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The Joe Rogan Experience.
Showing by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day.
How are you? Pleasure to meet you. Thank you for having me. My pleasure. I wound up seeing you, as many people did, on those videos that you were making where you were talking to students about You know, just kind of like exploring critical thinking and asking students questions and why they're upset about certain things and getting to the bottom. And I'm like, wow, this guy is like he's young.
He's obviously an academic, but super reasonable and like really level headed. I'm like, we need more of this. This is really interesting. And then I found out you got fired for doing that. It's like if this isn't an encapsulation of all that is wrong with our current higher education system, then I don't know what is.
Well, to be fair, I didn't get fired for that technically. I think I got fired for posting another one similar to it. But I think they were looking kind of – that whole thing was so bizarre for everyone. It was so big. I think there was – at the school where I teach, there's kind of one – Echo, sorry, I got to get used to this. One person in control of everything that makes these decisions.
And it was so nuts. I think they genuinely... We don't know what to do because if we fire him, our name might get out there, which is their primary concern, I think.
Do you not want their name to get out there?
No, it doesn't feel right. Okay. I...
It's not important.
Yeah, it's not.
No. What's important is that what it is, is that this is a resistance to thinking. I mean, it's really what it is.
It's out there for sure.
It's a resistance to questioning why people have certain deeply ingrained thought processes that are a part of an ideology. And I think what you were doing was really pretty brilliant. It was awesome. And I love the way you were handling it. It was very...
calm and rational and just having discussions with students and you kind of see like a lot of their flailing and trying to rationalize while they have these sort of incoherent beliefs.
Yeah. And I don't teach critical thinking. I was, when I was a teacher, I was teaching multimedia, like what we're doing now, working with cameras, did a lot of podcasting. I had this lab that I developed over four years with a bunch of Mac computers with Adobe Premiere Pro, Photoshop, a 3D printer and,
So it was using technology to make art at a special education school with kids that had behavioral challenges and some – a variety. Anything you could come up with, we had it there. It was like the last line of defense kind of for public schools that couldn't handle these kids. They would send them there. And so I would just use this tech to work with them in a therapeutic way, kind of.
That was my goal, the way that would most benefit them. And so one day they asked me to do a, hey, can you do a newscast for the school? Like this week at the school, you know, there was this field trip, the soccer team did this, blah, blah, blah. Sure. And we want this kid to be on camera and like to do, he's really good at that. And he was getting really nervous on the day.
And so I was like, let's just sit down. You've seen Joe Rogan and stuff. Let's just treat it like a five-minute warm-up podcast. Here, I'll sit down and be on camera. You ask me whatever you want. Well, how have your thoughts on Harry Potter changed given J.K. Rowling's bigoted opinions? So that's where the video came from. So I just want to be clear. I don't teach.
I wasn't like, we're going to sit down and learn in the moment what We do have conversations like that because when you are doing something like this with students, well, what are you gonna talk about? Kill two birds with one stone, be as effective as you can. A lot of students have questions. I've had students ask me, what's the difference between fascism and socialism?
What's the difference between a Democrat and a Republican? They don't know. And they're genuinely curious and sometimes you can get another. I had one teacher that the music teacher I worked closely with and he was like my best friend there and he would be in the room often and we would have little debates and he was from Romania. Yeah, I think Romania, I'm blanking.
And so he had a very different political perspective. And when you're in those debates, the kids were like locked in and you can tell. Normally they're just making noise and then they're just quiet and they're ceased. They turn around and they're like watching it. There was an effect. Yeah.
Well, I think most kids are aware that you're being forced to think a certain way or at least to talk about things a certain way. Most people are – they don't like being told what to do. People don't enjoy that. And when they feel like there's like a lot of social pressure to adhere to a very specific ideology – I think people don't like it.
And so when you see debates where people have differing opinions and they have these sort of logical, objective ways of describing why they think about things a certain way, it gets people like, okay, was there another way to think? Like how is this guy doing this? Like what does this mean? Like why do we have to say – what is wrong with what JK Rowling said? And it's exciting to people.
And the videos were exciting, and there was a tremendous amount of response to them. I know you're aware of that. I mean, there was so many comments and so many people were interested in them. They got very popular. And then when I heard you were fired, I was like, oh, of course. It was too good because it gave me hope.
I was like, more people should be doing this at schools, and it would help a lot because a lot of this – There's really sort of polarized positions that people are taking one side or the other. They just want to win and they dig their heels in and they don't exactly even know why they have this particular opinion that they're defending. They just know that they're supposed to.
And so they just kind of bite down and dig in and you get these shouty sort of polarizing arguments.
I've been playing with the idea of how we see the world through stories. I think that has a lot to do with it. Because people kind of labeled me as the critical thinking guy all of a sudden. So I really started to think about it. What is critical thinking? And the best I can articulate, it's thinking for yourself to contend with the stories that make up the world.
Because a lot of stories are nonsense. Some are true. And there's usually a middle ground. And my background's in filmmaking. I kind of fell into teaching. and I've spent time in LA and made some movies and I teach at Emerson, a filmmaking course still, where I went to grad school and got my master's in Film is probably the wrong term now because it's all digital. It's like visual media art.
But I think you can study movies today like scholars are now studying the great thinkers. Movies will be the artifacts that people look back on for our time, you know, be in museums and things like that. Sure.
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No, we talk about it all the time that it's a great sort of postmark for culture. Like if you go back and watch movies from the 50s and then the 60s and the 70s, the 80s, the 90s, the 2000s and then today, you can see how different the narratives are.
how different the way the films are made, the way people communicate, the subjects that are covered, the quality of the acting and filmmaking, the quality of the cinematography. It really just shows. If you really think about it, human civilization and human history, modern society is so recent. The Industrial Revolution and giant cities and... and transportation and all. It's so recent.
It's a couple hundred years maximum. You know, you go from trains and horses to cars and cities, and then you have Morse code to all of a sudden now you have digital communication that's instantaneous worldwide. I mean, it's a rapid change in humanity, and a lot of it is the artifact, as you said, is really our media. Like, what have we created?
You know, we were talking the other day about the limitations of mainstream television and how mainstream television, you know, they're trying to kind of like adapt more towards what is going on on the Internet. But they're so hampered by their format.
The censorship, the format, and the fact that they're sponsored by a bunch of different enormous corporations that they can't really critically talk about. So there's a bunch of things they can never actually say. So there's news that they can't cover.
There's like significant health problems that have probably been a direct result of medication that they literally can't cover because they're being sponsored by these companies. So they're so hampered. And if you go back and watch the early broadcast from 1945, people had like this way of communicating. It's changed. Right.
It's not the way – like if you were having dinner with someone and they were saying, tell me, Warren, where did you grow up? You'd be like, oh, this is not a real person. This is bizarre.
The transformation in acting is remarkable.
Remarkable, right?
Yeah.
You go Marlon Brando. It's like Marlon Brando is probably like the first example of someone – Yeah, who's like, sounds like a real person. Like, this is what I really expect a person to be behaving like on the waterfront, like under duress. Like, this is a real human being.
Yeah, it became internalized. And now we're in this phase now where I think the best actors are doing both. The external, like Heath Ledger is my favorite actor of all time and had a huge impact on me. That's why I went into filmmaking. And he, think about his externality in The Joker and all his roles. He had this...
I think the key to acting is about what is not said, what's unspoken, and it ties into everything about critical thinking. It's the best metaphor I ever got from a directing professor. He drew on the board. Mm-hmm. What really sets an actor apart is everything else. What's not said, what they do with the words, the intention behind the words. The words are just floating on the surface.
They're just the tools that we're trying to use to communicate the elusive intangible, the subtext, everything that's And the best we can do are bumbling cells or formulate with these tools. So to treat words as the end-all be-all is so silly. You know, like people say the wrong thing now and you get politically incorrect. Papa John's CEO. Right. Right. With no context has gone up.
But it's a larger issue. But it's just fascinating how that correlates beyond just film to... Because it's true that most communication is nonverbal. So the more time you spend studying, working with actors, studying movies, you start getting really tuned into body language. It has great utility. So it's pretty interesting.
Yeah, no, it's very interesting. So when you were doing these videos, when you initially did it, did you have any idea of the impact that it was going to have? I mean, did you think, like, wow, this is actually, like, really unique and interesting and I think people are going to really enjoy this? Or were you, like, really shocked?
Yeah.
Yeah. I had been playing with YouTube as a medium since discovering Jordan Peterson in 2017. Because I remember, maybe it was even earlier than that, because I arrived at graduate school in 2016, Boston, Emerson, and all hell breaks loose, Trump gets elected, and there seemed to be a huge pushback. And I had never thought about these things before. And then being a grad student and seeing...
What I witnessed at school, protests claiming Emerson was racist, which is one of the most far left schools I've ever seen. Yeah, it's super far left. Can you provide any evidence of that?
2016.
2016. So was this what time? So this is like September of 2016, August of 2016? Beginning of the academic year. So this is like when the elections are kind of heating up and people didn't think that Trump was going to win yet.
Because I vividly remember the day of the election because I was renting a house with three roommates. And I was watching the election. I remember just being like, guys, I think Trump might win this. It's not even worth watching. And they were walking around.
time goes by i'm like guys like and then they started to what so no one saw that coming and i my big takeaway was how could so many experts get something so wrong and that caused me to question my presuppositions basically my view of the world and then that opens your mind to someone like jordan peterson and all these other great thinkers intellectual dark web blah blah blah you know but that it's suddenly it's so difficult to articulate what that does
To someone like me an average of you are like a genuine lover of this space. Mm-hmm so it's surreal to be here and because like it suddenly causes you to if you feel like everyone's moving in slow motion all of a sudden you feel like you're waking up and it doesn't it's I don't want to talk about the matrix because it's so It's such a strange.
It's gotten all this momentum in a different but it's what it felt like it felt like you were suddenly like how what this is so much more interesting and complicated than I thought and there's no going back and
Yeah, I think we like to adhere to certain narratives about the world. And we will want to think the big thing is we want to think that there's a central there's some sort of competent control, some sort of competent leadership that exists and that the structure of government and the structure of media is established
rock solid and logical and that these are the smartest people in the world that's how they've risen to this position and now they they're there to provide this you know like if you have a knee injury you want to go to an orthopedic surgeon because he is an expert in knee injuries and he's going to tell you what's wrong with your knee and what can be done and you know that's a real expert and we thought we think of politicians and we think of the media as being real experts
Well, it turns out, no. It turns out I'm not even a little bit. They're terrible at it. They're not just not good at it. They're really bad at it. They're really bad at it, and they lie a lot.
Yeah, they're not much smarter than you or I. No. And then you realize that about your professors. Right. This guy really... Doesn't know much more than like my my dad or what's the dip what makes you a professor what right qualifies you and Often there's just this and that's what going back to that core thesis if we see the world through stories mmm Professor means something.
Yes politician means something. These are experts. Yeah, they're not much different than us. I
When you were in school, so you at the beginning, everybody's thinking there's no way Trump can win. You know, these experts, I think on the day of the election, I think they had some crazy odds of Hillary winning. It was like in the 90 percent. And we watched it from the comedy store. We did a podcast from the comedy store called End of the World Podcast.
And we did this live stream while the election was going on, and we just kept bringing in different comedians. We had a whole conference table, and it was fun. We did it in front of a live audience, and then we updated the crowd. And then when marijuana became legal, Burt Kreischer takes his shirt off and runs around the stage. It was really funny. It was fun. It was a fun time.
But what was most fascinating was the podcast was over, and then we all went to the bar. The comic store has this private bar in the back, and on the television, Jake Tapper was just seriously bummed out, talking about Trump winning all these different states. And then we watched a little bit of The Young Turks, and Cenk Uygur was freaking out.
In the beginning, they were so cocky and so confident, and by the end, they were just freaking out. They couldn't understand how everybody got it wrong. And it I think for a lot of people, that was the end of trust in mainstream media. That was the first nail in the coffin. Those to be like, you guys didn't you were so wrong. You were so wrong.
Yeah. How could you get something so wrong?
Yeah. And it was just fascinating to watch what's supposed to be the news. Right. So it's supposed the news is supposed to be. at its best, an objective analysis of what's going on, giving you the facts, but they were so clearly upset.
And, you know, there's a lot of editorializing on how bad this is and what this means to the world and what does this say about us that this guy who said grab him by the pussy is now the commander-in-chief of the greatest army the world has ever known. It was just... For us, as comedians, we're like, this is gonna be fun.
It was just...
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Yeah. Yeah. I'm just trying to go back to those days and think about it, but it was at Emerson. I remember I was taking a class with the dean of the student body And it was a pedagogy class, the philosophy of teaching. And it was right in the midst of these protests. And it was the day of the protest. And there was like 10 people in the class. It's a four-hour class.
So they're like, we're going to devote the four hours to talk about the problematic racism occurring at Emerson. So we're all sitting around. But the white students were not allowed to speak. We had to concede our space for four hours. And I just remember like, what the fuck?
Fuck is going on here. Why was that? What was the reason given for that?
Because it was the moral right thing to do. Because we, they said to me, I remember he said, I said, what can I, I did say, I was like, what can I do about this? I genuinely, I genuinely believed everything. I was kind of, I was just starting to question things. I was like, what can I, I feel terrible speaking to the student who had just spoken.
Like you genuinely feel every day you wake up and come to class, you feel oppressed. That sucks. What can I do? They didn't have a response because they just said, you can just listen. Just take your time to concede your space and listen. So that's that was the reason given concede your space.
And then why did they feel so threatened? Did they articulate that?
There was a Facebook group that was designed to provide that evidence called Emerson, hashtag Emerson so racist or something. And it was like a student, like a teacher said, no, you can't, you got to turn in the work or you're going to fail the class. Yeah. My first teaching gig occurred shortly after that. I remember this vividly.
The teacher, I was going to be teaching the screenwriting course with undergraduates for the first time. And before the protest, she said, don't let them walk all over you. They will try and take advantage of you. If they don't do their work, just be fair, honest, give them the grade they deserve. After the protest, yeah, Warren, you remember when I was saying that?
Because she got called out on the Facebook page for some stupid, I don't remember what it was, quote. Yeah, Warren, you remember what I was saying about that? I was wrong. Don't forget to be compassionate because that student is black and she reminded me of how difficult it is to be black at Emerson and so I couldn't fail her. I couldn't give her the grade.
I'm
Honestly. Abracadabra. Yeah. It's just like microaggression. That's the thing about these claims, though, is there is no concrete evidence. It's things like microaggression. Someone made a reference about fried chicken that was... I've heard that one. That happened to my mom who's a professor, runs a study abroad program. She said... We're really excited.
This place is, um, they have really, they were in Italy doing a study abroad program. She's like, I know you guys have been missing American food and this place has fried chicken. So, and it's really good here. And two of the students she was talking to at that table were black and they claimed that that was racist.
She was like, what? The fried chicken one is so crazy. Fried chicken and watermelon. Those are the two things that are associated with racism for as far as foods, which are universally loved. Like fried chicken is delicious. Watermelon is delicious. Like how could that possibly be a negative that certain people like delicious food? To this day, it's one of those things. It's so bizarre.
You could bring up all kinds of different delicious foods. But if you bring up fried chicken, which everybody eats, everybody who eats meat and loves delicious food loves a good fried chicken. Have you tried Gus's in town? Is that where you get the slabs of meat? No, no, that's Terry Black's. But Gus's fried chicken is in Austin. Fantastic.
Some of the best fried chicken you're ever going to have in your life. But if you brought that up to a Black friend, they might look at you sadly. What the fuck are you trying to say? Food's good.
Good food. Let's go eat good food. Keep that analogy in your mind about the boats floating on the surface. And they're just the tool. What's the intent? Right. If there's no intention there, you can't claim that's racist. Right. Unless you want it to be. Right. And this goes back to seeing the world through stories. If you believe a story is true, I'm oppressed. The world is active.
There's systemic racism. There's active racism. I'm at my college. I'm a victim. You're going to start seeing what you believe to be true. You're going to start finding hints of it. Right. And it's true as well for like why it's important to have a moral code or I personally believe in a higher power.
But if you believe in objective truth, you're going to see those lessons when they occur in life and it's going to be a help, be a guiding star for you. Yeah. But it can be wielded in both ways. It's like the response that I got about J.K. Rowling. It was the ContraPoints YouTuber. Everyone was like, you got it. Got to counter-contrapoint. She's the one who's taken down J.K. Rowling.
The argument essentially is I'm so done arguing. I'm not even going to debate this. If anyone who believes in transphobia can see that J.K. Rowling is obviously transphobic, that's it. It's the same thing. If you believe in that definition of transphobia, well, you can find it almost infinite places.
Well, the problem with that kind of arguing is that it's a total cop-out. Like, if there is any sort of debate, and there clearly is when it comes to trans issues, if there's any sort of debate, you have to be able to discuss things. And as soon as you say, if you want to debate, we're done. If you want to have a discussion, we can't. You don't see it? Well, we're done.
Well, what you're essentially conceding is you don't have...
logical ability to shut this down because if you did you would just do it you would have a rational conversation that person and you would say clearly look this is why this is racist this is why this is transphobic this is why this is sexist like whatever the whatever the argument is and you would lay it out and as soon as you say if you don't believe that then we're done talking mm-hmm
I can't even, I can't even do this. That's what I started. Like my mom disagrees with me heavily on politics, which is okay. In the wake of, we were talking about 2016 and I found Jordan Peterson. I was like, this guy, look at this. This is really interesting.
And if I had any kind of conversation with her about it, even to this day, it's often, I think she's getting better now that I've been making content. Yeah. but it was often a formation of that pattern. I just can't do this with you, Warren. And it's just neutralizing the debate because they can't have the debate.
Well, they can't have the debate because they're not equipped for it. That's all it is. They don't have any weapons, right? If you're going to go to battle, you have to have some sort of resources. There's nothing there. And when there's nothing there and you just say...
I can't instead of saying like is there a logical argument that there are men who are manipulating this in order to control women spaces and like it used to be that we protected women against men and protected particularly we protected women against predatory men right like perverts or sex offenders for example.
But somewhere along the line with this woke ideology, we completely eliminated the even possibility that a man in a dress that wants to go into the woman's room could be a pervert, which to me was the most insane thing. It's like you've just given a hall pass to the grossest members of society that we've always...
We've always feared people that would try to take advantage of women and do so in a weird way where you claim to be one, but you have a penis. You're walking around with an erection in a locker room and anybody who calls it out is transphobic. Right. It got real weird.
And people would counter and say, Joe, but... But like you're taking the extreme. You're claiming that trans people are walking around with erections. It allows for that capacity. It allows for that to occur.
After all this craziness occurred with the video, viral video or whatever, I went back to North Carolina for the first time and my best friends, you know, who I've grown up with and we just, I guess, fine. They were deeply concerned about what I was doing. Right. You're talking to too many people from the right. I sat down with Destiny for six hours, but it's never enough.
But I laid out what you were saying, and I was amazed that they couldn't. follow that logic that what about the mother in the dressing room with a six-year-old? Does she have a right to decide if that six-year-old is exposed to male genitalia? Just to keep it as simple as that, take out erections and all that. It's like, is it fair to her? And they just can't. Right. It seems so clear. It's,
But they're just scared. They're scared of thinking logically because if you do, you will be cast out of this group. You'll be ostracized. Like there's very specific rules and they're very much like a cult. Like you have this very cult-like thinking. And if you deviate from that at all...
You run into the possibility of social ostracization, and that's what happens to a lot of people, and they're scared of that. So to defend against that possibly happening to them, they attack things without any logic at all. They just say, you don't think, you don't know, I'm done talking to you.
It's like a get-out-of-jail-free pass, and you can just get away from the conversation, and you don't have to confront the logical fallacies. You don't have to confront all the problems with what you're saying.
And the only solution I've been able to find is to just push through. Yeah. And I say to them, Chris, one day, I genuinely believe you'll look back and understand. One day. And I believe that.
No, I believe that too. If it's done logically and you can have reasonable discussions. But even in the opposition to that, right, you have people on the right who adhere to a right-wing cult-like thinking, right? And they'll push back against it in a way that's also not logical. And so they dig their heels in on their ideology. The left digs their heels in.
And, you know, you have things like people say people on the left don't get it. People on the left this. Like, no, there's a giant spectrum of people on the left and a giant spectrum of people on the right. I don't like any of those labels. Exactly. And I really don't like it because of me. Like, I don't fit in there. Exactly. Yeah. Exactly. I've been... Playoffs. We're talking about playoffs?
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And people want to box you in on that. And this goes back to seeing stories. Which story do you fit into? Like my mom has a story of what a Democrat is. She can never think in a story of what a Republican is. She'll never deviate from that.
My parents are the same.
Right. Exactly the same. I'd rather be homeless.
They're blue no matter who. They're just locked in. Yeah.
Yeah. Yes. You know, it's I'm just I don't. I don't dread the question of, are you a Republican or a Democrat? It's like, who cares? I'm not a part of any... I'm just going to be... I'm going to call it as I see it. Follow the logic.
Yeah, it doesn't make sense to be on a team.
Right.
It doesn't make sense at all. Even for someone like me, like, you know, who... I went to the inauguration. How was that? Bizarre. But I don't consider myself a Republican. I don't consider myself a Democrat either. I consider myself an American. I'm a human being. And there's a lot of things that the Democrats believe that I believe too.
There's a lot of things that they say that I say that makes a lot of sense to me. And there's a lot of things that the Republicans say that makes a lot of sense to me too. And the idea that I have to ignore things that make sense to me because it's coming from the wrong team is just stupid.
These are bad faith arguments where you have to have a conversation with someone and pretend that what they're saying is not logical because they're supposed to be your opponent. That to me is just dumb. That doesn't benefit me at all. It doesn't benefit anybody listening at all. It's just stupid. It's a stupid way to think.
It's so limiting and it's so bad for you cognitively because I think when you put up those blinders, like you ever talk to a person that's a liar, especially like when you're younger, you meet people that are liars and they lie all the time about all kinds of things. One of the things about liars is they can't really recognize how other people see their lies because they're living a lie.
Like they're lying so often they don't realize the language of truth and honesty. And so when they're talking to people, they don't even realize that people know they're full of shit. Because they've lost their ability to sort of discern what natural conversations are about. Where it's really – it's not about you being. Bullshitting me to try to get me to believe something. That's not true.
It's about you just expressing yourself So they stopped doing that they stopped just genuinely expressing themselves and then they just live with these blinders on and so everything Exists and the only way they can find someone who will buy into their bullshit is if someone is like so bad at thinking and reasoning that they don't have the tools to discern when someone's full of shit and
And this happens with ideologies. This happens with religion and it clearly happens with politics. It's like you get locked into these blinders and you're incapable of looking at any sort of positive aspects of someone who is on a team that you believe is the opposition.
Mm-hmm. Yeah, I think there is a power in truth. It can be felt, like you're saying, and that's beneath the boats, beneath the surface, which we can't articulate. We can't explain how we can sense that on someone when they're bullshitting. You can feel it. So as a teacher, you really learn that reality if you're going to be effective. The first thing I would say on the first day to my students is,
By law, by ethical bounds, there are going to be some things I can't tell you. Confidentiality, whatever. But I will never, I promise I will never tell you something I know to be untrue. They try and embody that through all behavior and that I saw that resonate. But there's a lot of. Teachers that, you know, it's a strange environment, that school. A lot of weird stuff.
Of course.
Well, it's an art school. That wasn't an art school. No, I'm talking about the ones where, like, the kids get kicked out of high school.
Oh, okay.
So there's, like, gangs, drugs, you know.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, I think we're entering a unique moment in history where a lot of those narratives are just dissolving. And a lot of that very tribal thinking is being critically analyzed and it's found to be lacking. And people are abandoning it left and right. And you're seeing sort of the consequences of...
a lot of this ideology affecting people's day-to-day lives, and that's causing people to abandon it. I was watching this left-wing podcast where they were discussing being gaslit about the problems with violence and crime rising in New York City, and that you're being told that it's not. But if you live day-to-day life, you're like, no, this is real.
You guys have let in a bunch of Venezuelan gang members, and you have a sanctuary city, and now it's kind of chaotic. and you're seeing like the woman who got lit on fire on the subway and like that kind of shit. You're seeing this with ever-increasing frequency.
You're also seeing the way they lie about crime statistics because they'll tell you that crime is down, but what they don't tell you is crime is severely underreported and that people are being released for even violent crimes very quickly, which has direct consequences because then there's no incentive whatsoever to not commit crime if you're going to be right back out on the street.
Mm-hmm. Are you familiar with Roland Fryer? Yes.
Yes. Have you had him?
I have not, but I would. It's really interesting. He's changed the way I view statistics. But in like a three-minute synopsis of it that goes to crime statistics, I can't think mathematically. And I think this applies to logic. I think visually. So if I have a metaphor, I can suddenly understand a mathematical concept. I just don't have that mind. So he broke it down. All right.
After all that research that caused him to go into hiding. He's like, if you look at it through an economics perspective, let's say my job is to explain. Let's get to explain why he wanted like he went into hiding, conducted a study, a deep dive into police statistics to see racial bias in policing. Right.
The findings did not match the story that people wanted to be true at Harvard, which caused him to literally go into police protection, like a one-year-old he had at the time, for days. Now, I don't know the deep dive beyond that, but that's the... Right.
Right. And we should say he's a black gentleman.
Right. Yes.
So he says the colleagues told him, don't publish this, warning you'll ruin your career. Right. For releasing findings that contradict popular left wing narratives on policing.
And he said, I'm going to do it anyways.
Yeah.
And then he came to the University of Austin and taught a class. It's on YouTube. And watching that class, to summarize it in a minute, look at it through economics. If my job is to approve or disprove loans. I've been able to get that down the best I can. I want to keep the default rate as low as possible, and I've achieved like a 0.5 default rate.
Out of anyone who comes in my office, 0.5 after I've done my job defaults. All right, that's pretty good. Someone could come along later and analyze all that and say, wait a minute, you're turning down 60% black people, though, versus white people. His point is you can't look at it through that lens. You have to look at it through what is the goal? What is the result we're trying to achieve?
So in policing, his study showed that 40% of stops approximately, if we use that as an example, 40% of stops recover contraband, which is pretty crazy, pretty good, across demographics, which means it's being done correctly. This changes how you view so much. It's kind of difficult to understand at first glance. Tell me if this makes sense.
Okay.
So it's 40% across whatever color the driver is. That means we've done correct. We've done it right. If it was 60% white drivers were recovering, we should be pulling over his arguments. We should be pulling over more white drivers. But that's assuming they're pulling people over upon race. Let's go back to the default rate.
You're just coming in after the fact and analyzing the results and looking at it through a racial lens. I'm going to judge each case based on a merit, regardless of, because are you going to default or not? And whatever, I'm going to run my analysis, whatever that is. So anyone can come in after the fact and say, but there's always going to be a discrepancy.
Okay, but you turned down more black people than white. Okay, so according to your logic, for every black driver I pull over, every Latino, I have to pull over a white driver now, which affects policing itself, as opposed to what's our goal? All the police are meeting that morning. Our job is to go out and recover contraband in this neighborhood and
But for every black driver, you've got to pull over a white... It's like, that's not how it works, right? So that kind of... That boggled my mind when I first heard it. I was looking at it through the lens of what are we trying to achieve and seeing if that achievement is even, then there's nothing off about it.
If the contraband being recovered is 40%, regardless of the rate of which you're pulling those cars over, the success rate is the same, which means you're doing it right. I'm trying to boil that down as simple as I can.
And so that was problematic for a lot of people. They didn't want to hear that.
Because they're pulling over, let's just say 60% of the drivers are black, which is bias. The question is, is it unwarranted bias? Because there's always going to be bias.
Right. Is it unwarranted bias, meaning are more black people causing them to get pulled over? Like the default rate.
70% of the people I turned down, let's say 70% of people that come in that office that were black got turned down. My rebuttal to that is that has nothing to do with it. My job is for the bank to get a 0.5 default rate, and that's the end result. Right. Can you prove that I'm doing anything wrong? What adjustment logically should I make?
Right. Should you give loans to people that are more likely to default just because of their ethnicity?
Right. That would be the only logical course of action in response to that.
Right. Which is the argument for equity. Right. Over equality. Right.
Equal yeah, essentially that would be a form of equity equality of outcome versus equality of opportunity, right?
Yeah, I've seen that argument that like not everybody starts at the same spot So you have to raise up people who've started a different spot, which is to me a band-aid on the real problem. I The real problem is that we have crime infested areas that we've done nothing to fix. That's the real problem.
The real problem is we have parts of our society that have been, you know, because of Jim Crow laws and red line laws. There's a long history of them being riddled with crime and gangs and it could be fixed. There's been no effort. There's been no real national effort to take impoverished, gang-ridden, crime-ridden neighborhoods and rehabilitate them.
The more you do that, if you did that, you would have less losers. If you have less losers, you have a better country. And that's including like... The Appalachias, like areas of West Virginia that are filled with people that are addicted to pills and committing crime because they're drug addicts that are all poor white people, coal mining people, those folks. It's everybody.
It's just crime and poverty. And crime and poverty causes people. You imitate your environment. You imitate your atmosphere. If you grow up in a crime-ridden, gang-ridden neighborhood, the chances of you getting involved in gang activities and crime are much higher than if you don't grow up in an environment like that.
Yeah, I'm from North Carolina. Like near Asheville. Asheville. Yeah.
It's rough out there, which people don't believe. Asheville, like mountains, beautiful.
Right.
No, it's like very high per capita crime rate.
There's a meth capital right near where I live. And so I agree with you. The thing is, if we look at it, I agree if we look at it through a socioeconomic lens. So I had one of my professors from Emerson. He's like, I solved racism. This was in one of the videos. Oh, boy. I was like, sure, come over. Let's record. Hit me with it. So the solution is we're going to have a tax.
So if you can trace your ancestry, then you don't have to pay taxes or some form of tax. Yeah. Okay, but what about the white person in Appalachia who is in an equally bad socioeconomic position, but they don't get the tax or the award, your solution? Well, their ancestors weren't oppressed.
So I would be all for it if it was looking through a consistent, applied across all demographics equally, socioeconomically.
You're never going to stop racism. You're never going to stop ignorant thinking. I mean unless there's some sort of groundbreaking human neural interface that completely changes our cognitive function and dissolves all boundaries. You're not going to stop people from – there's people that don't like people from other cities because they play sports against them. I hate people from Philly.
There's always going to be people that discriminate against other people because there's always going to be ignorant people. And it's easier to do that. It's easier to decide this person is my enemy. These people are on my side. It's easy to be tribal. It's much simpler. You don't have to think as much.
Like, Anna Kasparian got sexually assaulted by a homeless person. So when she's walking down the street, she's probably going to recoil a bit, maybe. And if she sees someone, you know, there's a human psychological element. She's going to try probably not to do the, but it's just human nature. If you have a bad experience, then it's going to, it goes back to how we see the world. But you're right.
Yeah, we'll never be able to solve racism.
Well, that's the type of bias that is kind of logical. Like if you see a guy and he's covered in his own shit and he's lighting notebooks on fire, that guy might be out of his fucking mind. You should probably go around him. And if you run into a bunch of them and they're camping out right in front of your house, you should act accordingly.
You shouldn't treat them the same the way you treat your neighbor who's just walking his dog waving to you. It's a different kind of human being you're encountering. There are certain people that you should be wary about.
And if you are severely mentally ill and addicted to drugs and you live in a tent in front of someone's house and you're cooking meth, like you're in the backyard barbecuing and you smell someone cooking meth in your front yard, that's a problem. Yeah, that's a problem. That's a problem. And if you pretend it's not a problem because –
Oh, you have to be sensitive to people's socioeconomic needs and it's a housing crisis and it's this and it's that. No, no. There's people that are really fucked up because being a person is hard. It's difficult. It's complicated.
And if you grow up with abusive parents who are drug addicts themselves and in and out of jail and you've been psychologically scarred since you were a baby because they beat you and You've encountered a lot of domestic violence. You're going to be more fucked up than the average person.
This is just the development cycle of you as an entity, as a human being that is a product of your accumulated experiences, your genetics, your biology, your environment. There's just a lot of factors. And to pretend that those factors don't exist and that if you do – You recognize them that somehow or another you're racist or you're sexist or you're ableist or you're this or you're that.
You're the problem. No, the problem is we've got a bunch of people that are really fucked up, you know, and we have to figure out a way to have less people that are fucked up. Here's going to have a certain percentage. But is there something that can be done? that would mitigate the number of people that are growing up really fucked up and becoming problems. Start at the root. Get to the root.
What's the root? Crime-infested, gang-infested neighborhoods, abusive family life, abusive neighborhoods. That's the root. It's the root of all of our problems.
I think that's why Jordan Peterson tapped into this so much because the only solution is taking a personal responsibility.
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Everyone around you is doing something fucked up or most people around you are doing something fucked up. And there's nowhere you can turn or you can relate to someone who can give you tools and objective reasoning and an understanding of how you got to the situation and what are the steps you can take to get out of that.
I encountered that every day at that school, because that's where I was, those are the kids that I was working with. They didn't have, majority of them did not have a parent. We would have open house and no one would come. They had no example, no money. And it's heartbreaking. So what do I do? All I can do is try and lead by example and maybe communicate.
Because that's their best hope is trying and taking responsibility. Because no one else is going to do it at the end of the day. There is no alternative. Right. Except for having someone hopefully come along and provide that role model.
Right. Or finding something that you can do that elevates you. Finding something you can do that gives you a very clear example that hard work and dedication can lead to success and then you can kind of get addicted to this positive feeling that you're getting from seeing yourself progress and get locked into that and it can elevate you out of certain situations. You see that happen with sports.
You see that happen with art. You know, sports and art are probably the two best ways that people can escape impoverished childhoods and bad neighborhoods.
The student who was, we're not supposed to have favorites, but was my favorite, he came from that kind of background, but he could draw like I've never seen. Hmm. There you go. Art. And so we got him a Krita drawing tablet, a digital drawing tablet, and he would just sit and draw all day. But here's the issue is, well, how do you, but he wouldn't go to any other classes.
And we kind of, he liked, for some reason, he liked being in my classroom.
so they would literally sit him in my room and he would stay there all day and then he would try and bring work from his other classes and get him to do the work from the other classes and but so through that pattern he and i you know we would talk about he got me into elden ring telling me like this video like he was he got me into the whole art style behind elden ring and dark souls
but what how do you foster then the school kind of comes along and they're like yeah but he's not doing um academic drawings that are not relevant to the school and i i get that but how do you then take that talent for drawing and show him that this can be monetized man like you could be up like yeah let's get you maybe freelancing i worked as a freelance videographer it's a it's a hustle but it's a way you're not gonna make but it's better than nothing like trying to think outside the box and
he ended up getting kicked out for a stupid, he didn't want to go on a field trip one day. And he was like, he made an offhand passing comment. He's like, I don't want to go on the field trip. Don't make me go on the field trip. I'll just bring a gun so I don't have to go to the field trip. And it's like, oh my God, like, And this goes back to the idea of telling the truth.
What got me is they lied to him and told him because the teacher that he said it to, you're compelled to report it and everything, and we run it up the chain. I don't think he should have been kicked out. I know this kid, though. He's done. That's why they're there, because they say stupid stuff. Right. And we're the last line of defense. He was graduating in two months.
Oh, God.
I don't know where he is now.
Well, it brings you back to like what is school supposed to be for? It's supposed to be preparing you for independence out in the world. And it's supposed to be preparing you to eventually have a career. Well, there's real careers in art. It's a viable pathway. Yeah. And the idea that this guy is extremely talented and that's not accentuated.
He would draw these Japanese samurai sword fighting just beautiful. And then I had the photo printer. We would. And but they were like, well, how's he going to make a living drawing Japanese photos? No, it's like get him to draw school like logos for multimedia projects for the culinary program. It does like this kid won't respond to that. And he didn't. And then he gets kicked out.
That was my problem as an artist. When when I was young, I wanted to be a comic book illustrator. That's what I wanted to do. And all I could. That's the only art that I was interested in. I read a lot of comic books and I was like really into like Frank Frazetta. And yeah.
I was really into like Jack Kirby and all these different artists that would draw for comic books and fantasy novels and that kind of stuff. That's what I was interested in. That was the only thing I was interested in. And my art teacher was an asshole. He was such an asshole.
Shout out to my friend John DeVore because I communicate online with a buddy of mine in high school who was also in that art class who was the most talented guy in the class. It was me, John, and our friend Kevin. And we were like the three most talented people. I was like third. It's like John was number one, Kevin was number two, and then there was me.
But we were all like much more talented than everyone else. And all we wanted to do was like comic book art. And John was so good. And he told me that that teacher gave him an F in his final year. Because he's just an asshole. He would never look at your art and say it was good. He would look at your art and say, you're not going to be able to do that for a living.
You're going to have to draw diaper commercials. You're going to have to do this. You're going to have to do things you don't want to do. I hate that shit. He was a bitter guy with a pot belly who looked depressed. A lot of teachers are. Yeah, and he didn't want you to have hope because he didn't have any hope. And he didn't like teaching. He wanted to be an artist.
And when he would draw, he would draw in the class. We would do projects. And his stuff was unexceptional. It just wasn't that good. And it just, they wanted you to fail.
I had a student. I mean, I had multiple students. The number one profession kids want to do now is be an influencer, YouTuber, blah, blah, blah. So I get the apprehension when a kid's like, I really want to do YouTube, make a YouTube channel. I want to do what Joe Rogan's doing, whatever. But the school was kind of... You can't make money on YouTube. That's so dumb.
That's like you should be fired for being incompetent. Not just incompetent, but you're counter to what's true. Like you're saying things that are objectively untrue. You can't make money on YouTube. That is – you could pull up statistics instantaneously.
It's hard, but you're never going to – I got lucky, man, just because I was willing to put myself out there and make a fool of myself.
But that's not why you got lucky. You got lucky because you put out good content, and it's a merit-based thing. It really is. It doesn't necessarily have to be good, right? There's content that's just – it's inflammatory and that people –
people gravitate to that because they like controversy people like just people squabbling and yelling at each other like shitty content or someone who's saying like awful things so people can you believe this person's saying these awful things and they get a lot of attention for saying awful things yeah and so you know and then youtube has ways to sort of manage that which are you know a little orwellian right like they demonetize people for talking about specific things and
That scares me.
It should scare you because a lot of times they're demonetizing things that are absolutely accurate, and that's where it gets really weird. This is what we faced during the COVID crisis. If you said that you think this disease came from a lab leak, you would get demonetized on YouTube. Well, that's proven to be true now. So what happens?
Does YouTube owe you money from all those videos that you put out that they should have monetized? No. I can't even think about it. It's crazy. You're saying accurate things, but these accurate things were being suppressed by our own federal government, which is really weird. We're in cahoots with these corporations that were making these medications.
And so it got real fucking weird, like real weird. And unfortunately, a lot of those laws still stand. We had an instance where there was a video that we put out during the pandemic where when we were only on Spotify. So when we were only on Spotify, all of our videos, all of our episodes got released only on Spotify.
But we banked them all to eventually, you know, just like we'd have them if we ever wanted to put them up on YouTube. Well, then in 2024, I signed this new deal. And in the new deal, what I want to do is put it everywhere. I was like, we'll be Spotify, but let's put it on. And Spotify wanted to do this as well. It was actually, they were very supportive of this. Put it everywhere.
Put it on YouTube. Put it on Apple. But it's a Spotify exclusive, and we work out this deal that way. So when we took these videos that were available on Spotify, in order to put them on YouTube, even though they're factually correct, they have a strike against them because it's still adhering to their old laws that were applicable at the time that we made the video.
So did they make adjustments?
What did we wind up doing with that, Jamie?
I don't know which case you're talking about.
You know where you were saying that there was a video that we were going to put up, but it had a strike, and you were going to have to do training? Remember that?
That was already up there. Right. That wasn't re-uploaded. That was from the past. Oh, it was? Yeah. We were still putting clips up on that channel.
Oh, it was a clip that was the problem? Yeah, pretty sure. Right, but it was the full episode, wasn't it? Right. And then when we uploaded the full episode, then it applied to that, right?
There was no way around not doing the education fucking thing, whatever it was called. Really? No way around it.
Did you have to do that?
No, I'm not doing shit. Yeah, but here's the problem. That clip was accurate. The problem is the things that they were saying were accurate.
Yeah, something changed in the news, and they were like, that's actually accurate now, but there was no way to change it in the system.
Yeah, it was always accurate. It's just the news started reporting it accurately. And because initially the government narrative was that it was incorrect. So we're in the situation where you're getting educated about something that's absolutely true, and you have to sort of pretend that you did a bad thing.
It's scary for me because this is literally how I make a living now. Yeah. I put food on the tables.
Yeah. Do you do other platforms as well as YouTube?
I'm on X, but I'm not monetized. I've never made a dollar on X. I'm not sure how to go about doing that. I could look it up. I should probably, but... Yeah, I don't know how that works either. I hear rumors about don't post one-to-one to X because YouTube wants exclusivity, and if you're posting on X, your videos will perform less.
I don't know how much truth there is, but I'm so kind of... There's probably something to that. And I'm so dependent on YouTube that I'm like, I'm not even going to do this.
Here's an interesting statistic about YouTube. This shows you. Like this is probably one of the best examples of bias that you're ever going to see. During the time where I released the podcast with Trump, it was getting – what was the most it was getting an hour? Was it 1.2 million views?
Sure, I think so. Maybe 1.2, 1.3, something like that.
As much as 1.5 million, I think, at one point in time. An hour. Never trending.
I heard about that.
Never trending. Never trending. What's trending then? Tell me what trending is. If something gets 50 million views in a couple of days and that's not trending, what's trending? What do you call trending? What does that mean then? Are you curating your trending thing? Why would you do that?
Did Kamala Harris on Call Her Daddy trend?
I don't know. That's a good question. Well, it didn't get any views. No, it didn't get much views. I mean, what did Kamala Harris on Call Her Daddy get?
Like less than a million, I think.
That's crazy. Yeah. I get a million for some random.
Should have gotten a million.
That's crazy.
Yeah.
But that doesn't make any sense. I don't think it might be wrong about that. Well, it wasn't extraordinary. It wasn't interesting enough. That's, you know, it's merit based, essentially.
I was curious what it would say. how the trending page is controlled. I looked up on the screen, it says there's no humans that manually curate the page. Right, but obviously the algorithm. I don't believe this. Yeah, I don't believe that. I'm pretty cynical about this response.
Yeah, okay. YouTube's trending page is controlled by an algorithm that's trained by human engineers. There's no employees who manually curate the trending page. How the algorithm works. The algorithm considers many factors to determine which videos are trending, including view count, view velocity, and video age.
The algorithm considers where views are coming from and how the video performs compared to other recent uploads from the same channel. The algorithm aims to create a list of trending content that's relevant and representative across the platform. The algorithm refreshes every 15 minutes to stay current.
Filters the algorithm applies strict content filters to keep the trending list family-friendly These filters ensure that videos don't contain excessive profanity Well that gets me out Mature content violence or disparaging others in the community. Okay, so just that line alone disparaging others in the community.
Yeah, I It would be in YouTube's best interest, though. They need you.
Well, don't they like views?
Yeah, that's my point. Don't you sell ads? If I was YouTube, I'd be like, no, we want Joe Rogan's thing up here.
We need views. Well, not only that, if you put it in trending, you'll get more views, so you get more advertising revenue.
On that specific one, I think they were worried about something else.
But yeah, they were worried about it promoting Donald Trump and him winding up being president because of that. But then it got to a point where you couldn't find it. So that was real weird. Like if you Googled Trump Rogan podcast, you would not find that podcast at all. You would find clips of people discussing it. You would not find the actual podcast.
When I first saw it, it was someone reacting to it.
Yeah. Live. Yeah.
bizarre didn't you tweet like we had to release it at the same time on multiple platforms sorry for the glitch wasn't there there was a glitch because the way um we upload generally uh jamie you can speak to this we upload with a timer right like it's going to upload it usually is like at noon and this time we were doing it at night and
For whatever reason, it didn't go live. The platforms don't work the same. We just released it.
We just said, let's just release it now. But it took a while to get up. That was just an issue with... just how the upload system works. It's like it's more effective to upload on a timer, apparently. But that had nothing to do with YouTube.
That was just a thing about, and then when it was being suppressed, and I knew it was being suppressed, I talked to Spotify and talked to Elon and said, let's just put it on X. And so we put it on X as well. And then Elon put it on X and it wound up getting across all platforms, somewhere in the neighborhood of like 250 million views
fucking insanity but a lot of it was x like a lot of people on independent pages they just took it when it was a problem finding it and they just uploaded it to their own channel on x a lot of people did that and then you know i uploaded it elon elon's alone got like 65 million views and i got like 25 million views it was just nuts It's like people wanted it. It's the Streisand effect.
As soon as you try to suppress something, I just don't buy into the idea that there was some sort of manipulation behind the scenes. It just doesn't make any sense. Whether it was rogue employees or whether it was someone who was gaming the reporting system, like reporting something. Maybe that could be it.
If you get enough people that report that a video is a problem, maybe that could throw it off. I don't know. You know, I don't even I don't want to ask because I don't think I'm going to get an honest answer.
You haven't asked.
I kind of have, but I don't talk to them. You know, I don't I don't have like a direct channel where I talk to them. I don't want one. I was just like, eh. Let me just put it, you know, like, if there's a situation like that, I'll talk about that. And that's my way of responding to that. Like, make it make sense to me. Like, why can't you find it?
Why can't you find a video that has 65 million views? Why can't you find that? That doesn't make any sense.
That is crazy.
That's nuts. Like, what's wrong with your search system? And then eventually, because of me talking about it, it went back. And then you could find it.
It's one of the best things. A lot of people are really grateful that you did that.
We were clearly being manipulated. We were clearly being gaslit and being told that this guy's Hitler. Even though he was already the president for four years. And he didn't act like a dictator. Like, we know what it's like when he's running things. We had experienced it for four years.
And they were telling us that this was the end of civilization, that trans people were going to be rounded up and fucking nets thrown on them. It was really wild that people weren't going to be safe. It was really wild. It was really wild. And they...
Yeah, they just demonized and they gaslit people to the point where when you actually do have the guy in and talk to him and say like, no, he's not mentally compromised. He's not incoherent. He's very coherent. He's got an amazing amount of energy. Guy sat here for three hours and we could have done another three hours easy. He can go on and on and on. And he's fine.
And he had some really good points. First of all, the point about the California wildfires where he's discussing their water issues, that it could all be fixed. And then he gave them a plan to fix it. And then they rejected it. And he's like, you could have all the fucking water you need. And you should be doing things to make sure that these fires don't happen again.
There's ways to clean up the brush. There's ways to do this. There's ways to do that. You stop the fuel. You know, you develop better systems for water distribution, sprinkler systems. Like there's ways to do this. And he talked about those ways on the podcast. And it's like, you know, eerily accurate when you see what happened to the Pacific Palisades. This episode is brought to you by Oracle.
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Yeah. Well, that clip of you predicting the whole thing.
Yeah. See, here's the thing, this climate change narrative. This is a really goofy thing that people on the left are talking about. This is because of climate change. This is climate change causes fire. L.A. has had essentially the same weather pattern since the 1800s. since they started noticing them. There's a great video. Here, I'll send it to you, Jamie.
There's a great video of the Topanga fires. You might be able to find it before I can pull it up. The Topanga fires from 1961, I believe. There was a huge fire that raged through the Hollywood Hills pre-climate change. 1961. LA has always been dry as fuck.
It's a desert.
That's why the movie industry is there. Because you could film outside and you don't ever have to worry about it raining on you. That's literally why they came there. Because it's the perfect climate. It's amazing. I was just there last weekend. The weather's incredible. But the city, because of their ridiculous policies, is just a fucking disaster. A dangerous, creepy, weird disaster of a city.
1961 Bel Air fire. Could be. Sounds the same. Brush fire, wind.
I mean, that's just what happens, man. So the situation that I encountered was from 2000. I was filming Fear Factor, so it had to be before 2007. So it was really before a lot of this. I mean, you know, you had the Inconvenient Truth documentary, but you didn't have the type of climate change discussions that you have today. So you think it was more... It's just L.A.
Okay.
It's just L.A. It's not a climate change issue.
God, I've got to find this video. 15,000 acres burned, 450 homes burned. Here's the aftermath. Houses, they're digging through it.
Yeah, that is a black and white one. The one that I had was color footage. I know I have it. Just give me a second. I will find it.
The documentary is called Design for Disaster. That's popping up. This also says Bel-Air.
Here, I'm just going through my – Whitney Cummings sent it to me. So I'm going through my videos with her. I'll find it in a second. But the point is it's like when I experienced that, this was not when everybody was chiming in about climate change being – here it is. I found it. 1960s, it was in the canyon. Here it is. I'll send it to you, Jamie. Okay.
And it's one of those guys talking like this because that's how they talked in the news back then. So it's a 1961 documentary about the fires. And so when I was talking to this fireman, I think it was 2003, if I'm correct. I think it was 2003. And we were experiencing a fire and he told me – because where I lived, I had been evacuated three times. I've been evacuated in the early 2000s.
So give me some volume on this so you can hear the way this guy talks.
484 times fire proved its deadly efficiency by incinerating.
In a few roaring minutes, what families had taken years to acquire.
So that has always been a problem. So they had the same issue back then. The 100% same issue. So this idea that these left-wing people, particularly media people, they want to use this binary thing, you know, This is what I saw. Oh, Trump said drill, baby, drill right after we're dealing with this climate change fueled emergency in the Pacific Palisades and climate.
That is not it's not climate change. It is the climate of Los Angeles. It's a fucking desert. They put a city in the fucking desert because they wanted to film movies there. And it's also windy in the winter because you get the Santa Ana winds, which is what just occurred. We get these 100 mile. They're historic. They've always happened. Every year we get the Santa.
There's fire season for a fucking reason. There's Los Angeles has fire season where I used to live. It was fire season. And every time the winter would come and everything was dry and all the vegetation was brown and the wind was whipping around, everybody would get nervous. Because you get, you know, there's a bunch of different reasons.
The one big one from 2018, they found out that it was like some part that had failed that initially caused the fire that was a $1 part. The park cost $1. This $1 piece that they failed to replace caused the sparks that led to the initial fire that was the 2018 fire where you saw, if you go down the 405 in Hollywood, like half of the side of the highway was completely engulfed in flames.
It looked apocalyptic. It was bananas. Driving down the highway and the whole left side of the highway is completely on fire. Giant hills of raging fires that they couldn't put out. It's always been like this. It's Los Angeles. It's Los Angeles. Why didn't they adapt?
Pfft.
That's so crazy. We're out by Concord, like near there. Yeah, I know where that is. So there's no fire hydrants. And so we bring our own water.
That's so crazy.
But it's possible is my point.
It's possible. And the problem with this past fire, and here's another thing that's a lot of weird pushback against, that it was arson caused. Hey, some of it was arson caused. Fact. They've arrested people. They arrested people for starting fires. They've arrested multiple people for starting fires. My friend Andrew Huberman filmed people starting fires.
They were starting fires in the middle of this fire disaster. Because it doesn't mean it's the cause of it. It means along the way, there was a lot of arson. Like some people were saying that, you know, oh, there's this false narrative that it was the homeless people. Right. OK, whether they had a house or whether they didn't have a house, some people started fucking fires.
There's video footage of the three fires that are started semi simultaneously that are near the Palisades. And on one of the video footage, it's very clear that there's a human being is like from the sky where they're filming this. There's a human being that's near the fire. Most likely the cause of the fire was a person who either accidentally did this or did it on purpose, lit a fire.
So the problem is not fucking climate change. The problem is L.A. is extremely vulnerable when it comes to fires and always has been. And they've done very little to mitigate this yearly disaster problem that they have. That's the facts. That's the reality of it. That's indisputable.
Do you think Gavin Newsom is going to – is this going to be the end of him or are people going to put up with it?
I would like to think that people would wise up. I mean there's been a trend in California to vote in the opposite direction. If you look at the map of 2020 versus the map of 2024, the counties that went red, like a significant number. But the high population centers are in the trance. San Francisco, Los Angeles, very difficult to get those people to vote anything other than blue.
And so if the people that are Democrat are giving them the exact same solutions, the exact same gaslighting, and they keep buying it over and over again and they still win elections, then there's no incentive for them to correct course. So this is why. California has been essentially blue since – except for the time where Arnold won, which is weird, right?
Because he was kind of like a moderate Republican and also famous and that probably led to him winning. But other than that, since Reagan, he – what did he – he did something where he allowed people that came here – what was the issue that Reagan did? There was some sort of a voting issue. where he allowed people from, I think it was people that had emigrated here illegally from Mexico.
There's coffee and water, whatever you'd like. There's water in that glass right there. But California is basically locked blue, and the only thing that's going to change it is things like these specific Palisades fires where people realize we have incompetent government.
And if we have competent government that is right-wing, and as long as they don't infringe on civil rights and human rights and all the things that we're terrified of from right-wing extremists, as long as they don't do that, you'll probably be better off leaning in that direction. If someone's going to take a pragmatic solution, a pragmatic –
a view of what these problems are and make meaningful change like you've got to you've got to figure out what what is first of all with the fires it's like this all could be prevented what's causing the fire well all this brush they had record rainfall record rainfall means record growth so you have record growth of all these grasses and brush and all this stuff so it's all green and lush until la runs out of water
Because it stops raining for a long time and then everything turns brown. And then it's a tender. It's just fire tender. It's just... It's a tinderbox.
When the fire chief says, if we'd had a thousand more trucks, it wouldn't have, quote, tamped this down. But then we see... an old man with a garden hose able to save his house, it's like, well, an individual was able to make a difference. Right. So then logically a difference could be made.
There was one guy who put lawn sprinklers on his roof.
Milk, orange juice. I saw one guy. So it's difficult to have those two narratives. They contradict each other.
They do. But I mean, the firefighters are saying once the fire is raging, even if they had 100 trucks, you're dealing with 100 mile an hour winds and you've got this enormous like who if someone did start these fires, if they were started by arson, the way they did it was very strategic because they essentially did it.
upwind they did it like right where the wind was going to blow the fire into the city like if you started that fire at the outskirts of the city it would just burn to an area that's not populated they started it right where all the brush was right where all the woods were where the wind was at its back and then they started it in multiple areas so that it would come and spread out in a in this way that was like impossible to stop
So once it gets big, like to this day, like what is the fire? Yesterday I read that it was 60, I think it was 65% contained. This is like we're in weeks, right? Weeks into this. At one point in time, it was 0% contained. It was just burning through. And if you haven't seen, there's a great video. I'll send you this, Jamie, of an overhead view of what it looks like now. And it's 68%.
68% contained today. I'm going to send you this, Jamie, because it's a helicopter that is flying over the Palisades and you get to see like the extent of the devastation. And until you see it like with your own eyes from the air, it's hard to understand how big the destruction is, how enormous the amount of land that was destroyed, the amount of homes that were destroyed and not just destroyed.
Here is like you could see this here. I mean, this is crazy. This is absolutely crazy. And the video is larger, Jamie, if you could shrink it a little so that way you can see the top. So there's words at the top that block off some of it, but it goes on way above that. See that? This is an enormous piece of land covered with homes that's gone. All that's gone? Not just gone, but now poisoned.
So now not only are these homes burnt, but everything that was in the homes, all the plastics, all the chemicals, all the batteries, Teslas, all these different electric cars, all the electronics, all the toxic chemicals that come from the building materials, all that is now seeped into the ground and will eventually seep into the water. It's going to get into the water supply.
It's probably going to get into the ocean. It's going to wash into the ocean.
Yeah, I don't think people realize how toxic that stuff is.
Not just that. It's in the air. So they can say the weather quality or the air quality is good in California based on how much smog there is. But what's in the fucking smog now? Because this is not just automobile smog. This is not just dry dirt kicked up by the wind, which they've always had. The smog in Los Angeles existed before there were cars.
Because there was always this problem with the way the valley is shaped. The valley just contains all this air in there and you would get dust pollution. Even back before there were fucking cars. Or if there was anybody that was burning coal or you had fireplaces or that kind of shit. You're getting all that smoke that was always contained in that area. It's just a bad place for air. Yeah.
And so then on top of that, you've got all these homes that were burnt and all this toxic waste, all this burning plastic and burning chemicals. Now that's all in the air and no one's discussing that. Like it has to be bad for you if you live near that. All those firemen that are breathing that shit in, that's going to have long-term health consequences for those guys. Yeah.
For all those people that are dealing with all that shit, all those people that are anywhere near it, your air is air of like – do you know the story of the toxic burn pits from Iraq in Afghanistan? So during the war, when troops were on a base – Overseas, they would take all their garbage and burn it. So they burned it in these waste pits.
And so the wind would shift and blow through the camp and all these people are breathing toxic air, extremely toxic. In fact, Biden's son died. died from a brain cancer that they connect to his exposure in the military to toxic burn pits. So there's a whole swarm of health consequences that veterans have faced because of these toxic burn pits.
So the dumbest fucking way to deal with garbage of all time, make the troops breathe it in as you burn it. It's the same kind of thing that's happening in LA. It's the same shit. You're breathing burnt garbage, burnt refuge, burnt buildings, burnt cars, burnt tires. All that stuff you're breathing in.
I didn't realize how often, you don't think about firefighters, but they're exposed to that. All the time. It's all volunteer work, but the guys that...
you know in their 50s 60s and just like hacking all the time yeah and it's it's like a sacrifice they make knowingly it's crazy it's the gear is never because you can't just wash fire gear right you gotta have it specially washed and so there's like the kitchen and the firehouse right and you can't bring the no gear allowed in the kitchen because it's but you know you put it on go home you're supposed to shower every time but that doesn't happen so it's just crazy also they're fucking exhausted
Like, you don't even want to shower. You just want to close your fucking eyes. I can't imagine. You've been working 28 hours. You get a couple hours to sleep before you get back out there again. It's fucking insane. And still, 68% contained. Today. What's today's date? The 23rd? 22nd?
I read some people talk about the big campfire from a few years ago. The decontainment number starts getting used as a big political tool. And, like, it'll never end up being, like, 100%. Just kind of keep pushing the number around to talk about stuff. It'll never... just eventually just goes away.
What do you mean?
Like the big number for the biggest fire, like they've contained 100% of a small fire. Like the biggest fire, it'll just, it'll always stay at a number that's below 100%.
Well, if it's still up.
No, it's like a political tool, they're saying. The residents there just got sick of it. They're like, this is now a political thing. We're going back and forth. Tell us what it is. Right. Where is the fire if it's not contained kind of thing. It just becomes a thing that no one has answers for.
Right. That is a weird thing, right? We want to put numbers on stuff. Like today, we're like, is it 65% or is it 68% contained? Like, what? It's a fire. Fire's still up. There's still a fire right now. January 22nd, there's still fire in Los Angeles. It's been going on for weeks. When did it start? What was the date the fire started?
I was reading through something on the New York Times, one possible thing, which doesn't sound right, but they're just going, it's possible. In that area, someone was lighting fireworks on the night of the first, and there was a small fire that started, and some firemen went up to put it out, and they stayed to see if it was going to catch back up.
And five days later, they're like, is that the same fire? Because it was in a really close to the same spot. It would be real weird if it started back up five days later, but...
Yeah, that doesn't really make sense. Also, it doesn't make sense if you think about how windy it was and the fact that everything's dry.
They're saying it can go into the roots, which is, I'm never, that's where I'm just starting to hear that.
Okay, maybe. It can. Maybe, but five days later it starts up again as a raging inferno? Perhaps. Perhaps, but there is also evidence that people lit fires. There's also people who got arrested for lighting fires.
Wouldn't surprise me, man. Have you heard of the book Monkey Wrench Gang? No. Eco-terrorism, these like friends living out of a van, they go around and back, originally monkey wrenching was sabotaging for environmental reasons, big equipment to fight back. against that kind of thing.
I had a friend back in high school, went to this boarding school, and he was really into it, and that's where I learned about this book. But it wouldn't surprise me if that kind of thinking carried over in someone. Because we saw a copycat, so there's definitely people out there that have a reason
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Enter promo code ROGAN for huge site-wide savings. MeUndies. Comfort from the outside in. Yeah. Well, there's disturbed individuals in our society. That's why we have school shooters, right? That's why we have a lot of things that people do that's horrible, that are horrible. And one of the things that people do is they start fires. You know, it's a known thing.
And to pretend that it's not possible because it doesn't. It doesn't appeal to your narrative. It doesn't fit with your narrative of the homeless thing that we just have to be compassionate because these are people and there's a housing shortage and it's just housing, housing, housing. No, you have open air drug markets and mentally ill people and fire.
And it's possible that that's what's caused it. LA wildfires rekindle eco-terror arson suspect manhunt after fake firefighters arrested. Yeah, that's the thing. There were fake firefighters that were arrested and there was also fake cops.
But I think that was, if I had to guess, it was more about stealing than anything because there was organized looting where they were breaking into homes in areas where there were people going to be abandoned.
LA, man, it's not my cup of tea, but it's tragic.
One of those firefighters has a history of arson. That's why they're talking about this.
Oh, great.
One of the firefighters? One of the fake firefighters.
Oh, yeah. There you go. One of them has a criminal history of arson. Gee, what's the odds? Well, he definitely didn't do it again. He learned his lesson, Jamie. A fake fire truck? A pair of fake firefighters from Oregon.
Where do you get a fake fire truck?
Yeah, he's like dedicated. He's like the Michael Jordan of fake firefighters.
Seems like a million bucks.
He got a used one. Did you see the thing in L.A. where they had the lot where they showed all of the fire trucks that were out of service? No. Hundreds. Oh, they're bringing them back in service? No, no, no. They were broken down. They hadn't bothered fixing them. So a journalist got to the lot and was filming from the outside. I think Schellenberger had it on his Twitter page.
But a journalist got to this lot where these fire trucks were, where they were supposed to be repaired. There was hundreds that weren't repaired. Like just a fucking huge parking lot. Jeez. 75 Los Angeles fire trucks wait for repairs as wildfires rage while city spends 1.13 billion on the homeless. This is New York Post. I heard it was more than 75.
This guy had a film of it and showed, and it looked like a shit ton of trucks that weren't fixed. You should have fixed those. You would have had more trucks.
The reason is going to be, well, we're backed up. It takes so long. To get a fire truck even ordered, it takes about a year.
God. I mean, maybe that could work where there's very few fires and it's just essentially home fires. We're fine where we are. Yeah, but it rains where you are too. California, it does not fucking rain for long stretches of time. I think California had gone eight months without rain when these fires started. This is common. This is why this climate change, it's climate change.
This is not a change in the climate. This is the climate of California. You see it from that 1961 video. You see it from when I was evacuated. Three times I was evacuated. The houses in front of my old house burnt to the ground in 2018. Both of them.
Like when you were talking about it in that clip that goes around, it's like there's nothing they can do. Exactly. It's the right wind.
Yes. It's going. This firefighter told me that when we were filming Fear Factor. He freaked me out. He said, it's just going to take the right wind. He goes, we just get lucky.
So is there any preparation that could have?
Yeah, you got to get rid of all the brush. Number one, you got to get rid of all the stuff that starts fire. That's possible to do. That's not impossible. That's not like putting a person on Venus. This is like something that could be done. Like if you have enough money for all that, you haven't spent $24 billion on the homeless crisis, didn't put a dent in it. You could have fixed the brush.
You could have fixed that reservoir that was empty. giant 11 million gallon reservoir of water completely dry you could have fixed that you could have saved homes maybe you wouldn't have saved all of them you could have saved a lot you could have saved people's lives and they didn't and it was incompetent and it was poor planning and it was you know they had a lot of
ideas that weren't good they had a lot of things that they paid attention to and things they focused on that weren't important what was really important is preventing these kind of reoccurring disasters continuously reoccurring disasters I've seen a bunch of them.
Like I said, I was evacuated multiple times, but I've seen multiple other fires that I wasn't evacuated from that were huge in all sorts of areas around LA. It's dry as fuck. One of the big ones that we experienced was... It was like we were out filming in like out in the Tachipi area. Like we're near Tohon Ranch. We're filming this thing at this ranch. And we had to cut filming short.
And when we were driving home, the entire right side of the highway for like... Almost an hour was on fire as I was driving home. So you're driving. Ash is falling from the sky like snow. And the whole time you're driving, it's apocalyptic. The whole right side of the highway is in flames.
I saw a clip of that. It was surreal.
So this has always been a problem with L.A. So these climate change kooks, these left-wing kooks that want to put everything into these very binary categories, like this is because the Republicans refuse to agree to climate change and call climate change a hoax. No, this is L.A. This is the climate of L.A. Is this the fire trucks?
Jones posted it.
Oh, he probably posted it too. Quite a few people on Twitter posted it, but there was all these fire trucks that were in this lot. This isn't the video that I saw. I think multiple people posted them, but they're all out of commission. They're all just sitting there. Obviously, they could have used them, but that's only part of the problem. Part of the problem is planning correctly.
Part of the problem is there wasn't enough water for the fire hydrants, so the fire hydrants went dry. The whole thing's nuts. And when Trump talked about it on the podcast, he was eerily accurate. He was eerily accurate as to what the problem was. And he offered a solution. And to save the smelt, they didn't want to do the solution.
Well, this department with Elon, you can just imagine what Elon could do with the fire truck problem. Yeah. But he can't do everything.
Well, you can't do everything with states, right? Because states have states' rights. One of the things, they arrest this one guy for arson, and they couldn't necessarily prove that he was an arsonist. One guy they found with an actual blowtorch. They couldn't prove that he lit the fires with the blowtorch.
But this guy had been arrested multiple times, including for vandalism and all sorts of other things. And I believe assault. And ICE wanted to deport him. But the California sanctuary state law, the way it's set up, they weren't allowed to deport this guy. So they're just going to let him go. He had been arrested eight times, this person, in like a short amount of time.
So it's like a real problem person. And they were like, hey, maybe this guy shouldn't be in the fucking country lighting things on fire. And they're like, no, we have sanctuary. He's still here? I don't know. I don't know what the latest is. I try not to pay too much attention or I'll go crazy.
Yeah.
But California is deep in the trance, deep. And I think the only thing that's going to snap people out of it is something like this, where they realize like, oh my God, these people are completely incompetent. It used to be the homeless situation was a little bit of a wake-up call. This is like next level. This is like next level incompetence wake-up call.
And so I'm hoping that someone can come along that's a reasonable conservative person that can shift things in California, like appeal to people's concerns when it comes to social issues, you know, women's rights, gay rights, the things that people are terrified of when it comes to right wing, you know, when you think about like far right fascist governments that are going to clamp down on people's rights, like
What we're really worried about is disenfranchised people and marginalized groups and people that are more maligned. So if someone can just appeal to that. So we have no desire to stop gay marriage. We have no desire to limit women's reproductive rights.
But what we do want to do is make a more fiscally sound city and have more conservative policies in terms of what are we spending our money on and what are the results. You can't just say, oh, we work for a homeless initiative. And so, oh, well, you got a blank check. Do whatever you want to do. It should be like, what have you done? How have you solved the problem?
Hey, look, we spent $24 billion and homelessness went up. by a significant amount, tens of thousands of new homeless people while we spent $24 billion. This is not effective. So whatever you guys are doing, you're shitty at it. So we don't want you doing it anymore. We're going to bring in someone who has some more progress. Something that's going to progress the idea better.
Someone who's going to fix this problem better. Someone who's got a more pragmatic solution. If they could do that, but they have to appeal to people that are deep blue. They're deep blue. They're blue no matter who. And the problem with California is very unique and more unique than New York in that California, the entire city, is established around the entertainment industry.
And it's established around the dream. If you go to Los Angeles, you can make it. Well, in order to go to Los Angeles and make it, if you're an actor, you have to audition. And when you're auditioning, you're auditioning to people that almost universally have a very specific political ideology. You can't be a part of the group.
You can't be a part of the team if you're a right-wing Christian Republican and you're making films. That doesn't exist. You got like Mel Gibson and a few outliers. That's it. Clint Eastwood, a few outliers. For the most part, if you are an actor and you want to work in Hollywood – and by the way, Mel Gibson and all those guys will hire left-wing people –
These people will not hire right wing people. So you see everyone sort of morph their personality and morph their political ideology and their social ideology around what's going to get them picked. Because when you're an actor, you have to get picked.
So if like you and I go for a part and there's a bunch of other people going for a part and we're all like similarly qualified in terms of like the look that this part is looking for.
A lot of it is determined by whether they like you. And Hollywood runs off the blacklisting idea. Oh, yeah. If you go against your union, that's how unions have power. Yes. If you cross the picket line, you're going to be blacklisted. And you'd be ostracized, and that has real consequences in L.A. Because people don't realize what... I always describe it when I'm teaching that class on filmmaking.
Hollywood is the very definition of a rigged game.
Yes, it's a rigged game. They can shut you out. And so this is the underlying philosophy of the entire city. So even though there's only a certain amount of people that are actors in LA, there's a lot of people that wanted to be actors. And there's a lot of people that want to be famous. And so they get their fame from their small social media.
They get like a little adrenaline and dopamine drip off of like social media likes. And like maybe my TikTok can go viral. And then they get a little fame from that. There's a bunch of fame seekers. All those people are locked in to this cult-like thinking. So it's very difficult to get them out of that.
The technology, I think, is going to revolutionize. We're on the precipice of this. We were talking about Heath Ledger earlier. What happened to those kind of independent movies that I remember being in high school before going into film school and watching those Monsters Ball, Candy, these small Heath Ledger movies. independent movies that made you feel like they were just made for you.
They weren't like Marvel or Disney, right? And we don't see those anymore because everything's changing in the industry for multiple reasons. The strikes had a lot to do with it. I think it's, It's this strange paradox where you have more of an ability to reach an audience than ever before, but there's fewer writing positions, movies being made.
There's this hiring shortage, but camera's more accessible than ever. You were talking about the potential for someone to come along. I mean, I think it's only a matter of time until it does happen. The Daily Wire is trying kind of with Pendragon Cycle. What's that? They were doing an Arthurian legend, their attempted Game of Thrones, which would be, if it were to land, could be...
massive it could i in my theory is it could be the tipping point because it's going non my understanding is this non-union you have angel studios and they're the kind of trying to compete but we've never had an alternative to the union model the traditional production model which drives that production cost because there's nothing stopping you from getting a camera going out there and doing it except for the rigged game which says well we're going to block you we won't distribute your movie there's all these different parameters you're not sag sanction blah blah blah blah
If Daily Wire could land the Pendragon Cycle and it were to be a solid enough story on the equivalence of Game of Thrones, it could change so much. But there's the recent Brett Cooper stuff that's going on. It's just so much Brett Cooper leaving the Daily Wire.
What's that story?
She's no longer at the Daily Wire. The comments section. You know Brett Cooper. She created the comments section at the Daily Wire. The comment section, is that what it's called? The comments section. Are you aware of this, Jamie?
A little bit, yeah, and then they hired someone else to host it.
Yeah, I'll break it down.
What happened?
She developed, they hired her. That's her? Yeah, we want you to start this YouTube channel for Gen Z. We want it to feel like you're a streamer.
Let's hear what she says. Let's rewind that shit. Let's hear what she has to say. Just a little bit.
Hey guys, some of you have heard the rumors online, and the rumors are mostly true. Today, December 10th, will be my last day hosting the comment section and working for The Daily Wire. It is not true that I am being forced out. It was my own choice to leave. And believe me, this is bittersweet.
I have had the most unbelievable three years helping to craft the show, building this community, and telling stories and sharing the truth every day. Through the comment section, you all have made me braver. more articulate, more thoughtful, more hopeful than I could have ever imagined. And I'm grateful that we spent this time together.
And I'm grateful that The Daily Wire gave us a platform to grow this community. But at this point in my life, I am ready to take on a new direction, both personally and professionally. This means new challenges and new endeavors, which I will share with you soon. As for this show, the comment section will continue with The Daily Wire.
My producer, Regan, is taking over as host of the comment section, and I wish her and The Daily Wire all the best. We have had three great years, and I am proud of what we've accomplished together. Leaving this show and the platforms that we've built is hard, but I am very excited for what's to come. Knowing that we have brought so many people together... Okay, pause this.
I'm not hearing this. So what I'm not hearing is, like, what caused...
No one knows exactly. There's speculation because the girl who took the place was her best, her maid of honor in her wedding, like best friend was the producer of the show. It'd be like Jamie taking your place, except obviously not, you know, but that's what's happened now. And it's nosedived. It's pulling like it used to pull like half a million views per video. It's pulling 40,000 now.
And there was this theory that they had trained Reagan with... They hired an acting coach because her mannerisms were the exact same, hand movements, everything. We were talking about nonverbal communication, the importance of that. And it was eerie... She has started a YouTube channel that's already amassed half a million. She hasn't posted any videos. So there's a lot of loyalists to her.
But she grew this channel to over four million people in the last three years, as you were just hearing. And she starred in the pin dragon cycle. She used to act.
But what was the problem, though? We don't know.
We don't know. There's speculation that she... It exploded the channel. So it's likely, if we're applying critical thinking to this, it's more than likely that she approached Jeremy Boring at Daily Wire. He's like, look, guys, I'd like to be paid more than what I'm making because I'm pulling more views than anybody at the Daily Wire. Possibly. She was living on this farm with a commute.
She was a little frustrated with that. Maybe it's... She wanted to... There's speculation she wanted to run her show kind of from her house. And there were... But no one knows exactly. There's NDAs and everything.
It's hard when someone is a part of a channel and then their show blows up and they realize like, oh, I could have done this on my own. Which is the reality. The reality is being a part of a channel, it doesn't really get you much, obviously, because the new show only has 40,000 views, right?
True, true. But Jeremy Boring's response would be, yeah, but we throw the Daily Wire's advertising money behind these people who spend a lot in advertising. We lose a lot of money before we make any money.
Yeah, but from what shows? Not the shows that are successful. The shows that are successful are successful like that you lose. That's the problem. That's like the record business version of Arithmetic you can't buy the elusive intangible.
Yeah, they're they're a record business is notoriously horrible with that So they they have a model where when they sign an artist the artist gets an advance right and then the advance You're responsible for so much. You're responsible for advertising. They take into account a bunch of artists they spend money on that doesn't create money. So they have all this Hollywood math that they apply.
Hollywood accounting.
And at the end of it, they make more than you and you make almost nothing.
So that's very likely a possibility.
And they throw as much shit against the wall as possible. Think of a record company. They might fund a bunch of different artists.
Pre-do distribution.
Yeah, and then only one or two of them take off, but those one or two of them, that's Prince, and he's getting fucked. And meanwhile, he's a giant superstar. Prince had to change his name. He was like, okay, well, you own Prince? You guys own, okay, I'm this now. I'm a fucking squiggly line. That's what he did. So it was the artist formerly known as Prince. Do you know that?
Prince for a while when he was in, was it Warner Brothers? whoever he was in dispute with, he changed his name to a symbol. And that was how he could still perform.
He's like, yeah, you don't own this, bitch. And there's probably a non-compete clause. That's just why she hasn't posted anything yet. Crazy. It's, yeah.
But, you know, that's what you get if you want the shortcut, right? The shortcut is being a part of a channel. You know, I'm going to connect myself to a channel and, you know, I'm going to agree to give them X amount percentage of what I do. It's really not a smart way to do it today and it's not necessary because today all you have to do is have a camera and a backdrop and just start recording.
And organically, if your content is good, your thing can grow and then it's yours. It's all yours. And then getting advertising is not hard. If you're successful, you get an agent. You get an advertising agent and they bring you MeUndies ads and – All kinds of shit. Next thing you know, you're making money. You're making money off your channel. And then your channel grows organically.
And then you don't have to deal with executives telling you what kind of guests you should have on or what topics you should avoid or what things you should accentuate. We would like you to talk about this today. All that stuff is, you know, and then as you get more and more famous from your work, you realize, no, the people like me, like this is the reason why this show is going on.
And I've got to pay these assholes 60% of everything I'm making. And this is dumb. If I was on YouTube independently, I would be rich right now. I'd be making good money. I'd have a nice car. And instead, I'm getting a salary. And my salary is not really representative of how much income I'm bringing into the company.
I mean, you got like someone like Jordan Peterson who did partner with the same company. And maybe that allows him to do more traveling over what they do, like the, you know, Jerusalem. Right.
But I bet he got a better deal. First of all, is Jordan Peterson. He's already famous, you know, and like they would throw money at him. You know, like there's that famous thing with Stephen Crowder where Stephen Crowder. Yeah.
People were using that in context of this thing, this kind of.
Yeah. And the Crowder thing was kind of weird because he recorded a conversation, a private conversation that he had. But the whole thing behind it is like you're getting money to agree to be a part of a company. And the only reason why they would be willing to give you that money is if they're going to make money. They're taking a chance.
I went through a similar thing with Spotify, but Spotify was great. There was no issues at all. It was like, we think this show is really valuable. We're going to give you a lot of money to be exclusive on Spotify. And just, that's it. Pretty simple. No input at all in terms of who I should have on or what I should talk about. There was nothing.
There was a few hiccups during the COVID days where they were experiencing so many attacks. They were getting strong pressure to try to remove the podcast. And they didn't buckle. They hung in there. Good for them. Yeah, good for them. I'm very loyal to them because of that. Because what they did was pretty extraordinary. A lot of people would have caved. And they did not cave.
But to bring it – you see how that now is going to – they've already filmed Pendragon Cycle, this whole thing, this Arthurian. So it's probably going to impact.
Well, I hope it's good. Me too. The thing is like who's writing it? How good are the people that are writing it? How good is the story?
It's all about the story.
Yeah. It's all about the story. It's all about how good is it because it's – I was thinking about that on the airplane.
Yeah. The logic of story, trying to connect all these dots and everything, but I think there is an inherent... There are patterns, like I was talking about mathematics, how I can't think about... I need a visual... I think when you're writing a movie, when it clicks into place, you can feel it. And they call it cracking the story.
And they hire writers to crack the story, almost like it's a math problem. So to me, that indicates that there's this fabric. This is how I think about it. There's this fabric of reality that stories tap into. that you're trying to connect to so you feel it when it clicks in.
And you're almost, when it is, when it does click and you have that hook, you're like, this is the reason to make why this movie is interesting.
Right, right, right.
Then you're almost making it for the sake of the story, not the audience. But the audience will come as a consequence. Yeah. As opposed to today where people think they can make movies for the audience like Disney. But they're discarding the very fabric of the reality of these stories and thinking we can change Snow White. Right. And then that screws them up.
Yeah. Well, it's also people like really resistant to that now. They're getting so upset about it. They don't want you to force feed them some sort of activist version of a story. They just want stories. They want the thing where, you know, you're saying like you get it, like, oh, we found it. This is the hook. This is the meat of the story. This is the exciting.
This is the thing that resonates with people. That's why it's so frustrating when you go to a movie and that never happens. You never get hooked in.
Yeah, because you can take the same story and tell it different ways. Logically, there's one ideal way. You're never going to quite get there. Right. Because I was watching Beautiful Mind on the airplane, which is, I think, my favorite movie. I'm trying to think of one that's better.
It's just... Amazing movie.
Yeah.
Yeah. That movie nailed it. Yeah. They nailed it.
Yeah.
Well, there's kind of a math to it, right?
That's my point. Yeah. Yeah. And then Dunkirk. All right. So this blew my mind. So the golden ratio can be found in music, movies, everything. Then someone showed me on your arm. This is the golden ratio. Wait, 1 to 1.6. Then from here, 1 to 1.6. In your hand, 1 to 1.6. Your finger, 1.6. to the knuckle, 1 to 1.6.
Now, if you break down what Nolan did in Dunkirk, this is probably getting too nerdy and everything. He took three different storylines, did what he does with the shepherd tone, and air, land, and sea. Land, the story takes place over a week. Air, an hour. Sea, a day.
and then he does with what he does with the shepherd tone which is in batman and all of his movies it's an ascending tone like a barbershop spiral that is infinite where you it's the first sound is like crescendo and then it fades out and the middle one is consistent and the top one is going down and it sounds to the human ear infinite he took that which he's used in the batmobile the batman's bike the music he's used in all the prestige in most of his movies
If you listen to Dunkirk, you hear this sound, and it's just increasing tension, and you don't even notice it almost. It's because it never reaches a crescendo, so you feel like something's off, but you never quite get there.
He then takes that and structures the frickin' story as a shepherd tone to the point where at the very end, and you are in that frickin'... the golden ratio, so this is the meat of the movie, and that final...
hour of air the three stories converge there's a mathematical formula to why it's not a coincidence and that was what separates him so there's a math math he seems uniquely uninfluenced by pop culture too true he's i think he famously doesn't have email he's one of those guys who doesn't have a phone doesn't have email and obviously incredibly brilliant person so he's obviously aware of email.
He's aware of phones, but I think he's probably one of those guys who goes, you know what? The more that's coming in, that's influencing me is it's going to fuck with my ability to have a vision, a unique personal vision based on what I know resonates with people and what I know resonates with me and how to make a story that really works.
yeah i think you're writing for yourself you should you should treat yourself like that's what i do with my youtube stuff it's like you don't try and do it for annoying because you do it for the thing you make the thing the best thing it can yeah which is what you want to see that's how you judge how do you judge it how do you know if it's good or not right yeah it's because what i would want to say i'm gonna try and make it as good as what i would want to see right you know yeah
It's a fascinating medium, right? Because now it's also being challenged by these shows that are essentially long movies, like Ozark. Ozark's a long movie. And you can get so much on The Sopranos. You get so much more into depth with the characters and the interactions and everything that's below the boat. There's so much more when you have six seasons or something.
Yeah, I heard you talking to Tarantino about that.
Yeah. Well, he was talking, he disparagingly talked about Yellowstone being a soap opera. But he also talked about Homeland. About Homeland was an exception to that because it was essentially this amazing moment at the end of the first season.
Yeah.
Where the show is like, Homeland first season was incredible. And it is like a movie. It's really good. It's really well made. And at the end of it, you're like, wow, this is a fucking incredible piece of just artwork.
Have you seen Taylor Sheridan's new show, Landmen?
I haven't. I watched one episode. I haven't seen it all yet.
It takes a bit to get into it, but he's doing something that no one else is doing.
I was a little thrown off by the lady who's playing his daughter because she's clearly like 30 years old. And I'm like, how are you telling me she's 17? This is crazy. It gets worse with that. But that's crazy. Like that girl looks like she's got to be 25 years old at least.
You think?
Well, let's find out.
Yeah, no, I know she is. We looked at it. From a producer's perspective, yeah, you're not going to hire a freaking 18. You're going to hire someone over 18 for labor laws, for sure. Well, how about to hire someone that's 18?
19, so then you can get around the labor laws. Okay, even 18, 19. At least she looks like she could be 17.
27.
27.
All right, you nailed it. Beautiful lady, but looks like a lady.
Yeah.
Looks like a beautiful woman. Does not look like a high school kid. Good point. And so when you're seeing that, it throws you off immediately. Like, what are you doing here? Touche. This is nuts.
Yeah.
It just doesn't make any sense. I'm not saying she looks bad at all. She looks great. But she looks like a mature woman. She doesn't look like a young child. So when he's got this dynamic where he's dealing with this wild, rebellious teenage daughter, and they're like, hey, bro, she's lying. When was the last time you saw her? That might not be the same person.
Billy Bob's hilarious, though.
He's great. He's fucking phenomenal.
He has some great rants about climate change and oil.
He's a phenomenal actor. Well, that's the other thing about climate change. Like, listen, if you really think that it's oil is the problem with climate change, well, you better change your whole fucking life. Everything in your goddamn, is that what he says? Everything in your goddamn life is made with oil.
Everything in your hair, everything in your car, everything in your phone, everything in your fucking life is made with oil.
Reading Elon's biography on the airplane, do you think he could get the solution with the battery walls and the battery roof? Could that work?
I don't know. It may work, but you're still dealing with some kind of pollution from brake dust. You're dealing with – we actually pulled this up recently. We were talking about it was an enormous percent of more pollutants are released into the atmosphere because of electric cars than combustion engines because of brake dust. So electric cars.
The one thing good about electric cars is specifically Teslas. Teslas have regenerative braking. So when I drive my Tesla, oftentimes I don't even have to hit the brakes because I just let off the gas when I'm getting close to an intersection. I gently tap the brakes when I get close to the line where the red light is. But when you're driving normally, it's like one foot driving.
The brakes work, but you don't have to use them because when you let off the brakes or let off the gas, rather, the car slows itself and it slows. It doesn't coast like you can't just hit 60 miles an hour and then let your foot off the gas and it'll just kind of cruise along. It doesn't do that.
It slows down considerably because it's regenerating electricity through this regenerative braking aspect of it. So that probably has less brake dust than other electric cars. But, you know, there's electric cars that you'll drive. Like if you drive like the Porsche Taycan, it's an amazing electric car. It doesn't have that regenerative braking thing, or at least maybe it's a setting.
You know, the car that I was in didn't have it turned on. But when you let off the gas, it just coasts like a regular car. So those cars are much heavier than regular cars, much heavier. And there's a problem with guardrails because of that. So guardrails are designed for a car that's a specific weight. And most cars weigh somewhere in the neighborhood of 4,000, 5,000 pounds.
But when you add batteries, so if you have a car that's filled with enormous amounts of batteries, that car is a lot heavier than a regular car. And some of those cars just go right through those guardrails. Whee! Because there's just too much mass. Yeah, so you have more brake dust that gets into the air because you have to slow down this much larger, heavier vehicle or much more mass.
And when you're doing that, you're generating more brake dust. And the only solution to that, we talked about it, like carbon fiber brakes, which are expensive and mostly in high-performance cars, they have much less brake dust.
So, like, you know when you clean your car and if you're washing your car, you go to the wheels, there's all that dust that's around, the dark dust that's around the wheel that you have to clean. That's all brake dust. So that's getting into the air. So if you live in a place that has high traffic and, like, stop-and-go traffic, you get brake dust everywhere.
I'm reading an article that kind of disagrees with that, and it explains why here in this third paragraph.
Okay, so it says, Founder Nick Molden said that its measurements show that particulate emissions can be 1,850 times more than those from modern car exhausts, which have become cleaner because of regulations. But the headline finding needs some context. The tests have not been peer-reviewed by scientists, and the industry disputes the findings. That doesn't mean anything.
What they just said doesn't mean anything. Just because they haven't been peer-reviewed and that the industry disputes it, that doesn't mean that it's not true.
This was the third article I got to that said that there's less because of regenerative braking.
Right. What we just talked about. But regenerative braking, again, I don't think is in all electric cars. I know it's standard on Teslas. Crucially, all cars produce those pollutants. That's true. Not just electric versions. That's true. But that's not true. What they're saying is not true either because these heavier cars produce more. That's just what they're saying.
Measuring tiny particle particulates is very difficult. There are relatively few comparative studies so far. That means there's still uncertainty over whether the extra weight of EV batteries will result in worse particulate pollution. But it makes sense. It's logical. So if they're showing this, if he's done a study and it's showing this in a study, this is a logical conclusion.
Is that an electric Range Rover? Yeah. I don't even know that they existed. Was that a new thing?
I never saw one before.
There's a lot now. It says, calculate that EVs are 400 kilograms heavier on average because of the bulky batteries. Yeah. So just because it hasn't been peer reviewed doesn't mean it's true. And the reason why they're saying this is because they're trying to put it into context.
Yes, electric vehicles are generally better for the environment, particularly if you have regenerative braking, but there's also an added element. What the solution might be is to make carbon fiber brakes standard. It's carbon ceramic brakes standard that you need them just like you need catalytic converters. It would be more expensive, though.
I never heard of that.
Yeah, so most brakes have steel rotors. You know, steel hits this carbon, and it just releases more brake dust. Or steel hits the pads, releases more brake dust.
I've got a hybrid RAV4. I love it.
Yeah, well, those are really good on gas. I mean, something that's good on gas is going to be better, for sure. Something that's bad on gas is going to burn more. But the bottom line is there's problems with all technologies in terms of whether or not they go into a landfill. Like, this is a giant problem with windmills. Windmills aren't efficient. They're gross-looking.
They pollute the landscape in terms of the way it looks. You just see these fucking windmills everywhere. And those things have to go in a landfill. So you have these enormous fiberglass propellers that now have to be buried in the ground.
And Billy Bob goes on a good rant about the whales.
I don't remember what it was, but he rips them apart. Yeah, they're not effective. They're not good enough for what they do to the environment. You know, they kill whales. That's the other thing. You know, Trump talked about that, too, that these things, when they set these things up, you know, near the ocean, like the sound is fucking with these whales.
Oh, I didn't know.
Yeah. It's not good. It's not the way to go. Maybe solar's better. But, you know, if you have, like, enormous areas of land that are covered in solar panels, that looks gross, too.
Yeah.
But if we could just have, like, one designated area in the center, like, take, you know, a state and fucking make that state just a battery, maybe that would work. Yeah, maybe L.A. Maybe when L.A. burns to the ground, like, look, it's already toxic. Let's just turn the policies into a battery.
How are they going to rebuild if it's, like, Yeah, there's nothing we can do if this happens again.
Well, it's also the fire insurance problem that a lot of insurance companies pulled their fire coverage because they're like, look, nothing's being done to stop these fires. We know the fires are coming. We're going to lose all of our money. We're just going to pull out. And they did that. And so now a lot of these people that lost their homes were not insured. So now they're really fucked.
And then you got Gavin Newsom on TV talking about speculators come in, land speculators, doing his little fucking dance. And you're like, what are you guys doing over there? This is horrible. This is horrible. And what solutions are on the table? I'll tell you, it's not as simple as don't drill for oil. You know, like, God damn it.
I don't see the mayor making it through.
this she doesn't seem like she should make it through no she was you see like some sort of a radical communist activist when she was younger too i don't know yeah that clip of her in the airport really yeah you're not not good that's not responding at all you look shell-shocked and then smiling when she's on tv we're gonna rebuild with a bunch of construction workers behind her it's like look we're rebuilding everyone's just smiling we're gonna read we're gonna get to work like
You're not going to get to work. You're not going to get to work. These people aren't going to have the money to rebuild. Where's the money going to come from? Are you going to give them the money for those homes? You're talking now about $300 billion worth of damage and counting. Are you going to shell out $300 billion to give those people their homes back?
When someone has an $82 million home, are you going to give them that $82 million rather than pay teachers more money?
In North Carolina, in the middle of Appalachia, you have people with cheaper homes than anywhere in L.A. They're not getting money back.
No, they're not. They're not even getting attention anymore. These people are waiting in line for fuel. They're waiting in line for propane fuel so they don't freeze to death.
Yeah, that's crazy.
Crazy.
I was just down there over the holidays and saw my brother and I, we invested in a little, the only thing I've ever invested in, like that little Airbnb, like super cheap and it's just gone.
Well, everything's gone there. It was a crazy disaster. But again, you could say that's climate change. But the problem with that statement is that the climate has never been static. There has never been a moment in human history where the climate was absolutely predictable to the degree every year. It's just not the case. Climate varies. It has always varied.
The real question should be how much of an impact are we having on it and how much of an impact are we having on pollution? The pollution in particular, that's a real issue. That's a real issue. And if other countries aren't addressing that – I read something. Find out if this is true.
that China right now is responsible for more pollutants in the atmosphere, more carbon in the atmosphere than all the other countries combined. I wouldn't doubt it at all.
I wouldn't doubt that.
The majority of the pollutants in the atmosphere are coming from there, and they're not going to change. So you switching to an electric car or you stop using a gas stove or whatever you're doing, it's not going to have an impact if CO2 is entirely what's going on. And even if we got down to climate neutral, that doesn't stop global warming.
It doesn't stop a shift in the change that has always gone up and down throughout recorded history. When we do ice samples, when they do core samples and they go back 10, 15, 20,000, 50,000 years, there's always been enormous shifts in the temperature. Half of North America was covered in a mile-high sheet of ice up until 12,000 years ago. So miles in some places, more than a mile.
So there's always been shifts in the climate. Long before there was any industrial revolution, long before there was any gas-powered cars, China emissions accede all developed nations combined. Combined. And they're not going to change. They're not going to shift that. That's what they do.
Long term, I think China poses the greatest potential threat still. You had a CIA ex-CIA guy on who was talking about the 21-year plan for China that blew my mind. Because when I was in graduate school, it was like 80% of the other students were from China. Yeah. No one believes that. There was multiple classes where I went in.
I was the only non-Chinese, not just American student, non-Chinese student. There'd be 15 people in the class. When I showed my thesis film, I went in and the whole auditorium was Chinese and every other film that played that night was in Chinese.
so you're like and i tried to do a documentary on it and then i was kind of there were constant people didn't like that all i was doing was asking questions like how'd you end up coming straight from for this and it's a societal there's a you know what's the word the parents want to do it there's a social aspect it's like it's viewed as a something that's you want to do and then there was the one child policy for a long time so they can afford to do it but it's it's crazy
Yeah, we're in a very strange time of narratives and truth, where narratives, to many people, are more important than objective truth. And that's never good for anybody. It's never good for anybody to ignore the reality of what's going on.
And there's a lot of... Peterson and you talked about this a lot, the postmodernism, the effect of postmodernism, the fact that there's an infinite variety of interpretations to stories. But...
it's that doesn't mean that there's not everything's not just a social construct it doesn't mean that there's not an ideal to strive for yeah and the the problem with people that talk about climate change is they never talk about china emissions they talk about america they trump wants to pull us out of the paris accord they want to do this they want to do that like
Look at what's going on in the world. You're not going to stop China from producing more CO2 and more emissions than all the other developed nations combined. And you're not even talking about it. If you really wanted to address the problem, it would be that. That's the problem. That's the biggest part of the problem. What's the biggest offender? It's China.
And they don't talk about that at all because they don't want to be racist. So it's like they just want to concentrate on people that, you know, live in America.
Yeah. Yeah.
And then criticizing the idea of drilling for oil.
Well, you said at the beginning of this conversation, too, you were talking about the potential for both sides. And we are in a strange time as well where we're seeing... things coming from both sides that are very strange. This rethinking of Winston Churchill and everything, there's just... What's the rethinking of Winston Churchill?
When Tucker Carlson had on, I'm forgetting the name of the historian, doesn't matter.
Martyr May, Darryl Cooper.
Darryl Cooper, yeah. I think people ask me sometimes after all this video stuff, they're like, what would you recommend reading and studying for critical thinking? And I think Winston Churchill is the ultimate example of critical thinking. Critical thinking is all about thinking for yourself for the long term when everyone around you is telling you that you're wrong.
When the stakes are at their highest is what he was dealing with. And it's such a fascinating time, World War II. I just think there's so much. You could just study that conflict and gain so much insight.
One thing that my friend Chris DiStefano brought up on the podcast that blew me away was Operation Unthinkable.
I haven't heard that one.
That was a proposal from Winston Churchill at the end of World War II to go to war with Russia, that the Soviet Union was getting too big and powerful and they would take the Nazis, that they would take the German soldiers and then go invade Russia. Yeah.
I haven't heard that. It wouldn't surprise me. He did not like Stalin. Because with Roosevelt, they got buddy-buddy. My whole thesis was on the untold story of Churchill's role with Harvard. Harvard's role, the president of Harvard meeting with Churchill secretly when the blitz was going on and Roosevelt was up for re-election, couldn't travel over there to meet with him.
And this echoes to today, exactly what we were talking about. 98% of the public were against involvement in World War II. That's why they called it the European conflict. It's not our fight. And he knew it was inevitable. And he couldn't be seen talking to Churchill in that way because they were... Publicly, they were like, nope, lend-lease program. We're not assisting.
If you watch Darkest Hour, they do a good job of showing the strangers. They're like, we can send horses to pull the weapons across the border, but we can't be seen. So he sent the president of Harvard, of all places. This is where the Secret Scholar Society came from. It's this story, and I found it in the Harvard archive when I was researching for my thesis film.
Whoa.
Yeah. And I was blown away. I was like, how is no one? And it taps into Oppenheimer. So James B. Conant, that guy on the left, that's the president of Harvard. This is afterwards. Churchill comes for an honorary degree after everything's won and everything. Conant on the left flies over there, meets with him. They make a secret deal. They have all this research. They're ready to do radar.
It's developed, but they can't build it. They're cut off from the world. All of Europe has fallen except England. They stand alone, their darkest hour, and he is desperate. He's just trying to hold out until America will join. Imagine being in that position. Everyone around you is saying, we have got to surrender. We have got to negotiate.
And he's like, no, only when the last of us are choking in their own blood. He's like, we have to fight to the death. That's not logical. but it's what saved them. When does illogical behavior save you? That's something that connects to the very fabric of reality that goes beyond what we can articulate. It connects to spirituality. When does living as though God existed save them, in a way?
So he negotiates with Conant, and they bring that tech back, develop a secret lab at Harvard to build it all. That's where Sonar came from, Napalm. There was a special, the Harvard Candle, named after Harvard. It's a remarkable story. It's so deep, I could talk forever.
You know what I found out last night? My friend Kurt Metzger told me this. We were talking about the Elon gaffe, where he's like, my heart goes out to you.
So silly.
Like, hey, don't do that, though.
That's the perfect example of when you see a story, you believe it's true. If you believe he's a Nazi, you're going to see him do a silly hand gesture and see that as that. Well, he's saying my heart goes out to you.
But that... is how the Nazis did it. But this is the thing. This is what I found out last night. That's also how they used to do the Pledge of Allegiance. The Pledge of Allegiance used to be done like this until the Nazis came along. And then we switched it to this, your hand over your heart. So we cut out that part. There's going to be a screen grab of you doing it.
Well, there's already a screen grab. This is what's funny. CNN, during the COVID times in particular, whenever I get in trouble, the photo they would use of me was me at the UFC weigh-ins. So when I do the weigh-ins, I announce the weigh-ins, I say, welcome to the weigh-ins, everybody.
I'm waving to the crowd.
That's what they did. So they would use this photo of me to try to make it look like I was some sort of a Nazi.
Whatever.
Because I'm waving to the crowd and they take a freeze frame of it. I'm like, welcome to the weigh-ins, everybody. I put my hands out to the crowd. I'm saying hi to everybody. I'll show you this, Jamie. You probably could find it if you look for it, but I'm going to show you what it looked like in the old days. I'm looking at it.
I was trying to find a different explanation. I have a picture of it, so I was just digging for better versions.
Well, yeah, that's it. That's how they did the Pledge of Allegiance. Oh, interesting. How crazy is that?
That's crazy.
That's in 1942. Yep. So this is, you know, and then we realize, oh, we can't do that anymore. That's how the Nazis do it.
It's right around that time.
Pledge of Allegiance would be your right hand up in the air.
Interesting.
How crazy is that?
Well, we were just getting into World War II, so we didn't have the views of Hitler embodied in us.
Pretty bizarre, though. It is. You know? Yeah. Yeah.
Now you're not allowed to do that anymore. I didn't know that.
It's like they're so funny because because of this, there's all these photos of AOC with her arm out like this and Michelle Obama. It's like everybody's a Nazi. It's so dumb.
You can go look at anybody and find that.
Yeah. If you move your arms at all. You try to catch a ball. You know, anything you're doing with your arms up in the air, now you're a Nazi. Like, oh my God. How about that Hindu guy that kept his arm up in the air for like 60 years? Not familiar. You ever seen that? We talked about him the other day. Who brought him up? I did. Jamie brought him up.
So this is this guy who has not put his arm down in some insane amount. His arm is shriveled. It's useless.
Why?
It's a devotion to Lord Shiva. So to show his devotion, he decided, I'm going to keep my arm up forever. And now his arm's frozen in place. And now he's like a really old man. That's what he looks like.
Okay. How crazy is that? That's crazy.
He has a useless right arm now. Look at his fingers are all twisted up and fucked up. His nails are all fucked up. His right arm is essentially completely useless. It just stays like that. It doesn't move anymore. Power of stories. Nuts. Yeah. 1973, decided to raise his right arm 90 degrees to the air. His fingers have withered to the palm of his hand.
His knuckles are white with rot and his nails have grown long and twisted. Well, he's a Nazi.
Oh, I didn't make that connection. I was like, why?
That guy's doing a Nazi salute forever.
I didn't think about that.
That's how dedicated he is to being a Nazi. He won't even put the hand down. He's all in, all in forever until he dies. They're going to have to get him in a super long coffin. How's Elon handling this whole?
He's probably like, what the?
Yeah, he was definitely what the fuck, and he was happy that the ADL of all people defended him. Yeah, that was good. Yeah, well, it's obvious. But all these people on Twitter are just chiming in saying it's clearly a Nazi salute. He's doing a Nazi salute. Yeah. No. No. So dumb. It's so dumb. It's not clearly. Yeah. It's great. The whole thing's crazy. But that's a sign of the times.
And they couldn't help it. They saw a thing and they're like, this is we're going to run with it. He's clearly showing he's a Nazi. You know, the Trump's in office and he's a Nazi. And this is what fascism is real, folks. Here it is. This my heart goes out to you. It's just weird.
It's illogical and weird, but it's a sign of this thing that is a real problem in today where people will pretend something is something other than what it is if it suits their narrative. And that's what this is.
Yes. The power of story.
Yeah, the power of story. That really truly is a great example of the power of story. Because the story that everyone's afraid of is that this right-wing dictator has gotten into power and he's brought with him this billionaire oligarch who happens to be one of the richest men, if not the richest person on the planet Earth. And this guy is secretly a Nazi.
Yeah.
And he's been hiding it all these days until Trump got it off.
It'd make a great movie. Let's go.
Yeah, yeah.
It'd make a great movie. Yeah. It's...
Well, it's fascinating but it also – what it does is it opens a door for people like yourself. It opens a door for reasonable, logical people who can talk about things in an objective, critical way and just like analyze. Well, what is this? Why do we think this? What is the cause of this?
And that's really how you got on the map by just being a voice of reason and in a time where there's very little reason – Anybody that steps up and says something that resonates with people to the point where they're like, yes, more of this guy, more people like that. I like how this guy thinks. I like how this guy talks. And that's what I got out of it.
It's surreal. I don't know. I don't think about it.
Well, you shouldn't think about it. Yeah, you can't think about it. Well, then you get audience capture.
Right. And you freeze, too. It's like Heath Ledger acting. You can't. If you think about it, oh, 100,000 people might see what I'm going to see. Then you just can't talk. That's probably why Christopher Nolan doesn't have a phone.
Same kind of thing. To make the kind of films that he makes.
Have you reached out to him?
No, I haven't. I don't even know if he does any interviews. I don't know.
Rarely.
I would love to have him on, though. I'm a huge fan of his work. I think he's brilliant.
Yeah.
Obviously. Not just brilliant, like amazing, like unusual.
Yeah.
Uniquely brilliant.
He's got this mathematical mind. And he approaches story in that way.
So did Kubrick. There's a lot of parallels there, right?
Yeah.
Yeah. Kubrick in his spare time would do complex math.
I wish. Yeah, that's crazy.
Yeah. So his films were all... Kubrick's films all had encoded things in them.
Yeah, I heard you talking to Tarantino or somebody about the lost... Eyes Wide Shut. Yeah, it was Roger Avery.
Roger Avery and Tarantino. And so Roger Avery was discussing how there was supposed to be a narrator through Eyes Wide Shut. And they changed that. And after... He died when Kubrick died before they made a different cut of the film. And he firmly believes that it should be like recut and it should be done with a narrator.
And in AI, you could actually probably do Kubrick narrating it if you wanted to. You could get samples of his voice and he could narrate it. But that would – you would also like – how would you know how he would cut it? He'd kind of be fucking around. But apparently there's many scenes that never made it into it that Kubrick wanted in. And then in the final cut, they changed.
Yeah.
The shining is filled with them. It's filled with, like, there's all the moon landing conspiracies have all clung on to it. Because the room number, like the haunted room, I think it's 237. Is that the room? Whatever the number is, is the amount of miles in hundreds of thousands between Earth and the moon. The little boy, when he's in the hallway, is wearing the Apollo 11 T-shirt.
He's got a sweater that has the Apollo rocket on it. There's, like, all sorts of weird shit there. That these people cling to. I love stuff like that. Oh, it's fascinating. There's a whole documentary on it. The subtext behind The Shining. The Shining is a fucking incredible movie. Which, by the way, which is really interesting, Stephen King didn't even like.
didn't like that movie which is so crazy because it was different than his novel so in his novel the jack nicholson character forget the name the jack nicholson character starts off normal and becomes crazier and crazier and what he didn't like is that jack nicholson is pretty on tilt right away and seems off from the very beginning and then just descent into madness accelerates very quickly
That's what I was talking about. There's different ways to tell that same story. You can feel it when it kind of clicks in, which is right. The audience doesn't lie.
And then Stephen King did his own version of The Shining as a television miniseries. Did he? Yeah. Yeah, but it wasn't very good. It wasn't effective. There you go. There was something about it. It just didn't work the same way.
That elusive, intangible thing that can't be bought, can't be replicated. Everyone's after it. Yeah. No one can articulate it. Yeah. What makes a good actor? Why was Heath Ledger a good actor? Right. And that's another great example of why those boats are superfluous to everything else. Mm-hmm.
Yeah, it's all about telling the story, right? And some people... What's going on?
Kubrick's assistant says in an interview in 2013, like a year after the movie came out, that Kubrick would have agreed that 70% to 80% of that movie was pure gibberish because he wouldn't be doing stuff like that.
Which movie?
Eyes Wide Shut? Room 237, the one about the... Oh, that was... The shining and all the... Okay, but even 80% is too pure gibberish.
What does that mean? That means 20% is legit?
I mean, he wouldn't tell an audience what to think or how to think. And if they came out thinking something different than him, that's fine.
It's hard to say, though, because someone saying that is their personal assistant. They're not speaking for Kubrick.
Stephen King said the same thing when he saw it. He said he had to turn it off because it was bullshit. Turn what off? The movie.
The Shining itself.
No, no, no. Room 237. The documentary.
Oh, the documentary. Right. But Stephen King also didn't like The Shining. You know, these are like people's personal opinions on things. It doesn't mean it's not true. And it's also like Kubrick in many of his films did have like hidden subtext and a lot. He was a fascinating guy, like all like 2001. 2001 is a fascinating movie.
You miss a lot of it when you you have to like rewatch it over and over again to get what he was trying to say. What was he doing in that film? There's many, many layers to his films. He had his own way of doing it. He might not have done it mathematically with the score the way Christopher Nolan did, but there was something to it.
Mathematically, I shouldn't even say that word, though, because it's just patterns. He's still using patterns. Mathematics is just a language that allows us to articulate a form of those patterns.
That said, what Stephen King said and what Kubrick's assistant said
also rings true because people try to find patterns in everything even patterns that don't exist yeah people they always try to find conspiracies that don't exist and patterns that don't exist there's like a natural inclination that people have to like uncover secrets like what's the secret behind this what is he really saying yeah yeah what's he really doing yeah
Are you still going to make films? Are you more committed? Do you feel like this thing that you're doing... What is your... Secret Scholar, what is your YouTube page?
Secret Scholar Society is the YouTube channel.
Why did you decide to call it that? That story I was telling you. That was from that, yeah.
There was a... Right before the viral video, I was working on a short film. There's a little experimental... I shouldn't call it a short film. It was me with a camera... And that music teacher in like a month, we threw this thing together. It's not a movie.
So people love to, cause like Warren's last movie is like, it's like, dude, it's not, that's not, don't hold that to the standard of like the other ones you can hold to a standard of a movie. But that one was just an experimental, like be me by myself. Yeah. I would love to keep doing that.
Right now it's about putting food on the table and fighting for the algorithm, keeping the algorithm on my side. Right, because you're unemployed. Right. And there's potential to teach, but I'm making more doing what I'm doing.
Yeah, and you're teaching by doing that too. You are.
I mean, I do look at it that way because any kind of really intelligent discourse where you get to watch it and observe people talking about things and you've done a lot of really good stuff where you're breaking down interviews and breaking down congressional testimonies and things like that and the way people are reacting to things and how people are laying stuff out.
All that stuff is very educational. And for young people in particular, maybe people that found you through those initial videos, then they'll be able to see how you sort of break down all of these interactions. And they'll be able to sort of think that way themselves. Like, oh, why does a person say things that way? What are they trying to do? Why are they appealing to authority?
Why is it important to recognize that this is a pattern to shut down criticism? And then why is it that this is not necessarily the truth?
Yeah, the art of critical thinking. I was kind of thinking like Sherlock Holmes was my, as a kid, my favorite fictional character. And I think it appealed, he was really the first kind of superhero serial monthly episodes in Strand Magazine. Sure. And he has no superpowers, just his mind, which makes us feel like I could do that if I could just see the world like him.
He has nothing I don't have technically. And he does it, we're presented the same information. It's just what he does with that information. It makes you feel like you have a potential for that power within you. You just got to know how to unlock it. So that's kind of playing with like the art of, that's why the slogan on the channel is the art of critical thinking.
It was, his was the science of deduction, but.
Yeah. It is an art too though because when someone does it really well, it's kind of beautiful. Critical thinking when you watch like a conversation between two people and they break – there's an igniting of your mind that is kind of beautiful. It's artistic. It's artistic.
Hopefully, hopefully you can sometimes get there.
No, I think I think you do get there. You get there for sure. You've gotten there with me. I think there's a lot of people that do that. And it's that that kind of critical thinking people, they gravitate towards it because there's not a lot of it in the world.
And especially if you live in if you exist day to day in a corporate culture where you're sort of locked into whatever ideology your company is and you're trying to make your way up the company ladder. So there's like office politics and there's a You know, a certain sort of mentality and narrative that's been distributed through the company and you're connected to it.
Like you're very suppressed and your thinking is very boxed in and, you know, you're forced to put those blinders on that we talked about earlier. You have to put those on if you want to move in the company. If you want to exist, like if you're in an environment that requires you to behave and think a certain way. in order to succeed. Well, you want to succeed.
So what are the rules of this game I'm playing? Okay. You know, if you're playing poker, you have rules, right? If you're playing chess, you have rules and you can't succeed without following the rules. And that's the case in everything. But oftentimes in society when you exist in a corporate environment or any kind of – especially an educational environment, right?
If you exist in an academic environment, it has very clear rules. And if you do not follow those rules, you will not succeed. If you go against the people that are in charge, you're going to – like what happened with you? You're going to get fired. You're going to get removed. You have to follow the rules if you want to succeed. Right.
And people feel very suppressed by that because they know that these rules aren't necessarily just. They're not necessarily accurate. They're not objective. They're not reasonable. They're not logical. They're just the rules. People hate the rules when they're just the rules.
Especially students.
Yeah, especially young people, man. Yeah, and they can sniff that out so fast. And now there's examples of the rules being bullshit. Now because of your show and a bunch of your Jordan Peterson, a bunch of different things that are available now for young people to consume. They can realize like, no, these people that are making these rules are idiots. They're assholes.
And they might be intelligent. They might have a good education. They might have a lot of information that they can spit out that makes them seem logical. But they're not looking at things correctly. They're captured by a narrative.
Yeah. Reading Elon's books, like on the airplane, he had that algorithm. It's essentially, if there's a regulation, if there's a rule, figure out who's requiring that rule, question it. And I forget the other ones, but it's making it all more efficient. It all stems from just questioning everything.
Mm-hmm.
That's what's going to be really interesting about him becoming a part of the Department of Government Efficiency.
If he's going to apply that to the most inefficient... I bet he will, because it says, right, he would go around preaching this algorithm, and he genuinely believed it, and it makes logical sense. There's a logical flow to him in his decision-making that's laid out in that biography.
Yeah. But you're also going against a culture that has operated with impunity for so long and has grown exponentially. Like there's more government agencies than there have been years of the government, which is crazy. They just keep making new government agencies. And the way to combat that, make another one.
Yeah.
It's going to be, to me, the Department of Government Efficiency and then Make America Healthy Again movement. Those are the two most fascinating things that are going on simultaneously with the Trump administration. Because I'm so curious because there's so many hurdles. with whatever Bobby Kennedy is going to have to jump through to make real change.
And you're seeing the response to that, like red dye number three getting pulled by the Biden administration. Like, hey, motherfuckers, you could have done that a long time ago. You knew that stuff shouldn't have been in food. It's not in food in Canada. You knew that shit had been in food. You waited until right before Bobby Kennedy got in where you know he's going to make it outlawed.
You know he's going to get rid of all that. And you see the resistance to it. You're seeing this resistance to fluoride being removed from the drinking water. Everybody's saying, oh, no, we need fluoride for teeth. Like, brush your fucking teeth, bitch. Let's not put neurotoxic chemicals in everybody's water. The way I describe it, I said it's like people are dying of skin cancer.
Let's put sunscreen in the apples. Like, no, no. Put sunscreen on, motherfucker. Or don't. It's probably bad for you, too. There's a lot of evidence that that's not good for you, that really, like, progressive sun exposure is the way to do it. And the real problem is that no one gets sun exposure, and then you get too much all at once, and that's how you get sunburn.
Yeah. It'll be interesting to see what he does with education.
Boy, good luck.
We need... Yeah. That's one thing I miss. I do miss teaching. I miss being in the classroom like that with those kids.
37.
You're still young. I'm 57. I'm old. I'm allowed to call – you're just a kid. I wish. But, you know, it's like – It's an important service. It really is. And there's more people like that now in the public eye than I think has ever been because of YouTube, especially in terms of the impact. What's the most watched video that you have? How many views does it have?
A million.
Okay. Just imagine a lecture that reaches a million people.
When does that happen? Peter was talking about this Gutenberg revolution of YouTube. And there's only one other professor. Okay, you've got like Eric Weinstein and all that. Okay, putting all of them aside, Sam Richardson, School of Communications is the only, and he's doing it. Every class is streamed live and the university is cool with it. All the students are cool with it.
200 students in the auditorium, they come up on stage and he's applying critical to he challenged them on the CEO of Papa John's concept where he got fired for saying the N word. With the context of that's not a good thing to say. And it's really interesting to see. And his office hours, I got to join him for his office hours and was live streamed.
That's just using this technology in such a remarkable way. There's so much potential for that in schools and education. But everyone's so afraid because they don't want to put themselves out there. That school was terrified that their name would get out there. They're so used to going through life without any ability for the public to see what's going on because no one would care.
First of all, no one cares. And then suddenly there's the potential and it changes your world. And the question is, look, if you're that scared of transparency, you're probably doing something wrong.
Right.
It's not just what you do, but how you do it.
Right. And you should never be scared of discussions. Yeah. Especially if you're an educational institution. you should never be scared of discussions. Like it's one of the most important innovation. Yes.
There's this technology is incredible. Yeah.
Yes, it's nuts. And it never existed before. And there's a lot of resistance because there's been gatekeepers to information that have existed for the longest time. And it made the distribution of propaganda much more easy, much, much easier and much more effective. Yeah. And now that doesn't work anymore because these things like this is bigger than all those things. Why?
Because it's not full of shit. It's that simple. Interesting conversations from people that aren't full of shit. Turns out that's what people actually want. They've just been dumped on with nonsense for so long that people have got accustomed to thinking, no, that's what you're supposed to get. You're supposed to get a late-night talk show host version of what's happening in politics.
That's what you're supposed to get.
you need people with integrity. And so I would, I would say thank you for having the integrity to how many people when presented with Kamala Harris or Kamala Harris to do that interview to be like, no, we're going to do it for real. If we're going to do, I'll do it. Yeah. It's like, there's just so many other people would have just compromised.
I thought about it. I thought about, I'm just sitting around like, how do I do? Sure. That's just tough. I didn't know. There's a concept in jujitsu that the Gracies came up with about cooking someone. And the idea is like someone can spaz out in the beginning. They can be real strong and pull out of submissions. But eventually I'm going to cook them.
eventually I'm going to keep hitting my moves until I'm going to get to a dominant position. They're going to get tired, and I'm going to cook them, and then I'm going to submit them. And you need time to do that. If Hoist Gracie had a jiu-jitsu match with a giant bodybuilder and the match was only 10 seconds long, he might not be able to get the guy in 10 seconds. He doesn't have enough time.
But if you give Hoist Gracie an hour, that guy's going to get cooked. Right. And the thing about a conversation like with the Kamala Harris thing was like I genuinely just wanted to talk to her. I thought I could like have a real conversation. I've seen her be really funny. This is like really funny video of her meeting her mother-in-law and father-in-law for the first time.
And that the woman grabs her face. She's, oh, look at you. Like Doug Emhoff's mom grabs her face. Like it was really funny. Like she's laughing hard, but she's laughing like it's authentic. It's a really fun. See if you can find it. It's very funny. And I was like, that person's in there. And that person. is dealing with incredible pressure of being in front of millions of people.
They're all scrutinizing every word she says, and that pressure causes people to bumble their words and say things in cycles because they're trying to dismount and they don't know how to. Maybe they're not the best public speaker. Maybe they're not the most articulate at forming sentences, but they have good ideas, and you've got to get those people comfortable.
You've got to find out what is in there. And so my thought was there was a few things they didn't want to talk about. They initially didn't want to talk about internet censorship, but then they changed their mind and did want to talk about it, which I thought was interesting. Maybe they had a solution. They said, if he throws this at you, you're going to say this. Okay, we got it.
Okay, let's talk about it. Tell him we want to talk about internet censorship. They didn't want to talk about the legalization of marijuana, but that was probably because of her prosecutorial record. She prosecuted a lot of people for marijuana crimes. So I was like, okay, we don't have to talk about those things. I'll talk about whatever you want to talk about. I don't care.
I just want to get to you and you give me three hours. I'll find out who you are. We could talk about nature. We could talk about the environment. We could talk about space. We could talk about, do you believe in reincarnation? Like I'll get to who you are. I want to get to who you are. I got to cook you. Why wouldn't she do that? Because she didn't want to get cooked. Because it's scary.
Because you could fucking bumble it. You could fuck up. Or you could be Trump. Where he comes in, he doesn't give a fuck. There's no discussion whatsoever about topics. He'll talk about anything. And just talk. And that guy would talk for three fucking hours, no problem at all. No problems, didn't ask to edit it. They wanted to know whether they had editing control.
They wanted to be able to edit things out. Like if she did Bumble, which is Trump's big lawsuit with CBS because of 60 Minutes. Because they edited her answers that made her seem like she had a more intelligent answer, which is essentially election interference. In the debate? Yeah. No, an interview. So there was a Kamala Harris interview and Trump sued.
And there's a lawsuit that's still going on right now. It is CBS, correct? What were his grounds? Because they changed her answer. So someone fucked up and released like a teaser of the conversation. And in the teaser, she was bumbling and fumbling to answer this question.
And in the actual show on CBS, they had edited that and put in a completely different answer to something else as the answer to this question that seemed more logical and made more sense. It was much more succinct and short. And he was saying, like, you fucking idiots. Like, you did this. You released it on video on the internet first, and then you had a different version on CBS.
Do you think people don't remember something that was just released – Like two days ago as like a preview to this thing. But in between the time that the video – this is Trump's argument.
In between the time the video was released on the internet and the response that it got, all the negativity and all the criticism that it got and all the backlash to how she responded to that question, they edited it and changed the response. And so he's suing. And he's got a point.
He's got a real point because you shouldn't allow them to edit it and make it look like it was better than it really was. I mean, this is not just a conversation where someone fucked up about, they made a flub and they said, oh, can you take that out? No, this is like a response to critical policy issues that are going to affect the entire country if you run into president.
If you become president, do you know how to address a situation? Do you have a plan? Do you know what this problem is? And do you have an actual solution? And if you don't and if you're kind of bumbling around your words, people should be able to see that because that's one of the things that we're deciding this election on.
So for someone like her that's had those kind of experiences where she said the wrong thing and done the – And it said things like, God, I wish I had a chance to reconsider that. I would have said it differently.
Because that thing that you say, even if it's under a high-pressure situation like an interview on CBS, that high-pressure situation that caused you to fumble, now people are going to say that is your opinion, period. This is your perspective, period.
Meanwhile, if she had time to consider that question and come up with a logical answer and then rehearse that logical answer and been ready, she might have done a much better job. That's the fear of not having any power over editing because in a three-hour conversation, you can't really prepare. I think they did think they had a preparation.
The only thing that makes sense to me is why they would just change their tune on internet censorship, that they wanted to talk about that. They must have had some sort of logical reason why a certain amount of censorship is important because you want to protect against misinformation, disinformation and hate speech.
And so this was something that Tim Walz was saying openly when he was on the campaign trail is that free speech does not include hate speech. But it does.
How do you define hate speech?
Exactly. Exactly. Because your definition of hate speech might just be misgendering Caitlyn Jenner. That might be hate speech. So if you're talking about Bruce Jenner winning the decathlon, what are we saying if you can't say Bruce Jenner? Because if you want to look at the reality of this biological male who wins the Olympics as a male and then transitions to becoming a woman...
If you're telling me that I can no longer discuss the fact that this was a biological male with a different name and it's hate speech, well, you've essentially put the handcuffs on reality.
The quote, my favorite Churchill quote, democracy is the worst form of government except for all the others. And I use that if anyone... If anyone tries to get into the free speech debate, I do think the approach that Elon's using on X, short of the law, freedom of speech, short of the law, we already have that objective line, that framework.
We know when it's crossed, that's what the law is there for. We don't need any other subjective interpretations. What is hate speech? What's happening in England? It doesn't mean that there's not potential for someone to misuse it. Of course. The same way democracy is going to end in inequality in certain areas.
You're going to have inequality no matter what we do because there's going to be in capitalism. Capitalism is the worst economic approach except every other one. Right. There's problems to it. That's right.
That's right.
People love when they debate you. They point out these little flaws. Well, here's an anecdote of how hate speech was used. Here's a potential. Of course, there's going to be potential flaws. It doesn't mean you have a better alternative. What is your alternative solution? Exactly. Exactly.
Well, listen, man, I really enjoyed talking to you. I really enjoy what you're doing. I appreciate you, and thank you for being here. Tell everybody again, it's Secret Scholar Society.
Yeah, Warren Smith-Secret Scholar Society.
On YouTube? On YouTube. And that's the only thing you're using currently?
I'm on X. It's WTSmith17 for some reason.
Secret Scholars is the handle on YouTube. And on Patreon, you have a Secret Scholars thing.
Yeah, if you go to Patreon, you can watch behind the scenes and exclusive. Oh, beautiful.
Perfect. Love Patreon. I love what they do. Thank you very much.
Thank you for having me. We appreciate you.
Thank you.