The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
549. Matt Walsh on Making Movies, the Woke Right, & Winning
Thu, 22 May 2025
Dr. Jordan B. Peterson sits down with Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh—filmmaker, provocateur, and cultural lightning rod. They unpack the making of two viral documentaries, What Is a Woman? and Am I Racist?, and the philosophical and political firestorms surrounding them. Matt pulls back the curtain on what it takes to expose ideology masquerading as morality—why he uses comedy, performance, and confrontation to challenge cultural frauds. From uncomfortable interviews to media backlash, the conversation explores the psychological toll and moral convictions that drive his work. From the psychology of editing, storytelling, and satire to the dangers of resentment-fueled ideologies like radical feminism they dismantle the facade of modern wokeness—and what comes next. Watch now and discover the real battleground. Privacy Policy: https://www.dailywire.com/privacy This episode was filmed on May 8th, 2025. | Links | For Matt Walsh: On YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@MattWalsh On X https://x.com/MattWalshBlog
Chapter 1: What motivated Matt Walsh to make documentaries?
You play, it's like a Bugs Bunny character in a sense, like there are these trickster characters in mythology that are troublemakers. Are you surprised that you ended up in the domain of comedy, making movies? You're a documentary star now.
I saw the first cut. So he warned me going in that this is going to be jarring. I was devastated by how much I hated it. This is the worst thing. It's an embarrassment. Our careers are over.
You talked about exposing people and exposing fraud and a certain amount of righteous judgment. You know, I've been thinking hard about the use of anger. It's very physiologically activating. It's one of the sources of energy that I draw on. And I want to talk to you a little bit about The Daily Wire too, since we're both part of it, because I'm struggling in a sense with Hello, everybody.
I had the privilege, the opportunity to sit down today with one of my fellow Daily Wire creatures, Matt Walsh. And you should know Matt, I suspect. And if you don't, well, then you could. was the force behind two of the most successful documentaries in the last few decades. What is a woman? That's a question he actually answers. And am I racist? Two deep and soul-searching questions, apparently.
I don't know, are those the cardinal questions of the last 10 years? Maybe they were. Anyways, Matt had a remarkable facility, has a remarkable facility to put his finger on central issues in the culture war, to lay them out, to inquire into them, and to show their appalling underbelly. And so we talked about that. We talked about how he managed that.
We talked about his role as a comedian, a straight-faced, Buster Keaton-like, monotone-speaking comedian. troublemaking comedian, social critic, a writer, a director, now an actor in these documentaries, playing a role, playing a character, what that was like, what he learned. his ambitions for the future.
We talked about the political moment and what the implications are of the Trump victory for conservative commentary of the sort that Matt particularly specializes in and that I delve into from time to time. And we touched on some more topical issues in the last week. Matt has been involved in a
rather contentious war of words with a number of people online, including James Lindsay, who I did a podcast with just a week or so ago on the issue of the woke right. And so we delved into the controversies that are erupting on the conservative side of the spectrum, and that's the podcast.
So join us for an update into Matt Walsh's life and another glimpse into the culture war and a bit of a slice of what's currently controversial. Hey, Matt, we were supposed to meet in person today. What the hell happened?
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Chapter 2: What are the key themes of 'What Is a Woman?' and 'Am I Racist?'
I know with the kinds of films that we make, again, it's an even greater challenge because we have so much raw material. And now here's all this raw material. Now you have to sculpt it into something. You know, you got all this clay sculpted into something. And then the director is the person, is the captain of the ship, is the person, you know, steering the ship this whole way.
And the editor, the editing function I find particularly interesting. When I'm writing, I learn to edit from writing, and I write a lot more than I keep. And I probably edit for half the time that I write. You know, like I separate the functions. There's a writing function and an editing function. And I've become much more effective over the years at writing a better and better first draft. But...
Editing, and I've also seen this with my other ventures, with Peterson Academy, for example, and with The Daily Wire as well, how important, with the documentaries that I've made for The Daily Wire, how important editing is. I mean, an editor can make or break a project to time things properly with the music, to select only the best from all the excess footage,
to make it stylish and punchy and well-timed. And so were you fortunate in your editorial team as well? And what kind of editorial role did you play?
Very fortunate editorial team. My role in the editing was pretty minimal. More involved than someone like me would normally be involved in something like that. But It was still editing on a film like this is hours and hours and hours and hours every day in the editing bay. And that's not what I was doing.
I kind of maybe like once a week checking in and especially when you're dealing with these really once you get through the lion's share of the edit and you're down to, you know, maybe you want the movie to be an hour 40. You're down to like an hour 50. And so you got 10 minutes to cut.
And at least in the past two movies, that's where I'm the most involved because most of the hard work's been done. Now we just got to figure out there's like a couple things we got to take out of this. And here are a few candidates for what we might cut. And that's where I'm involved in helping to make those decisions.
And I certainly got an appreciation for how important the editing is because I can tell you that in both movies that I saw the first cut, And I hated the first cut in both movies. I was devastated by how much I hated it. And of course, our director, Justin, he warned me because I'd never seen a first cut of a movie before.
So he warned me going in that this is going to be jarring because you've never seen a movie that... If you're just a civilian, you've never seen what the rough draft of a movie is like, and I hadn't. And so I had that warning, but still I went in and I watched the rough cut on both movies and I thought, well, this is terrible. This is the worst thing. It's an embarrassment. Our careers are over.
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Chapter 3: How did Matt Walsh approach comedy in his films?
Because you're making the case that you used your belief that you were uncovering fraud and malfeasance, which I believe to be the case, by the way, and that that justified cornering people who you couldn't talk to otherwise and actually exposing them for what they were doing. And is there... Is it reasonable to presume that the emotional source that you're drawing on there is anger?
Is that correct?
Yeah. Yeah, I think certainly. There are probably other emotions that go into it, but I suppose in a way anger is the main one. Now, we are making a comedy, so it's sort of a weird mixture. And... anger isn't funny. And this is one of the reasons why this is why SNL was not funny for very long.
I think it's gotten a little bit better, but one of the reasons why it has not been funny for a long time. One of the reasons why a lot of these political comedians haven't been good. The late night hosts aren't funny. In my mind, it's because they're too angry and they just despise. And maybe anger is not the right word. It's resentment. They resent the people they're making fun of.
They resent Trump so much that they just
Yeah, resentment's a bad one. Resentment's a very dangerous emotion.
And it's hard to get comedy out of it. Yeah, it is. Anger can be justified, but it's hard to find comedy out of you being angry. So there has to be a certain sense of... You can't take yourself too seriously. That's what's one part of it. There are stand-up comedians who part of their whole shtick is that they're angry about stuff and they're ranting.
Yeah, yeah, they're raging. Yeah, yeah, rage comedy. I've seen quite a bit of that.
Yeah, and that can be really funny. Bill Burr back in the old days was really... These days, I don't think he's as funny as he used to be. Not nearly. But back in the old days, he was really good at that. He'd just rant about something, and it was really funny. But he's not taking himself too seriously. So I think that's part of it. And so it helped me.
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