The Way I Heard It with Mike Rowe - 370: Rikki Schlott—The Smartest Dropout I Know

Episode Date: February 13, 2024

The New York Post columnist and author discusses the disruptive and damaging nature of social media, our shortening attention spans, the lack of free speech on college campuses, why the First Amendment is the most important right, why she left NYU during COVID despite her 4.0 GPA, and how she came to write The Cancelling of the American Mind with Greg Lukianoff.

Well, hello, friends, and welcome to the way I heard it. This episode is called The Smartest Dropout I Know is Ricky Schlott. Because, well, frankly, Chuck, because I think she is. Not only is she a dropout. She's an NYU dropout. She plans to be a two-time dropout. She's taking courses at Columbia College right now, or Columbia University, I should say. And she plans to drop out there, too.

She is who I want to be when I grow up, and she's only 23. So what does that say? Yeah, I mean, this is kind of the, this is the 23-year-old you wish you had. Christ, I mean, you know, this girl is impressive. Yeah, her story is so good, and she's currently really riding a fun wave. She's written a book with our friend Greg Lukianoff, who runs an organization called Fire, which stands for the foundation of, what stands for, Chuck? the foundation of individual rights and expression.

Yeah. It's my own bias, notwithstanding. It's a better version of the ACLU focused, you know, really laser focused on First Amendment rights. Greg and Jonathan Haidt wrote a book a couple years ago called The Coddling in the American Mind, and we talked about that on the podcast because I think it's awesome. Greg has written another one this time with the aforementioned Ricky Schlaught, who got on his radar as just a super smart college kid who got very frustrated, not just with the cancel culture that was raging at NYU,

but with the cost. These guys actually had the nerve to increase their tuition during the lockdowns, during Zoom college. The Zoom classes are going to cost you more than the in-person classes. What I think is really interesting, Mike, is that she says in this interview that she actually read the coddling of the American mind. Yeah. She read that book when she was, I think, starting college or just out of high school.

And yeah, and then she went to interview when she started working for the New York Post, interviewed Greg Lukianoff, and that's how they met. And he was quite taken with her, and they wrote a book together. So, you know, imagine reading a book that you love. Imagine just devouring it, going, gosh, this thing really speaks to me. And then imagine just a couple of years later writing a book with that author. Right. A bestselling book called The Canceling of the American Mind, which I really do recommend you check out.

In fact, the foreword is by the aforementioned Jonathan Haidt. So it's a really fun coming together of like-minded people across the political aisle and also across generations. And I just haven't seen the like of it before. And since I've already talked to Greg, I wanted to make sure you guys had a chance to get a load of Ricky Schlaught. You're going to like her. She's awfully smart. Awfully smart. She's just borderline threatening, Chuck.

Intimidating. No, because she's so sweet. She's so sweet. Having said all that, here she is the smartest dropout, I know. Ricky Schlaught, right after this. Shameless plug. Long before she was Peggy Rowe, my first. mom was Peggy Noble, daughter of Carl and Thelma Noble. It was her father, Carl, who inspired me to

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Greg Lukianov, told me in no uncertain terms, and these are his words, not mine. I really don't understand why you're talking to me, Mike. There's a woman named Ricky Schlott. She's younger, much better looking, and probably smarter than me. And that's all I needed to hear. I'll never have him on again. She's finished.

That's okay. Well, I'm happy to be here. Thanks. Where are you sitting right now? I am sitting in a conference room in the New York Post's office. So that's why all of the backdrop is. I'm a full-time columnist at the Post as of this moment. I had a friend who worked over there, and I think I've been in that conference room.

Really? Aren't they famous for headlines? Like the greatest headlines in the world? Oh, yeah. Our headlines make news. It's true. Right. Sometimes they make me cringe.

I'll write what I feel is like a nuanced and kind of threading the needle sort of article, and then it's the most salacious thing I could ever dream of. Well, I mean, let's be honest. You would have to go a long way to top. headless body found in topless bar. Yes, I do have that on a mug, by the way. They make a mug with it. I wish I had it here to show you,

but they do make a mug with the cover of that day. That was probably our most iconic. It was a big one. Where's page six? Is that still a thing? Also part of the post, yeah. Right. Page six, for those of you who don't know,

was sort of like the snarky, gossipy look at all things Manhattan. And if you were on page six, it was either great news or horrible news. Yeah. Right? Yeah. Every time I tell people I work for the post, they're like, oh, God, not page six, right? I'm like, no, it's okay.

I'm not a spy. It's all good. But isn't it weird, Ricky, how a thing like page six, which existed in such a specific way and was so unusual from that which surrounded it, it's like, and I'm not criticizing the post necessarily, but it just feels like page six. is everywhere and news is not as prevalent. And like in some ways, we've kind of morphed into a page six default sensibility maybe. Yeah.

I mean, I think that gossip definitely generates clicks, especially in the internet news age, for sure. I'm happy at the post, at least, that we have our two lanes in that sense. But I do. I mean, I agree that especially in the social media era, and the fact that you no longer pick up an entire newspaper and you get the whole stack and whatever's in there, whether it's salacious or nuanced, you probably browse through it versus now it's a matter of just a million different things competing for your attention and the most grabbing or shocking or rege-inspiring headline potentially rather than the one that actually is the most meaningful, even if it's a little less sexy. So it's something that concerns me, to be honest.

Well, how did it happen? People have been saying a version of, this cautionary tale ever since, you know, journalism tiptoed into television and, you know, radio and newspapers were one thing and then TV sort of bitched it all up and then social media has come along. And now, you know, this business of headlines is so interesting to me because I find myself in them in ways that I never imagined, you know, Roe breaks silence on blah, blah, blah, and I see it everywhere. It's like, do you think that came out of Twitter's initial sort of limited character thing, or are we just doomed to have shorter and shorter retention spans?

Oh, I think, honestly, I'm realizing, I mean, I'm 23. I had an iPhone when I was 10. I was on Instagram by the time I was 11. I've been so online for my entire life. I was an only child, so oftentimes that was just the way that I would occupy myself. And I've been realizing more and more as I've had some free time after this book coming out to actually read and consume other materials that my attention span is awful. Like, I mean, I try to limit my screen time, but I am such a guppy. I mean, I will write like articles for the New York Post about Gen Z employees have no attention span and they're so distractible and they're so woke, which I'm definitely not woke, but I definitely cannot sit at my desk for more than like 10 minutes.

And I think that a generation that has grown up with, like, you can tap into the next thing or there's the even more outrageous or exciting videos one swipe away. I think that we're feeding the market for this kind of sound bite-sized content that I don't think that trend is going to change at all because I've had to be super disciplined to try to actually get myself to concentrate and not always be bouncing from task to task or have one browser open doing one thing. and another doing another. And I genuinely think that, you know, I wasn't even an iPad kid, but once these iPad kids grow up into adulthood, I don't even know if they'll be able to get through an entire headline, frankly. I wonder too. I mean, I think it, what is it, Moore's Law in tech anyway, talks about the phenomenon of shrinking technology, right? How micro-processors and, you know, so forth, they get smaller and smaller as they get more and more powerful. This is almost, well, it's very similar, except content grows with Moore's Law and efficiency grows.

Here, eventually, what are we looking at? Headlines with three words, then two words, then one word, and then just a letter, and then just like an oomlock? Then just a grunt. Right. I mean, like, how much shorter can our spans become until we're incapable of even articulating its brevity? I mean, and not only how much shorter, but how much will we even be choosing our own path in terms of the content that we're consuming? I mean, I'm working on an article right now for the post that shows that two-thirds of Gen Ziers are saying that they're using TikTok as a search engine, which, I mean, even if you put the potential CCP influence aside, when you use something like TikTok as a search engine, it's not like you're scrolling through a list of things on Google and deciding for yourself which source to click on or what you're. you trust or evaluating it on face value, you're getting a video from TikTok and then just this

endless like waterfall of an AI generated stream of content. So it's not even like you're even in control of the content that's coming before you. And I think that infinite scroll sort of situation in combination with the fact that people can't even potentially get through a whole long form TikTok video, I remember there was a period of time where TikTok expanded the, I think I think it was like 60 seconds that a video could be, and it went up to like three minutes. And people were saying, oh, my gosh, I can't even get through these three minute TikTok videos. These are way too long. And I'm embarrassed to admit, but I'll say so myself that I have like this habit of just going on to the next thing.

And when potentially a hostile foreign nation, no less, is able to potentially influence what is just fed to you as a stream of content as well. I think that that's just the next level of dystopian nightmare that, we're headed towards. God, you're cheerful. Well, look, I mean, it's a couple of different things, right? I mean, we're all drinking from a fire hose, but we're all choosing the fire hose, our personal thing that, you know, can blow our face off. TikTok, you know, it's like the old joke. You know, the guy loses his keys, but he only looks for them underneath the lamp post because that's where the lights better, right? But what you said, I mean, it's maybe there's some reason for optimism. If a platform like TikTok is expanding, you know, the length of time that the content can occupy.

And if a platform like Twitter went from, what it was, 165 characters to whatever you want now. And look at you. Look what you did. All right. This is not a pop up. All right. This is not a picture book. You and Lukianov wrote a tome.

It's thick. Yeah. When it first arrived, I was like, wow. I'm looking at it now. That came out of my head somehow. The book, by the way, is called The Canceling of the American Mind. Shame on me if I didn't introduce it properly before, but the coddling preceded this by our friend Greg Lukianoff. And when we had him on the podcast, I'm not kidding, he was so, well, you know him better than I do, but he was so taken with the subject.

He's so passionate about fire. but he was really, really taken with you. And he was so excited to tell me about this young woman with this big brain who shared his passion for this thing. So I guess maybe we should like officially start with how in the world do you wind up collaborating with that old bearded man? And why do you care so deeply about this issue? Because full disclosure, the people listening to this. podcast, by and large, I think a lot of them have kids your age, and they're scared, Ricky. They're worried to death that the entire glittering, top-heavy superstructure of our academic

world is starting to fall apart beneath them, and they don't know what to do. And you've had a front-row seat to it now for a while. Yeah, I mean, my front-row seat, unfortunately, all the craziness starts back when I was 14, and I can remember I was a student at the Lawrenceville School, which is a prep school in New Jersey, and right next to Princeton University, and a lot of the kind of trickle-down craziness from academia showed up there. And I still remember the first moment when I, you know, 14 years old, a freshman in high school worried about boys and acne and not politics and not yet activated. But on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, they had us come into school and they brought us all into the auditorium. sitting next to my best friend who's an Indian American and they tell us, okay, timed for the white

students to go into this building to talk about your racial experience and the Asian American students did this building and the black students to this building. And I remember thinking to myself, like, I don't know what is going on here. I've never been racially segregated in my life, let alone by supposedly progressive administrators. But I know that this is not right and I don't agree with it. And that was when I just became skeptical of the world around me. And that continued to the point where I got to NYU as a freshman in 2018 and was hiding books under my bed, my Jordan Peterson and my Thomas Soul books, because I was literally afraid that somebody might call me out or label me another because it's a very progressive school. And ultimately, I think those fears were warranted. This book demonstrates that cancel culture is very much a real and tantal.

tangible issue, but unfortunately I just was not being honest and authentic in myself. And also in 2018, I happened to read The Coddling of the American Mind, which I found was a, it diagnosed a lot of the symptoms that I was observing, but I couldn't really get to the root cause as someone within Gen Z and who was, you know, definitely guilty of some of the great untruths that they called out. And it was a really kind of meta experience for me where I could zoom out and understand. what was going on from a deeper level than just kind of my anic data observations. Were you there at the height of like the safe space and the aromatherapy candles and the crying closets and all of that?

And coloring sessions and the administrators would set up like in the library crayons and adult coloring books during finals and all of that stuff. I mean, in fact, on the back of my NYU ID card that I picked up my first day on campus, you know, to scan into all the buildings, it has 9-1-1, it had the phone number for the student health center, it had the phone number for the campus police, like, things that you would potentially need as a student alone in New York City, and also the phone number for the bias response hotline in case you feel perturbed or offended. And that same phone number was plastered on the back of the bathroom stalls in the library,

and basically was an institutionalized snitch culture where you could call, an administrator and report however you feel aggrieved. And ultimately, the school released a report on how that was being used. And one of the examples that they listed in the sorts of reports that they were getting was that someone had called to say that the posters around campus promoting the school with student photos in it were not diverse enough to reflect the student body. And they felt the need to call the biased response hotline. So if there's a way to make professors and students and certainly heterodox ones at that self-censor,

would be to place a hotline all over the walls and the wallets of the community members, for sure. So yeah, I was definitely there in the thick of it. I kind of kept my head down. I was a 4.0 GPA student. I felt that I had to kind of walk the walk and bite my tongue and sit on my hands in order to succeed. I do believe that that is probably true in some context, although I wish in retrospect that I had been bolder, but what really was my impetus to speak out was in 2020. when the pandemic was going on and, you know, at the height of cancel culture surrounding Black Lives Matter

and did you post the Black Square and just it felt like the world was spiraling out of control. And at that point in time, I was with my mom out in L.A. And they were trying to pull the great trick of charging full tuition for Zoom school. And my mom said, you can take a leave of absence and do your own thing for a semester, just make it worthwhile and use your brain. It should be noted, Ricky, that you're talking about NYU. One of the most expensive schools in the country. If not the most expensive, right?

Yeah. I mean, it's certainly up there with Harvard and Yale and so forth. Oh, yeah. Absolutely. Can I ask what your tuition was back in, what was it, 2020, 21? I think I didn't live on campus, but I want to say if you did, it was like $75,000 or something like that. Somewhere in that range. Is that a semester or is that a year? A year.

A year. Okay. I think. So four years on it. Including board. Yeah. Or room. Yeah.

So, I mean, one of the most expensive schools in the country with a billion dollar endowment. And I'm not sure where that endowment should be going, if not to relieve students from the burden of tuition during an active pandemic. But I did my one semester. I got through my Zoom semester. And my mom gave me the thumbs up to take time off. but to be purposeful with it.

And what I decided to do was actually read the stack of books that I had acquired of things that I felt interested in and passionate about, but I'd just been reading whatever was assigned to me. And despite having done two years of a philosophy program at NYU and, like, accelerated liberal arts degree essentially in my first two years, I had never read John Stewart Mills on Liberty. And I read that during the pandemic. And it was like a switch. flipped in my head or like learning to ride a bicycle and I just couldn't unlearn it and unsee how I had been taking for granted all of the freedoms and the classical liberal values that underpin

my freedoms and I just didn't understand the philosophical basis for free speech and how in my opinion that's the most important freedom that were afforded in a society and that just ignited a passion in me and I couldn't put that away and so I started writing for the New York Post and I interviewed Greg for an article about whether the pandemic would uncoddle Gen Z, which it did not so far, but perhaps one day I will. Back up, back up. What do you mean you started writing for the New York Post, right? Okay, so you're in college and you're like, oh, you know what I'm going to do today? I'm going to start writing for the post. That's what I'll do. I was going to play tennis. I did a lot of, so I did a lot of kind of scrappy LinkedIn DMs and cold emails and ended up finding

a tremendous editor here at the post to, I sent an essay that was absolutely inappropriate for the post to but she said there's something here and let's talk about some other ideas and ultimately one of my first articles was about the degradation of free speech at NYU

which I wrote while still technically a matriculated student there and that ended up taking off I heard from so many community members who said oh I completely agree with you and everything that you said but just don't tell anyone that we Don't tell anybody we had this conversation. Okay. Exactly. Yeah. I mean, look, we're probably

going to bounce around a little bit here, but that's such an integral part of the necessary ingredient to self-censor, to stifle, and to ultimately wind up in a world where there's a hotline for everything in every bathroom stall. Because on the one hand, you're being affirmatively encouraged, wildly encouraged to articulate the slightest provocation or offense while at the same time profoundly cautioned not to step outside the line or say the wrong thing. So there's two things happening at the same time. But the fact that you were able to parse that probably has something to do with the reading materials under your bed were Jordan Peterson and, you know, so forth. I had Mad Magazine and Playboy when I was your age, you know.

So it is intensely interesting to me as to why you were able to pivot as early as you did. And ultimately how you wound up writing this. I mean, this book is selling like crazy. And you've got your little hands right on the pulse of something really, really, really important. And I know you're sick of hearing it, but damn it, Ricky, you're 23. How does this even, how does this happen? Do do do do do do do do. Well, people are still raving, raving, I tell you, about my mother's performance in the latest Pure Talk commercial.

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Well, I would say, that I was blessed with a pair of parents who definitely could not have been more helpful in getting me to that conclusion quicker. My mom's of Eastern European heritage and kind of has that no nonsense sensibility, pull yourself up by the bootstraps. Like there's no whining in my household. And I had that in combination with a father who is 86 years old. I was a very late addition to his family. And I think that growing up and having that breadth of history, even just at the family, dinner table was so invaluable and something that I mean, I would come home from school and say, you know, try to a couple of times, not in a rude way, but just in a naive kind of childlike way

as like a second grader, like tell my dad, oh no, we don't say African American anymore. We say black now. And I remember very distinctly one night at dinner where he was like, they just changed the rule from black to African American like yesterday. What do you mean? We don't say that anymore and we're saying black now. And I think having a parent anchored in a different period of time made me a little bit more resistant to the generational tides and definitely made me wake up a little faster. But I also would say I'm definitely not like typical in terms of my politics, but I don't think I'm alone in my generation in a meaningful plurality of young people who I think the pandemic was just really a formative moment for them. And it might have activated a bit of a libertarian energy that

might not have been there before because it was just such a profound eclipse of our liberties at a young informative age. And I wouldn't be surprised if there aren't more and more young people who are kind of waking up. And maybe it's not the same traditional right and left binary or they're not all becoming like Reagan Republicans. But I do think that there's a splintering and some meaningful questioning that's going on for some people who who saw the pandemic and a lot of the, I think sometimes irrational government responses to it as a formative life event and maybe a wake-up call in terms of actually making them realize that liberty and freedom are important values. Yes, a thousand times, yes, but just so Chuck and I are on the same page.

Where are we with the black and American thing again, African-American? I think we say black now. It's black now? Yeah, it might have changed. But also BIPAC, but then that one changed a few times as well. BIPAC, people of... Black and indigenous people of color. It was POC, but then they had to put the B.I. first because it was, I think, a way to, like, exclude Asian Americans from the people of color umbrella.

It was, like, a more exclusive, sort of. I want to talk about Asian Americans in a minute, because I can't think of a group being more discriminated against right now in higher ed. But I also want to check you on something earlier you said, just because I can't keep up. But I think you described somebody as an Indian American in the early part of our conversation. Is that derricker or is that accepted now?

I think so. I've not heard that that one's been updated, but I'll have to call Vaughn yet and make sure that I haven't missed ethnicity. I mean, I'm kind of only half joking because it seems like part of the early canceling, the early wrist slapping really starts if you misidentify, not just an individual, but a group of individuals. And, man, the stakes for doing that are high. Absolutely.

I mean, so I ended up dropping out of NYU at that point in time. And right now, I got into Columbia and I'm just kind of taking a little buffet of some classes that I think I'll enjoy and then I'm dropping back out because I don't feel the need to go through all the requirements and all the kind of. of bureaucratic checking boxes. I'd just rather take some classes I'd enjoy that I feel is worth the money. But I had my first class last week and going around the table and I mean, I'm all for respecting people as much as possible, but some people have some really confusing pronouns that I don't even know how they function in the English language. And I don't even

think I could refer to that person with a pronoun because I've never heard it before. So I'm not sure how to decline it in a sentence as I'm having a conversation with them. So that's a tripwire that even wasn't there when I left NYU like two or three years ago to the degree that it is now. I think to be a college student certainly or to be someone on the internet that's public with their beliefs or it's just a ton of tripwires everywhere. And they seem to be multiplying every time I come out of my little echo chamber here at the New York Post, there's something new to ensnare me. Well, speaking of that, what was your take?

I mean, I'm sure you've thought a lot about this, but between Liz McGill and between Claudine Gay, and I don't know how much you know about me, but, you know, I've been for 15 years taking a fairly measured stance between, you know, my foundation focuses on trade schools simply because you can't boil the ocean, and it just seems to me that that's where the shortages are. But I've been careful not to, you know, blatantly disparage higher ed because I don't like cookie cutter advice.

And I do think that there's a lot of great things still to be said about Columbia and NYU and so forth. But the last two months, Ricky, I'm out of platitudinous defense. I don't know what to say about the Harvard Corporation other than, are you kidding me? $51 billion in an endowment and you're soft peddling blatant plagiarism issues, you're equivocating. Do you think it was her fear of being canceled that led to such a dismal performance in front of Congress? And I'm speaking about all three of the presidents who were there. Yeah, I mean, I think for once on campus there was a fear of cancellation from both sides of an issue. It wasn't just, you know, do the left-wing performative, like take the most peacey possible path and you won't get canceled now.

The Israel-Palestine divide, I think, really defied the typical right-left. And I think she tried to appease everyone and ended up sounding like an insensitive and lawyerly person who just didn't have a backbone. And I mean, even if she's right on the free speech issue to a certain degree, I think the rich is irony, in my opinion. opinion is to see a school like Harvard, which was dead last on fire's free speech rankings this past year and literally got a negative score to hear that they've suddenly discovered that free speech is a value that's worth being upheld and that institutional neutrality is worthwhile and that an institution is made up of people with opinions and should not have an opinion itself. Just suddenly now in the wake of October 7th, I think that the timing is really revealing and

disheartening and I completely commiserate with Jewish students on these campuses who feel totally just jilted by this and shocked to see that this is the state of American higher education. And it's the most elite schools, ironically, that are apparently having the biggest issue realizing that anti-Semitism is actually bigotry when they've been so obsessed with every other possible form of bigotry that they could sniff out of any corner for years. I think the irony is just unbelievable. So, I mean, to say the same thing in a slightly different way, had these women, Corn, Bluth, McGill, and Gay, had a long track record of being free speech absolutists, then they could have sat there. And they could have said, look, it's incumbent upon us to accept that which we find most abhorrent.

And that is the hymn book from which we've always sung. But they couldn't because just months earlier they were throwing people out for misgendering. They were throwing people out for so many things. So is it the underlying cancellation that worries you most? Or is it the rank hypocrisy that is just sort of unveiling this whole thing? I think it's the cancellation that caused the, or all these cancellations that caused the hypocrisy, honestly. Like the fact that they're even put in this position in the first place,

I think is the root of it is that they have just totally abdicated their responsibility. to uphold free speech for so long. And continuously, fire surveys will find that among the most contentious issues that students feel that they can't discuss is the Israel-Palestine conflict. And there's a way to have civil disagreement on certain aspects of that or actually have a conversation with someone who might disagree with you. And yet these schools did not make themselves the forum for those sorts of conversations for years on end.

And unfortunately, what happens when you stifle speech and when you don't, allow dissenting viewpoints to collide in a civil discourse and dialogue, especially on a college campus where people tend to have radical and hot-headed beliefs. If you push them underground, they will fester and they will come out the other end as Harvard students that are championing Hamas, which seems unbelievable if you haven't been watching the trajectory there. But if you have watched the fact that kids have not been having normal and rational conversations and at the same time they've been taught this sort of oppressor and oppressed dichotomy then. I mean, to me, I understand those who haven't been in academia recently might have been shocked by the way that

elite higher ed has responded. But frankly, like, I'm not surprised to see that this is the state of universities today. Help me then with this. I mean, I've been pretty vocal about my own feelings toward council culture. You know, I mean, especially in common. especially in my industry only because, you know, I remember watching, oh, what was his name, Chris Harrison, I think, from The Bachelor. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Wow. I mean, for me, right, a guy who makes his living, you know, he and I do a lot of the same things.

And refresh my memory with that, right? It was a debutante party and a woman, a contestant, it came out, and he kind of defended her. it was a photo of I'm going to fudge the ages here but I want to say she was like 26 when she was on the bachelor and she was ended up being the winner of the season and it was a photo that surfaced I think towards the end of the season of her when she was a teenager like 19 probably at a college I think she went to a large state school in the south and there was a sorority or a fraternity party that a frat hosted. that she went to you as a sorority sister that was antebellum themed. And so she was photographed with a bunch of other women, like, dressed in period clothing. It's gone with the wind, basically. Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

And so what happened was she ended up just getting totally piled on. And she was just like some hapless girl on The Bachelor. So she didn't know what to do. And it was in 2020. And she ended up apologizing. But before she apologized, Chris Harrison, didn't even say, oh, you know, it's okay that she did that. He just said, I don't really want to comment or pile on to her before she can actually

respond herself and we should afford her some grace. And I think he literally used the word grace. Yeah. And that, not even defending her, but just saying like let's cool down for a minute. He ended up, I think he was like 20 seasons on The Bachelor and then all of a sudden, poof, he's gone. Which I also think kind of tanked the franchise entirely. Actually, I completely agree with you.

I always bring up that anecdote. And I feel like that's never people's first go-to with cancel culture. But that was so absurd to me that grace was a cancelable offense. I completely agree. That one was ridiculous. The fact that he suggested the mob put their pitchforks down just for a moment to let the world spin was egregious. I remember calling my partner at the time and saying, look, I'm looking back at you know, 10 seasons of dirty jobs. And I can't think of a single episode where I didn't do

or say something on international television that by today's standards would have absolutely positively demanded my immediate removal. And so, you know, I think the thing that's so interesting isn't that the rules have changed, right? In the same way, it's not interesting how page six suddenly is much bigger than a page or how the headlines have done all the things they've done. All that stuff is interesting. But what's super interesting is how freaking fast it happened. Yeah. And like for me, I woke up one day and there's a whole new set of rules.

There's a whole new set of names. There's a whole new category of genders. There's unlimited genders. It's like, are we just like trolling ourselves? do we really believe these things, or are we just trying to get a rise out of our fellow man? Well, I mean, I can tell you that consistently, when you look at public polling,

that roughly 80% of Americans believe that cancel culture is a problem and believe that political correctness has gone too far. And it's not that most people believe it, it's just that that tyranny of the minority, I mean, I would bet that remaining 20%, 10% don't even really, aren't even plugged into the conversation. and it might be a 10% tyranny of the minority that would actually say, no, cancel culture is not a problem, and political correctness hasn't gone far enough.

But the problem is those are the squeakiest wheels. And I saw even on NYU's campus, all it takes is one really outspoken, ad hominem nasty student at a table to shut down an entire conversation. And I think that we're seeing that on a mass scale, those voices are getting amplified on social media. And also, I think all these rules and also these very public takedowns, Part of the reason why we define the modern age of cancel culture in our book is starting in 2014 is because social media really kind of began to proliferate at that point in time. And it was like a memeification of this tactic to take down your opponents because rather than actually meaningfully refute whatever you might say to me, I just say, oh, you're a cis-hat white

male and I never even have to deal with it. You just get canceled and your point doesn't matter. And social media is the perfect forum to do that. And also to get retweets and amplification every time you do. Right. Constant feedback, constant approval. But look, Chris, I haven't seen Chris Harrison do anything since he stepped away from The Bachelor or since he was fired. Maybe he doesn't want to. I have no idea, but. Yeah, I'm not sure. I haven't seen him either. It just looks like a wrecked career to me. Yeah. And I wonder if the exact same thing happened today, would the mob have still come or have other mobs on the other side started to close ranks? And would people defend him? Would people today have the courage to defend Chris Harrison?

Because I look at Chappelle and I look at Ricky Jervase and I look at people. You know, I thought Netflix took a pretty principled stand. Yeah, totally. And they could have buckled. Spotify could have buckled, right, with the business with Joe Rogan. With Joe Rogan. But ABC buckled. ABC let Chris be run out on a rail.

And I really wonder if they would do that today. Yeah, I think we're seeing more of a corporate backbone for sure, which I think is a positive development. It seems that a lot of corporations just did not know what to do with the 23-year-old woke hires that wanted the scalps of their CEOs on the wall. And placating them was the first instinct, and that obviously doesn't really work. So I'm glad to see that there's definitely a shift in the corporate world. I think that will have meaningful, a meaningful impact going forward. But I would also say that it's very easy and people frequently have throughout the past decades that cancel culture is over. You know, after 2016, it seemed to kind of cool off.

And we said, oh, okay, that was just a really weird election. But we'll just put that behind us. And then that all seemed fine. And then 2020 happened and it was even worse. And fire got 1,500 cases in just one single year, the most they ever have. And then after 2020, we said, okay, that was a pandemic. And like, maybe it's fine. It could be over.

And then the Israel Palestine thing happened. And there's a whole new host of free speech issues that come with that. And I am really scared of what a 2024 election looks like. So as much as I wish I could say, it seems like things have kind of passed and maybe people will actually have strengthened numbers. I really think that a society that isn't all mutually. bought into the principles of free speech and what that means to actually comport yourself in a free speech positive way. Even if you might be the champion of free speech, sometimes I see a lot of people on the right or that by default because they see their own speech attacked, but that they

might not actually have the principles of classical liberalism totally down. And unless we can get that foundation rate and that social contract agreed upon, I think every time that we have social unrest, it will inevitably erupt into an illiberal, like, scrappy fight and mess, frankly. What do you say to people who say, look, cancel culture is really just a form of consequence. And I'm for free speech, but I'm also for the consequences of being a fool. And full disclosure, when I watched those knuckleheads give that unbelievable testimony, I reveled in the idea that there would be consequences. I knew there would be consequences.

At some point, the donors are going to stop writing checks, and alumni are going to start saying, hey, you know, people are going to start taking their diplomas off of their walls because they're going to stop being hallmarks of pride and harbingers of shame. And so this idea that people, like, two big, be a big supporter of free speech, I feel like I have to also say, you know, that just means I'm talking about First Amendment speech, the stuff that doesn't get you thrown in jail,

but might cost you your friends, might cost you a job. So how do you draw the line in between the consequences of being a grown-up who mouths off versus this protected, coddled class that you're so worried about. I love stories like this. Seven years ago, a guy named Ben Still was a musician. He had zero interest in running a food company, but he was annoyed that so much imported meat was being deceptively marketed and labeled as domestic and decided to fix the problem.

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If you could eat a stare, if you could eat a cow, don't take a chance on a foreign ranch, get good ranchers now. Ah, ha. Yeah, I mean, I would say that in the cases of the university professors, I mean, I think there were some cheap pile-on ad hominem attacks that I would say fall beyond the pale of actual consequences and just is unhelpful kind of fodder. But I do believe that as a university president, your job is to create a legitimately safe space for your students to study in.

And I mean, we see in Harvard, I got the other night a video from a student there with the most heinous graffiti that he had seen on campus. And there are students that couldn't even walk to class without getting heckled and shouted at because of their religious identity. And I think that abdicating the responsibility to create a literally safe space, not the kind of figurative safe space that we're talking about for students, and also failing so dismally in your role to create a community that can have a healthy conversation and to lead a community in a way that inspires pride is a meaningful set of reasons when you add plagiarism on top of it, too, to potentially call your job into question.

However, I would say to the typical, like, example of, oh, it's just consequence culture. It's not cancel culture. To me, the proof that that's not true is that so frequently you see the cancel mob, like, do their offense archaeology and find something from 10 years ago that someone tweeted and someone say, oh my gosh, I'm so sorry, I don't mean that anymore, and that's not me. But the apologies never matter. If it was actually about consequences or about trying to make a difference, then an apology would appease the mob. But so often we see that an apology is just the opposite.

And it's not about trying to get someone to atone for a point. It's about taking the person down. Okay. Well, I love that expression. Would you call it archaeological? Offense archaeology. Which is not our term. We did, I think we credit it in the book, but I can't remember the original origin.

It's very much along the lines of, you know, dragging a statue down. because now we have a sudden understanding, a new understanding, and we're going to apply this new understanding to the old days. You know, you find a picture of a girl at an antebellum party, and you're going to punish her 10 years later. Everybody knows, pardon the metaphor, but you can't whip a dog three days after it craps on the rug. It doesn't take.

You can't do that. But in real time, when I look at those guys in, I think it was Australia, chanting, gas the Jews, kill the Jews, right? I saw them on TV doing it. Now, do I think they should be thrown in jail? No. But do I have a problem with them being doxed? Do I have a problem with them being identified?

Do I have a problem with their bosses firing them? Do I have a problem with future employers going, oh, you were screaming gasped the Jews. I saw you six months ago. no thank you right honestly rickie i don't have a problem with that i don't have a problem with that group of people paying a very very steep cost for exercising their freedom to speak so i wonder if that makes me less of a less of a free speech absolutist because here i am i'd like to see those idiots canceled there i said it i'd like to see it i would like to see people who protest

at those big universities, I loved it when those big Wall Street law firms said, nope, don't even bother applying here. So am I conflicted? Am I a hypocrite for rooting for the cancellation of those careers? This is a moment where Greg's expertise would definitely be of help because he in our book, we talk about the contours of public employment law and how if you are a public employee, there are certain contours to your free speech rights. And you can't just like decide to get naked in the workplace or call your coworker fat or curse at them. And those are all contours that we reasonably have in a workplace setting. And so there are, you know, calling for the genocide of a minority group is certainly, I think, within the confines of

things that an employer is totally free and frankly within their, well within the bounds of their rights to use as a factor in deciding whether or not to hire someone. One thing that did worry me in the wake of October 7th, though, is I was concerned about the blacklist situation that happened immediately when it was not just, you know, the student who's out there being the most loud and proud in signing their name to an email and saying that, you know, Israel brought this upon themselves. But it was anybody who was potentially a member of a student group whose president might not have even seen the email or it's like within one day.

And frankly, I can say having known a lot of college students in the lead up to this point in time, a lot of them are not up to date on international politics and affairs and probably get their information from TikTok. So I would say I don't, where I start to get nervous is when it's less a case-by-case basis thing and just a kind of blackless situation. It feels a little McCarthyism vibes to me. And I don't like that. And I also think young people who are, you know, still trying to figure themselves out if they change. I would like to afford them the opportunity to do so. The words you're looking for, I think, we just talked about. It's the Chris Harrison paradigm.

It's grace. You can extend some grace on October 8th to people who are reacting to horrific visuals on either side. And you could just say, look, I'm going to kind of ignore what you just said because it's so in the moment. It's so raw, it's so happening that you couldn't have possibly taken the time to really think through your view. You're reacting. But at some point, I just feel I was struck by my own willingness to pick up a pitchfork and ruin the lives of those people who were literally chanting, F, the Jews. Gas the Jews. I just thought, yeah, I don't have it.

any sympathy. I don't have any grace for you. I don't honestly know what to make of myself as a result. That's where I draw the line. I think that talking and having a meaningful conversation about where we're drawing the line is a far more productive situation than enforcing things willy-nilly. And I think that that's what cancel culture has been for so long. And, you know, it's a meaningful conversation to have because, I mean, cancel culture is a term that gets dragged through the mud and abused frequently, and it's one that neither Greg nor I actually really like all that much, just because, you know, Vladimir Putin was saying he got canceled for invading Ukraine, and people have said that Harvey Weinstein was canceled.

And there are points in time where there are actually consequences. And so it's about having a meaningful conversation about where we draw the line and how we don't ascribe people's views to their personhood. But at a certain point in time, when things are so shameless and potentially, it could be disastrous to a corporate setting to have someone who meaningfully believes that their co-workers should be the subjects of genocide. I mean, that's a conversation worth having, but it's so even the fringe. Yeah, I mean, look, you can't look into anybody's soul, but when they show you, when they tell

you what's in their soul, we ought to believe them. But then there's this whole new level of it's not one-on-one or small groups anymore. That's all gone, to your earlier point. We've all got this thing, which is a same. essentially a broadcast mechanism. I can go live right now on Facebook and broadcast our conversation to 6.3 million people. A lot of people can do a version of that. And so, A, there's not enough time to thoughtfully get to a sensible conclusion.

And B, the minute you open your full head about it, you're probably doing it in front of the world. And so you can't get the crap back in the goose. It's very hard to walk back gas the juice, right? It's like, well, what I meant? And it's like, you know, sorry. Subtexted next. What did you mean? You just have to be so careful where you run the pin through.

Is it the Bachelorette? Is it the girl at the antebellum party? What about libs of TikTok? I heard somebody the other day say, it's so unfair to target the libs of TikTok. You know, take the thing that they put on this public platform and then talk about it publicly because you'll ruin their lives. These people are going to have to live with the crazy things they've done and said. That's not fair.

That's what I'm going, oh, no, dude, that is fair. I want consequences for that. I don't know. You know, sometimes, though, I do think we actually mentioned lives of TikTok in our book. And I think there's a whole host of, sometimes they'll post something that I think is literally a fireable offense for a teacher. But other times, it could just be kind of poking fun at someone ad hominum or maybe their general appearances. I mean, it's definitely a case-by-case basis. but I would say that sometimes there is a pile on effect in a way that is definitionally cancel culture.

It's not always so kosher in my opinion, sometimes unleashing it on just some random unwitting teacher somewhere who may have said something that was like a little beyond the pale. But, you know, if it is on a public platform, I do think that that is also a conversation worth having to. I just want to, I loved your book, by the way. Thank you. And I marked a whole bunch of places. I'm only going to refer to one, though, because it just, I remember when this happened. And the clarity with this, this is when Constantine Kissin was invited to give a speech. Chuck, I don't know if you remember this, but he was invited to talk to UNICEF, basically to do like an hour or a half hour of comedy.

And of course, he agreed. He's a big platform. And then he got this thing. This is so awesome. A charity benefit of UNICEF is a school of African and origin. Rional Studies in London. Upon accepting the unpaid gig, he was sent a behavioral agreement form. The title alone, the Soviet-born comic said, nearly made me puke. And here's what it says. It's only two paragraphs. But this is real. And I think this is why your book is a bestseller.

This comedy night aims to provide a safe space for everyone to come together to share and listen to comedy, with all proceeds donated to UNICEF. This is a chance for all to be entertained and overjoyed by the different performances here on this day, 23 January 2019, hence the importance of this contract. This contract has been written to ensure an environment where joy, love, and acceptance is reciprocated by all. By signing this contract, you are agreeing to our no-tolerance policy with regards to racism, sexism, classism, ageism, abelism, homophobia, bifobia, bifobia, transphobia, a xenophobia, Islamophobia, or anti-religion, or anti-Atheism. All topics must be presented in a way that is respectful and kind.

It does not mean that these topics cannot be discussed, but it must be done in a respectful and non-abusive way. You know, there we are. Sometimes the real world is beyond parody, I think. Yeah. That's what's so great about the Babylon B. You know, they keep hitting it on the nose. six months before it actually happens. It's crazy.

Well, my favorite is their spin-off page that's not the B of the actual real things like this that somehow feel like they're, they'd be too on the nose if they were fictional. But yeah, I mean, comedy, we have a whole case study on comedy because that's the cultural space where we're supposed to be able to kind of have this cathartic pushing the edge, the edges of acceptable speech and laughing about it in a way that's not hurtful or harmful. and yet, you know, I think the comedy that ascribes to this contract is probably the least funny form of it, frankly. How could it be? I mean, Chuck sent me something this morning.

I was out early from my walk. What's that guy's name, Chuck? Do you remember? No, I'm going to. Ben Bankus. Ben Bankus. You got to Google this, Ricky. I can't even share it.

It's so inappropriate. I can't even joke about it, right? But I laughed so hard at what he. he said. And part of it was because I knew I wasn't supposed to laugh at this. Yeah. And that's what I meant earlier when I said, I can't get my arms around the idea that the other side, whoever that is, really and truly believes. Like whoever wrote that contract, I can't decide if they really and truly believed it.

or if it was an attempt to virtue signal in some way in their own little bubble, or if they were actually diabolically clever and just, you know, an anarchist who was trolling me and you and you and Greg by actually articulating something so completely hairbrained, right? And so there's so many ways to get attention anymore. To your point, is it the B? Is it the post? Is it the headline? Is it the tweet? Is it not the B? It's just a hot mess of ambiguity.

Yeah, I could probably, based on how I've seen some of these sorts of, not statements, but like in clubs and stuff, I've heard people around the table crafting emails and stuff. What I see often and what I saw at Lawrenceville and again at NYU was that there'd be, you know, little groups of kids in charge of things. And this is at a university. So there's probably, I'm just making this up, but let's say there's five of them sitting around the table. And one person says, oh, my gosh, we have to make sure that whoever's coming in isn't going to say something offensive. And let's make a list of all the issonisms. And, you know, maybe one person totally disagrees, but isn't going to say anything. And the other three might kind of agree and go along with it.

But it's that tyranny of the minority sort of situation where something like this can just be one really overzealous and frankly socially terrifying individual. who would cancel anyone around them for dissenting. And everyone else is sort of like, oh, okay, that sounds okay to me. And I think that that happens a lot on these college campuses where we see these crazy statements that are the product of the squeakiest wheel in the room, and everyone else is just too afraid to say,

are we sure about that? Our friend, Todd Rose, who maybe you know, I know he's good friends with Greg, Lukianov. He runs a think tank called Populis, and he talks a lot about the tyranny. of the minority and the fact that, you know, 80% of all the content on Twitter is actually created by 20% of the users. Yeah.

And so the average visitor can very quickly form an assumption that all of that noise is a representative view of the majority. But of course, it's not. It's useful, I think, and important to unveil that. And I think your book does that in a couple of different ways. But look, I promise Chuck in the new year, we try and keep these things close to an hour. And I really just want to ask you as we land the plane here. Yeah.

Can you talk to parents who have kids who, like, through this varsity blues lens, who are so desperate to get them into the right school? And kids who are getting so much pressure from their peers to get into the right school and borrow whatever it takes to do it. Yeah. What's your advice to get a decent, well-rounded, liberal arts-based education, which I still think has great value? How would you do it in this environment? It's so difficult, and I'm a dropout, and I plan to be a dropout again with Columbia.

I'm taking John McWhorter's class, hopefully in the fall, and I think extracting what I see is the most valuable resources from that school. But I walked into that school on Wednesday for the first time, and, scanned my ID and it was the school that I applied early to when I was 17. I literally cried my eyes out and like could not eat for a day after I did not end up getting in and being there now as a 23 year old and looking around and now being so much more in tune to how much these institutions have just totally made a fool of themselves and have walked away from the classical liberal values that make them or made them great institutions of learning. I would say My number one piece of advice right now, I can say as the kid who was walking into Columbia at the moment, that it's not all that it's made out to be.

And that I've been heartened by how many people in my life, FIRE changed their hiring policy to hire me. They actually had a college degree requirement. And they took that off the books to hire me. Nice. And Greg didn't even realize that that was there. At the New York Post, I was fortunate that my editor Margie here basically gave me a crash course graduate degree in journalism by actually doing. it and holding my hand through it a little bit. And it was basically like a journalistic apprenticeship. I would say my number one piece of advice, if I were a parent right now, I accidentally took a gap year

that turned into just dropping out during the pandemic. It would never have been the case I was headed to law school. That was my plan. I would say let your kid take a gap year. Let your kid figure something out. Make them actually do something with it. It better not be a video game and social media year. But having the actual experience of testing the waters on the thing that you say that you want to do, I was an environmental studies major when I applied to college. I don't know what I was going to do with that or why that was my major. Don't underestimate just how little directional help your kid is getting in high school in terms of actually trying to figure out what they want to do. I am so grateful that my parents, the day that I turned 16, it was the day that

in Massachusetts you could legally get a job. And I had a job that. that day and that was my first day of work. And I would say, get your kids working early. Encourage them to actually do internships and fields that they think they might be interested in. And if they decide that they're not, then that's a cause for celebration. And let them take some time off or, you know, be a part-time student while trying an apprenticeship and seeing if something sticks. And I also would say that if your kid does not graduate, the world I can say in just the past two years of being a dropout is becoming a lot more hospitable to people. like me who carve their own path because a lot of people are really suddenly waking up and realizing

what a lot of people have been saying for a while that these institutions are not all that they say that they are and they should not be the sole gatekeepers to success. Amen. Last question real quick. Do you think as guys like Bogosian argue that we have to tear the whole thing down? Like does it have to go splat before? I'm talking about the Ivy League in particular. Like, how much worse does it have to get before the scales fall from our eyes? I love Peter, by the way. I think he's great and brilliant, and his story is just hilarious to me with the hoax papers. I love these alternative institutions that are popping up here and there and a lot of experimentation.

I would much rather see that, but I don't know that we have to tear it down and cancel higher ed. I think I would like to extend higher ed grace if it would like to reform. You know, I think that the most meaningful thing with these colleges, and especially post-October 7th, when I think that there's a less partisan scrutiny on them, and it's just a more generalized suspicion, I would say that a market pressure of promising young kids who are saying, actually, that's not going to be my route to success, and I'm going to prove that you can do it without it, or I'm going to go to a state school and save a bunch of money and maybe get a graduate degree from the school, if it's on better behavior in four years. I think there's a meaningful

market correction coming, and especially as more and more donors to wake up. I am going to hold out faith. I would like for our elite institutions to be worthy of the praise that I think they are deeply unworthy of right now. But I'm all in for the alternative institutions too, and I support that entirely. Lukianov is lucky to have you. Are you going to this thing this weekend over in Palm Springs? There's another stand-together event? No. I saw Greg there at the last. one, I figure he'll be there for this one, but who knows? Oh, I'm missing out. You never know what that guy.

Yeah, you are. Thank you for making the time. Good luck at the post. Thank you. Such a pleasure. Write a great headline, something memorable. Oh, my gosh. I don't even get to write the headlines. I'm not clever enough for that. The book is The Canceling of the American Mind by Greg Lukianov and Ricky Schlott. If you like the coddling of the American mind, or if that worried you, you're going to like this even more, and it's probably going to worry you.

a little bit more. But the truth will set you free, and this book is full of it. Thank you. Thank you, Ricky. Thanks. If you leave some stars, could you make it five? And before you go, could you please subscribe? If you leave some stars, could you make it five? And before you go, could you please subscribe? If you leave some stars, could you make it five? And before you go, could you please subscribe? The ocean moves us. Whether that's surfing a wave or taking in an inspiring view.

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