to do a deep dive. And like, I just think, I think one of the issues with Hollywood right now, to be honest, and like, why some to do a deep dive. And like, I just think, I think one of the issues with Hollywood right now, to be honest,

and like, why some of these films just don't make sense or so many of them don't is because the creator of the idea is so far removed from the executor of the project. Yeah. So like, hey, here's a great idea for a movie blah, blah, blah, and then someone goes, I'm gonna buy that from you. That's great, thank you so much. And then we're gonna go make it.

And they're making it with all these people that are also kind of detached from the project. If you look at the writer directors, their movies hit at a much higher rate. Yeah. And it's not only because maybe they're more talented, but it's because they're invested in the project all the way

through. It means something if that project fails because their identity is wrapped into it. Random person that gets thrown on a project, a random ranger that does punch up, that's not even credit. They also benefit from the success, just the success. The success. So, you know, you were talking about these censorship proclivities. So, one of the things I observed in, in court in the corporate world when I was attempting

to sell to middle managers was that if they bought something from me and it failed, they would get blamed. That would happen. But if they bought something from me and it was very successful for the company, they wouldn't get credited. Oh, they wouldn't get credited. Oh, they wouldn't. No, because of this, because so I'll give you an example, we were selling these tests, psychological tests, and to a group of people who were doing the hiring and they said,

well, they got budgeted on the cost side. So every cent they spend on hiring would be credited to them, right, as an expense. But if they hired much better people in the company did well, that wouldn't be credited to them as a accomplishment because the value would go to someone else. It wouldn't be directly attributed to them. And so what happened to them was that there was an outside risk to each of them for acting in an entrepreneurial manner.

And very little upside if it was successful. And you can imagine in a Hollywood production, for example, that isn't spearheaded by a writer director. If it's successful, he's gonna be wildly successful. Now he has to shoulder the blame too. But if it's distributed among a bunch of people, then they're gonna get blamed if something goes wrong, but if it goes real well, they're not gonna get credited.

Exactly. Yeah, and that's how you have a shitty project. Maybe you get lucky and it ends up working out, but yeah, I think that I like shouldering that blame. I'll take the risk of myself with these projects that I want to do. I don't mind that. If it fails, it's on me.

I can take that. That's motivating. That's exciting. Yeah. And I also believe in myself and the people that I work with that we can execute these things. So, but what happens is if you run a business like that, you create a bottleneck.

I even went through this when I was editing the special, and we were editing the special, I edited it with Mark and Shifty, who were absolutely brilliant. And we sat in there and we edited, it took us one day for each minute of the special. So for one 60 seconds, it took us a day of editing. And we did that for until it was done. Now, nobody's edited a comedy special like this. Be as usually the editor is so far moved from the comic or it's already with another production company

or it's already at one of these streaming things. But for me, in order for it to be as good and as nuanced and as beautiful as it is, in order for me to take you into the room, we need to edit it that way. Like, we were watching horror movies to see how they built tension and then released it. Yeah.

Because that's comedy. It's tension and release. So if you have slow pushes while you're building the tension and then removal when it's released, or like you was zoom out, when it's released, it's like, okay, let's use that. Let's apply that. How can we make you feel the tension that you won't feel because you're watching through a screen?

How can we bring you into the room, you know? So that's interesting. So did you focus in while you were building the tension and then snap out? Sometimes? Yeah, well, why did you decide? That's very interesting because that actually corresponds to different hemispheric function. So the left hemisphere zooms in,

and the right hemisphere zooms out, and that the right hemisphere is responsible for insight and the left hemisphere for detailed processing. And so you seem to have, you seem to have intuited something like that in that editing process. That's very cool. So you zoom in and then when the punchline hits,

you can, you can snap to a broader perspective. We'll often hit a punchline on a zoom in, but sometimes a punchline is a misdirection. And by zooming in, immediately we would be telegraphing it. So what we would do is leave it and let's say a cowboy shot or something like this, so we could catch you off guard. He is catching you off guard is very important, right? But maybe on a big laugh, we let the room breathe.

We were able to show the audience laughing as well. I think there's a communal aspect when you're at a comedy club, you see other people laughing. And that's beautiful. It's cathartic. You're like, okay, I'm free. I can let loose here. So we want to show shots where other people are laughing, so you feel comfortable.

You could get caught up in that momentum. So it's like approaching the editing process with the same passion, love, and creativity that we approach writing the jokes and creating the show. Yeah, well, that definitely, definitely one of the things that stand up comedians are doing is providing a communal theater for free play.

And it's definitely free because you can't compel someone to laugh. You can't even compel yourself to laugh, not genuinely. It has to be, it has to come from the source, right? It either strikes you as funny before you think, or it's not funny at all. And there is something, I think, extremely stress relieving to be among a lot of other people who are laughing at the same thing,

because it means you're all playing spontaneously together without fear. And that's almost like the definition of no stress. Exactly. And one of the things that we like specifically did like, like I would say that my audience is by far the most diverse audience in in standup. Now the advantage of that is and one of the things that I learned is I was going through standup and I like to make fun of everybody because I'm curious about everybody. And I learn these things about people that I think are really funny.

So when I organize them into jokes, I also like to talk about everybody. And I learn these things about people that I think are really funny. So when I organize them into jokes, I also like to talk about it. It doesn't only have to be like me. I'm not very self centered with my comedy, which is not necessarily a bad thing, but I like talking about topics, other people, cultures, et cetera. These things are all interesting to me.

But what I realized is we were going through this very like woke time where a white dude, a straight white dude like me making fun of You know something for me Ethiopia might be crazy, right? But what I realize is if that Ethiopian person was there and I'm talking to them and doing the joke to them and they're laughing Nobody can be offended. Yeah. Yeah, Russ that person does that very well. I mean, brilliant. He's great, man, because he's an equal opportunity, oh, fender. And his audience is so interesting to watch his audiences, because you can just, you can almost feel the tension in the different ethnic groups in the audience waiting for their chance to be made fun of.

And it's they want it. Well, yeah, it's because I think at a deep level, they want to show that they can play along with the joke, you know, the two things. They want to play along and they want to show the kid, but they also like representation in a creative clever way. Yeah. So like, this is something I learned without realizing, but like I would do these jokes about random, random groups, right?

The, you know, knowledge that I picked up over the years. And then because the internet exists in these echo chambers, those jokes will go viral in those communities. Right, right. Right. So the Bosnian community would hear about a joke. I did about some Bosnians in St. Louis, there's a big Bosnia community there, but it would go crazy viral, not only here, but in the Bosnian communities, but in like Bosnia.

And the beauty of this is they felt represented not in a hacky way. They felt represented in a cool way. They didn't know that people knew this about them. They thought it was just their community. And then they're seeing it on a YouTube page with millions of views and the world is laughing at it as well. Laughing is something they might be proud of and they're cool with being represented in that way.

When you do that, the community wants to share it. They want to be part of it. You feel like you're hearing about them. It's an invitation to the universal table in some sense, right? It's a place where everybody, and that's what is so wonderful about stand-up comedy.

It's like a music concert, right? It's the same sort of thing, is that people can go there and enjoy something spontaneously, communally, and play together. I'm really happy, by the way, about this insight, about play. I think if you had to set the world up and you wanted to figure out what the best story you could possibly tell is, that would be an antidote to the depredations of power. It does seem to me that a story about play is the right one because there's nothing more

fun than that. What are we going to do this weekend? What are people around the world going to do this weekend? Exactly. They're going to play with death. They're going to play with the most terrifying thing in the world. Yeah. Right? The most offensive costumes, but also the idea of death is what's, what's on it.

We need it. It's, and I got to give Louis C. Kate credit on this. Like Louis had a, he was talking about comedy and it's like making offensive jokes has existed for centuries. It would have been weeded out if there wasn't something that we needed. If there wasn't some catharsis in it, the idea of Halloween, like playing with death is crazy if you really think about it, especially for earlier societies. The most terrifying thing in the world to just dabble with it and joke with it and scare

people, we need it. We want that release, we want that play. Well, the alternative is to run in terror from it and hide, and all that does the thing about that is all it does is make it worse. And so I think, you know, here's another way of thinking about it. So when I was training people who were agro-phobic to get back on elevators, let's say. We basically did that by playing. And so the way it would work was,

all right, I'm afraid of this elevator, I can't get on this elevator. I'll have a panic attack. My heart rate will go up to 150 beats per minute. I think I'm gonna die. I'm gonna make a fool of myself. It's just, I'm gonna wanna go to the emergency room. It's gonna be humiliating and dangerous. It's just, I'm gonna wanna go to the emergency room. It's gonna be humiliating and dangerous.

It's just a catastrophe. It's death. I had a client who actually said when the elevator's doors opened, she said, that's a tomb. And so she was afraid of dying in there. And so, in a sense, what we would do is play because I would say, well, you can't get on the elevator.

She said, that's right. And I said, well, you know, can you look at a picture of an elevator in a magazine? It's like, well, I think I could do that. And so that's on the edge of play, right? It's like, well, it's a bit challenging and it's a bit threatening, but I could do it.

And then maybe you have the person go out in the hallway and they can walk within 40 feet of the elevator. And so you find that line, it's a line, right, where the person is willing to walk up to that line and then one step farther. And that's really, again, what you're doing when you're telling a joke, it's you're finding that line

and then you're walking one step farther. And it manifests that spirit of play. And it helps expose people to the things they don't want to think about. In a safe environment, it exposes them in a safe way. Right, Pus, we all know that we're playing. It's just like, it's honestly, it's like flirting. You're flirting with a girl or you're flirting with a guy, flirting is finding that line of what is polite and then being funny enough to go a little bit past it and now everybody's in that little naughty territory.

It's still safe because we're playing. It's not like you're coming on too strong or like grabbing people or anything like that. You're being naughty, you're flirting, you're like, yeah, what if we were married? Where were we going vacation? And the girls like, what do you talk about? I just met you, what do you mean we're married?

And now we're creating this hypothetical scenario where we're both dancing the dance and it's safe because it's play, we're able to access. I think that's also how women evaluate men while they're dancing. It's like, ooh, well, can you play, right? Are you all hands? Are you two dead sat on your instrumental goal

or can you control yourself well enough to play? And it's got to be to dance properly is to be in that flirtatious zone exactly. And that also indicates that you're responding to the cues that the other person is putting out there in the most accurate possible way. Right now you're going to be pushing slightly because you want to find out where the boundary is. And that's probably what makes it exciting. But if you're going to be pushing slightly because you want to find out where the boundary is. And that's probably what makes it exciting. But if you're just rampaging in past all the boundaries, then you're just a dimwit.

Yeah. Maybe a dangerous one. So and that's, yeah, and that's the problem with politics is there's no play. It's boring. It's binary. There's no fun whatsoever. Everything that you say can get you canceled for this or canceled with that.

Nobody's just allowing it to just play and I will give Trump credit in this regard. Yeah. He was just up there playing. Like he didn't give a f***. He's like, I'm gonna make fun of this guy for being short. I'm gonna make fun of this person for killing everybody.

I'm gonna make fun of everybody on the stage. And people reacted to play. They also reacted to to him speaking on things that their fringe groups cared about, but there was an element of play. You know what I was there? I was given a book, and unfortunately I didn't keep it, which was a big mistake, which was someone had published

quite a beautiful book. It looked like a leather bound library copy, you know, a classic book. It was the collective poetry of Donald Trump. And what they had done was taken his tweets and turned them into poems, page after page after page. And I got to tell you, man, they were hilariously fun. It's funny.

It was unbelievably funny. He's unbelievably costically witty. And yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, and that was certainly one of his charming features. That's like Megan, Megan Kelly, it's shout out, Megan, I love Megan, but Megan Kelly goes, you've called women pigs and you've called women ogres or something like that. And he was like, just Rosie O'Donnell, that's a funny playful thing to say on the world stage. You know, to say on the world stage, you know, calling what surface polka-hontas is funny. Like it exposed politics in a lot of way because if somebody's having fun, that's infectious,

especially if they're having fun around everyone else who is not. You've been at this stuffy dinners. I'm sure they invite you all the time. And there is a table that's laughing and goofing around and having, it is impossible not to look over at it. It's impossible not to see what's happening. Where is this fun and why are you guys having so much fun? You enjoying yourselves.

So, so I have a theory of leadership and you tell me what you think about this. So imagine that all leaders are confronting dragons of one sort or another. Okay, now the question is, are you the man for that dragon? Because some of them are large enough to burn you very rapidly to a crisp. And so you might say, well, how do we judge that? How do we know if you're the, if you're the knight for that particular dragon? And here's a good rule. in her dragon. And here's a good rule. If you're frightened into paralysis or tempted towards tyranny in your attempts to deal with the dragon, which is, this is so catastrophic that I have to panic and everyone has to listen to exactly what I say, then you're too small for the dragon and you're not the right leader. And so I was thinking about this in relationship to the climate crisis. It's like if the, if carbon dioxide transforms you into a paralyzed tyrant, you're not the

right man for the environmental job. And then you might say, well, who would the right man be? And that might be someone who can approach that particular dragon with a certain degree of play. And what would that be? So give me what is the play? How do we play with the environment? Well, I would say we at least agree not to put in rules by compulsion. Yes. Right.

So here's a rule. No rules instituted by compulsion because it's bad play. It's like you have to do this. It's like, that's because that's a bad policy If you can't get me to go along with it willingly then you're a tyrant and you think the crisis is so important that you get to be a tyrant But that just shows that you're not a very good leader Yeah, yeah, don't you think I mean so yeah, you don't get to say you have to do this. Not if you're a good leader.

You have to say, here's a bunch of reasons. You have to tell a story back to what we were talking about earlier. I have to tell you a story and you think, yeah, man, I could get on board with that. I'm all in on that. And that's a much better arrangement anyways because then I don't have to enforce your compliance. You know, you talked about these projects

that you were engaged in creatively. If you want them to work, everybody's got to be on board, right? If you're going around hitting people to make them listen to you, then you're almost inevitably doing the project to failure. Because first of all, they're not going to be all in.

And second, they're going to take the revenge where they can get it. Yes, they have to believe in the project as well. They have to be pot committed as well. They have to believe in you, especially if you're their leader. Yeah, I mean, the dragon, the dragon metaphor, you can almost see day to day with like bullfighting. I know it's unfair because they stab and wound the bull, etc. But like, he's not terrified of the bull running away.

He's scared of the bull. He's dancing with the dragon. Yeah, no kidding. stare at the bull. He's dancing with the dragon. Yeah, like that's for sure. That's what the fuck is. Exactly. It's playing with death. It's the same as Halloween, man. It's the same thing to play with death.

So why do we need that? Maybe that's how we understand comedy. Maybe that's how we understand Halloween. Maybe that's how we understand like the darker sides of our nature. And people probably just want to ignore them. Well, maybe I can give you an example of that. So I was just on the Via Dolorosa with Jonathan Pagio, who's a Greek Orthodox Christian thinker, who's also an expert on postmodern theory, and we went to Jerusalem.

We did a documentary there, which will be released sometime in the next six months, and we walked the 12 stations of the cross in Jerusalem. And then we went to the church of the Holy Sepulcher, which is founded on the crucifixion spot. And you might say, well, what were we doing? And what is everybody doing who's walking that road? And the answer is they're playing with tragedy and death. Interesting.

Well, that is what's happening. So you imagine that the crucifix itself is a symbol of torturous death Well, why would people be gazing at it and the answer is well because you have to gaze upon that Which frightens and terrifies because otherwise you can't master it and so each of those stations of the cross You know what you're marked out both mythologically and geographically, because it isn't certain where each of those events occurred, let's say, it's a play. It's a passion play.

And the passion is, look man, sometimes you're going to have to die. And sometimes you're going to be exposed to be trail. And sometimes you're going to be under the thumb of a tyrant. And sometimes you're going to be questioned the thumb of a tyrant and sometimes you're going to be questioned about truth by a moral relativist and sometimes criminals are going to be preferred to you. That's all going to happen to you in your life and you bloody well better get ready for it. And the way you get ready for it is by playing with it. But playing with it. You bet. Yeah. That's exactly what's happening. It knows religious rituals. It's

play with death. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I was there as well. You got to touch the stone. And while I was, you know, I was at the, not anointing stone, what is the stone where, where Jesus' body was wrapped up. Yeah. You mean in the church of the Holy Supposure? Yeah. Yeah. Right. That's where he was wrapped after the crucifix, yeah. And it was a beautiful moment and I saw people touching it and I wanted to touch it, but I also was feeling naughty. I was like, this is such an important place in history

and I was wowed by the fact that I could actually touch this thing where like Jesus' body was also there. But because of those high stakes, I was like, ooh, what's the naughty thing that we could do over here? What's, huh? And I think that that dance we have is why theme parks exist. Like, why are we on roller coasters? Yeah. You know, we want to face it. What is that about? Well, that's why we go to horror movies too, which is really a very difficult thing to understand. And it is, you know, the fundamental spirit of religious affirmation, I would say, is to play with catastrophe, fundamentally, right? And so, and the reason we have to play with catastrophe is because we have to face catastrophe.

And so there's all sorts of things we do that appear very strange. Like you said, amusement parks are a good example of that because they push you to the limits of your physical tolerance and they do it in a way that is constrained danger. And horror movies obviously do that psychologically. Yeah, it's like sparring. Yeah. You know, like sparring prepares you for fighting in life, but you do it in a more safe environment. It allows you to be more calm and comfortable in those circumstances that happen in life that are not going to be calm and comfortable otherwise. Yeah.

Yeah. It's like, you know, it's all part of that dragon confrontation process is that you want to find a dragon that's large enough to pose some threat, but that you have a reasonable chance of overcoming. And then what you have is an optimal challenge instead of something that terrifies you. And then you build the challenges across time. And that's what you do as you become competent. Think about, you've seen the rise in popularity of Jiu Jitsu, right? And obviously we got to give our good friend Joe Rogan credit for this MMA credit

for this Dana White. But jujitsu is the closest you can come to death while training because if somebody chokes you and you don't tap, you just die. You know, like in boxing, you know, you get knocked out, you get back up, like it takes a lot of brain trauma with like really small gloves to be killed while you're sparring. I don't think you're getting killed while you're sparring in boxing. You got the head gear, the gloves are much bigger. But in jujitsu, if someone just keeps choking you and there isn't enough oxygen that gets your brain, you could potentially die. I could see why people like playing with that.

Yeah. I could see it. It's, well, you know, what you find, what you find in therapy, it's very, very interesting. There's a large body of research supporting this. So the idea, first of all, was that if you exposed people to things they were afraid of and you paired that with a relaxation response, they would learn to relax instead of being afraid. But then it was rapidly discovered

that you didn't have to teach them to relax. And that kind of blew the whole theory because the theory was they had learned to be afraid and now you were teaching them to relax. It's like, no, all you have to do is expose them voluntarily and they get better. And then the theory was, well, they'll get better in relationship to the specific thing

you're exposing them to, but the symptoms will just crop up somewhere else. And that also improved. And that also improved. Yeah, but that also proved to be wrong. And it was because, you know, when my client said, this is a tomb when the elevator doors opened, what it showed was she wasn't confronting the elevator. She was confronting her fear of death. And it showed was she wasn't confronting the elevator. She was confronting her fear of death. And she really was doing that. And what she was learning was that by putting

herself in a position where she was confronting the threat of death, she could observe that she could actually handle it. And then she got braver. And that's what happens to people in psychotherapy when you use exposure therapy is they don't become less afraid. They become braver. And that's what happens to people in psychotherapy when you use exposure therapy is they don't become less afraid. They become braver. And that generalizes. And so what they see is that there's something within them that can overcome even the things they're most afraid of. And that's, well, that's a good thing to talk about in relationship to Halloween because I mean, Halloween plays with death and decay and predation and monstrosity and everything that's dark and it's become an immense holiday. And I think it is because our culture is so sanitized that we take everything that smacks of death away and hide it and to some degree thank God for that.

But it still presents us with this conundrum, which is, well, we have to face our our finitude and our mortality and how best to do that and the answer has to be something like in a spirit of play. God, it's a hell of a thing to think about when you're thinking about death itself. But how brave of us to get a challenge? Yeah, right. Well, that's exactly right, man, and I think that's actually a good question, right? How brave of us question get a challenge. Yeah, right. Well, that's exactly right, man. And I think that's actually a good question, right? How brave of us question Mark? And the answer to that might be, well, how brave can you be? And God only knows how brave you can be.

Oh, you can be brave enough to play with death. And this is why discourse has completely fallen apart because there's no room to play. There's no room to say the wrong thing. There's no room to play. There's no room to say the wrong thing. There's no sparring session. There's no Halloween. There's no trying out the jokes, trying out the ideas. It is deaf. It's not play.

It's not even a practice room. Yeah, well, that's the problem with cancel culture, you know? Well, you know, I learned years ago when I was lecturing at Harvard. I was talking about very serious things, about the Holocaust, and about the catastrophes and the Soviet Union and all of that absolute abysmal, hellish mess. And there was a little voice in the back of my head that said, you know, you're too serious about this. If you really mastered it, you could do it in a spirit of play.

And I thought, oh my God, you know, really? How can that possibly be when discussing things that seriously, how could you possibly do that in a spirit of play? And the answer would be something like, well, if you really mastered it, you could. And that the mastery would be evident in the fact that you were playing.

Now, that didn't really tell me how, right? Because it's still a big problem of how you do that. But I do believe it's true. I believe it's fundamentally true is that the mastery that someone demonstrates over a given subject domain is precisely proportionate to the degree that they can do it in the spirit of play. Yes, 100%. Yeah. Yeah. How do you play with these like dark, these dark tricky topics? I think that was even with the Kanye thing. I think that was so tricky is like, especially with the anti-semitism that was bubbling out. Yeah. I think anti-semitism is this like, it's such a unique form of hate

because one, most people are not familiar with juice. Most people, so if you're not familiar with them, most people. So if you're not familiar with them, you haven't spoken to them and talked to them about how they react to this. And two, the way that we get taught, like World History, at least in America, is that like Germany was regular, and then all of a sudden, one day they just started hating Jews, and then they were putting them in concentration camps. We don't get taught what Hitler used and Gervals used to build up the resentment for the Jews. That's not really spoken about to us. So I think a lot of when the Jews hear these things like they run the media, they run the banks, it's red flag.

It goes, uh-oh, this is how it starts. It's happening. And then when non-Jews hear it, they go, well, those sound like some pretty cool stereotypes. I mean, imagine someone like a black friend of mine who wears glasses, even though he doesn't have a prescription. So people think he's less threatening when he's walking down the street. Imagine his reaction to hearing the stereotype, own the banks, run the media, own sports teams. He's going, give me those stereotypes right now because he's unfamiliar with what those stereotypes lead to.

So there's this huge chasm with understanding the hate of a group of people and how those things which seem complementary, they seem an aspirational. Like you want to be able to be in power positions, but because we haven't been taught that those are the things that first are said before you dehumanize a group of people and then kill

six million of them Yeah, well part of the problem with with the with the discourse about about the Jewish minority is that Jews are disproportionately successful for all sorts of reasons and so that That fact easily feeds into conspiratorial thinking, right? Partly because minorities are annoying, you know, but they're not nearly as annoying when they're unsuccessful because at least they can, what would you call a tone for the sin of being a minority by being oppressed and miserable. And so that's a positive thing. But if they're saying, if they're people, then they're really annoying because not only are they a minority,

but you know, it's easy to become envious. And then it's also easy to presume that it's some sort of conspiratorial practice on the part of that minority that's giving them an advantage over, you know, you who's striving ahead so nobly. You're giving a hypothetical to how the majority sees minorities, not how you see minorities. Yes, I can see it clapped on. Yes. Yes. Hopefully the listeners and watchers will have done the same thing.

I can see it clipped. Look, minorities are annoying, but especially the rich ones. I mean, yeah, like, yeah, yeah. You can be sure the young Turks are gonna clip that out. But yes, yeah, I see, I don't know, I just see it. I saw it kind of happening in real time. And I'm planning to talk to him soon, I think. Say again, I'm planning to talk to Kanye soon, I think. Say again, I'm planning to talk to Kanye soon, I think. And what are your thoughts about that? Have you had...

Yeah, what is your thinking with that? Well, I'd like to find out what's going on. I mean, he's a stunningly creative person, and he seems like a bit too much of a treasure just to throw in the dustbin. You know, obviously, he's got his problems like most people do. And the thing about geniuses is they have lots of problems just like ordinary people,

but they're also geniuses. Yes. Yes, that's a good thing to keep in mind. I think that Kanye's genius, outside of music, I think he's an incredibly gifted producer, but I think Kanye's genius is his ability to influence. And then the ability of, then the genius of influence seeps into industries that are completely subjective. Fashion is nothing. Fashion is, if you can

get the most influential people to wear a garbage bag, that is cool now. Things go in and out of style. Skinny jeans are cool, then baggy jeans become cool. There's not a specific cut that makes them go better. Well, there's an edge, you know, just like the edge we were talking about in comedy. And fashion comes, imagine there's a social hierarchy. Yup, fashion goes from the top down.

It even happens with names. And so there's a standard trajectory of names. The aristocracy picks names, whatever the aristocracy happens to be. Then those names become popularized till everyone has them. Then they go out of fashion and then they disappear for a number of generations.

And then the aristocracy rediscoveres them and the names cascade down the hierarchy again. Fashion is all about being on the edge, just like comedy, right? Is like, are you with it? Are you awake? Are you on the cutting edge? And that changes where the edge is.

Exactly, because, and I would say it doesn't start at the top of the aristocracy, but I'm just, we're just pulling, what is it? I'm picking whatever. But essentially fashion, what is it? I'm nitpicking, whatever. But essentially fashion, what is cool is a rejection of what is popular. Cool will always be the rejection of popular. Right, right.

So what happens is the skinny jeans become ubiquitous and then you start seeing them in the mall stores. Yes, exactly. And then there's a target. There's like, exactly, target has them. And then there's a small group of like cool kids that exist in a few different areas that start rejecting the norm even before they're in target.

Those kids, once the thing is in target, because they're such, I don't want to say devil's advocates or counter culture, whatever it is, those kids are the wheel influencers. They get copied by a guy like Kanye Kanye and then Kanye's influence puts his clothing on a bunch of other famous people who have influence. And then it trickles down to me, other people, et cetera. And now we're changing out. Those kids, those kids, the influencers that you're talking about, those are the aristocracy among their age group.

They're the creative kids there on the edge. No, that's fair. That's fair. Within their peer group, they're the coolest or they're the outsiders that nobody thinks is, no, they're probably the coolest. They say they're the coolest. But, yeah, well, if you, you know, if you've got it exactly right, you can be cool and an outsider at the same time. And that's the real artist, right? I mean, yeah, yeah, yeah. So, all right, you know, we should stop because we've been going for quite a long time. It's so, yeah, go, go.

It's been a pleasure to talk to you. I should let everybody watching and listening know that I'm gonna talk to Andrew for another half an hour behind the Daily Wire Plus platform. We're gonna talk more biographically. I wanna find out exactly how he shaped his career. Hello everyone. I would encourage you to continue listening to my

conversation with my guest on dailywireplus.com