The School of Greatness - 959 How to Deal with Backlash, Find the Truth, and Live in Gratitude with Dave Rubin

Episode Date: May 27, 2020

“If you dip your toe in the pool, you might find out the pool is not that cold.”Lewis is joined by Dave Rubin, host of the Rubin Report and author of New York Times Best Seller "Don't Burn This Book," for a freewheeling discussion on free speech, big ideas, how to keep moving forward in the face of backlash, and whether you should clone your dog.For more Dave Rubin on the School of Greatness, visit lewishowes.com/959. And text Lewis at 614-350-3960.

This is episode number 959 with New York Times best-selling author Dave Rubin. Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, a former pro-athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur. And each week we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin. Albert Einstein once said, we cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.

And from the Roman historian Tacitus, them. And from the Roman historian Tacitus, it is the rare fortune of these days that one may think what one likes and say what one thinks. I think you'll find today's interview with Dave Rubin extremely fascinating. If you don't know Dave, he's a political commentator and comedian, and he's the host of the Rubin Report and the author of the New York Times bestseller, Don't Burn This Book. He's committed to, in his own words, free speech and big ideas, and his iconoclastic thinking has often made him the source of controversy. And in this episode, we talk about the importance of stepping away from news and or negativity

to reset our own thoughts, finding what's true to you and doing your own research on every idea, how to prepare emotionally for backlash and keeping moving forward regardless, his strategy for approaching interviews with people he may fundamentally disagree with, and the mob mentality that comes into play in dividing people who support different political parties. Dave was recently touring with Jordan Peterson, who also came on the School of Greatness for an amazing two-part interview last year. And if you liked those podcasts, then you'll definitely like this. And as always, while you're listening to this, make sure to share this with a friend because you have the power to change someone's life today by spreading some greatness to them right now. Let me know what you think about this at the end. And without further ado,

let's dive into this episode with the one, the only Dave Rubin. Welcome everyone back to the School of Greatness podcast. We've got Dave Rubin in the house, my man. Good to see you. Thanks for being here. It is good to see you, and I mean that in the most literal way possible. Because we haven't seen a human being in months. I kid you not, I've got my new associate producer, Michael here, who's doing some stuff for us right now and taking some pictures, but besides him,

I have not seen anybody. Are you sick of your husband? I'm sick of my husband. I'm sick of my dog. Your dog. You know what, I'm really sick of looking at a camera because i'm doing this whole book tour just staring into a camera a blank camera i'm imagining someone's face yeah i imagine someone they said to me some people are like you want us to send a picture so you can just look at my still face but i'm just staring into

that camera all day long so i genuinely mean it it is nice to see you it's good to see you man we lived in the same neighborhood for many years. Yeah, yeah. We live, I don't know, 10 miles away now. And I didn't really learn about you until about a year ago. I think when I was interviewing Jordan Pearson, I saw some videos of him with you. Yeah. Because I don't follow political stuff at all, but you also do non-political stuff. That's why you look young and happy.

Yeah. Healthy. Yeah, exactly. Vibrant, joyful. Yeah. Yeah, I'm just not really that into it. I feel like it's more confusing for me than anything. So I try not to focus on things that I'm ignorant about.

Try to learn a little bit, but it's like, if I try to speak in there, I'm going to get mauled. So I try to- That's actually probably a very healthy way to look at the world. You know, I always tell people, it's like, the people right now, especially in the midst of coronavirus,

the people that only look at the world through a political lens, like if you only see the world through Democrats, Republicans, liberals, conservatives, blah, blah, blah, or you wake up every morning and you're like, what did the governor do today? And what did the New York Times say about this thing and that thing?

It's like, all that can lead you to is endless misery because politics is not, I love politics. I'm a political creature. So I'm not pretending I have nothing to do with this. But if your whole worldview has nothing to do with anything other just the day-to-day political machination you will be miserable because politics is a battle of power. And it's like pretty much everyone in Game of Thrones.

Did you watch Game of Thrones? No. You didn't watch Game of Thrones? I watched the first two episodes and I couldn't get through it. You know what? I honestly didn't love it. I know we're gonna get a lot of hate for that. You didn't watch Game of Thrones? I watched the first two episodes and I couldn't get through it. You know what, I honestly didn't love it. I know we're gonna get a lot of hate for that. You didn't watch it and I didn't love it, but I did watch it.

I did watch the whole thing. And in Game of Thrones, basically everyone dies and the people that are around at the end, everyone they know is dead. And that's sort of what politics is. Everyone at some point dies. Well, everyone's gonna die one way or another, but it's sort of like this endless,

like just like crushing and slaughtering people, now in many ways through the mob, which is why I wrote the book, but like, I'm just not that interested in just politics. 27 Democrats voted for this and third, it's like, how do people- There's so many more interesting things out there. How do people who are in politics,

I would say you're in politics all day though, right? Yeah, no, I am in it all day. You're in it all day. This is the irony, but it doesn't define my worldview. And that's really what I mean. How do people who are obsessing about it live a good life? It's because you're constantly in stress and anxiety and anger and frustration and yay, we won. Oh, we lost. Well, that's one of the reasons that in chapter 10, the final chapter of the book, I lay out ways to get away from this stuff. You know what I mean? It's like you need to look, you know, the 20, cause certain people will say I'm not political. And that's

actually not what you said. You said, it's not totally my thing, you know, blah, blah, blah. And that, that makes sense to me. Cause not everyone can be political, but when people say I'm not political, it's like, well, politics cares about you. You know what I mean? So like, there's going to be something one of these days that comes down the pike and you're suddenly going to be like, oh man, my kid's going to be, I need something days that comes down the pike and you're suddenly going to be like, oh, man. My kid's going to be I need something for my kid or this, my family or immigration. Like I'm dealing with immigration because my girlfriend's from Mexico. So it's like.

So, yeah. Now I get interested. Now you suddenly care about politics. So so that's the interesting thing. It's like when people say, oh, I'm not into politics. You it will get you at some point because something is going to happen in your life, whether it's mexican girlfriend or suddenly your kid's school isn't funded enough or or is funded the wrong way or there's a charter school you want to send them to and they don't want you to go there marriage it's like it's all there um but getting away from the day-to-day thing um is why i wrote

chapter 10 the way i did because it's a political book but then i wanted to say to people hey we need spaces to not be political. Like one of the things that drives me nuts is that when we had sports, remember when we used to have sports? You remember that? You'd go to a basketball game. I'm watching The Last Dance right now.

It's like, give me. Wait, can we talk about that in a second? I wanna finish this up, but I wanna talk about that. So when one of the things that I try to do is I take August off the grid, no phone, no news, news no nothing you lock your phone in a safe i literally lock it in a safe and i've done it for three augusts in a row and i'm telling you you can re-set your brain your heart your body you feel alive again you can clearly

think everything right it is not i am not exaggerating i am not being over the top I am not exaggerating, I am not being over the top. Literally like around August 15th, like about two weeks in, songs will start playing in my brain. Like I will literally be walking down the street and suddenly a song is just like rolling in my head. And the reason for that is, your brain's got a lot of stuff in there, a lot of stuff. And if you're in the day to day, what the hell's going on?

Who am I fighting with? Somebody I didn't know across the world said something that I mildly don't like and I gotta to destroy them. You're, you're inundating yourself. We have no idea. I got my phone here somewhere. We have no idea what that little black mirror is doing to us. It's rewiring us. And basically I rewatched a matrix a couple of days ago and it's like, we are the batteries. The matrix is actually happening right now. You know, the matrix, the whole idea is that the human, the organic being became the battery for the digital machine, right? And we are actually doing it. What was that, 25 years ago, that movie? Yeah, yeah.

It's about 25 years ago. And it's still, man, that thing stands up. You know, sometimes you watch a sci-fi thing and just because of tech and how things change, it's like, ah, that feels too old. But that thing is still pretty. Oh, it's like, ah, that feels too old. But that thing- It's still pretty. Oh, it's pretty. It's pretty evergreen. It's beautiful. It's pretty current still.

Yeah. Wait, can we do Last Dance for a sec? Let's do it, man, yes. Are you loving it? So I haven't watched it, but I- Oh my God, it's amazing. But 92, okay. You remember which finals that was?

No. So this is- How old are you? I'm 43. I'm 37. 37, okay. So around the same time. I was like nine.

Yes, okay, so it's a little early for you, but 92 was when Jordan and the Bulls beat the Blazers, and it's the famous moment with the shrug, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, of course. He hits the six three-pointers, 35 points in the first half. You see Cliff Robinson just crumble as a human. But my hero in life to that point,

and in many ways even still now, was Clyde Drexler. He's unbelievable. in life to that point, and in many ways, even still now was Clyde Drexler. He's unbelievable. Clyde the Glide. I love this guy. And I still do. We've actually, we text every now and again, which is great. And, you know, he's totally apolitical. We live in very, very, very different worlds, but I just saw this guy playing and he was so smooth. He never showboated. He was calm and cool. I mean, the nickname Clyde the Glide, like that. And I just, my dog now is Clyde. So we call him Clyde the Glide. We named him after Clyde. But what I loved about him was, you know, all of these guys, especially now, it's always about them. You know, that you hit a three, you dance, you shimmy, you pound your chest, you look at the

crowd and all that stuff. And like, I was never into that. Maybe that's partly why I interview people the way I do and the rest of it. But Clyde was just like, his head was kind of down. He used to dribble with his head down. You know, you're supposed to dribble with your head up, but he would dribble with his head down. And then, you know, you'd look at the end of the game and you'd be like, he scored 42 points,

had 11 rebounds and eight assists. You're like, I didn't even know he was playing. Right. Because he was just calm and cool. So it was like the Barry Sanders of basketball. Yeah, in many ways, Barry Sanders. Go off the field. Barry Sanders, the guy who was freaking amazing,

but quiet off the field, never show, but he just went in and did his work. And there's something I really, really respect about that. I don't know why as a 12-year-old or 13-year-old that that really appealed to me because you would think it's odd. It's like you'd like all the other stuff, but for some reason that appealed to me more

than the guys that were out there making it all about themselves. I think there's people that love the humble achiever. And then there's others that love the Muhammad Ali's, the Mayweathers, the McGregor's that say what they're gonna do and they do it. They call their shots and they do it. But I just feel like that's a lot harder of a life to live.

There might be big upside, but big lows as well. And I think also the way and the time that we like those things is different. So like I also came to love Kobe Bryant and Kobe Bryant was the ultimate showman. He wanted to take out everybody. He was an incredible orator too. I mean, every interview with him. And I'll tell you the day that the day before Kobe died, we're here in LA obviously. And I was flicking through the channels, you know, there there's a, the spectrum Lakers channel, we're here in LA obviously, and I was flicking through the channels, you know, there's the Spectrum, Lakers channel, whatever it is, and Kobe was doing a show on there and I saw him and you know, he kind of had half-shaven,

or he sort of had like a little bit of a beard at this point, and I was just flicking the channels and I swear to God, the first thing that popped in my head was there is a guy living his best life. This is literally the day before he died. And the next day I was going to San Francisco, I think, and just as I pressed the Uber, I saw on Twitter and I couldn't believe it,

just like everyone else, I was like, this is made up, because you always see that, somebody's name, and you're like, no, no. And I teared up and then I was late for the airport and when I got into the Uber, it was a young black guy, probably late 20s. He was hysterical crying. Oh man.

And we sat there and I cried too. And he said, I may not be able to drive. I said, let's just take a couple minutes. And we talked about basketball the whole time, how much he loved Kobe, how he taught him the Mamba and taught him about passion and drive and all those things.

And I know this is quite a tangent from wherever we were going, but like when you see people like that, that's the thing about Kobe that's so weird. It's like, it doesn't fit reality sort of that something like that could happen to someone like him. And that's not to, to demean, you know, his kids or anyone else that was in there. But when you see someone that was so doing what they were put on this earth to do. The highest level. The highest level. And it's not just, you know, a lot of athletes, they finish up and then it doesn't quite work out right.

Even Michael Jordan, you could tell it's like, he owned the team, he came back. Even now it's like a little bit of like, what's going on there. But Kobe was freaking thriving. I mean, he won an Oscar. The schools, the Oscar. Schools, the podcast, the books.

He was creating after basketball. Tiffany and I got to interview him a year and a half ago. I got to watch that. I'm going to watch that today. It went viral when it came out on ESPN and NBC and Olympics.com and Lakers. It went everywhere because we talked about love. We talked about family. We talked about these other things that he normally doesn't talk about.

And he set an example that I'll always remember. And Tiffany was there. It was just me and Tiffany filming. Where we went to his office at... The interview was set for something like 8 o'clock in the morning. First thing in the morning in the Orange County at his office. We get there, I think, around 6.30. Thinking, let's get there super early.

Let's set up the cameras. Make sure we have everything ready. And when we get there 6 30 a.m the assistant opens the door for us and like unlocks it opens the door and she's like this is where we normally film our interviews in this spot and i was like i'm not really feeling this can we walk around the office and check another location yeah and we walked through a long hallway with uh kind of windows glass um offices on both sides, kind of conference rooms into another big room.

Didn't like what we saw over there. We walked back through this long hallway with these offices on each side and the lights were turned off. And at one point when we crossed this office, I see a shadow in the back of this office and it's Kobe sitting there just like this looking up. His computer's turned off. There's no phone in his hand, no lights on, no distraction. The guy's just looking up like this, dreaming, visualizing,

staring into the distance at 6.30 a.m. And I talked to the assistant. I go, is that Kobe? Like he's in the back of the room. I was like, I think that's Kobe. I saw it for a second. And I was like, what's he doing here? And she was like, he's been here for an hour.

And he was up before then at four working out with his daughter in the gym you know playing basketball and teaching her about his mentality and she was like he's always the first one here and I'm like here's a guy who has it all five championships all the money in the world invested in businesses Oscar and he's still showing up setting the, which I thought was really cool. It's not just cool. I mean, it's truly incredible. And that's what I mean about like, when you heard about that moment, it's like, it feels like a rip in reality in a way, because, you know, we're all sometimes doing the best we can, sometimes not doing the best we can. And I always think about it sort of like when you're in your zone, when you're like really living life the best way you can.

Like at the moment, I'm in like a good spot. And I've really, and it's partly because of the book, but it's partly because of being around Jordan, who I know you've interviewed. Like I'm in a good run right now. And I find when you're in a good run, you actually start forgetting about time. You're like, holy cow, three months pass by. And, you know, some of that stuff that's always rattling around in my head, the old, the old demons or whatever's in there,

you kind of forget that they're there. Now that's not to say you're always gonna be on that path and we all then make mistakes and do all those things. That's kind of what life is about, right? Like figuring out a thing that works and trying to stay within those lanes as much as possible. But when you see someone like Kobe, who exactly what you just described,

it was so obvious to all of us. And then he's gone like that, it makes you just described. It was so obvious to all of us. And then he's gone like that. It makes you question reality. Like, what is this? What is this thing that we're doing every day that could just be ripped like that? What brings you back to perspective and gratitude? You know, why I talk about gratitude all the time. It's almost like this. You know, I talk to all these scientists, professors, doctors, researchers on happiness. And it always comes back to gratitude as being one of the main research scientific things that lead to happiness. And you get gratitude from perspective. You know, it's like, okay, my life used to be bad.

Now it's good. Now I'm grateful. Or someone lost a child or someone lost a parent. I've got mine. You know, that perspective helps us. You went on tour with Jordan for, what, a year or something? About a year and a half. Year and a half.

Yeah. This guy is probably blowing up more than anyone online right now. It's been amazing to watch his trajectory since the book came out. Yeah. What would you say has been the greatest lesson you learned from his example and the way he thinks? Because he's one of the most powerful thinkers today in a lot of people's opinions what's the greatest lesson you learned about yourself and a new belief that you adopted after being around him

yeah I lay out a bunch of those in the book actually and the funny thing about going on tour with him I mentioned this it's like we it wasn't planned he literally he was in my studio with Ben Shapiro. We do this interview and that night Jordan was doing his first ever theater show here in LA at the Orpheum. And we knew he was doing it and Pete first off, to put him and Shapiro in a room together, and I'm not even gonna include myself in that.

I was just the guy, yeah, they're playing tennis and I'm just, you know, okay, okay, let's make sure. I'm just, I'm the ball boy really. I'm just making sure the thing doesn't, you know, go out of the way. So we do that and we went for like two hours and they were just getting started, these two. And you know, the speed with which Ben talks.

And then, right, so that's Ben, right? And then you're watching Jordan with the hands. It's like, you know, I feel like I'm in a movie here. And I think what I've become good at actually, why I fit into this whole thing, is that I am able from a regular person's perspective, when Jordan goes off the deep end with all of this stuff, and Ben, yeah, what can the average?

How do we understand? That's it. That's why I feel like my role is in my show. It's like, how do we take a billionaire's mindset or the greatest athlete in the world and make some simple ideas so that human beings like myself can apply them? It's funny. I love that you're embracing it because it's very obvious that you are.

And that, for me, it's like people will be like, oh, Dave thinks he's like Jordan Peterson or something like that. I'm like, no, I do not at all. I was part of this thing that was incredible. But so we finish up the interview with them and they could have gone hours, but I wanted to be respectful of Jordan because he's doing this first test show.

He had never done a theater show. And literally as a joke, as he's walking out the door, I said, hey, Jordan, if you want, I'll come on with you tonight. I'll tell a couple jokes. That's it. I was like, I'll warm up the crowd. He looked at me, he didn't even think about it

for a split second. He's like, that sounds great, Dave. I'll see you tonight. Go there to the Orpheum, 3000 people. Wow. What was he gonna do without you? Did he have a setup man? Did he have a- No, he had nothing.

He was just- He was gonna walk out on stage and be like, okay, and lecture. It's Jordan. It's like, he just, it's sort of what we were talking about a little bit before the cameras went on, but he just does, he just does things. You just move forward. So we get there and it's jam packed.

And the announcer says, so now nobody knows I'm gonna be there, but the, which is fine. The announcer says, and now the host of the Rubin Report, Dave Rubin, and the crowd goes freaking bananas. And I couldn't believe it. Because this was just when the whole

intellectual dark web thing was taken off. All of us were feeling that like something special is going on, but we don't know what it is exactly. Are teammates are we a road touring group are we like combatants like what are we nemesis i like is this like what is this thing the crowd went crazy and i could i genuinely couldn't believe it i was like i cannot believe these people know me and from that moment i crushed it up there i made some silly jokes about lobsters and about the way he talks. He sounds like Kermit the Frog and some of that stuff. And the show was over.

The agents at CAA were there. They said, are you repped? I said, yeah, but let's talk. And we signed the deal like the next day and it completely changed my life. A year and a half later, we did 120 stops. We did something like 20 countries. I saw this man, so to answer your question,

I saw this guy change people's lives. Like not just talk about stuff, not just put out theories that kind of sound right, not give you faux personal wisdom. I saw him by laying out those 12 rules, the amount of people that I saw him get to stand up straight with their shoulders back, that clean their room. I mean, I could give you a million examples,

but I'll give you one, because this is the one that like, I actually took it out of the book, but it just stuck with me. We were in Ireland, we're in Dublin, and try to imagine like, this is a guy that he did not want fame. He was a clinical psychologist, right?

So this isn't like- Professor, doing research. Right, this isn't a guy that, this isn't like meeting a comic who suddenly becomes famous and it's like, oh, this is what I always wanted, or an actor, like this is what I wanted. He was still this humble, quiet guy from Alberta, Canada, who's touring with his wife and only eating red meat.

I could get him to have a whiskey every now and again, which was always nice. But we finished the show in Dublin. When you do these theater shows as the performer, you don't walk out the front because you're gonna be mobbed. So there's always this little side door and you leave a couple hours later.

And try to imagine just like the level of travel and jet lag and he stopped every single person for a year and a half that wanted to say hello to him. He shook their hand, he asked them what their name was. I mean, the guy was just off the charts. And these are very much things that I've tried to incorporate into my life. So that partly answers the question.

But we walk out and it's late night. He's signed all the autographs. He shook all the hands, the whole thing. He's tired. He sounds like a tired Cometh the Frog now. Yeah, now he really like his voice, his voice, cause also, you know, he has that thing actually,

where he talks about it sometimes, that the way he talks is sort of up here. And that's just like what happened to him sort of. But sometimes he used to say he would train himself to try to sound a little deeper. But I could tell when he was tired, his voice would trail off a little bit. And usually at the end of the night, the guy was beat. We walk out. We see these two guys.

One's about 60. One's about 20, 25. And they're crying. And they're sort of embracing. And they quickly, they see us. And they run at us. And it's me, Jordan, Jordan's wife and the tour manager. And it turns out they were a father and son

who had had a falling out about five years before who both bought the book, both showed up to the show because they were fixing their lives, saw each other at the show, made amends. And they stood there telling us that story, both of them crying. Then Jordan starts crying. His wife starts crying. the tour manager starts crying,

I start crying. It was like, it felt, I knew it as it was happening. I was like, I will never forget this. And I can give you a million other versions of like that sort of thing. People coming up, I got this job because of you. I got off drugs because of you. I got a better job because of you.

A guy that literally, we were in Sweden, a guy ran, that was running the jet bridge, he ran onto the plane. He was like, Jordan, I could get fired for doing this, but I just have to tell you, I got this job because of you, blah, blah, blah. And meanwhile, everyone on the plane's looking, who the hell is that up there?

But I saw so many things like that. Young people buying their first suits. I was in Stockholm at H&M. I was just buying a baseball cap because it was really windy. I heard the story. And literally the guy in front of me, young kid, he's probably 20.

He tells the cashier, I'm buying a suit because I'm going to see Jordan Peterson tonight. The guy goes, I'm going to see Jordan Peterson tonight. I tapped him. I was like, hey, they knew who I was. And then I gave him a shout out at the show. I forget what his name was, but I was like, I was like, Mike's here.

He bought his first suit tonight to be here. And the whole crowd applauded for him. And that really was the feeling of the tour. So what I got from Jordan more than anything else is if you say something true, you can change the world because that's what he did. It's not magic, it's not magic. We sort of think that that's not quite right somehow.

That like you actually can't change the world or the world is just this thing that like goes and you know you're an actor in it or something or maybe you can get your little piece and it's kind of okay or like something like that but like he lived up to those 12 rules it doesn't make him perfect it doesn't make him Jesus he's obviously had some issues since then which by the way he was open about as as some of them were were transpiring. But that is the lesson. You can change the world. If you fix yourself, you have no idea what putting a little order in the world can do. And I'm really trying to do that. I really am. Was there a belief that you had that was changed after that year that you were like, no, I'm 100% this thing and believe in this value and principle, but as time went on,

maybe I believe in the opposite or something. Honestly, it's probably the biggest belief that there is, which is belief. He moved me on this. So as we were on tour, there were a couple other tour stops that he did these debates with Sam Harris that you may have heard about where,

in essence, they had done a couple podcasts together. He's atheist, Jordan is a believer. Jordan is what I would call a sort of functional believer. I don't know that he believes in sort of like this undefinable magical God. And he always would say, I hate, when we would do the Q&A, he'd say the only question he hated was when people would say, do you believe in God?

Because he found it to be such a sort of amorphous question that no one- What is God? Right, because short of saying, yes, I believe, or saying, no, I don't believe, your answer is always gonna be muddled and nuanced. And I hate to tell you, but a lot of people can't deal with nuance

and the other thing. But what their debates really were about were pretty much the nature of reality. Like is reality and are the biblical eternal truths valuable and true versus what Sam would say, Like is reality and are the biblical eternal truths valuable and true versus what Sam would say, which I'm just paraphrasing both of their arguments. Obviously Sam would say that humans can basically come up with systems of belief that are eternal and good enough.

Sort of like enlightenment values around the 1700s of free speech and open inquiry, that like that's kind of enough. And I really, I was definitely in the Sam corner years ago, and I have completely moved to the Jordan side. I think you can be a complete secular person and non-believer and be absolutely moral and decent and good.

I know many such people, including Sam, but I don't think a society can organize itself around something, I'll say it a little differently. I think the only way a society can organize itself is around a belief outside of itself. You cannot organize a society. Look, that's what the United States did. What did the founders do that was so brilliant?

They said, here you go, you have God-given rights. We're just protecting those rights. That's what the whole point of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights is. They didn't say we gave you these rights. They said there are things that exist before us. And those things are the things that we will build a system to create. Because if you say that the system itself made you free, if the system, our government made us free, well, you're saying man made you free, but no man made me free. No man made you free. You were born free. We are free as human beings. Now, a government can take our rights,

but it didn't make me free. And we're seeing a weird version of that right now with coronavirus. It's like, we're watching some of our rights be slowly eroded and we could debate whether that's all well and good. And right now our fourth amendment, the right to assembly, that's suspended right now.

That's big, but we're not really talking about that. So I would say Jordan moved me on what really, I don't know, in many ways, it's the core question of life. I just don't think you can, a society can do it otherwise. So for 40, I guess, years, were you a non-believer in God or a certain religion or, because you grew up Jewish, right? Jewish kind of. Yeah, see, I mean, Judaism has like, Jew-ish, right?

Well, that's the funny thing. Cause Judaism really more in a, in like a modern sense, it's more like, oh, do you like Seinfeld and bagels and lox and like have a sense of humor? Like that's very much like what we think of being Jewish. Some of the traditional dinners or something. Yeah, then okay, you're gonna celebrate Passover, you eat some matzo, like that kind of thing.

And I very much had that. I came from actually a more religious family than that, but not like super, super religious. But I think the difference for, and obviously I'm not speaking for all Jews, I'm not speaking for all believers, all Christians or anything else. But I think the sort of core difference

when Jews and Christians- You and I are so similar, because we have to qualify every time. Everything we say, otherwise people come at you. Well, they're gonna come anyway because they know where to cut the video. I know, it's crazy, sorry, go ahead. But I think the difference in a vague sense

or in a broad sense between the way Jews believe and the way Christians believe is that Christians believe in a very personal relationship with God, is that Christians believe in sort of like a very personal relationship with God, where Jews, it's sort of like the sort of like existential and eternal struggle of finding out what truth is. And that's very different. Those are very different things.

I'm not saying one is better. I'm not saying one is worse. Look, the history of the Jews, we don't have to go into it. It's a pretty painful, brutal, pogromed, holocausted, lot of death history. So I don't think it necessarily came with some banner of protection around it. It obviously didn't.

But so when you asked me, was I a believer in a traditional sense or something like that? I was not a believer or a believer. I was never taught that that was actually that important. It was more like, what did you put into the world? So what would you say that you believe in now? Is it you believe in this idea of God

or you believe in a religion or you believe in a- I believe in some eternal truths that have to exist outside of ourselves. It's the only way- There had to be a creator. There had to be a creator. Something had to start this and it had to be something with some level of intelligence outside. I don't think we're just atoms flying around.

Maybe we are in a simulation too, right? Everyone's big into the simulation idea. I don't even think that would preclude a creator at the beginning of that thing, right? Like when you're playing Sims or whatever, I don't know, one of those games, like you're the god of that game. So like you started somewhere,

but someone started you and somebody had to create that world. So these conversations can always go in like, we could parse this off into 80 different roads. I mean, I love this topic. I'm curious in a world of abundance of info and ideas, free thinking, videos, media, influencers, persuading people, enrolling people in their ideals. How do we, as young people, how does anyone find their values and their beliefs?

Yeah. It's tough. Especially when you say, oh, I changed my belief at 40. It's tough. It's a great question because it's tough, right 40 and I changed, you know, it's like. Yeah, yeah. It's tough. It's a great question because it's tough, right? So, well, first off, I think there's a unique opportunity right now. So through the noise of the online world and for all the haters and the trolls and the bots and all that stuff, it's on you to pilfer out some truth out of it. That very much explains, by the way, how Jordan appeared. You know, it's like Jordan was saying this stuff for

a long time, right? He was saying this thing in the classroom. He was doing these biblical lectures for a long time. And then clearly the world, through the chaos of the world or the last 20 years of a zillion ideas coming at us all the time or the collapse of the mainstream media or the collapse of manhood in a certain way and we don't have good leaders anymore, political or personal, there was something crazy happening. And here's this guy who's been having this beacon, right? He's sending out a beacon saying there's some truth here, these biblical stories.

I mean, the one that I say in the book is like, why do we all think that the little guy can beat the big guy? Like, why do you- Yeah. My middle name's David, so I always felt like I'm the little guy, you know? David,, right? Like why am I always attacking Google every time they demonetize me or push one of my videos down? Well, it's not yeah. Well first of it sucks, right? It sucks, but why do I do it what no one in their right mind thinks that they can beat Google?

But but there's an eternal truth there David Goliath. I don't know if you're seeing what? Brian Rose is doing right now with London Real. Have you seen him? No, I'm going to do London Real in a couple days, I think. He just raised over a million dollars in literally two weeks. Because Instagram shut him down. Not Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter. YouTube is taking his content away. Why'd they do it?

I mean, nothing would surprise me at this point. Oh, David Icke? David Icke. He had him on and they deleted it. It had 100,000 views in an hour or something. They delete it. He tried to do it again. They delete it. Then they delete his account or suspend. And then everyone deletes his page. Wow. I mean I'm doing the London Real in a couple of days. I'll have to talk to him about this. And he raised literally from his audience over a million dollars creating something like, I forget the name of it,

but something like the free speech video platform where you can have these thinkers on and it's not gonna get blocked by a big corporation. I mean, I've had enough of a foray into this and I actually started a tech company in the middle of this called Locals.com where we're building digital homes for creators to protect them because I believe in competition.

I don't want all these people that want the government to come in and solve this. It's like, well, big tech is really big and government's really big. I don't really like these big things. So why would I combine these big things? So it's an odd spot for a lot of conservatives because this is the one where the conservatives are like,

hey, we love Trump and Trump's gonna help us. But if Trump loses the election, well, congratulations. Now the people that you don't like are also in bed with big tech. So that's a whole other thing. But that concept though, of big tech sort of deciding, we have no idea. This is the most important part. We have simply no idea how they're manipulating us. We have no idea when you put up a podcast, how many of your subscribers get those videos, how many they just don't send them to, what the algorithm says, well, oh, he's got Dave Rubin on this week,

his audience leans a little this way, we're gonna suppress it this way, we're not gonna show the tweets. You know that shadow banning, meaning suppressing tweets in your timeline, which is just supposed to be chronological, that's what we all signed up for with Twitter, right? You follow people so you get one chronological feed.

Shadow banning is in the terms of service. They tell you in the terms of service that they can de-boost, I think they use another sort of Orwellian term, but they can basically hide or boost other people. So in effect, what we're doing is- They're in control. We're playing a basketball game or any sports game.

The rules are rigged. We all know the rules are rigged. And then the outcome comes out and we're like, oh, I can't believe it happened. We're trying the rules are rigged and then the outcome comes out and we're like, oh I can't believe Blackjack in Vegas. Yeah, it's like and by the way guys some of you are gonna get better cards or no Some of you are gonna know what's the next card coming? You're gonna know when you got the ace coming And then we all pretend we don't know so it's such a big issue because it actually in many ways sits on top of Absolutely everything else. So I mean back to the question of how do we figure out what our values and beliefs

and principles are if we're thrown so much information from all these different opinions and ideas, government, free thinkers, YouTubers, whatever. Yeah. We look up to influencers who are doing crazy stuff. How do we actually set values and principles for ourselves? I'm glad you brought it back because I find sometimes when I'm interviewing somebody, you go on like a great tangent.

And then I'm like, what the hell was I asking? I completely, you know, cause- I didn't say a thing, I'm trying to be better. No, but I can see you're present. And that's the thing, like when you're in it, like when I'm doing the other version of this, when we're doing it the other way, it's like, I try to be in it as much as possible.

And sometimes when you're in it, it leads to the next great thing. You're three steps down and you're going, there was something back there that I try to be in it as much as possible and sometimes when you're in it it leads to the next great thing you're three steps down and you're going there was something back there that I wanted to pick up I think this is an important thing just to figure out because I have seen over the last 15 years whatever you know since I've graduated college let's say you know I had one vision and both set of beliefs that we're trying to get into college and then play professional football and then play professional football and then it's how do I make my first $5,000?

How do I make whatever? How do I sell? It's like your vision and things evolve and your values evolve, I would say, as you grow. So I think the only, so yes, I agree with your premise. I think the only way to actually do it is it's on you. I know that sounds kind of cliche and not like the perfect buttoned up answer, but it is now on you that you have access. Every single person with the phone

or with internet access has access to incredible minds at all time. In many ways, we're watching, and I think we're really seeing it exacerbated by Corona right now, but we're watching the university system collapse because all of these kids now they're going, wait a minute, wait a minute, why am I paying 30 grand a year and going to all this debt? I can be on Zoom for free. And they're doing it, Zoom for free.

And not only that, think about it right now. So just a couple of people, it's like you could learn psychology from Jordan Peterson on YouTube for free. Or buy his book and you'd get a membership for 20 bucks a month or whatever. And this is this thing that we're talking about, this access to information and knowing that there are good people out there who are figuring out ways to live kind of outside the system.

It's a beautiful thing, but, but your question really is how do you like, how do you pilfer something out of the muddle, out of the noise, out of the muck? That really is on you. I think the best thing you can do is what I've tried to do, and I suspect it's what you try to do. You try to find some people who are doing something approximately close to true. You know what I mean? Like they're, that you can just sense. How do you know what's true? When you see the leaders in government who are saying one thing that maybe your family doesn't agree with,

how do you know? I think you have to do the work. So you have to do the work to actually know facts. Okay, so we'll back up a little bit, right? So, okay, so how do you know what's true? Well, first off, there are book, you know, look, it's like, yeah, could you read books that are all manipulated or whatever?

But let's try to like clean it up a little bit. For the average person that's just going, man, I wanna figure out kind of what's true here. First off, I think, you know, this is where we gotta have a decent education system and it's very 50-50 on whether we have that. I've heard some interesting libertarian arguments that we just have to get the government

out of education altogether. Why is it that everyone in LA, you know, all the lefty liberals in LA that love to tax the hell out of you and throw money at everything, you know, all the lefty liberals in LA that love to tax the hell out of you and throw money at everything, you know where they all send their kids? It ain't public school, it's private school. So like these are the complex issues that underlie everything we're talking about. I think you have to be able to know some facts and not just narrative. So like one very simple one that we hear all the time is that there's this wage gap, this gender wage gap.

And the implication is that women make 63 cents or something on the dollar that the men make. And this is because of systemic misogyny and a patriarchy and all of these things. Well, you can actually do some research, go on Google. I would highly recommend a PragerU video by Christina Hoff Sommers, who is a true feminist, meaning she wants true equality

for women. She has fought for it her entire life. And she lays out why when they present these numbers, it's not exactly true. Do you know that men and women do different things? So there's a really fascinating version of this coming out of Sweden. It's like a documentary. It's like we can make a documentary persuade you into anything with facts or these, you know, information. Right. So you always have to be careful of the sources. And I wouldn't say just watch one video. And look, I'm mostly a libertarian when it comes to economics. And I can give you a couple great guys.

I mean, watch my interview with Thomas Sowell, who has been beating this drum for literally 50 years, who was a leftist and a Marxist. But I wouldn't say to you, watch that. That's the truth. Now you're done. It's like, okay, watch that. Now find a sort of lefty economist and match these two things. Match these two things. So when Thomas Sowell will say something like, you know, every time we throw money at something, we make the problem worse. So we have a welfare state that we all know doesn't work because if it worked, it would get people out of poverty, but we know it just keeps sucking people into poverty. Just put a bandaid on it and they stay in it.

They're not empowered. They're not taking responsibility. They're not, yeah. All of those things. Why? Because it's easy. Why would you get out of it? So the best example I can, and then, so, okay, that's a great point because then you can take

what you learn from an academic, right? And then you can map it to something in your life to see if it jives. So a great example of that would be that my sister she actually just moved out of New York City because of Corona but her plan was to live in New York City her whole life with her husband and kids they just left but she was in a you know one of these big 40 floor high-rises and it was basically half rent controlled and half market so she was paying I think around five

grand for a converted one bedroom so So they turned it into two. Yeah, they turned it into two kind of, and one of the bedrooms didn't even have a window with her two kids. She would refer to it as my little box. I live in my little box, right? Now the problem is half of the building was rent controlled. And what happens then is you've got people

that have the exact same apartment as my sister who are now paying 400 bucks a month. And then you can't blame them for not getting off the government dole because if you're looking at your numbers, if you're just looking at your life and you're going, well, the government's been giving me this 400. And then what happens is that it goes generationally.

So my sister will say, there are literally people here who were the grandparents, now their grandchildren are living there and they'll inherit that too. And they'll stay in that place because it won't force them to try to be more creative or hungry or resourceful. And by the way, again, you cannot blame them for that.

Because it would be like, let me get this straight. Like I could pay 400 bucks, I'm going to live in a nice area in a nice building and there's a doorman down there. Or you're telling me I can give all that up, get three jobs, work my butt off and have to leave and move to a much worse place. Commute an hour and a half, yeah, exactly. So I think that's a good example because what you do is you hear a theory.

So Thomas Sowell would say, the welfare state creates perpetual welfare. And then he'll lay out some numbers to do it, okay? And he's written a million books on this. Then map it to something that you know in your real life. And I would say the thing that really has shifted, people always ask me, have I really shifted on anything in these couple of years?

I have shifted on economics because in the process of all this, much like you, I started my own business. And you pay a lot of taxes here in California, man. We pay bananas. It's crazy. It's almost like they're making more than us. Not only are they making more than us, but what are they doing to us?

What are they doing to us? The more that they take from us as the job creators, the more they say to us, you can't give other people jobs. You can't hire more people because we don't give any money to hire people. Yeah, so here's my associate producer, Michael, right here. He's a great guy.

We just hired him right at the beginning of coronavirus, right? We sent all my guys Omaha Steaks in the midst of this thing because they're busting our butts for us. I treat my guys good. We pay all their health insurance and all that stuff I'm not I'm not tap patting myself on the back to say that I'm saying I have a vested interest in keeping my guys Happy because they will work hard for me and I can grow my business now I can tell you I don't really want more stuff in my life that that is the truth

I don't we have one car between the two of us, but we have a nice house We got it. We have a good life There isn't like I don't flip the internet, like what can I buy tonight? I really have the physical things that I want. So I don't mean they should tax me lower just so I could have stuff, although that would be well within my right.

Like if I wanted a yacht and I could afford it, that would be fine. But what I know as someone that runs a small business, if you cut my taxes right now, I guarantee you the first thing I'm doing is hiring somebody. Guarantee it. My guys are killing themselves right now working. We're all working 10 jobs. And it's like that. So what I'm saying here is hear what a great economist thinks, map that to your life

and see if it makes sense. And if it does, that's probably the right thought. And do that in religion, do that in relationships, do that in everything. Do that literally in everything. Find both sides and see what's true for you. Listen, I'm talking about a libertarian economist in Thomas. I'm not saying ignore the leftist economists.

Find that guy. They're out there. Find them and see if high taxes. I mean, you could also, I traveled the country with Jordan and every progressive city that we went to, Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles, the high tax places, guess what happens there?

People can't afford apartments anymore, ton of homelessness, drug use. Guess what, you're not gonna believe what happened in the low tax conservative cities, Dallas, Salt Lake City, you know what? Clean, clean, nice buildings. People can afford to rent. Very little homelessness.

And again, that's not a knock on homeless people at all. That is that we have to think about policies honestly, and we're not that good at it. We're not that good at it. But I mean, just because your values and truth and beliefs might be one way, does it mean that that is the truth and that is the value that everyone should have?

Or if someone else has their values, principles and beliefs, we should adopt that? Like what is the truth? Right, okay, so, well, what you're asking is, can one set of ideas be empirically better than another set of ideas, right? I think that's in essence what you're asking. So my answer to that would be yes, absolutely.

There are ideas that are better than other ideas. An idea of, oh, everyone should, we should kill everyone. That's not a good idea. Not a great idea, right? Like not a great idea. We can all pretty much agree. Which principles are the ultimate principle? You want like the primo, ultimate?

I'll tell you, I'll tell you as close as I can get to that answer is exactly what I lay out in this book. Individual rights is the most important thing, period. Meaning that everyone who lives in, let's just do it from an American perspective. Individual rights is the most important thing, period. Meaning that everyone who lives in, let's just do it from an American perspective, everyone that lives in the United States, regardless of gender, skin color, sexual orientation, any of that immutable stuff, if you are a legal member of the United States, I believe you should live under the exact same laws, period. That eliminates discrimination. Now, here's where the lefty argument would be,

oh, but some people come from money and some people don't. Well, yeah, that's life. That's tough. Some people are born with great physical attributes and some people are born disabled. Some people come from a lot, come from a little. Some people come from great homes where they're going to be enriched and set off into the world in a positive way. Some people come from broken families where they're abused and then that hampers their life and then that cascades through generations. But the government can't fix all of that. I think all the government can do is give you equal rights. And then it can basically say, now we're out of your way.

And then find the little spots where they have to jump in. That's it. Equal rights in terms of what? What does equal rights actually mean? Well, equality under the law, meaning there's going to be no law that discriminates on somebody based on an immutable characteristic. Gotcha.

That's it. We're not going to say black people get this, white people get this, gay people get this, straight people get this. Gay people get this, women get this. Yeah, that's it. It doesn't matter. Those things do not matter. And there's an odd-

If you're a human being, you get equal rights. Are you here legally? You got equal rights, we're good to go. And then we'll get out of your way. Now that's not to say we shouldn't have any government, although I really do like some of the really far right libertarian thinkers.

When you say far right, people think you mean like racist, but when I say far right, I mean like the disassembled government, like let's see what happens happens kind of Mad Max people. I love the idea. The Burning Man type of thing. Yeah, it's like the perpetual Burning Man people. But guess what?

Burning Man burns kind of hot, right? Like you can't live like that forever, right? And then he flames up at the end of the week too. Yeah, nobody wants to be cleaning those porta potties. Like that's the thing. And everyone wants a shower. Everyone wants a shower. Have you ever done it? I haven't. I haven't been called. You're too pretty boy for that. Like that's the thing. And everyone wants a shower. Everyone wants a shower. Have you ever done it?

I haven't. I haven't been called. You're too pretty boy for that. You can't do that. Every one of my friends has done it. And every year my friends like beg me to come and they're like, I've got a ticket saved for you. Every year they save me a ticket.

I'm just like, I don't feel drawn. Yeah. I love the people that go like, you're all awesome. I think maybe 10 years ago I would have enjoyed it. Now I'm like, come on man on i like sleeping on a nice bed now like i used to sleep in the back of like yeah buses and middle seats and back of planes and yeah so i like to have a comfortable bed i like to be clean i hear you and i'm gonna dust storm all day you know um this is powerful this is really interesting i'm curious uh you know we about Jordan and Ben Shapiro a little bit. When you did great thinkers, like Dennis Prager, who's a believer in Michael

Shermer, who's a skeptic. And we talked about, can you, can you have a moral society without God? And they, they hold completely opposite positions. And we, we debated it. And by the way, they happen to like each other very much. And it turns out in a bizarre, we found out that day that Dennis's current wife actually dated Michael years before his wife was there It was like a really weird strange thing, but like what a beautiful thing and it's like they like they view the world in the most Fundamentally different ways. I would say this for like Sam Harris and Ben Shapiro. Also, it's like Sam and Ben Disagree on literally everything I'm talking about friends Yeah, but well, I would say more,

I don't know that they're friends, like, I had been out to dinner with both of them a couple times, but I'm not saying, like, they're the chummiest chums, but they're allies- They respect each other today, yeah. They're allies in, like, the quest for us to live our best lives.

Yeah, that's great. What they view as their best lives are different things, obviously, Ben, from a religious perspective, and Sam from a humanist or an atheist perspective. So as for who won the debate, it's not really- Who do you think is a better debater in general?

Like if they're not debating each other, but in a debate. I think Ben in a debate, Ben's style, the quick hits of Ben, his mind operates like that. Jordan's strength is taking seriously complex, long argued ideas and extrapolating them. But that takes time. And I would say to Jordan, when this is really true and people find it hard to believe, but when we toured, he never gave the same speech twice. Every single night. I mean, try to imagine that, an hour and a half lecture. Some nights he would do all 12 rules. Some nights he would do one rule.

Some nights he didn't even talk about the book. He would talk about Twitter literally the whole night and relate it to his life. People loved it. I never, I mean, when I tell you that I would look at the crowd, cause you know, I'm sitting on the side of the stage so I can basically see Jordan from behind and then see the crowd. And I'm telling you, never, it never stopped. It never, never stopped. There was one night where we were on stage during the Q&A and someone asked a biblical question and he was coming up with some imagery from a biblical story, but he couldn't quite remember it.

And then suddenly we heard some screaming in the crowd and then like a crashing sound. And it turned out that somebody about 20 rows back ran at the stage, we saw the guy and then security tackled him. And I kind of freaked. Like I like, first I like kind of froze. It's like, you know, you don't expect, you know, even though we've been warned and we talked to security and all the things, but we didn't know what this guy was doing.

And I kind of froze. And Jordan, he now knows the whole room is like, holy shit. Like is someone about to kill them? Like what the hell is going on here? And Jordan, like in the most calming possible way, he completely saw what happened. He goes, guys, he said, everybody, I want you all to calm down. I saw his phone.

He had the image that I was talking about. And he got a little overly excited and he shouldn't have come up here like that. But I want you to calm down. But the way he just did that, and that sort of it answers your question earlier about Jordan as well. But I bring that up here because Jordan's strength

is understanding the human condition and working within that. Ben is a debater. Ben is a debater. I've seen him debate a ton of people. I've never seen Ben beaten in a debate. I've never really seen him. I've never seen him rattled.

What? I don't think I've ever seen him beaten in a debate. I don't think he's, he's probably not at his best every debate. But I've never seen him rattled. What? I don't think I've ever seen him beaten in a debate. I don't think he's, he's probably not at his best every debate. But I've never seen him purely beaten or someone like really get a point. Humiliate him or something. Cause he always has something to come back with, right?

He's got something. So that's just more of a style thing. I don't think Jordan, you know, Jordan would even say on stage sometimes, he'd be like, you know, I'm not, I'm not a combatant. He would say, you know, every time a hit piece comes out, he would be like, you know, I'm not that thrilled to have to fight it.

And I feel very similarly. It's like when I see them come out against me and there's a lot of them right now, you know, people that are just attacking me personally and that just have years of not liking me that, you know, hate me now. And it's like, well, I'm not really that interested in that you don't like me.

Some people like me, some people don't. But some people want that fight all the time. We talked about this before the show about getting hate. And I think the bigger that anyone gets, they're going to get more people that love them and more people that hate them. And you're getting a lot of hate and attacks. And I feel like when you're in the political game

in that world, you're going to get a lot more hate in general. Yeah. Extremists, people that are like shouting your name in praise and other people that are like trying to take you down I'm assuming I don't know if that's yeah So I don't know if I ever want that that life, but I think

You know, I know that life may come for you whether you like it will come for me Yeah, you know It's already coming even though all I try to do is speak positivity and just show the light of people and the best of people It's like I had been on he He's talking about being tied to his bed and bullied as a kid by friends or whatever, or fake friends, and how it affected his whole life. Like being bullied and made fun of and picked on. And I'm trying to like showcase the good about people.

Even if you don't believe in what they believe in, there's still lessons that we can learn from everyone. But even just doing that, people hate me for that. Do you remember this about two years ago? You know, Mark Duplass, the director and actor, he's been in a good- I recognize his face. He's done a gajillion things on HBO

and a whole bunch of stuff. He was, his brother, it's the Duplass brothers. His brother was in Transparent. He's been in a lot of stuff. I sort of became friendly with him on Twitter. And you may remember this about two years ago. He sent out a tweet that in effect, all it said was, I disagree with him on a bunch of stuff,

but Ben Shapiro is not the devil. It was something to that effect. Something like that. And he got. The mob went bananas. He deleted the tweet. Oh my gosh. He then, he then, well, Mark's a nice guy.

I've broken bread with him before privately. So this is not a knock on him as a human, but this is sort of what the mob is. He deletes the tweet. He then, but now they know they've got you, right? Because he didn't do anything wrong. All he said was this guy who I have political disagreements with is a human being,

something we all know to be true, right? He deletes the tweet. Then he issues an apology. He actually posts an apology about, you know, and then basically threw Ben under the bus and said, and you know, his racist past and all of this stuff, like just the red meat stuff that, you know, we all know is nonsense. And unfortunately what happens in that case is the mob came, Mark bent the knee, and then it's not like they ever let you get up. They now know we've got you and you will now stay down forever.

And that's one of the reasons whenever I see one of my friends or sometimes people that aren't my friends, sometimes it's even people that have gone after me, when I see them getting mobbed, if it's just, I will defend them. I will defend them even at a cost to myself because I mean, right now,

right now I have this crazy coordinated Reddit, just these underbelly of the gross internet all assaulting my Amazon reviews and they're all writing horrible things and none of them have read the book, they're not verified reviews and the rest of it. And it's funny, because it's called Don't Burn This Book. I wasn't expecting this to be 1941 Germany

where they were gonna like, the trolls were gonna show up and throw the books into the bonfire. But in effect, they're doing a digital book burning. Why would you burn a book? Well, you would burn a book because you don't want the ideas to get out there. So why are they, if my ideas are so nothing,

well, then why would they be assaulting the reviews? They're assaulting the reviews because they don't want people to read these ideas. It's probably the best thing that can happen in the book. In many ways- More people talking about it. Well, sales-wise it is, but I'm not gonna sit here and say

that it isn't slightly annoying. And know he's like frustrating when you say like you know to go to my Amazon page right now where we know we're crushing it but then see that the first six comments because because they send out worse yeah yeah and it's just like lie after lie and all that so it takes some toll of course but ultimately they are they are the driver to what we're they're proving the point of the book. Like I couldn't make this shit up. I feel like, you know,

I've gone through different stages of levels of attacks. Right? There's different things that have happened in my life where people then bullied me online or attacked me. And I remember being like, man, this really sucks. Like in the moment. Yeah. And a recent one, a year, a little over a year ago when it was

happening the mom mentality i just kept thinking to myself like this is happening in my favor and i'm gonna have hindsight now in a year from now this is gonna blow away some people remember but it's not gonna be this and this much energy if you don't let it destroy you we don't and if you keep moving forward and keep being positive and keep creating the content that you love that's helping people in service, eventually they're going to let it go. And you're going to be that much stronger because of this to be able to serve at a bigger level. You know, Jordan Peterson, we have a video that went viral. There's 30 million views on Facebook with Jordan from our interview where he says, don't

protect your kids. Yep. You know, the thing that makes them beautiful is their vulnerability, their insecurities, these things that make them children. But don't protect them because it's going to weaken them if you protect them. They need to fall. They need to smash their face in the ground and scab up. He would tell a story about letting his daughter climb a tree

and she would occasionally fall and he knew he had to do it. Exactly. And it's like you know it's a friend of mine was going through this this last weekend actually uh dr nicole lapera who's a therapist that puts out like how to help people with anxiety and stress online she's blown up millions of followers on instagram she got tons of attacks of being like this cult leader where all she's trying to do is just here's an Instagram image of like how to overcome anxiety but millions of people are flocking to it and you know people are getting attacked at the highest level how do we overcome the hate and attacks that are to come our way when we put our voice in the world when we share our truth when we rise to our greatness. I suspect you know the answer because you're doing

a version of yourself, but this really more than anything else may be the driver behind the whole book because I really believe that right now the biggest growing sort of political or even philosophical movement is people that are just afraid to say what they think. It doesn't mean you agree with me. I lay out my political positions here. It is complete, if it turned out that you disagreed with me on 10 out of 10 of them, it would be completely fine. It's very obvious, this is the first time we've met. It's very obvious, we wanna live in the same country. Like we wanna find fulfillment and happiness

and make people's lives better. Peace, love, everything, yeah. All that stuff, all good. And if we disagree on abortion or on legalized weed, it just doesn't matter to me truly. That's not to say those things aren't important and we should discuss them and all that, but it's just like, I want truly to live in a country

with people that disagree with me. There's something like 350 million people in the United States. It's like, if they all thought like me, we'd probably have a problem. You know what I mean? Like, I don't wanna live in North Korea. I like America.

This is a good spot, right? But I think the main driver of the book is really getting to what your question is. You must start standing up for what you believe. I think a lot of people think that, everyone feels this weird thing right now. And with Corona, it's getting even weirder. It's like, we don't know what the future is anymore.

Just two months ago, remember two months ago when we used to go out? Hang out, friend, go to the basketball game, yeah. Go to the beach. Go to the park. Go to the beach, remember the beach? That was a great thing that we had here in SoCal. It's 85 and sunny today, we can't go to the beach. So really think about it.

The world feels right now for everybody, if you're thinking, the world feels like, kind of like, whoa, is the future guaranteed? We always thought everything would basically be okay. You know, you might go, oh, Trump's president, this, that, the other thing, but you think that the world itself is sort of like functionally okay.

Well, right now, we have all been trapped in our houses for two months. Nobody thought anything like this could happen. I remember, I remember. And by the way, the good part of it is that I think people are rethinking their lives. People are going, you know what? Maybe I don't wanna commute that hour to work each day and I do maybe want to work

from home or I like being around my kids more or I don't like being around my kids more or I don't want to live in a big city because I'm too reliant on systems that are under assault or I want to be able to grow more food so I need to move out to the suburb. A million different things. Like I've really tried and in the Rubin Report community, one of the things I try to do is we post recipes on there. We've been doing stuff about how to do gardening. Wow.

Like just stuff. It's not, I'm not a freaking amazing chef. My husband happens to be a great chef and we post some of his stuff, but I've started gardening. I'm growing broccoli right now and peppers and all this stuff. I mean, you'll see my house eventually.

Like it's not that I have a huge garden. I got beds on the side of my house, but it's like I wanted in the midst's not that I have a huge garden. I got beds on the side of my house. But it's like, I wanted, in the midst of this, I started rethinking things. It's like, maybe I should be a little more reliant on myself. And we planted some citrus trees. Like, maybe we should be more reliant on ourselves. So I think being reliant on yourself,

that that really is the answer. So how do you beat the mob? Well, the mob actually preys on the fact that people are afraid and I think there's a lot of people that think oh if I could Just be I can sit this one out. Let me just sit this one out. Let me be quiet this time It'll pass it'll pass. It doesn't pass. That's the thing they have preyed on the fact that good people are good people and They have used that against us and it's it's the frog in the boiling pot and they have used that against us and it's the frog in the boiling pot.

If you think that your acquiescence or that your silence is saving you, you're actually turning the dial up on the pot that you are in. And as you know, it does not end well for the frog, right? Like that frog is fried at the end of that thing. And I think that that is what has happened here. And that in many ways is why I wanted to write the book

more than anything else, because that was the idea. It was like, I don't think that everything I present here is the most legendary political idea of all time, but I think I've been able to communicate ideas in a good way and I've paid the price for that. And there are rewards. Absolutely. Based on the price you paid too.

And I don't say paid the price to get any pity points. I don't want any pity points. I've gotten the rewards of that too, right? Like it's awesome. It's cool. I wake up and I'm ready to go every day. How do you feel like we can emotionally arm ourselves for taking on backlash?

Because if we want to be great in our lives at any stage, any decade of our life, there's going to be critics, haters, backlash, mob, whether it's online, offline, whatever. What do you think we can do emotionally to prepare for that? Besides what I think is the best thing is just to do it as often as possible to be able to stomach it and say,

"'Okay, I'm still alive, I'm still here. "'Like it didn't kill me, it hurts, but I'm stronger.'" Well, partly it's that, partly it's that that partly it's basketball has been a theme here. So like partly it's why did Michael Jordan practice harder than anybody else? Right. Like that is the known thing. Kobe was like it, too. It's like, why did they do it? Barkley didn't love practice. Now, Allen Iverson famously practice, you know, exactly.

And that's not to say they weren't great players, but Allen Iverson and Charles Barkley never won championships. And Michael Jordan won six championships and he was in the final six times, right? And he systematically eliminated every one of his peers to get there. So partly it's just that you gotta, you know, Douglas Murray, who I've had on my show, who's a brilliant conservative political thinker from the UK and one of the greatest writers that I think we have in modern times. He said to me once, he said, you know, if you get in the pool, he said in a British accent, if you dip your toe in the pool, you might find out that the water is not that cold.

And I actually think that that's the right idea. You know, there's nothing to fear but fear itself. It's something like that, that we create these monsters. And then when you actually go ahead and do whatever you're supposed to do, you might step in the pool and be like, I thought the water was gonna be freezing, but it turns out it's 92.

And that's not to say it's gonna be perfect. Cause trust me, it won't be. You will lose friends. I mean, we've all been through versions of this. People that you love will suddenly say the worst things about you. You'll watch, I'm seeing some of this now. I'm getting a lot of support

from my sort of right-leaning friends. So Shapiro and Peterson and Glenn Beck and Dennis Prager, that crew. A lot of my lefty guys who have been with me all along the road have completely abandoned me because they don't wanna just deal with any of the backlash. And I also think this is a whole other topic,

but I think that goes to a little bit of the lefty mind, which is in constant protection mode. That's like sort of like a whole separate thing, but you got to get in. Get in the game because the game is coming for you anyway. Whether you like, you can say I'm not playing, but it's what we talked about with politics before. The game is being played, man. That's like saying, you know, if we were looking at a chess board, it's like you are one of the pieces, whether you like it or not. And if the whole board is being shifted around, well, you got to move with it how do you handle uh interviewing someone or

sitting down with someone who has every opposite belief than you who is so firm in their beliefs on whatever opinion they have they hate everything that you love yeah how do you sit and listen to someone with an opposing view on everything about your life and your beliefs and not let it affect you and hurt you? Is that possible? So I can give you two examples of this. I'll give you one on the left and one on the right because the premise that you're asking could apply

to no matter where you fall, right? So on the left, I interviewed Marianne Williamson, you know her, right? So on the left, I interviewed Marianne Williamson, you know her, right? The Democratic candidate, the, yeah. So I interviewed her and as I was interviewing her, lovely lady, maybe a little out there, that's fine too, that was part of the magic. But what I realized about 20 minutes into the interview

is we had a fundamental impasse on how we view the world. She's a collectivist and I'm an individualist. She believes sort of in collective guilt. So she had just done this thing a few weeks earlier in a church. You saw this. About the slavery? Yeah, and that she had the white people in the church

go up to the black people and touch them and basically apologize. And it's like, I don't believe you're guilty for your father's sins, your grandfather's sins, much less, no one in my family owned slaves. That's not to say that we should not realize that obviously slavery was a horrible thing and all of those things.

But I don't believe in collectivism that white people are suddenly guilty of something or black people inherently are not guilty of something or guilty of something. I just don't believe the world operates like that. I believe the world operates, you are responsible for your thoughts and actions. Now she obviously viewed the world in a very different way.

And that's very obvious in all of her policies and all of the things that she was putting forth. And I realized as an interviewer in that moment, I thought I could let her say whatever she wanted and I will, and I'll treat her respectfully. But if I don't stop right now and announce, we just have a fundamental difference on how we view the world,

then everyone's gonna look at me and be like, Dave, everything she said up there for an hour is completely against what you say, but you just let her say it. So I felt the best way to deal with that was to just make the announcement, just make the announcement, we just view the world differently.

There you go. Not making her wrong or making her bad or whatever. Do I believe that my view of the world is closer to something that will ultimately free people? Absolutely. But it's not interesting to me to bring on people to just attack them. I'm not interested in doing that. Someone else can do that.

That's fine. It's not what I want to do. You're more of a neutral like me. Yeah. Well, yeah, because this is how you get... It's very obvious to me that you don't have an agenda with me. You're actually trying to find out what I think. That's much more in line with my kind of interview.

I'm trying to get gotchas. And by the way, man, I say this all the time. If a million, you know, I was kind of early on the long form interview thing on YouTube, but if a gajillion other people start being out there doing it better than me, I will find other things to do. Like I really liked writing the book.

I like doing public stuff and talking to the camera and tours and all that. So that's why it's like, I never feel a competition in any of these things. It's like, man, if you blow up, that's awesome. Like you're doing something good. I really mean that. Like, that's cool.

Like I can do other things. I wanted to be in the NBA. It's too late. But I'll give you the right version of that as well, which was I had this guy by the name of Stefan Molyneux. Do you know who he is? So he's a YouTube guy who's become a bit of a cult figure. And he talks a lot about race realism and sizes of brains and all of this stuff that I was never particularly interested in. It's not my

thing. There's a twang of what feels like genuine racism in it. I don't even mean that he himself is racist per se. but if you're obsessed with that topic it always strikes me as like a little bit more weird yeah and it was one of the only interviews that i've ever done maybe maybe literally the only one i've ever done where i actually called a couple people to ask for advice on how to go about doing this because i wanted to treat him respectfully the same way i would treat everybody else but i also wanted to make sure i wasn't not getting attacked by the world for well, I knew that was going to happen no matter what. I knew the world. I knew that either way was going to happen. Right. But so I talked to

a couple of people and I felt that I dealt with the interview. Correct. My my driving point in the interview was I kept saying to him, I think I said it three times. Why do you care about this? Why do you care about whether there are racial differences related to brain size and iq like what and i don't know that he gave me an answer that perfectly answered it for me but i also think as an interviewer if i'm never to touch i'm sure you have your own version of this if i'm never to touch the people that are on the fringes then what will happen is the fringes will keep getting tighter and tighter. You know what I mean? Like we'll keep getting a slimmer and slimmer

version of who we can talk to. And, you know, it's sort of like the Alex Jones thing. It's like, listen, Alex Jones may be a nutbag. He may be really a WWE style wrestler more than a political pundit, or he may be half actor and half conspiracy theorist. It doesn't even matter what he is. But the idea that this was the guy that we had to take out online, I'm not defending anything he said. I'm not lauding it or defending it. I'm just saying when they do this coordinated assault to just eliminate somebody, in effect what they did is they made him more popular. I've heard from people on the inside that he's actually making more money than he's ever made before because they drove his core fans to him, right? To however he makes money.

I'm not even sure that is. Maybe it's through his website or whatever. They drove it all to him. So instead of giving the YouTube rev and the, which you know is pretty crappy and the CPMs and all that nonsense. So I'm just a believer that for guys like us, we have to do our best to talk to some people that maybe aren't loved by everybody and then survive the slings that'll come with it.

It's just what you got to do or get it into another line of work. That's it. If you can't stomach it. If you can't. I hear you. I try to really make sure that I'm not attacking someone or anything like that when I'm interviewing them. It's really trying to pull the best out of them and make sure that also that I'm not saying this is also what I believe in. So I think that's good that you do that as well.

Well, because that's the tricky part because sometimes someone will say something that everyone knows that I think is wrong or the wrong idea. And it's like I don't feel it's like sometimes I push them. You don't need to constantly justify. See, that's the thing. I don't want to justify myself. I may push them and say, you know, I don't feel it's like, like sometimes I push them. You don't need to constantly justify, yeah. I don't, see, that's the thing. I don't want to justify myself. I may push them and say, you know, well, I don't really understand. I mean, if you keep giving money

to the thing that you say doesn't work, maybe that's not going to work, you know, something like that. Well, that, you can do that. But then it gets to a point where it's like, if they came on my show, which is in my home. Yeah, literally. Yeah, it is literally in my home. I'm not there to destroy them. And as far

as I know, no one has been killed because of any of the ideas that have been put forth on the Rubin Report. It's funny, I'll get a, you know, I typically have, I guess, a certain type of person on my show, let's say, maybe, I think. And when I don't have that type of person on, people are like, I can't believe you. Like, I'm going to get this with you for sure. Like when I had Jordan on and Ben on and with you, they're like, I loved you for seven years, but now I have to unsubscribe because I can't believe you'd even give a platform to a human like this. And I'm like, I remember a few years ago, I was on Ellen one day, the Ellen show. And the next morning, 24 hours later, I was on Glenn Beck.

And people were like, I can't believe, it's probably the only person ever to go on Ellen and Glenn Beck in the same 24 hours. I like flew to Dallas did the whole thing and People like I can't believe you're on Glenn Beck and I'm like Why like if I'm if I'm trying to get a message across? Do I just want to speak to people that only think the same way or do I want to try to inspire? People think in different ways, but now think about this. Did you get any hate for going on Ellen? No, so nothing. So this is super interesting are people thinking different ways. But now think about this, did you get any hate for going on Ellen? No. So this is super interesting.

No, I mean, I got praise. But that's super interesting to me because this is also partly why I wrote the book, because this, what you're talking about right there, is a symptom of something that's on the left that really is out of control right now. So these people see you go on with Glenn Beck. Now, Glenn happens to be a good friend of mine now.

I didn't know him two years ago. I like Glenn, I've interviewed him. He's a super nice guy. Glenn and I have major political disagreements. Yeah, yeah. I am pro-choice. He is pro-life. That is like the biggest one for conservatives.

Like, that is the one where they're just like, what the high hell is wrong with you? You may disagree with me on everything else, but the pro-life one for them is the big one. Yet, Glenn and I, they distribute my show on The Blaze. Like, we're actually in business together. People think he my boss he's not my boss i do whatever i want we give him my show that's it but um but i know him to be a good man and everything else now i think about perfect man and he would never tell you he's perfect by the way the guys apologize for his past so many times it's like i don't know that anyone's done more mia culpas than glenn beck but the point is that so you go on glenn Glenn Beck and then your lefty audience is going, how could you be with that right winger, blah, blah, blah.

Now they'll probably call him racist and why Glenn is not a racist or any of that stuff. But what's interesting is your right, whoever the right side of your audience is, the politically right side of your audience is. Now, Ellen's a member, the number one top lesbian we've got in America. And she's a known progressive and lefty and blah, blah.

Why did nobody, you said you got none. And that doesn't surprise me. Why didn't nobody say, you sat down with that lesbian? They're supposed to hate gays, aren't they? That progressive lesbian. And they didn't. And that disconnect is one of the things

that I am trying to show people. Because the new move that people make is, oh, both sides are equally horrible. And at this moment in 2020, it's not true. I am not saying that there is no mob on the right. Of course there can be a mob on the right, but the mob on the left is coming for everyone all the time, even the biggest lefties.

Brett Weinstein, who I had on my show, and you probably know his story, he was a professor at Evergreen, a progressive his whole life. Evergreen is the, Evergreen State was the most lefties. Brett Weinstein, who I had on my show, and you probably know his story, he was a professor at Evergreen, a progressive his whole life. Evergreen is the, Evergreen State was the most left college. It was voted literally the most left college in the United States. And he, they had this day once a year, I think they called it a day of absence,

where students of color would not go to class that day as a acknowledgement of what they felt was historical racism. And they had been doing this for two decades. All Brett said one day was they had decided to change it. About three years ago, they were gonna actually tell white students and students not of color not to come to campus.

And he said, we can't do that, we're a university. We can't tell people not to come to class one day because of their skin color, that's racism. He didn't say that they can't do it the other way. He had allowed it and been part of it for years. They then called him a racist. Of course, even though he was taking the anti-racist position, he was literally chased off campus with bats. Him and his wife, Heather Hying, who was also a biology professor at the school, they both ended up resigning. They got 500 grand to resign,

which sort of sounds like a lot of money, but for two tenured professors is absolutely nothing. But my point is the left does it to their own. They sort of come for everybody. Brett was a Bernie Sanders guy. He bought into all of that stuff and he wasn't good enough for them. So it is interesting. And the one other thing with Ellen on this is,

remember there was that moment at the, what football game was it? When Ellen was taking that picture with George W. Bush. Now what happened? Ellen- She got a lot of backlash on her show and talked about it, right? She literally had to apologize on her show.

She was like, we're friends, even though I don't believe in everything that he believes in. But why did nobody, not one conservative came after George W. Bush. You're in a box at a, you're in a box with a lesbian, it's kind of funny, but you're in a box at a football game

with America's top progressive lesbian. No mob. Nobody said it. Nobody judged him. Nobody cared. Or shouldn't the stories were all, Ellen DeGeneres sits down with, or is in the football box with George W. Bush,

who was for the Iraq war and blah, blah, blah. Shouldn't the stories, if we were a mature society, a society that wanted to heal shouldn't the stories have been george w bush who ran as a wedge issue used gay marriage as a wedge issue it's one of his worst mistakes um and i think he actually regrets it i don't know what a wedge issue meaning he made a point you're a lucky you're a lucky you're a lucky man i just want people to live a happy life you know it's. Let's just make good decisions. Wedgie, what?

No, a wedge issue, meaning he took, at the time, gay marriage, it was being debated, but it wasn't like a hardcore issue of the right. He made it a right issue. His campaign manager at the time, Ken Melman, really pushed him into doing that. And you're not gonna believe this. Turned out Ken Melman was a closeted gay guy.

So that's a whole other psychological examination right there. But George W. Bush made gay marriage a wedge issue. And that actually helped him get re-election because it fired up the evangelical base that was very anti-gay marriage at the time. And by the way, most of them don't even care about it anymore, which shows you that they've changed. But the point is that if we were a healing nation that wanted to show evolution,

that wanted to show people change, we change, you can be friends with people that you maybe don't agree with. The stories on HuffPo instead of being Ellen sits down with war criminal George W. Bush or whatever it is, the story should have been George W. Bush, president who ran against gay marriage, goes to a football game with literally America's top,

most famous, loved lesbian and their friends. And their friends. Look what we can create together now. But nobody ran that story. Wow. Why is that? Well, because, you know, why do you turn on the 630?

Well, not that anyone watches the local news anymore, but, you know, you turn on the news and if this guy got shot, this guy, you know, lit himself on fire, the cat died over here, a woman got electrocuted, you know. If they were to say, you know, everything's all right. You gonna watch that? No one watching. Yeah. I don't know that anyone's watching the other thing, but, uh, you know, we do have a, Bill Maher talked about that this week that we have this sort of like, um, I think he called it outrage porn or, uh, something to that effect. Like we're just like, we've become obsessed with all of the craziness and and that

also goes to why i talk about getting offline every now and again and not being permanently political it's like uh when this whole coronavirus stuff hit my my girlfriend was i wouldn't say obsessed but she was checking a lot of stuff all the time and it was causing her to almost get sick yeah yeah like emotionally anxiety, shortness of breath. And she was creating, you know, sickness symptoms essentially in the first week. And I said, you need to stop watching this. It was my birthday, March 16th,

like kind of the first week it all hit. And I said, for my birthday, do not talk about coronavirus. Like, that's all I want. I was like, please. Because for like a week before, she was like, ah, you know, the stress. And she didn't talk about it.

I go, this is all I want. And now she doesn't look at it anymore at all because she knows it only causes more stress and anxiety. You can't live a great life when you're focused only on the negative all day long. Well, not only the negative, but the immediate. The immediate, it's in the definition. It changes every second.

And if you're obsessed, oh my, they found out that there's two more cases in here, and guy did, it's like you will go bananas in the midst of this thing. So letting go with some of that stuff, it's key man. It really is. Focus on a positive vision. Did she give you just the day or did she take it into it? She gave me the day, then she put it back for a few weeks,

but now she doesn't talk about it anymore at all. She knows the stress of it. And it's like in her culture, the telenovela is a big thing. It's like, ah, that's what people watch. Like, you stole this and then you cheated on her with your sister's ex, whatever. And that's what people are fascinated by.

You know, it's hard to put out positive information out there sometimes. Can I do a reverse interviewer move here? I wanted, something's been rattling in my head. And since I'm doing so much press, I'm not interviewing people right now. There's something I've been thinking about and maybe I'll give this thing to you and you can Go ahead, bring it. And since I'm doing so much press, I'm not interviewing people right now. There's something I've been thinking about and maybe I'll give this thing to you

and you can start asking people about it. So I've been re-watching The Sopranos during the, I was gonna call it the break. Whatever the hell this is. You never saw it? Okay, so it doesn't matter. You've seen mafia movies. And one of the amazing things about The Sopranos

and almost all mafia movies is that the bad guy or the good guys do all sorts of horrible stuff. They beat their wives. They have gumas. They kill people. They chop them up. They're alcoholics. They're doing coke. They're beating their kids. They got hookers over. Yet you like them. Yet you like them. Because they're trying to go after the bad guy who's stealing the money or something?

Well, who's often doing just the same stuff. Right. But there's this fascinating thing. You watch Goodfellas and you're rooting for Ray Loiota, who's doing all kinds of horrible stuff, right? You're rooting for Joe Pesci. You're rooting for Tony Soprano in this. Well, it's one of the things that I've really been thinking about lately.

Something that you just said there really like clicked that with me, that I think the reason is that they have a code. Oh, that's how I wanted to bring this all around as the guy being interviewed, right? We're talking about greatness. They have a code that they have a code. Oh, that's how I wanted to bring this all around as the guy being interviewed, right? We're talking about greatness. They have a code that they live by. It may not be the code you like

or the code that is the right code or something like that. But Anthony Soprano or any of these mafia guys, they believe in- They have a set of rules. They have a set of rules. Now, and if you play by those rules, you almost let them do anything. So in the last couple episodes,

he has literally chopped up a man. He has cheated on his wife with like 20 women and prostitutes and the whole thing. He moved out of his, he hit his kid. Like just so much stuff. But the whole time, and I keep saying this to David as I'm watching, I'm like- But he kept his mouth shut.

He didn't tattle. He didn't, yeah. And I really think there's something to that. I have to think this thing kind of through a little bit more, but I think that sort of gets to a lot of what we're talking about here, that you need some kind of code in life. I'm not saying your code should be cheat on your wife

and kill your business partner. And do cocaine all day. You gotta do what you gotta do, right, you gotta do all that, but like, but I think the fact that he has a code, it allows you to watch somebody do horrible things and still be like, oh, well, at least he's got a code. And I guess I would relate this a little bit to the political part, which is most of these politicians, it doesn't seem like they have any code. You don't know what they believe.

They say anything on any given day. You see just to get the same stuff that they railed against 10 years ago is the same stuff they're going for now and all that kind of stuff. So I don't know what I did there, but I did something. Sure. Well, I just feel like it's just a game. You've got to constantly be evolving the game to get people to vote for you. Yeah. And you have to change your beliefs a lot of times in order to, like the George Bush thing.

Yeah. Maybe he was changing belief or whatever to get voters to play the game. How do we get the base out? The base, oh, the base is heavily Christian. We know that the gay marriage thing's a big one for them. Let's do it. Do you think there's any political leader that at a high level in government

has been able to stay true to their principles and values throughout their four, eight, 12, 16 years of being in government at that level? I think the closest we got is Rand Paul from Kentucky. Senator from Kentucky. four, eight, 12, 16 years of being in the government? At that level? I think the closest we got is Rand Paul from Kentucky, Senator from Kentucky. His dad was Ron Paul who sort of led the Tea Party movement. He's a true libertarian.

He tries to cut spending all the time. He tries not to vote for wars. He tries, you know, it's odd because he's become one of Trump's biggest allies because Trump has cut a lot of regulation. So he's kind of freed up business to do stuff. I view that as a good thing. And one of the reasons that I don't have Trump derangement syndrome, that I have become sort of okay with Trump, although do I think he lies? Of course he lies. Would I wish, you know, he would

somehow speak a little nicer and some of that stuff, of course. But the policies themselves, I actually think have basically been fine. And one of the reasons I've been able to even, it seems odd that you have to say you have the courage to say that, but you know what happens when you say that kind of thing, is that his main ally is this guy that I actually really do think is trying the hardest he can.

Does he end up signing bills that increase the debt and the rest of it? Yeah, because the whole system is out of whack. There's no money left and yet we keep, okay, more stimulus. We have literally no money. How much debt are we in right now? Trillions system is out of whack. There's no money left. And yet we keep, okay, more stimulus. We have literally no money. How much debt are we in right now? Trillions and trillions of dollars.

And it's going up. I think we just signed another $2.2 trillion stimulus. It's like, how do we get out? Well, I hate to tell you. Are we ever going to get out of this? Or is it just you go bankrupt and you say, start again? Can I whisper how we get out? I mean, it's called war.

The sad truth is we are, it seems to me that we're in an almost unavoidable conflict with China now. They have so much of our debt that we know we can never pay it back. There's nothing, like short of like some sci-fi, we find a planet somewhere that has unobtainium, like in Avatar, and we mine it and sell it to the Chinese here. Although we would get in a war over who's going to get there first. Like there are debtors and we've got more weapons than our debtors right now that that's i mean talk about a mafia move it's like we sort of know how we can keep borrowing from them because we got all the nukes and you know they've got some stuff but you know we've got bases everywhere it's a seriously depressing like unpleasant thing to think they got more people can't they just create more weapons and

have more money they got more people i suspect they're probably cloning people too. That's a whole other thing. I mean, we know we can clone dogs and, you know, you can clone sheep. Yeah, all that kind of stuff. And it's like, if we can clone dogs right now, which there's commercial cloning of dogs happening right now. It's the same people that did Dolly the sheep. You can do it right now. For a million dollars.

It's 50 grand. To clone a dog? To clone a dog. 50 grand. Have you seen a cloned dog? I've never seen it. Is it 50 grand. To clone a dog? To clone a dog. 50 grand. Have you seen a cloned dog? I've never seen it. So I haven't- Is it functional or is it like one?

I'll give you one. I'm gonna give you one. I have not said this publicly, but I will tell you this. Your dog is cloned? So my dog, my dog, Emma, was my first dog that I ever had. She died in February. She was 16.

She lived an incredible- Oh man, oh man, it's the worst. She died in February. She was 16. She lived an incredible. Oh, man. Oh, man. It's the worst. This dog, she lived an amazing life. She was a rescue from Hurricane Katrina. Oh, man. Survived the hurricane.

Gave birth during the hurricane. Oh, man. So sad. She lived with us in New York, then came with us to L.A. She went to the White House. She went to the Grand Canyon. This girl, just gorgeous. Great life.

Okay. 16 is a great life. And she lived a long, great life. We treated her great at the end she the last thing right before we put her down we had people come to the house and put her down we we cooked a whole chicken we put it on the floor we let her tear through it she was struggling to stand at that point everything else but but she lived a great life anyway a few weeks before she

we had to let her go my husband David was cooking and he said and Emma was there and she was kind of just you know know, and they just stare at you. They just look up at you in the eyes and the whole thing. And she, and David said, you know, I'm really going to miss that. I'm going to miss, I'm going to miss the way she looks at me. And suddenly that sparked something in my head and I started doing a little Googling about the cloning thing. And I've never said this publicly before.

I know, I don't know who's going to get more, more crap for this. Me saying it to you or, or, or it to you or you letting me say it. But I found this company that does the cloning. They're the same guys that did Dolly the Sheep. Remember that was the famous one 20 years ago. Dolly the Sheep was the first sort of animal cloning. Anyway, they do commercial cloning. It's 50 grand a pop.

I don't have 50 grand to do cloning. I had my assistant contact them and I sent a bunch of videos. Don't tell me they did a trade for it. They did not do it. So Emma is on ice right now. Shut up We did we did the the samples you have to do, you know Some skin samples some samples and she's on ice and in Austin, Texas right now And then here's the thing we because I was supposed to be on a book tour right now and everything else we'd said well We're not gonna have a dog probably through the summer because

Also, we wanted a break. Like it was a, she had- Heartbreaking. Yeah, heartbreaking. Like we, she had bladder cancer. So we had like a long protracted thing we wanted to break. Then Corona hit and I ran to the, I heard that the shelters were all closing down

and I saw this guy Clyde. He had, well, he was, he had no name at the time. They just found him. But he was, he literally, they had the thing. They just found him. But, but we, he was, he literally, they had the thing signed. He was about to be put down that day. We grabbed him and he's, he's gorgeous and he's awesome too.

But anyway, Clyde is, Emma is, is on ice. Her cells are on ice to be cloned. That's crazy. And. When's it going to happen? You want to hear even the great. Is this legal? Yeah, no, no, it's legal.

Okay. What's not legal is CRISPR technology. So they're not allowed to manipulate their genes in the United States. To like enhance them as a super... You can't, so you can't. So that's CRISPR where you can manipulate eye color. You can manipulate...

Oh my gosh. Because David's allergic to dogs. So he said, could we ask them if they could make... Hypothermic. But so in America, you can't do that yet. But now I know why I was telling you this whole story. Because in China, there's no doubt. And not just China, by the way,

and I'm not even knocking the Chinese. You know, once science comes out, once you open that Pandora's box, you can't stop things. So in many ways, you could argue that by us not allowing these other gene manipulations, that we're actually going to fall behind as countries are doing this. So that gets to my point. We have to do it. In a way, we have to. If someone else is going to do it, we need to do it over here.

I mean, this is the race to science that can lead to all sorts of, the island of Dr. Moreau and all kinds of stuff. But anyway, she's sitting there and I don't know if we're ever gonna do it because I'm a huge believer in adoption and I love saving dogs and all of that stuff. But we couldn't say no to the opportunity to,

and by the way, the company's wonderful. They didn't want, all they said is, they said, we'll do it for you because we see how much you love your dog and we see all these, I put videos up of her that got millions of views at the end. And they said, listen, if we give you the puppy at the end, all we would ask is that if you turn on the camera

and say hi and say who she is. And so we'll see if we're gonna do it. I honestly don't know. I'm- This is nuts. And you know what's funny also? I had this running joke. I've had this running joke with David

that what will happen, this is before coronavirus, that what will happen is we'll clone Emma, she'll start multiplying, and then humans will get a disease and start dying off, and then the world will be run by Emma, which is sort of the plot of Planet of the Apes. And then next thing I know, we're in a pandemic and I've got Emma on ice in Austin, Texas.

So- Maybe she's the savior. She could bring us home I mean if she starts talking it's like, you know, so have they done this already with another dog? Yeah Yeah, Barbra Streisand has several clone dogs So there's a lot of celebrities that have it but they won't talk about it publicly because they think it's a bad PR Because you got to have a lot of money if you're gonna put These I don't rescue a dog that's gonna die. Why spend 50 grand on your own dog?

And truly I have an ethical, I'm not downplaying it at all. Like I'm not sure we're gonna do it. We did the stuff to get the material. It's like having your eggs taken out as a woman. Yeah. Like you're saving your eggs for the later if you wanna do it. It's like having your brain taken out

and they're gonna ice it. This is crazy, man. And bring you back in 2021, 22. We try to wrap this up. This has been a powerful, it's been so great meeting you, connecting with you and hearing all this stuff. Even though if I don't 100% agree with you,

100% of your life, everything you do. Jeez, can we make a note of that? That's gonna be a problem. I feel like you have to say that at the end of every one of your interviews, right? Yes, you know, oddly, I've agreed with everything you've said here. I was kidding, I don't know.

This was a real weird one for me. Every question I've asked, I've agreed with everything you've said here. I don't know. This was a real weird one for me. Every question I've asked, you've agreed with. Incredible, incredible. This book is called Don't Burn This Book, Thinking for Yourself in an Age of Unreason. There's a lot of unreason out there for sure. Got a lot of great people who've endorsed this, Jordan Peterson and Ben Shapiro, Eckhart Tolle, which is, you know, someone on the other side, I guess. Someone Larry King, who I've interviewed as well.

So some great people in this. Excited to check it out more, man. This is really powerful. I've been watching a lot of interviews about you, researching for this. So it's been fun to learn about your story and a lot of things we didn't get to talk about, which was, you know, what was harder to come out

as being, you know, gay or your political side, which I've seen you talk about. But if people want to learn more about all these other things you talk about, they can go watch you on the Rubin Report YouTube. do you have a podcast too oh it's audio it's well podcast that it's on YouTube yeah yeah it's it's that's your main channel the book is where can we get the book you can go to don't burn this book calm we're crushing it on Amazon and if you want to help defeat the trolls leave this is what I keep telling people leave an honest review yeah

if you want to give me a three-star review and you're like, you know, I didn't love it, but it was okay, I'm fine with that. I don't like just the destructive, the menace thing. I can take a one-star honest review over a one-star, this sucked and he's horrible or whatever. Do you know Scott Adams, the Dilbert creator? So Scott, I did his, he does a Periscope show and he's a great thinker. He's one of the people that when Trump got elected, you know, when everyone said it could never happen,

I was like, I was on Rogan, I think the day before. And I said, yeah, it's 50-50 because I had listened to interesting people like Scott Adams who had sort of explained what was going on there. And Scott Adams said to me, I'm now calling it the Scott Adams theory, that if you sell a book and that book only has five stars and one stars, you've done it right. Because that means you have people that love you and people that hate you. But if you have all three stars, you got a problem on your hands. Yeah, you do. It's not an interesting book. Yeah, you haven't done that much.

You need to be on both sides. This is a question I ask everyone at the end. It's called the three truths. So imagine it's your last day. You've cloned yourself a million times over, but eventually technology blows up or something and you can't clone yourself truths. So imagine it's your last day, you've cloned yourself a million times over, but eventually technology blows up or something and you can't clone yourself anymore and you've got to say goodbye. And you've created every dream you can think of for your personal life, professional life, everything you want to say, it's out in the world.

But for whatever reason on your last day, you've got to take all your information with you so no one has access to your content anymore. Your book is gone. Everything is gone. But you get to leave behind three things you know to be true about your life, about your experiences, the lessons you've learned and you could pass these on, only these three things.

What would you say are your three truths? Well, I think the most important one is that you stand up for what you believe in. That is the most important thing. It is your life. As far as we know, we got one shot at this thing. And if you don't fight for what you believe, then all you're doing is creating room for people who believe other things. And those may not be great things.

And in many ways, it will be your fault when the world goes out of control. So that would be one. That's good. I think another one that this would be a sort of one that I came to a little bit later in life is be a little kinder to yourself if possible. I don't have regrets in life. I really don't. That's not to say I don't have all of the mistakes, all of the mistakes and stupid things and drugs and every other stupid thing that I did. But I don't regret them because I made it out

on the other side, but I do wish in the process of that, maybe I had been a little easier on myself. You know, like that is, I think, especially when I think of the closeted stuff that we didn't get into, I beat the hell out of myself up in a way that now seems almost, it actually seems almost unimaginable and in essence, I don't even know why I did it. There was no proof.

All of that stuff, but it was like, it was an internal job. It was an inside job. So I would say be kind. And then one more, this may sound cliche, but do something. Do something with your life. You know, like I think one of the reasons that so many people, I'll answer it a

little different. I'll say do something. But what I mean by that is people always say to me, Dave, why don't you put out five shows a week? You do one or two shows a week. And then I do some live streams and some other stuff. And I always, my answer is always, well, I assume you have a life. If you watch my show, that probably means, hopefully you listen to Lewis's show. You listen to Sam Harris's podcast. you watched the Jordan Peterson thing, you watched maybe, you know, Rogan does 80 hour shows, so maybe you watch half of one show. There's enough stuff out there that's cool and interesting,

but you shouldn't just sit there watching stuff all the time, like don't. I don't want to, it's not like if I did more, well, first of all, I don't have a freaking time anymore. Like we have enough, we're busy enough, but I don't mean it because of that. I mean it because go out there and do stuff. Don't just sit there on your phone all day as riveting as this interview maybe was.

Like hopefully you put your phone down after and go do what you want to do, whatever that is, and find something that gives you purpose. I think that was the trick that anyone that's interesting in the world pulled off is that they started doing something and then before they knew it, it was like, I became the thing that I thought I could be. And that does feel like a very sort of Jordan-esque

type move because I saw him do that. But a lot of people don't do it and they don't know why they don't do it. You know, and now it's funny because now that I've achieved something that's pretty good, a lot of my friends, my college friends, my high school friends that saw me go through all the struggle years of standup

and having no money. And my buddy who worked at a food service thing used to literally drop off giant cans of tuna, like industrial cans of tuna. And I would just eat tuna for weeks. I kid you not. My mom was always afraid I was gonna have mercury poisoning. Right, I was gonna drop dead. He industrial can of tuna. And I would just eat tuna for weeks. I kid you not. My mom was always afraid I was gonna have mercury poisoning. Right?

I was gonna drop dead for, he ate too much tuna. But like, I did all of that stuff. And it's like, I don't know why I did it in retrospect. Standing out on street corners, handing out tickets. I'll tell you what. I'll tell you one funny thing related to that. So one night, so this is called barking. And when you're trying to do standup,

you stand out there for an hour a night, you hopefully get your stage time and it might be front of, it's usually in Times Square. So if you get 50 people in the audience, it's like four of them are Chinese, three are from the Netherlands, you got two people from uptown. Like it's a weird collection of people

that you gotta somehow figure out how to be funny on. That wasn't the hard part for me. The other part was that we would do it six nights a week. I did it two hours a night, because we usually do two shows a night. And I did that for probably five years of my life. And that is very hard to think back, how the fuck did I do that?

What gave me the crazy passion to do that? But there was one night, there was a crazy, a nor'easter, New York City. The city was shut down. They were telling you you do not go outside You know, you're gonna freeze to death. You're gonna drop dead out there. It's like hot in the winter You got to get out of here, you know But of course, I only knew how to do one thing

I remember I put on two pairs of pants put on two pairs of socks sweatshirt hoodie jacket another jacket hat mops I'm out there and my cell phone rings and this is before iPhones and whatever. It's like my old Nokia, all I can do is play Snake. It's my roommate, so that's why I picked up. And I pick up and I remember my hands shaking, I'm freezing.

And it's my roommate Mike and he goes, "'Dave, I'm watching the local news right now "'and they're doing a report from Times Square "'that nobody should be out in the in this freezing Cold and I see you standing behind the reporter There was a reporter like half a block away doing the thing about Me is this idiot comedy tonight anyway, but there's nobody on the streets But like that type of thing like I have no idea how I did it or why I did it other than I did it

no idea how I did it or why I did it other than I did it. You did it. And I think the point of be kind to yourself, kinder to yourself is probably something I don't hear enough, but it's something that I would give as probably one of my top 10 truths at least because for 25 years, I was raped as a five-year-old boy by an older man. And for 25 years, I held that secret in. And so I can't understand what it's like being closeted gay or not telling your story or what's happened to you or how you feel or what your position is on sexuality.

But I understand the feeling of beating yourself up, being shameful for something and feeling like you won't be accepted if people knew. And when I learned how to you know so it was just a constant beat up as especially as a straight man yeah trying to be more manly i guess in middle school and high school and be seen as a man to have been sexually abused and raped was like the lowest of low for a straight white man in Ohio, right, for me. How long did you hold that in?

25 years. Yeah, until I had 30. So nobody, literally nobody knew. No one knew, yeah, except for me. And it was a story that I would remember every day. I mean, I would remember the scene, the setting, the whole thing, experience every single day. And I would just kind of use it as a fuel for anger

in my life. Yeah. Oh my God. And so I can, I can't fully understand what it's like but I can empathize in a sense of like beating yourself up, feeling shameful, feeling insecure. What are people gonna think of me? Are they gonna accept me? Are people gonna love me?

And I think if I would have been kinder to myself, I would have had a much better life. So I think everyone should be kinder no matter what they're going through, whether it's sexual abuse or they're, they're not fully accepting who they are, whatever it is. It's like, if we are kind to ourselves, we're going to have much more peace and love in our heart. And that's what we're all looking for. So, man, well, you know, it's funny. I usually tell at the end of a good interview, when someone gives a closing remark, I'm like, that's how you end an interview. You

just did it yourself on your own show, but I promise you, we will have you in studio. And let's talk about that and learn a lot more. You're a great interviewer, man. You really are. You just gotta ask curious questions, dumb questions that you think are most, I think the reason why I'm okay at it is because I ask a lot of dumb questions

that people aren't willing to ask. Come on, that's fake humility right there. And I feel like, no, it's true. I feel like because i'm just a curious person and sometimes i feel like man i wonder if everyone knows this but i'm going to ask it anyways i have one final question for you even though you said you wanted me to end it there you cleaned it up really nice at the end there make sure you guys get this book don't burn this book check it out uh give it an honest review once you check it out. I want to acknowledge you for a moment, Dave, for how you've shown up in your life consistently

towards your truth. And again, I don't know 100% about what you believe and everything, but I love the fact that you have even changed your beliefs in the last few years. And you constantly are evolving based on your experiences, based on what's working for you and what you want is best for the world in your point of view. So I acknowledge you for that and for putting yourself out there,

especially in your political space with all the hate that you guys get. I don't know how you do it, but I acknowledge you for putting your art out there because this is an expressive art form and I know how much energy it takes to put that out there. I appreciate it, man. I'm glad we got to connect. My final question is what is your definition of greatness well i knew this

one was coming i knew that's what you said before i got one more fair i was like wait a minute wait a minute greatness is is i mean this is an offshoot of what we're talking about here it's it's doing what you're supposed to do i have been blessed it's it's very much like your situation like the amount of people like you sat across from ko Bryant. I toured with Jordan Peterson. I've become good friends with Peter Thiel, like innovative thinkers. I have interviewed and you have interviewed people that have done what you're supposed to do

as a human being. Greatness is doing what you're supposed to do. Greatness isn't, oh, you have to invent a product or you have to be a basketball star. Greatness is there is something, I really believe this, there is something in you that is the thing that you are supposed to become. And you gotta, maybe this is sort of what you were saying

a moment ago, you almost have to just learn how to get out of your own way to do it. We all know it. We all know there is something in us that internal monologue that like knows what is right and what we're supposed to be doing and that we shouldn't lie and we should be honest and we should be open with our friends

and we should be loving and generous and all those things. Doesn't mean we do it all the time, but like if you try to do it as much as you can, like that's the best you could do i think right like but when i've sat across from people like when i sit across from jordan or i sit across from teal and i'm sure it was like you like this with kobe and you're like man it's exactly where we started so this is how you end an interview the right way right like when you sit across from that and you see it you you're like, it's almost like you're not talking to a human

because you're seeing someone that's like, it's like, we're all in a big freaking show here and you're one of the stars of the show. And that's a pretty beautiful thing. So if, as the kids are saying these days, life is a simulation, it's like, well, maybe life's a video game or maybe life's a cartoon or something,

but it's like, you may as well be the star of the thing. And what does the star do? Luke blows up the Death Star. You know? You might as well win the game. You might as well, or at least play the game. Play the game. At least play the game.

Don't just watch other people playing the game. Yeah. Play the game. Dave, thanks man. Can we shake hands? I haven't touched another. Just do it. I appreciate you, man. Thanks brother.

Thank you so much for listening to this episode my friend i hope you enjoyed it as always please share these new insights that you learned with a friend you have the power to change someone's life to improve someone's life by just spreading some greatness and it's 100 free here on the school of greatness podcast make sure to post it on your social media as well and tag me lewis house and dave rubin and also we're now on TikTok. That's right. I'm posting creative, inspiring content over there every single day. Check out at Lewis over on TikTok and let me know what you think of those videos.

And if you want to connect with me directly and receive inspirational texts every single week, then send me a text right now. 614-350-3960 with the word podcast. So I know you came from the School of Greatness. Again, text me right now if you want inspirational texts from me every week, 614-350-3960. And Albert Einstein said, we cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them. You are constantly going to be growing and evolving in your life. You're going to have different beliefs from childhood to your teen years to adulthood.

Things are going to grow and evolve based on what's happening in your life and the stage of life that you're in. Have the courage to change your mind. Have the courage to evolve your mind. Have the courage to evolve your thinking. Don't stay stuck in a thinking that keeps you in a problem or in a negative set of experiences. Allow yourself to question things. Allow yourself to explore. And it's okay if what you thought was right for you in the past is no longer right for you in the present or in the future. This is the power of your mind and your life. Things change and evolve and everything is okay. Thanks again for being a part of this incredible greatness community.

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And you know what time it is. It's time to go out there and do something great.