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- [00:02]
A
Joe Rogan Podcast. Check it out.
- [00:04]
B
The Joe Rogan Experience. Train by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day.
- [00:14]
A
Pleasure to meet you.
- [00:15]
B
Thank you for having me.
- [00:16]
A
My pleasure. I. I wound up seeing you, as many people did, on those videos that you're making, where you were talking to students. 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's 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. And I was 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.
- [00:59]
B
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. This echo. Sorry, I gotta get used to this one like person in control of everything that makes these decisions. And it was so nuts. I think they genuinely, like, we don't know what to do because if we fire him, it'll. Our name might get out there, which is their primary concern, I think.
- [01:37]
A
And do you not want their name to get out there?
- [01:40]
B
I just. No, it doesn't feel right.
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A
Okay.
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B
I.
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A
It's not important.
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B
Yeah, it's not.
- [01:47]
A
No, what's important is that what, what it is is that this is a resistance to thinking. I mean, it's really what it is.
- [01:56]
B
It's out there for sure.
- [01:57]
A
It's a resistance to questioning why people have like certain like, 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 like, you know, very calm and rational, 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.
- [02:27]
B
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, bunch of Mac computers with Adobe Premiere Pro, Photoshop, a 3D printer. 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 like Joe Rogan and stuff. Let's do like, just treat it like a five minute warmup podcast here. I'll sit down and be on camera. You ask me whatever you want. Well, you know, how have your thoughts on Harry potter changed given J.K. rowling's bigoted opinions? And so that's where the video came from. So I don't. 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. We do have conversations like that. Because when you are doing something like this with students, like, well, what are you going to talk about?
- [03:52]
A
Right.
- [03:53]
B
Kill two birds with one stone. Be as effective as you can. And so a lot of students have questions. Like, I had students ask me, what's the difference between fascism, 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, no, I think Romania. I'm blanking. But. 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 in their seats. They turn around and they're like, watching it. There was an effect.
- [04:41]
A
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. And 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. 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, you know, 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, is there? Like, how's this guy doing this? Like, what is. What. What does this mean? Like, why do we have to say, well, why? What is wrong with what J.K. 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's 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, of course it was too good, because it was. It gave me hope. I was like, more people should be doing this at schools. And, you know, it would help a lot because lot of this 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 know, and you get these shouty sort of polarizing arguments.
- [06:23]
B
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 the 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 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. And 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 think movies will be the artifacts that people look back on for our time. You know, be in museums and things like that.
- [07:24]
A
Sure, we've all been there. You're hungover thinking about all the dumb stuff you did last night and wondering if anybody remembers. Unfortunately, someone does remember everything you do online, and they've got receipts. I'm talking about your Internet provider and data brokers and every shady marketing company that gets their greedy hands on your private activity. But this year is going to be different. Give your online privacy a fresh start with Express vpn. Express VPN is an easy to use app that encrypts your online activity and reroutes it through secure servers, keeping your browsing history private from third parties. And it hides your IP address, making it impossible for data brokers to use it to track you. You don't have to be a tech genius to use Express vpn. No matter what device you're using, phone, tablet, laptop, or smart tv, just tap one button to make everything you do online private. It's incredibly fast. It doesn't slow down your streaming or downloading, and it lets you connect instantly to secure servers in 105 countries around the world. So forget dry January. This year you're doing private January with ExpressVPN. Podcast listeners can get four extra months of ExpressVPN for free at expressvpn.com rogan or by tapping the banner. And if you're watching on YouTube, you can get your four free months by scanning the QR code on screen or by clicking the link in the description. Yeah, so no, I. 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. And it's. It really just shows. Like, if you really think about it, you know, human civilization and human history, like modern society has, is so recent. You know, the Industrial revolution and giant cities and cars 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. 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 could 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.
- [11:14]
B
It's changed.
- [11:15]
A
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.
- [11:24]
B
The transformation in acting.
- [11:25]
A
Yeah.
- [11:26]
B
Is remarkable.
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A
Remarkable. Right?
- [11:28]
B
Yeah.
- [11:29]
A
You go, marlon Brando is 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 behaving, like on the Waterfront, like, under duress. Like, this is a real human being.
- [11:45]
B
Yeah. It became internalized.
- [11:47]
A
Yeah.
- [11:47]
B
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. They drew on the board the ocean with a squiggly line, and they drew little boats on the surface and said, these are words. This is everything you need to know about directing actors. Everything beneath the surface is subtext. What's really important. So if you're an actor and I hand you a screenplay, well, anybody with given enough time can memorize those words. What's. What really sets an actor apart is everything else. What's not said, what they do with the words, the intention behind the word. 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 been the End all, be all is so silly. You know, like, people say the wrong thing now and you get politically incorrect. Papa John CEO.
- [13:13]
A
Right, right.
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B
With no context has gone up. But it's a larger issue. But it's fat. It's just fascinating how that correlates beyond just film to. Because it's true that most communication is non verbal. 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.
- [13:40]
A
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? The. I mean, did you. Did you think, like, wow, this is actually, like, really unique and interesting. I think people are gonna really enjoy this. Or did. Were you, like, really shocked?
- [13:59]
B
Yeah, I was 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, like protests, claiming Emerson was racist, which is like, this is one of the most far left schools I've ever seen.
- [14:40]
A
That's super far left.
- [14:41]
B
Can you provide any evidence of that? It was just nuts.
- [14:46]
A
And did it come out of nowhere? Was it like right after the election? Like, did you, what year did you first attend?
- [14:53]
B
2016.
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A
2016. So was this what time? So this is like September of 2016.
- [14:59]
B
August of 2016 of the academic year.
- [15:01]
A
So this is like when the elections are kind of heating up and people didn't think that Trump was going to win yet.
- [15:07]
B
I remember 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 being like, guys, I think Trump might win this. Yeah, we're not. It's not even worth watching, you know, and they were walking around, time goes by, I'm like, guys, like. And then they started to. They were like, what? 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, you know, intellectual, dark web, blah, blah, blah, you know, but that. And suddenly it's so difficult to articulate what that does to someone like me, an average viewer, like a genuine lover of this space. So it's surreal to be here 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. 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 that'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.
- [16:19]
A
Yeah. I think we like to adhere to certain narratives about the world, and we 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'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 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.
- [17:28]
B
Yeah. They're not much smarter than you or I.
- [17:31]
A
No.
- [17:31]
B
And then you realize that about your professors. This guy really doesn't know much more than, like, my. My dad or what's the. 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, professor means something.
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A
Yes.
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B
Politician means something. These are experts, but they're not much different than us.
- [17:55]
A
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%. And we watched it from the Comedy Store. We did a podcast from the Comedy Store called The End of the World podcast. And we. We did this, like, live stream while the election was going on, and we just kept bringing in different comedians. We had a whole like. Like a conference table. And it was fine. We did in front of a live audience. And then we updated the crowd whenever. And then when marijuana became legal, Bert Kreischer takes his shirt off, runs around stage. It was really fun. 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, like, private bar in the back. And on the television, Jake Tapper was like, just, like, 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 fucking screws. Freaking out. In the beginning, they were so cocky and so confident, and by the end, they were just fucking freaking out. And 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 that was to be like, you guys didn't. You were so wrong. You were so wrong.
- [19:20]
B
Yeah. How could you get something so wrong?
- [19:23]
A
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 like they opened up the door to the candy store and said, go crazy. Have fun. This is all free. Yeah, but it was. It was a real wake up call for a lot of people that this system is not. Is not really as well managed as we'd like to believe it is. This episode is brought to you by Visible. You know how most wireless plans feel like they're designed to confuse you with, like, hidden fees, weird subcharges, family plans you don't even want. Not with Visible. On the Visible plan, it's one line of unlimited 5G data for just $25 a month flat rate. No surpr. Powered by Verizon's network, so, you know, it's solid. And here's the kicker. They're all digital. You can manage your plan in the app or online, meaning no stores, no pushy salespeople, just you and your phone. And right now, Visible's got an insane deal. Use promo code ROGAN by January 31st and you will get the Visible plan for just $20 a month for 25 months. That's $5 off every month for over two years. So go to visible.comrogan and check it out. It's wireless made. Simple terms apply. See their website for the details. This episode is brought to you by Me Undies. If you want to better yourself, knock yourself out. Hit the gym, start a diet, go on a detox, whatever makes you happy. But don't fall into this New Year's resolution stuff just because you feel like you have to. If you're happy where you're at, don't do anything different. I think we could all benefit from learning to chill the out sometimes. Like in the gym, part of a good workout is recovery time. Do what works for you, and do it comfortably. With Me Undies, the fabric they use to make their stuff is damn good. It's stretchy, light and crazy comfortable. It's also made to be breathable to help regulate body temp so you can stay cool. You'll want to wear it all day long. They also use this fabric in everything their underwear, PJs, loungewears. Me undies even has an activewear collection just in case you do decide to start working out more. They're joggers. Sneakers are perfect for a little CrossFit or weightlifting or just lounging around at home. Another thing I like about Me Undies is the variety they offer. They have all sorts of different items that come in a variety of different colors and prints. There's literally something for everyone, like their boxer briefs. You can get a solid black or red pair if you want something simple and sleek, or if you're feeling a little more playful. They have prints with kangaroos, Darth Vader campers or dragons. There's even a print with dumplings and steamed buns for all you foodies out there. Me Undies also offers a wide range of sizes, from extra small to 4 XL with cuts that flatter everybody. Plus, it's all made with sustainably sourced materials from partners and businesses who care for their workers. Try it out. Kick off the New year comfier than ever with Me Undies. If you don't like your first pair of underwear, it's on them. Get 20 off your first order, plus free shipping at Meundies.com Rogan and enter the promo code ROGAN. That's Me Undies.com/rogan. Code ROGAN for 20% off your first order. Me Undies. Comfort from the outside in.
- [23:17]
B
Yeah, yeah. I'm just trying to go back to those days and think about it. But it was at Emerson. It was. 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. It was the day of the protest and so. 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 and. But the white students were not allowed to speak. We had to concede our space for four hours. Like, what the fuck is going on?
- [24:02]
A
Why was that? What was the reason given for that?
- [24:05]
B
That. Because it was the moral right thing to do accordingly. Because we. They turned that. They said to me. I remember he said, I said, what can I. I did say when I was like, what can I do about this? I would genuinely. I. I genuinely believed everything. I was kind of. I. 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. And they just said, you can just listen. Just take your time to concede your space and listen. So that was the reason given.
- [24:44]
A
Concede your space. And then why did they feel so threatened? Did they articulate that there was a.
- [24:52]
B
Facebook group that was designed to provide that evidence called Emerson. Emersonsoracist or something. And it was a student, a teacher said, no, you can't. You got to turn in the work or you're going to fail the class. And 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 if they don't do their work. Just be fair, honest. Give them the grade they deserve. After the protest. Yeah, Warren, 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, you.
- [25:57]
A
Know, so that objectively, she deserved.
- [26:00]
B
Yeah, yeah.
- [26:02]
A
Why was it. Why was it articulated that it was so difficult for her? Uniquely difficult as a black student?
- [26:09]
B
I'm trying to remember.
- [26:12]
A
I don't know.
- [26:13]
B
Honestly.
- [26:13]
A
Abracadabra.
- [26:14]
B
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. 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, 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. And she was like, what?
- [26:49]
A
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? Like, I. To this day. It's one of those things. It's. 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?
- [27:28]
B
Is that the. Is that the. Where you get the slabs of meat?
- [27:30]
A
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 gonna have in your life. But if you brought that up to a black friend, they might, like, look at you, silent. What the fuck are you trying to say? Like, I'm not trying to. Food's good. Good food. Like, let's go eat good food and.
- [27:48]
B
Keep that analogy in your mind about, like, the boats floating on the surface, and they're just the tool. What's the intent?
- [27:53]
A
Right.
- [27:54]
B
There was no. If there's no intention there. You can't claim that's racist.
- [27:58]
A
Right.
- [27:59]
B
Unless you want it to be. And this goes back to, like, 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 at my college. I'm a victim. You're going to start seeing what you believe to be true. You're gonna start finding hints of it.
- [28:15]
A
Right.
- [28:16]
B
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 or. But if you believe in objective truth, you're gonna see those lessons when you, when they occur in life, and it's gonna 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's like, you gotta, gotta counter contrapoints. She's the one who's taken down J.K. rowling. The argument essentially is, I'm so done arguing. I'm not even gonna 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.
- [29:03]
A
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 with it. Well, what you're essentially conceding is you don't have a logical ability to shut this down, because if you did, you would just do it. You would have a rational conversation with 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 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.
- [29:55]
B
I can't even do this. That's what I started. 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 any, even to this day, it's often, I think she's getting better now that I've been making content. But it was often a formation of that pattern. I just can't do this with you, Warren. Blah, blah, blah. And it's just neutralizing the debate because they can't have the debate.
- [30:27]
A
Well, they can't have the debate because they're not equipped for it. That's all it is. They don't have. 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's spaces? And like, it used to be that we protected women against men and 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 feared. 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.
- [31:48]
B
Right?
- [31:49]
A
It got real weird.
- [31:50]
B
And people would counter and say, joe, but like you're taking 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 who I've grown up with, and we just. That's fine. They were deeply concerned about what I was doing. Right. You're talking to too many people from the right. And 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. But the mother in the dressing room with a six year old, does she have a right to decide if that 6 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.
- [32:54]
A
Right?
- [32:55]
B
It seems so clear.
- [32:58]
A
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, you run into the possibility of social ostracization. And then 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 like, without any logic at all. They just like say, you don't think, you don't know, well, I'm done talking to you. Like, this is. And that. It's like a get out of jail free pass. And you could 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.
- [33:47]
B
And the only solution I've been able to find is to just push through.
- [33:51]
A
Yeah.
- [33:52]
B
And I say to them, like, Chris, like, one day, I genuinely believe you look back and understand. One day. And I believe that.
- [34:03]
A
No, I believe that too. If it's done logically and you can have reasonable discussions. But even in the opposition of that. Right. You have people on the right who adhere to a right wing cult, like thinking. Right. And you know, they'll push back against it in, in a way that's also not logical. And so they dig their heels in on their ideology and the left digs their heels. And you know, you have things like people say people on the left don't get people on the left. This like. No, this is 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. Right. I don't.
- [34:41]
B
Exactly.
- [34:42]
A
And I really don't like it. Because of me. Like, I don't fit in there.
- [34:45]
B
Exactly. Yeah, exactly. I've been.
- [34:48]
A
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- [36:05]
B
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, and she'll never deviate from that.
- [36:19]
A
My parents are the same, right? Exactly the same.
- [36:21]
B
I would rather be homeless.
- [36:22]
A
They're blue. No matter who. They're just locked in. Yeah.
- [36:26]
B
Yeah. Yes. You know, the. It's. I'm just. I don't. I dread the quote. I don't dread the question of, are you a Republican or different? It's like, who cares? It doesn't. I'm not a part of any. I'm just gonna be. I'm gonna call it as I see it. Follow the logic.
- [36:42]
A
Yeah. It doesn't make sense to be on a team.
- [36:44]
B
Right.
- [36:44]
A
Doesn't make sense at all. Even for someone like me. Like, you know who. Yeah, I went to the inauguration. You know, I was that bizarre. But I don't consider myself a Republican. I don't consider myself a Democrat either. I consider myself an American.
- [37:03]
B
I just.
- [37:04]
A
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. Stupid. And the idea, like, 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. It doesn't make any. 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, 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 bullshitting me to try to get me to believe something that's not true. It's about you just expressing yourself. So they stop doing that. They stop 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. Is if someone is like so bad at thinking and reasoning that they don't have the tools to disc when someone's full of shit. And this happens with ideologies, this happens with, 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.
- [39:14]
B
Yeah, I think there is a power in truth. It can be felt like you're saying, and that's the under, beneath the boats, beneath the surface. That which we can't articulate, we can't explain how we know these, how we can sense that on someone when they're bullshitting. But you can feel it. So as a teacher, you really learn that reality. If you're going to be effective, 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. Then you try and embody that through all behavior and that I saw that resonate because. But there's a lot of teachers that you know. But it's a strange environment that school, a lot of weird stuff.
- [40:04]
A
Of course.
- [40:04]
B
Well, it was a crazy. That wasn't an art. 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.
- [40:15]
A
Yeah, yeah, just interesting. Yeah, it's. 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 it left and right. And you're seeing it, 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. You know, I was watching these, 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 know, you're being told that it's not, but if you live day to day life, you're like, no, this is real. Like 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, 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.
- [41:45]
B
Are you familiar with Roland Fryer? Harvard?
- [41:48]
A
Yes.
- [41:49]
B
Have you had him?
- [41:49]
A
I have not, but I would.
- [41:50]
B
He's. It's really interesting. He's changed the way I view statistics and. But in like a three minute synopsis of it that goes to station crime statistics, he. 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. Just don't have that mind. So he broke it down like, 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.
- [42:24]
A
Job is to explain, let's get to explain why he wanted like he went into hiding.
- [42:28]
B
He conducted a study, a deep dive into police statistics to see racial bias in policing.
- [42:36]
A
Right.
- [42:37]
B
The findings did not match the story that people wanted to be true at Harvard, which caused him to literally go under 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.
- [42:54]
A
Right.
- [42:55]
B
Right.
- [42:56]
A
And we should say he's a black gentleman, right?
- [42:59]
B
Yes.
- [42:59]
A
So he says the colleagues told him, don't publish this warning. You'll ruin your career.
- [43:05]
B
Right.
- [43:06]
A
For releasing findings that contradict popular left wing narratives on policing.
- [43:10]
B
And he said, I'm gonna do it anyways.
- [43:12]
A
Yeah.
- [43:13]
B
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 that's trying, what is the result we're trying to achieve? So in policing, it's to. His study showed that 40% of stops, approximately. I think 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. People. This changes how you view so much. It's kind of difficult to understand at first glance. I'm trying to 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. If 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 turn down more black people than whites. Okay, so according to your logic, for every white driver, 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. But for every black driver, you gotta 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, like, looking at it through the lens of what are we trying to achieve and seeing if that achievement is even then. There's nothing, like, 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.
- [46:19]
A
And so that was problematic for a lot of people.
- [46:23]
B
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.
- [46:38]
A
Is it unwarranted bias, meaning are more black people causing them to get pulled over?
- [46:45]
B
Like the default rate? 70% of the people I turned down, let's say 70% of people, 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.
- [47:07]
A
Right.
- [47:07]
B
Can you prove that I'm doing anything wrong? What adjustment, logically should I make?
- [47:13]
A
Right. Should you give loans to people that are more likely to default just because of their ethnicity?
- [47:18]
B
That would be the only logical course of action in response to that.
- [47:23]
A
Right. Which is the argument for equity over equality?
- [47:28]
B
Yeah, essentially, that would be the form of equity. Equality of outcome versus equality of opportunity.
- [47:33]
A
Right? Yeah. I've seen that argument that not everybody starts at the same spot. So you have to raise up people who've started at a different spot, which is, to me, a band aid. On the real problem. 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 redline 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 Appalachians, 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, folks, it's everybody, it's, it's just crime and poverty and crime and poverty causes people. You, 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.
- [48:57]
B
Yeah, I'm from North Carolina. Ash, like near Asheville.
- [49:00]
A
Asheville, yeah. It's rough out there, which people don't, don't believe. Asheville mountains. Beautiful, right? No, it's like very high per capita crime rate.
- [49:09]
B
There's a meth capital right near where I live. And so if 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 a professor, one of my professors from Emerson, he's like, I solved racism. This was in one of the videos. I was like, sure, come over, let's record, hit me with it. So the solution is we're going to have a tax for. So if you're, if you can trace your ancestry, then you're going to, you don't have to pay taxes or below some form of tax. Like, okay, but what about the white person in Appalachia who was in an equally bad socioeconomic position, but they don't get the, the tax or what 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.
- [50:03]
A
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. You know, they, I hate people from Philly. There's, there's always going to be people that discriminate against other people because there's always going to be ignorant people. So he's going to be. And it's easier to do that. It's easier to decide this person is my enemy. These. These are. These people are on my side. It's easy to be tribal. It's like. It's much simpler. Yeah. You don't have to think as much.
- [50:48]
B
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, hope, you know, it's. 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 and it's going to. Goes back to how we see the world. But you're right. Yeah, we'll never be able to solve racism.
- [51:09]
A
Well, that's the type of bias that, like, is kind of logical. Like, if you see a guy and he's covered in his own, and he's, you know, 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. You should. 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. You know, 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, you're cooking methods, you know, like, you're in the backyard barbecuing, you smell someone cooking meth in your front yard, like, that's a problem. Yes, that's a problem. And if you pretend it's not a problem because, you know, 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 up. Because being a person is hard. It's difficult. It's complicated. And if you grow up, you know, with abusive parents who are drug addicts themselves and in and out of jail and you've been, like, psychologically scarred since you were a baby because they beat you and you've encountered a lot of domestic violence, that 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 if to pretend that Those factors don't exist. And that if you, if you do 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. Like you're, 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. You're always gonna 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. Like that's the root. It's the root of all of our problems.
- [53:15]
B
I think that's why Jordan Peterson tapped into so much, because it's. The only solution is taking a personal responsibility.
- [53:22]
A
But even personal responsibility for a person that has no. There's no examples of someone taking personal responsibility. 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.
- [53:49]
B
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, no.
- [54:05]
A
Right.
- [54:07]
B
And it's heartbreaking because. But what, 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. And 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.
- [54:31]
A
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.
- [55:01]
B
The student who was, we're not supposed to have fairs, but was my favorite. He. He came from that kind of background, but he could draw like, I've never seen.
- [55:12]
A
There you go. Art.
- [55:13]
B
And so we. We got him a critter drawing tablet, digital drawing tablet. And he would just sit and draw all day. But here's the. The issue is, well, how do you. But he wouldn't go to any other classes, and we kind of. He, like, for some reason, he liked being in my classroom. So they would literally sit him in my room. 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, these video games, like. And 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 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 out, like, 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 stupid. He didn't want to go on a field trip one day. And he was like. He made a 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 or trip. I'll just bring a gun so I don't have to go to the field trip. And like, oh, my God. Like. And then. And this goes back to the idea of telling the truth. What got me is they. They lied to him and told him because the teacher that he said it to, you're compelled to, like, 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 stay. They say stupid stuff, right? And we're the last line of defense. He was graduating in two months.
- [57:00]
A
Oh, God.
- [57:02]
B
I don't know where he is now.
- [57:06]
A
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. And the idea that this guy is extremely talented and that's not accentuated.
- [57:27]
B
He would draw these Japanese samurai sword fighting. Just beautiful. And then I had the photo printer. We would.
- [57:36]
A
And.
- [57:36]
B
But they were like, well, how's he gonna 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 was like, this kid won't respond to that. And he didn't. And he gets kicked out.
- [57:50]
A
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 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. In that was the only thing I was interested in. And my art teacher was an. He was just. He was such an shout out to my friend John Devore, because I'm still. 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? There 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's 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. And because he's just an asshole, he just. 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. It was just. He was a bitter guy with, like, a pot belly who was depressed. And he was.
- [59:18]
B
A lot of teachers are.
- [59:19]
A
Yeah. And they. 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, you know, and he, when he would draw, you know, like, he would draw in the class, we would do projects and his stuff was unexceptional. Just wasn't that good, you know, and it just. They wanted you to fail.
- [59:39]
B
I had a student, I had multiple students. The number one profession kids want to do now is be an influencer. YouTuber, 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 like what Joe Rogan's doing, whatever it's like. But the school was kind of. He can't make money on YouTube. It's like.
- [60:01]
A
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.
- [60:20]
B
It's hard. But you're never gonna. I got lucky, man. Just because I was willing to put myself out there, make a fool of myself.
- [60:27]
A
But that's not why you got lucky. You got lucky because you put out good content. It's a merit based thing. It really is. Like, what the. And it doesn't necessarily have to be good. Right. There's content that's just. It's, you know, 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 believe this person's saying these awful things, and they get a lot of attention for saying awful things.
- [60:56]
B
Yeah.
- [60:56]
A
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.
- [61:06]
B
And that scares me.
- [61:07]
A
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. Like, this is what we faced during the COVID crisis. Like, 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, like, what happens? Does YouTube owe you money from all those videos that you put out that they should have monetized? Like, what? If you're saying it was 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 when we were only on Spotify. So when we were only on Spotify, all of our videos, all 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 on up on YouTube. Well then 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. But let's put it on. And Spotify wanted to do this as well. It was actually they, they were very supportive of this. Put it everywhere. Put it on YouTube, put it on Apple, put it on. But it's a Spotify exclusive. And we work out this deal that way. And just like, well, so when we took this 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 law that were applicable at the time that we made the video.
- [62:57]
B
So what did they. Did they make adjustments?
- [62:59]
A
Where did we wind up doing with that, Jamie?
- [63:04]
C
I don't know which case you're talking about.
- [63:05]
A
You know what you were saying that like there was a video that we're gonna put up, but it had a strike and you, you were gonna have to do like training. Remember that?
- [63:12]
C
That was already up there. That was. Right, that wasn't re uploaded. That was from the past.
- [63:17]
A
Oh, it was. Yeah.
- [63:19]
C
We're still putting clips up on that channel.
- [63:20]
A
It was a clip that was the problem.
- [63:22]
C
Yeah, pretty sure.
- [63:23]
A
Right. But it was the full episode. Right. And then when we upload the full episode, then it applied to that. Right.
- [63:29]
C
I just still had.
- [63:29]
B
I.
- [63:30]
A
We.
- [63:30]
C
There was no way around not doing the education fucking thing.
- [63:36]
A
Here's the problem. No way around it.
- [63:37]
B
Did you have to do that?
- [63:38]
A
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.
- [63:49]
C
Yeah, something changed in the news and they were like, that's actually accurate now.
- [63:52]
A
But.
- [63:52]
C
But the system had. There was no way to change it in the system.
- [63:55]
A
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 get educated about something that's absolutely true and you have to sort of pretend that you did a bad thing.
- [64:15]
B
It's scary for me because this is literally how I make a living. Put food on the table.
- [64:19]
A
Yeah. Do you do other platforms as well as YouTube?
- [64:22]
B
I'm. I'm on X, but I'm not monetized. Never made a. A dollar on X. I'm not sure how. How to go about doing that. I could look it up. I should probably.
- [64:30]
A
But yeah, I don't know how that works either.
- [64:31]
B
I hear rumors about don't post one to one to X because, like, 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.
- [64:42]
A
There's probably something to that.
- [64:44]
B
And I'm so dependent on YouTube that I'm like, I'm not even.
- [64:47]
A
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 gonna 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?
- [65:07]
C
Sure, I think so. Maybe 1 2, 1 3, something like that.
- [65:10]
A
As much as 1.5 million, I think at one point in time. An hour. Never trending.
- [65:17]
B
I heard about that.
- [65:18]
A
Never trending. Never tr. 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 is, are you curating your trending thing?
- [65:34]
B
Why would you do this on Call Her Daddy Trend?
- [65:37]
A
I don't know. It's a good question. Well, it didn't get any views.
- [65:39]
B
No, it ding. Imagery.
- [65:40]
A
I mean, what. What did Kamala Harris on call Her.
- [65:43]
B
Daddy get, like less than a million?
- [65:44]
A
I think that's crazy.
- [65:47]
B
Yeah.
- [65:47]
A
I get a million for some random.
- [65:49]
B
Should have gotten a million.
- [65:50]
A
That's crazy. Yeah, but that doesn't make any sense.
- [65:53]
B
I might be wrong about that.
- [65:54]
A
Well, it wasn't extraordinary. It wasn't interesting enough. That's pro. You know, it's merit based, essentially.
- [66:00]
C
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.
- [66:10]
A
Right. But obviously the algorithm.
- [66:13]
C
I don't believe this is what's happening.
- [66:14]
B
Yeah, I don't believe that.
- [66:14]
C
Cynical about this.
- [66:16]
A
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 cuts me out. Mature content. Violence or disparaging others in the community. Okay, so just that line alone, disparaging.
- [67:09]
B
Others in the community.
- [67:10]
A
Yeah.
- [67:12]
B
It would be in YouTube's best interest, though. They need. They need you so.
- [67:17]
A
Well, don't they like views?
- [67:18]
B
Yeah, that's what I don't.
- [67:19]
A
You sell advertising.
- [67:20]
B
If I was YouTube, I feel like, no, we want Joe Rogan's thing up here. We need views.
- [67:23]
A
Well, not only that, if you put it in trending, you'll get more views, so you get more advertising revenue.
- [67:27]
B
On that specific one, I think they were worried about something else, but, yeah.
- [67:32]
A
They were worried about it promoting Donald Trump and 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.
- [67:54]
B
When I first saw it, it was someone reacting to it.
- [67:57]
A
Yeah. Live bizarre.
- [68:00]
B
Didn't you tweet? Like, we had to release it at the same time on multiple platforms. Sorry for the glitch. Wasn't there?
- [68:08]
A
There was a glitch because the way we upload generally, Jamie, you could speak to this. We upload with a timer, right? Like, it's going to upload usually is, like, at noon.
- [68:19]
C
And this time we were doing it at night. And, you know, they just didn't. For whatever reason, it didn't go live. The platforms don't work the same.
- [68:27]
A
We just released it. We just said, like, let's just release it now. But it took a while to get up and to. It was just. That was just like 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 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. 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 like6.65 million views, and I got like 25 million views. It was just nuts. It was like people wanted. And it's this try sand effect. As soon as you try to suppress something. I just. I don't buy into the idea that there wasn't 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 for, like, maybe that could be it. Like, 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.
- [70:02]
B
You haven't asked?
- [70:03]
A
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 like, let me just put it, you know, like, this is like, if there's a situation like that, that I'll talk about that. And that's my way of responding to that. Like, make sense. To make it make sense to me. Like, why. 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.
- [70:32]
B
That is crazy.
- [70:33]
A
That's nuts. Like, what's wrong with your search system? And then eventually that, because of me talking about it, it went back and then. Then you could find it.
- [70:42]
B
It's one of the best things. A lot of people are really grateful that you did that.
- [70:47]
A
So, yeah, I, you know, I wanted to. Like, 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 wasn't 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. The trans people gonna be rounded up and fucking nets thrown on them. And it, 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. The 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. The point about the California wildfires where he's discussing their. Their water issues, that it could all be fixed. And then he gave them a plan to fix it, and then they. They rejected it. And he was 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, 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.
- [72:27]
B
Yeah, well, that clip of you predicting the whole thing.
- [72:29]
A
Yeah, that was a. See, here's the thing. This climate change narrative, this is a really goofy thing that people on the left are talking. This is because of climate change. This is. Climate change causes fire. LA 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.
- [73:07]
B
That's why the movie industry.
- [73:08]
A
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.
- [73:28]
C
1961 Bel Air fire.
- [73:31]
A
Could be.
- [73:32]
C
Could be a windy ass. Windy sound, the same brush fire, wind.
- [73:35]
A
But I mean, that's just what happens, man. So the. 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.
- [74:01]
B
So you think it was more.
- [74:02]
A
It's just la.
- [74:03]
B
Okay?
- [74:04]
A
It's just la. It's not a climate change issue. God, I gotta find this video.
- [74:08]
B
I know.
- [74:08]
C
10,000 acres burned, 450 homes burned. Here's the aftermath. Houses. They're digging through it.
- [74:13]
A
Yeah, that is a black and white one. The one that I had was. Was color footage. I know I have it. Just give me a second. I will find it.
- [74:24]
C
Documentary is called Design for Disaster that's popping up. This also says Bel Air here.
- [74:30]
A
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 the. Here it is. I found it. 1960s. It was in the canyon. Here it is. I'll send it to you, Jamie. 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 2000, if I believe. If I'm correct, I think it was 2003 and we were experiencing a fire. And he told me I. Because where I lived, I had been evacuated three times. I've been evacuated in the early 2000s. So this is. Give me some volume on this so you can hear the way this guy talks. Ground cover in the Western hemisphere. The fire, starting from its point of origin north of Mulholland on Stone Canyon, spreads out along canyon walls in three directions. Flames begin spreading at the rate of.
- [75:45]
C
13 acres per minute.
- [75:47]
A
We've got a report of four people trapped on foot between Chalan and Roscommer.
- [75:51]
D
We need help from the police department.
- [75:53]
A
Send an ambulance at 2025. How can a modern Water system properly designed to meet emergency fire conditions fail to function 484 times. Fire proved its deadly efficiency by incinerating in a few roaring minutes what families had taken years to acquire.134. So that has always been a problem.
- [76:15]
B
So they had the same issue back.
- [76:17]
A
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. Trump said, drill, baby, drill. Right after we're dealing with this climate change fueled emergency in the Pacific Palisades and climate change 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, where you 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 part cost $1. This one $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.
- [78:05]
B
Why didn't they adapt? Like, I lived in LA for two years. I'm on the volunteer fire department in my town, where I live now, Massachusetts. And we don't have fire hydrants.
- [78:15]
A
That's so crazy.
- [78:17]
B
We're out by Concord, like near there.
- [78:19]
A
Yeah, I know where that is.
- [78:20]
B
So there's no fire hydrants and so we bring our own water.
- [78:24]
A
That's so crazy.
- [78:25]
B
But it's possible is my point.
- [78:27]
A
It's possible. And the problem with this PAC fire and there's a. 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 arrested people, okay? 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 was the homeless people. Like, okay, 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 climate change. The problem is LA 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. Yeah, that's the reality of it. That's. That's indisputable.
- [80:01]
B
Do you think Gavin Newsom's gonna. Is this gonna be the end of him? Are people gonna put up with it?
- [80:06]
A
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. The 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, 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. And what is, 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 emigrated here illegally. From Mexico, there's coffee and water, whatever you'd like. There's water in that glass right there, 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 an 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'd probably be better off leaning in that direction. If someone's going to take a pragmatic solution, a pragmatic 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 a tinder box.
- [82:28]
B
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. So then logically a difference could be made.
- [82:47]
A
There was one guy who put lawn sprinklers on his roof.
- [82:51]
B
Milk orange juice. I saw one guy. And it's so. It's difficult to have those two narratives. They contradict each other.
- [82:57]
A
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 our. 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 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% contained. Today, I'm gonna 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 can see this here. I mean, this is crazy. This is absolutely crazy. And the video is larger, Jamie. If you could, like, shrink it a little so that. That way you can see the top. So there's. There's words at the top that block off some of it, but it goes on, like, way above that. See that? Like, this is an enormous piece of land covered with homes that's gone.
- [85:08]
B
All that's gone.
- [85:09]
A
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.
- [85:44]
B
Yeah. I don't think people realize how toxic that stuff is.
- [85:46]
A
Not just that it's in the air. So, you know, 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. Just dry dirt kicked up by the wind, which they've always had. Like, they. The. 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. 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 gonna have long term health consequences for those guys.
- [87:02]
B
Yeah, yeah.
- [87:03]
A
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. 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 from a brain cancer that they connect to his exposure in the military to the toxic burn pits. There's a whole swarm of health consequences that veterans have faced because these toxic burn pits, 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 it you're breathing. Burnt garbage, burnt refuge, burnt buildings, burnt cars, burnt tires. All that stuff you're breathing in.
- [88:19]
B
I didn't realize how often you don't think about firefighters, but they're exposed to.
- [88:23]
A
That all the time.
- [88:25]
B
The guys on the. It's all volunteering, but the guys that, you know in their 50s, 60s, and you just like hacking all the time.
- [88:33]
A
Yeah.
- [88:33]
B
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 got to have it specially washed. And so there's like the, 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 you. But that doesn't happen. So it's just crazy.
- [88:56]
A
Also, they're exhausted like you. You don't even want to shower. You just want to close your eyes. Been working 28 hours. Hours. You get a couple hours to sleep before you get back out there again. It's insane and still 68 contained today. What's today's date? The 23rd, 22nd.
- [89:14]
C
Some people talk about the lot was the big camp, the campfire from a few years ago, that. That containment number starts getting used as a big political tool. And, like, it'll never end up being like 100%. I just kind of keep pushing the number around to talk about stuff and just know it'll never just eventually just goes away.
- [89:29]
A
What do you mean?
- [89:31]
C
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%.
- [89:40]
A
Well, if it's still up.
- [89:41]
C
No, it just like a political tool. They were saying, like, the residents there just got sick of it. They just. They're like, this is now political thing. We're going back and forth, like, tell us what it is, right? Where is the fire if it's not contained kind of thing. Like, it just becomes a thing that no one has answers for.
- [89:53]
A
Right. That is a weird thing. Right? We want to put numbers on stuff. Stuff like. 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?
- [90:13]
C
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 1st. 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. Be real weird if it started back up five days later.
- [90:36]
A
But, yeah, that doesn't really make sense. That doesn't make sense. Also. It doesn't make sense. If you think about how windy it was and the fact that everything's dry.
- [90:44]
C
They're saying, I can go into the roots, which is. I'm never. That's where I'm just starting to hear.
- [90:48]
A
That, okay, maybe it can. Maybe. But five days later, it starts up again as a raging inferno.
- [90:53]
C
That's just.
- [90:54]
A
Perhaps, perhaps. But there is also evidence that people lit fires. There's also people that got arrested for lighting fires.
- [91:01]
B
It wouldn't surprise me, man, if you. Have you heard of the book Monkey Wrench Gang?
- [91:04]
A
No.
- [91:05]
B
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.
- [91:20]
A
Okay.
- [91:20]
B
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. And. But it wouldn't surprise me if that kind of thinking carried over in someone because we saw Copycat. So there's definitely people out there that have a reason.
- [91:36]
A
Yeah, well, there's disturbed individuals in our society. That's why we have school shooters.
- [91:41]
B
Right.
- [91:41]
A
That's why we have. 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. It's a known thing. And to pretend that it's not possible because it doesn't appeal to your narrative, it doesn't fit with your narrative of the homeless thing. 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 Wire Files 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 a 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.
- [92:34]
B
La, man. It's not my cup of tea, but it's, it's tragic.
- [92:38]
C
One of those firefighters has a history of arson. That's why they're talking about this.
- [92:41]
A
Oh, great. One of the firefighters.
- [92:44]
C
One of the fake firefighters.
- [92:46]
A
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.
- [92:55]
B
A fake fire truck, A pair of.
- [92:57]
A
Fake firefighters from Oregon.
- [92:59]
B
Where do you get a fake fire trucks?
- [93:01]
A
Yeah, he's like dedicated. He's like the Michael Jordan of fake fire trucks.
- [93:04]
B
Seems like a million bucks he got a used one.
- [93:08]
A
Would you see the. Did you see the thing in LA where they had the lot where they showed all of the fire trucks that were out of service? No, hundreds.
- [93:16]
B
Oh, they're bringing them back in service?
- [93:18]
A
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 Shellenberger 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. Yeah.
- [93:40]
B
Jeez.
- [93:43]
A
75 Los Angeles fire trucks wait for repairs as wildfires rage While Citi spends 1.13 billion on the homeless. This is New York Post. I'd heard it was more than 75. I. 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.
- [94:05]
B
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.
- [94:12]
A
God. I mean, maybe that could work where there's very few fires and it's just essentially home fires.
- [94:19]
B
We're fine where we are.
- [94:20]
A
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.
- [94:53]
B
Like when you were talking about it in that clip that goes around, it's like there's nothing they can do. Exactly the right wind.
- [94:59]
A
Yes.
- [95:00]
B
It's going.
- [95:01]
A
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.
- [95:08]
B
So is there any preparation that could have.
- [95:11]
A
Yeah, you got to get rid of all the brush.
- [95:12]
B
Okay.
- [95:13]
A
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've spent $24 billion on the homeless crisis didn't put a dent in it. You. 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, 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 Tachapi area. Like, we're near tojon ranch. We're filming this thing at this ranch. We're. 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.
- [97:02]
B
Saw a clip of that.
- [97:02]
A
It was surreal. So this has always been a problem with la. So these climate change kooks, these left wing kooks that want to put everything into these like very binary categories. Like, this is because the Republicans refused to agree to climate change and call climate change is a hoax. This is a climate change. No, this is la. This is the climate of la. Is this the fire truck? Oh, he probably posted it too, a lot. Quite a few people on Twitter posted it. But there was all these fire trucks that were in this lot. And 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 and, you know, 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, you know, there wasn't enough water for the fire hydraulic, 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, you know, what the problem was. And he offered a solution. And in to save the smelt. They didn't want to do this solution.
- [98:17]
B
Well, this department with Elon, like, you can just imagine what Elon could do with like the fire truck problem. Yeah, but he can't do everything.
- [98:24]
A
Well, you can't do everything with states, right? Because states have states rights and they have, you know, like one of the things they. They arrest this one guy for arson, and they couldn't necessarily prove that he was an arsonist because they didn't. They had one guy they found with an actual blowtorch, but 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. Things. And, 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, you know, 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 country lighting things on fire. And they're like, no, we have sanctuary. Sanctuary still here. I don't know. I don't know what the latest is. I try not to pay too much attention. I'll go crazy.
- [99:23]
B
Yeah.
- [99:24]
A
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 and marginalized groups and people that are more maligned. Right. So if someone can just like, appeal to that and say, like, we have no desire to stop gay marriage. We have no desire to, you know, 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 we. 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 like, it should be like, what have you done? How have you, 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 gonna bring in someone who has some more. Something that's gonna progress the idea better. You know, someone who's gonna fix this problem better. Someone's got a more pragmat 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. 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 out 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 you're, 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 about whether they like you.
- [102:42]
B
And Hollywood runs off the blacklisting idea.
- [102:44]
A
Oh yeah.
- [102:46]
B
If you, if you go against your union. That's how unions have power.
- [102:50]
A
Yes.
- [102:50]
B
If you cross the picket line, you're going to be blacklisted and we're not, you know, and you'd be ostracized. And that has real consequences in LA because people don't realize what I always describe it when I Teaching that class on filmmaking. Hollywood is the very definition of a rigged game.
- [103:04]
A
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 into this cult, like, thinking, so it's very difficult to get them out of that.
- [103:48]
B
It's the technology, I think, is going to revolution. We're on the precipice of thinking 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, like, watching those monsters Ball Candy, these small heath. I think independent movies that made you feel like they were just made for you. They weren't like Marvel or this. 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 a strange paradox where you have more of an ability to reach an audience than ever before. But there's fewer, like, writing positions, movies being made. There's the shortage of. There's this hiring shortage, but cameras more accessible than ever. You were talking about the potential for someone to come. I mean, I think it's only a matter of time until it does happen. Happen. The Daily Wire is trying kind of with Pendragon Cycle.
- [104:51]
A
What's that?
- [104:53]
B
They were doing an Arthurian legend. Their attempt at Game of Thrones, which would be, if it were to land, could be massive. 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 kind of trying to compete, but we've never had an alternative to the union model, the traditional production model, which drives up production costs, 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 black history. We won't distribute your movie. There's all these different parameters. You're not SAG sanctioned, 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, like, 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.
- [105:46]
A
What's that story?
- [105:47]
B
She was. She's no longer at the Daily Wire. The comment section. You know, Brett Cooper, she created the comments section at Daily Wire.
- [105:55]
A
The comment section.
- [105:56]
B
Comments section. And it's got.
- [105:58]
A
Are you aware of this, Jamie? A little bit. A little bit, yeah.
- [106:01]
C
And then they hired someone else to host.
- [106:03]
B
Yeah. I'll break it down. Break it down.
- [106:05]
A
What happened?
- [106:06]
B
She developed. They hired her. Like, we want you to start. Yeah, we want you to start this YouTube channel for Gen Z. We want it to feel like you're a streamer.
- [106:14]
A
Let's hear what she says. Let's rewind that shit. Let's hear what she has to say. Just a little bit.
- [106:22]
D
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, Reagan, 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'm very excited for what's to come, knowing that we have brought so many people together.
- [107:24]
A
Pause this. I'm not hearing this. So what. What I'm not hearing is, like, what caused.
- [107:29]
B
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 nosed, dived. 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 non verbal communication, 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 4 million people in the last three years, as you were just hearing. And she starred in the Pendragon cycle. She used to act.
- [108:21]
A
But what was the problem, though?
- [108:23]
B
We don't know. We don't know. There's speculation that she, she. It exploded the channel. So she. It's likely. If we're applying critical thinking to this, it's more than likely that she approached Jeremy Boring, Daily Wires, 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 is what happened. She was living on this farm with a commute. She's a little fresher at that. Maybe it's. She wanted to. There's speculation she wanted to run her show kind of from her house, but no one knows Exactly. There's NDAs and everything.
- [108:57]
A
So 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 like being a part of a channel, like it doesn't really get you much, obviously, because the new show only has 4,40,000 views. Right?
- [109:15]
B
True, true. But Jeremy Boring's response would be, yeah, but we throw the daily wires advertising money behind these people who spend a lot in advertising. We lose a lot of money before we make any money.
- [109:25]
A
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.
- [109:37]
B
You can't buy the elusive intangible.
- [109:39]
A
Yeah, there's. Their record business is notoriously horrible with that. So they have a model where when they sign an artist, the artist gets an advance 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, like, they make more than you and you make almost nothing.
- [110:14]
B
So that's very likely a possibility.
- [110:15]
A
And they throw as much against the wall as possible. Think of a record company. You know, they might. They might fund a bunch of different artists. Yeah. And then only one or two of them take off. But those one or two of them are. That's Prince. And he's getting fucked. And meanwhile, is a giant superstar. Like Prince had to change his name. Name. He's like, okay, well, you own Prince. You guys don't. Okay, I'm this. Now I'm a squiggly line. That's what he did. So it was the artist formerly known as Prince, you know? And do you know that, like 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.
- [110:52]
B
Huh.
- [110:52]
A
And that was how he could still perform. Yeah. You don't own this.
- [110:56]
B
And there's probably a non compete clause. That's just why she hasn't posted anything yet.
- [111:00]
A
Crazy.
- [111:01]
B
It's.
- [111:01]
A
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 gonna connect myself to a channel and, you know, I'm gonna 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, 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. They bring you me undies, ads, and all kinds of. 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 or. We would like you to talk about this today. Like, 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 was 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 car company.
- [112:22]
B
I mean, you got, like, someone like Jordan Peterson who did partner with the same company, and maybe that allows him to do more, like, traveling over what they do, like the, you know, Jerusalem.
- [112:33]
A
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 Steven Crowder where. Steven Crowder. Yeah.
- [112:44]
B
People were using that context of this, saying this. This kind of.
- [112:47]
A
Yeah. So. And the. The Crowder thing was kind of weird because he recorded a conversation, a private conversation that he had.
- [112:53]
B
Yeah.
- [112:54]
A
But the. 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. Like, they have to. They're taking a chance. I sort. I went through a similar thing with Spotify, but Spotify was great. There was no issues at all. It was like, we think the show is really valuable. We're going to give you a lot of money to be excited. Exclusive on Spotify. And just that's it. Pretty simple. No input at all in terms of, like, who I should have on or what I should talk about or, you know, there was nothing. It was. There was a few hiccups during the COVID days where, you know, they were experiencing so many attacks. They were. They were getting, like, strong pressure to try to remove the podcast. And they didn't buckle. They. They hung in there.
- [113:41]
B
Good for them.
- [113:42]
A
Yeah, good for them. 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.
- [113:52]
B
But you see how that now is gonna. They've already filmed Pin Dragon Cycle, this whole thing, this Arthurian. So it's probably going to impact.
- [114:00]
A
Well, I hope it's good, you know, me too. The thing is, like, who's writing it? How good are the people that are writing it? How good is the story?
- [114:09]
B
Hopefully about the story.
- [114:10]
A
Yeah, it's all. With the story. It's all about how good is it? You know, because it's.
- [114:14]
B
I was thinking about that on the airplane, like, how the. The logic of story, you know, all trying to connect all these dots and everything. But I think there is a. An Inherent there are patterns. Like, I was talking about mathematics, how I can't think about math. 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, like, 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.
- [115:10]
A
Right, right, right.
- [115:11]
B
Then you're almost making it for the sake of the story, not the audience. But the audience will come as a consequence.
- [115:16]
A
Yeah.
- [115:17]
B
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, well, we can change Snow White.
- [115:27]
A
Right.
- [115:28]
B
And then that screws them up.
- [115:29]
A
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. You get it. Like, oh, that 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.
- [115:59]
B
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.
- [116:08]
A
Right.
- [116:08]
B
Because I was watching Beautiful Mind on the Airplane, which is, I think, my favorite movie. I'm trying to think of one's better.
- [116:14]
A
It's just amazing movie. Yeah, yeah. That movie nailed it. Yeah, they nailed it.
- [116:20]
B
That's why I'm thinking so much about, like, math and everything.
- [116:23]
A
Well, there's kind of a math to it, right?
- [116:25]
B
That's my point. Point. Yeah, 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 should be on. On your arm. This is the golden ratio. 1. Wait. 1 to 1.6. Then from here. 1. Wait, sorry. 1 to 1.6. In your hand, 1 to 1.6. Your finger 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 is a. Is a. The story takes place over a week, air an hour, sea a day. And then he does 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. 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 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 if this is the meat of the movie, in 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.
- [118:21]
A
Math is the uniquely uninfluenced by pop culture. Too true. He's. I think he famously doesn't have email. He's one of those guys that 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 that goes, you know what? The more that's coming in that's influencing me is it's gonna 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.
- [118:59]
B
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 an all you.
- [119:09]
A
Because we do it for the thing. You make the thing the best thing it can.
- [119:13]
B
Yeah. Which is what you want to see. That's how you. 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 see. I'm going to try and make it as good as what I would want to see.
- [119:22]
A
Right.
- [119:22]
B
You know?
- [119:23]
A
Yeah, it is. It's a fascinating medium. Right. Because now it's also being challenged by these shows that are essentially long movies. Like Ozark.
- [119:37]
B
Yeah, right.
- [119:37]
A
Ozark's a long movie. Yeah. And you can get so much on the Sopranos. You get so much more into depth with the characters and the interactions and. And everything that's below the boat, you know?
- [119:49]
B
Yeah.
- [119:49]
A
There's so much more when you have six seasons.
- [119:52]
B
Yeah, I heard you talking to Tarantino about that.
- [119:54]
A
Yeah, well, he was talking. He's 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 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.
- [120:23]
B
Have you seen Taylor Sheridan's new show, Landman?
- [120:26]
A
I haven't. I watched one episode. I haven't seen it all yet.
- [120:28]
B
It takes a bit to get into it, but it's. He's doing something that no one else is doing.
- [120:33]
A
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?
- [120:40]
B
This gets worse with that. But.
- [120:42]
A
But that's crazy. Like, that girl looks like she's. She's got to be 25 years old at least. You think, well, let's find out. Yeah, No, I know she is.
- [120:50]
B
We looked at it from a producer's perspective. Yeah. You're not gonna hire frickin 18. You're gonna hire someone over 18 for labor laws for sure. So she's definitely.
- [120:57]
A
Well, how about to hire someone that's.
- [120:58]
B
18, 19, like, so then you can get around the label.
- [121:02]
A
Okay. Even 18, 19, at least she looks like. At least she looks like she could be 17.
- [121:06]
B
Yeah. Yeah, that's her 27. Okay, you got it.
- [121:10]
A
27. That's all right.
- [121:12]
B
You nailed it.
- [121:12]
A
Beautiful lady, but looks like a lady. Yeah, Looks like a beautiful woman. Does not look like a high school kid.
- [121:18]
B
Good point.
- [121:19]
A
And so when you're seeing that, it throws you off, like, immediately. Like, what did. What are you doing here?
- [121:24]
B
Touche.
- [121:24]
A
This is nuts.
- [121:25]
B
Yeah.
- [121:25]
A
It just doesn't make any sense? Yeah. I'm not saying she looks bad at all. She looks great. She looks. 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 this, like, wild, rebellious teenage daughter.
- [121:39]
B
Yeah.
- [121:40]
A
And like, hey, bro, she's lying. That's like, when's the last time you saw her? That might not be the same person.
- [121:47]
B
Billy Bob's hilarious, though.
- [121:48]
A
He's great.
- [121:49]
B
He's got some great rants about climate change and oil.
- [121:52]
A
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 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 life is made with oil.
- [122:13]
B
And you're reading the Elon's. Elon's biography on the airplane, but do you think he could. He thinks he could get the solution with the solar, with the battery walls and the battery roof. Could that work?
- [122:27]
A
I don't know. It may. 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 Tesla's. 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, like, 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 it's. Maybe it's a setting. And, 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. 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 you know, most cars weigh somewhere in the neighborhood of 4,000, £5,000. 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 garage rails. We. 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, 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 you, 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.
- [125:13]
C
Read an article that kind of disagrees with that and it explains why here in this third paragraph.
- [125:18]
A
Okay, so it says many of the claims about EVs causing air problems. Reference figures from Emission and Analytics, a private company. Founder Nick Molden said that its measurements show that particulate emissions can be 1850 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.
- [125:51]
C
This was the third article I got to that said that there's less from. Because of regenerative braking.
- [125:58]
A
Right. Well, 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 version. That's true. But that's not true. What, 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.
- [126:40]
B
Is that an electric Range Rover?
- [126:43]
A
Yeah. I don't even know that they existed. Is that a new thing?
- [126:48]
B
I don't know.
- [126:50]
A
I never saw one before. There's a lot now it says calculated that EVs are 400kg heavier on average because 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 that this is because they're trying to put it into context. Like 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. Carbon ceramic brakes standard that you need them just like you need catalytic converters. It would be more expensive though.
- [127:27]
B
I never heard of that.
- [127:28]
A
Yeah. So most brakes have steel rotors. You know, know steel, steel hits this carbon and it just releases more brake dust or steel hits the, the pads, releases more brake dust.
- [127:41]
B
I've got a hybrid RAV4. I love it.
- [127:45]
A
Yeah, well those are really good on gas.
- [127:47]
B
Yeah.
- [127:47]
A
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, the bottom line is there's, there's problems with, 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 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.
- [128:20]
B
And Billy Bob goes on a good rant about the window.
- [128:23]
A
Yeah.
- [128:23]
B
What it was though. But he rips them apart.
- [128:25]
A
Yeah, they're not effective. They're not, they're not good enough for what they do to the Environment, you know, they. 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 with these whales.
- [128:40]
B
Oh, I didn't.
- [128:41]
A
Yeah, it's. 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.
- [128:52]
B
Yeah.
- [128:52]
A
But if we could just have like one designated area in the center, like take, you know, a state and make that state just a battery, maybe that would work. Yeah, maybe la. Maybe when LA burns to the ground. Look, it's already toxic. Let's just turn the palace into a battery.
- [129:07]
B
How are they going to rebuild if it's like, yeah, there's nothing we can do if this happens again?
- [129:12]
A
Well, it's also the fire insurance problem that a lot of insurance, 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 is. What are you guys doing over there? This is horrible. This is horrible. And what, what solutions are on the table? Well, I'll tell you, it's not. Not as simple as don't drill for oil, you know, like, God damn it.
- [129:51]
B
I don't see the mayor making it through this.
- [129:53]
A
She doesn't seem like she should make it through. No, she wasn't. She like some sort of a radical communist activist when she was younger, too.
- [130:00]
B
I don't know. Yeah, that clip of her in the airport. Really?
- [130:05]
A
Yeah.
- [130:06]
B
You're not.
- [130:06]
A
Not good at. Not responding at all. You look shell shocked and then smiling when she's on tv. We're going to rebuild with a bunch of construction workers behind her. Like, look, we're rebuilding. She's smiling. We're gonna re. We're gonna get to work. Like, you're not gonna get to work. You're not gonna get to work. You're not gonna have. These people aren't gonna have the money to rebuild. Where's the money gonna come from? Are you gonna give them the money for those homes? You're Talking now about $300 billion worth of damage and counting. Right. Are you, you gonna shell out $300 billion to give those people their homes? But back when someone has an 82 million dollar home, are you going to give them that $82 million? And rather than pay teachers more money.
- [130:43]
B
In North Carolina, in the middle of Appalachia, you have people with cheaper homes than anywhere in la. They're not getting right money back.
- [130:50]
A
There's 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.
- [130:58]
B
Yeah, that's crazy.
- [131:00]
A
Crazy.
- [131:00]
B
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.
- [131:10]
A
But everything's gone there. It was a crazy disaster. But again, you could say that's climate change. But what 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, the particulate is. 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.
- [132:00]
B
I wouldn't doubt it at all.
- [132:01]
A
I wouldn't doubt that there are like 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. 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, 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 to seed all developed nations combined. Combined.
- [133:05]
B
Yeah.
- [133:06]
A
And they're not going to change that. They're not going to, they're not going to shift that. That's what they do.
- [133:11]
B
Long term, I think China's poses the greatest potential threat still. There was a. You had a CIA, ex. CIA guy on who was talking about the 21 year plan from China. That blew my mind because then when I was in graduate school it was like 80% of the other students were from China. And I'm not ex. No one believes that either. There was multiple classes where I went in. I was the only non China, not just American student, non Chinese student. And there'd be 15 people in the class.
- [133:41]
A
Yeah.
- [133:41]
B
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.
- [133:47]
A
Wow.
- [133:47]
B
So you're like. And I tried to do a documentary on it and then I was kind of. There were consequences. 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 something that 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.
- [134:15]
A
Yeah, it's. We're, 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.
- [134:31]
B
No. And there's a lot of, I mean, Peterson and you talked about this a lot. Postmodernism, the effect of postmodernism, the fact that there's an infinite variety of interpretations to stories, but that doesn't mean that there's not. Everything's not just a social construct and it doesn't mean that there's not an ideal to strive for.
- [134:55]
A
Yeah. And the problem with people that talk about climate change is they never talk about China emissions, they talk about America. Trump wants to pull us out of the Paris Accord. They want to do this, they want to do that. Like, look, look at what's going on in the world. Like 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.
- [135:36]
B
Yeah, yeah.
- [135:37]
A
And then criticizing the idea of drilling for oil.
- [135:41]
B
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, like, Winston Churchill and everything. There's just.
- [135:55]
A
What's the rethinking of Winston Churchill?
- [135:58]
B
When Tucker Carl said head on, I'm forgetting the name of the historian. Doesn't matter.
- [136:02]
A
Marner Mae, Daryl Cooper, Darryl Cooper.
- [136:04]
B
Yeah. I think people ask me sometimes after all this video stuff, they're like, what's the. What would you recommend reading and studying for critical thinking? And I think Winston Churchill is the ultimate example of critical thinking, because critical thinking is all about, like, 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.
- [136:36]
A
One thing that my friend Chris DiStefano brought up on the podcast that blew me away was Operation Unthinkable.
- [136:44]
B
I haven't heard that one.
- [136:46]
A
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 had. They'd take the German soldiers and then go invade Russia.
- [137:00]
B
I haven't heard that. It wouldn't surprise me. He did not like Stalin because with Roosevelt, they got. Buddy, buddy. There's some. My whole thesis was on this. 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 because, 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 extremes. 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 the story. And I found it in the Harvard archive when I was researching for my thesis film.
- [138:06]
A
Whoa.
- [138:06]
B
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 have. They're ready to do radar, develop it. They can't build it. They're cut off from the world. All of Europe has fallen, Except. 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. 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. 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. Connects. Like spirituality. When does. Like living as though God existed. Saved 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 that. It's so deep I could talk about it.
- [139:34]
A
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. Like, hey, don't do that, though.
- [139:44]
B
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 gonna see him do a silly hand gesture and see that as well.
- [139:54]
A
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.
- [140:13]
B
There's going to be a screen grab of you.
- [140:15]
A
Well, there's already a screen grab. This is what's funny. Cnn, during the COVID time 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 way 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 when I was trying.
- [140:56]
C
To find a different, different explanation. I have a picture of it. That's why I was just digging for better versions.
- [141:01]
A
Well, yeah, that's it. That's how they did the Pledge of Allegiance.
- [141:04]
B
Oh, interesting.
- [141:05]
A
How crazy is that?
- [141:06]
B
That's crazy.
- [141:07]
A
That's in 1942.
- [141:08]
B
Yeah.
- [141:08]
A
So this is, you know, and then we realize, oh, we can't do that anymore. That's how the Nazis do.
- [141:12]
B
It's right around that time Pledge of.
- [141:14]
A
Allegiance would be your right hand up in the air.
- [141:16]
B
Interesting.
- [141:17]
A
How crazy is that?
- [141:19]
B
Well, we weren't in, we were just getting into World War II, so we didn't have the, the views of Hitler embodied in it.
- [141:26]
A
Pretty bizarre though. It is, you know.
- [141:29]
B
Yeah.
- [141:31]
A
Now you're not allowed to do that anymore.
- [141:32]
B
I didn't know that. That's crazy.
- [141:34]
A
Well, it's like just 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, everybody's a Nazi. It's so dumb.
- [141:43]
B
You can go look at anybody and find that. Yeah.
- [141:46]
A
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. You know that one? You ever seen that? We talked about him the other day. Who brought him up? I did. Jamie brought him up. So this is a guy who has not put his arm down and like, some insane amount. His arm is, like, shriveled. It's useless. His devotion to Lord Shiva. So he has his to like, to show his devotion, he decided, I'm gonna 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?
- [142:25]
B
That's crazy.
- [142:26]
A
He has a useless right arm now. Like, 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.
- [142:39]
B
Power of stories.
- [142:40]
A
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.
- [142:56]
B
Oh, I didn't make that connection. I was like, why are you.
- [142:58]
A
Shut up. That guy's doing a Nazi sleuth forever. That's how I got anything about that. That's how dedicated he is to be the Nazi connected. 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.
- [143:16]
B
How's Elon handling this whole. He probably, like, what the.
- [143:19]
A
Yeah, he was definitely what the. And he was happy that the adl, of all people, defended him.
- [143:25]
B
Yeah, that was good.
- [143:26]
A
Yeah. Well, it's obvious. Like anybody, 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.
- [143:39]
B
So dumb.
- [143:40]
A
It's so dumb.
- [143:41]
B
It's not clearly.
- [143:42]
A
Yeah, it's crazy. 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. 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.
- [144:20]
B
Yes, Power story.
- [144:21]
A
Yeah, the power story. That. 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. And he's been hiding it all these days until Trump got in office. Make a great movie, Go.
- [144:46]
B
Yeah, yeah, it would make a great movie.
- [144:49]
A
Yeah, it's. Well, it's fascinating, but it also. What it does is it opens the door for people like yourself. It opens the 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? 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, that says letting you know and says something that makes people resonate, it resonates with people to the point where like, yes, more of this guy, more people like that. Like, I like how this guy thinks. I like how this guy talks. And that's what I got out of it.
- [145:35]
B
Surreal. I don't know. I don't think about it.
- [145:38]
A
Well, you shouldn't think about it.
- [145:39]
B
Yeah, you can't think.
- [145:40]
A
Yeah. Well, then you get audience capture.
- [145:42]
B
Right, right. And it. You freeze too. It's like Heath Ledger acting. He's like, you can't. You think about, like, oh, a hundred thousand people might see what I'm gonna. Then you just can't talk.
- [145:52]
A
That's probably why Christopher Nolan doesn't have a phone. You know, same kind of thing to make the kind of films.
- [146:00]
B
Have you reached out to him to invite him on?
- [146:01]
A
No, I haven't. I don't even know if he does any interview views. I don't know.
- [146:04]
B
Rarely.
- [146:05]
A
I would love to have him on, though. I'm a huge fan of his work. I think he's brilliant. Obviously, he's not just brilliant, like amazing, like unusual.
- [146:12]
B
Yeah.
- [146:13]
A
Uniquely brilliant.
- [146:14]
B
He's got this mathematical mind and he approaches story in that way.
- [146:18]
A
So did Kubrick. There's a lot of parallels there. Right?
- [146:22]
B
Yeah, yeah.
- [146:24]
A
Kubrick in his spare time would do complex math.
- [146:27]
B
I wish. Yeah. That's crazy.
- [146:31]
A
Yeah. So his films were all like. Kubrick's films all had, like, encoded things in them.
- [146:38]
B
Yeah. Heard you talking to Tarantino or somebody about the lost Eyes Wide.
- [146:42]
A
Was that Eyes Wide Shut? Yeah, it was Roger Avery.
- [146:44]
B
Okay.
- [146:45]
A
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 if you wanted to. You know, you could get samples of his voice and he could narrate it, but that would, you know, you. You'd also like. How would. You know how he would cut it? You'd kind of be 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. The moon landing conspiracies have all cling. Clung on to it because the. The room number that's like the Haunted Room is. 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 that these people cling to that, like, I love stuff weird. Substack. Oh, it's fascinating. There's a whole documentary on it. The subtext behind the Shining. The Shining is a incredible movie. Which, by the way, which is really interesting. Stephen King didn't even like. He didn't like that movie, which is so crazy because it was different than his novel. So in his novel, the Jack Nicholson character. I 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.
- [148:43]
B
That's what I was talking about. There's different ways to tell that same story, and you can feel it when it kind of clicks in. But. But which is. Right. The audience doesn't lie.
- [148:52]
A
And then Stephen King did his own version of the Shining as a television miniseries.
- [148:58]
B
Did he?
- [148:59]
A
Yeah, but it wasn't. It wasn't very good. It wasn't effective.
- [149:03]
B
There you go.
- [149:03]
A
There was something about it. It just didn't work the same way.
- [149:06]
B
That elusive, intangible Thing that can't be bought, can't be replicated. Everyone's after it.
- [149:12]
A
Yeah.
- [149:13]
B
No one can articulate it. What makes a good actor? Why was he thought, You're a good actor.
- [149:19]
A
Right.
- [149:20]
B
And that's another great example of, like, why those boats are superfluous to the. Everything else.
- [149:27]
A
Yeah. It's all about telling the story. Right. And some people. What's going on?
- [149:33]
C
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. He wouldn't be doing stuff like that.
- [149:45]
A
Which movie?
- [149:46]
C
I was watching Room 237, the one about the.
- [149:49]
A
Oh, that was Shining and all the. Even. 80% is too pure gibberish. What does that mean? That means 20% is legit.
- [149:59]
C
Just. I mean, he wouldn't. It's just here. 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.
- [150:08]
A
It's hard to say, though, because someone saying that, that is their personal assistant. They're not speaking for Cuba.
- [150:13]
C
Stephen King said the same thing when he saw it. He said he had to turn it off because it was.
- [150:17]
A
Turn one off.
- [150:18]
C
The movie.
- [150:19]
A
The Shining itself.
- [150:20]
C
No, no, no. Room 237. The documentary.
- [150:22]
A
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. Like, what. What was he doing in that film? Like, what was he. There's many, many layers to his films that I, I. You know, he had his own way of doing it. He might not have done it mathematically with the score the way Christopher Nolan.
- [150:58]
B
Did, but there was something mathematically. I shouldn't even say that word, though, because. Because it's. It's. It's just patterns still, using patterns. Mathematics is just a language that allows us to articulate the form of those.
- [151:10]
A
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. 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, cover secrets. Like, what's the secret behind this? What is he really saying?
- [151:33]
B
Yeah.
- [151:34]
A
Yeah. What's he really doing?
- [151:37]
B
Yeah.
- [151:39]
A
Are you still gonna make films? Are you more committed to. Is it like. Do you feel like this thing that you're doing. What is your Secret Scholar?
- [151:50]
B
What is your YouTube secret scholar? Societies is the YouTube channel.
- [151:54]
A
Why'd you decide to call it that?
- [151:55]
B
That story I was telling you, that was from. Yeah, there was Harvard, right before the viral video. I was working on a short film. It's. 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 criticize. 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. 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.
- [152:34]
A
Right, because you're unemployed.
- [152:36]
B
Right. And there's potential to teach. But I'm making more doing what I'm doing.
- [152:43]
A
Yeah. And you're teaching by doing that, too. You are. 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. 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?
- [153:40]
B
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. Strand magazine.
- [153:55]
A
Sure.
- [153:56]
B
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. And it makes you feel like you have a potential for that, that power within you. You just got to know how to unlock it. So I was kind of playing with like the art of. That's why the, the slogan on the channel is the art of critical thinking. It was. His was the science of deduction.
- [154:25]
A
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 the. There's a, there's an igniting of your, your mind that is kind of beautiful. It's artistic.
- [154:46]
B
Hopefully. Hopefully you can sometimes get there.
- [154:48]
A
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, 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 be hanging, behave and think a certain way in order to succeed, well, you want to succeed. So what, what are the rules of this game I'm playing? Okay, you know, if you're playing poker, you have rules. Like 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's 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 gonna like what happened with you, you're gonna get fired, you're gonna get removed. You have to follow the rules if you want to succeed. 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 log logical. They're just the rules. People hate the rules. When they're just the rules that makes them.
- [156:33]
B
Especially students.
- [156:34]
A
Yeah. Especially young people, man.
- [156:36]
B
Yeah. And they can sniff that out so fast.
- [156:39]
A
And now there's examples of the rules being bullshit. You know, 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. 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 like spit out that makes them seem logical, but they're not looking at things correctly. They're. They're captured by a narrative.
- [157:09]
B
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. It. I forget the other ones, but it's making it all more efficient. It all stems from just questioning everything.
- [157:28]
A
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.
- [157:39]
B
I bet he will. Because he would, it says. Right. It's like he would go around preaching this algorithm and he genuinely really believed it. And it makes logical sense. There's a logical political flow to him in his decision making that's laid out in that biography.
- [157:53]
A
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. That's crazy. They just keep making new government agencies. And the way to combat that, make another one. Make another government agency that corrects all the government agencies inefficiencies. It's gonna 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's gonna 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 shouldn't have been in food. You waited until right before Bobby Kennedy got in where you know he's gonna make it outlawed. You know he's gonna 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.
- [159:12]
B
Water.
- [159:12]
A
Everybody's saying, oh, no, we need fluoride for teeth. Like, brush your teeth. 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 or don't. It's probably bad for you, too. There's a lot of evidence that. That that's not good for you. That really, like, progressive sun exposure is the way to do. 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 sunburned.
- [159:43]
B
Yeah, it'll be interesting to see what he does with education.
- [159:46]
A
Boy, good luck.
- [159:48]
B
We need. Yeah, that's one thing I miss. I do miss teaching. I miss being in the classroom like that with those kids.
- [159:53]
A
Well, I think you should definitely do more of that, But I'm really happy you're doing what you're. What you're doing.
- [159:57]
B
Thank you.
- [159:58]
A
Like I said, when I saw you, I was like, oh, is this young, intelligent guy super reasonable and intellectual.
- [160:03]
B
Hey, look, young than I am.
- [160:04]
A
How old are you?
- [160:05]
B
37.
- [160:06]
A
You're still young. I'm 57. I'm old. I'm all out to call. You're. You're just a kid.
- [160:13]
B
I wish.
- [160:14]
A
But, you know, it's like, it's an important service. It really is. And we need. 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, like, what's the most watched video that you have? Have, like, how many views does it have?
- [160:35]
B
A million.
- [160:35]
A
Okay, just imagine a lecture that reaches a million people.
- [160:41]
B
Peter was talking about this. This Gutenberg revolution of YouTube. And there's only one other professor. Okay, you've got, like, Eric Weinstein and all the. 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 universities cool with it. All the students are cool with it. And there's like 200 students in the auditorium. They come up on stage and he's applying critical. 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. It was just. And really interesting to see. And he. His office hours. I got to join him for his office hours and was live streamed. There's. That's just using this technology in such a remarkable way. There's so much potential for that in schools, in 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. Then the question is, look, if you're that scared of transparency, you're probably doing something wrong. Like.
- [161:58]
A
Right.
- [161:58]
B
It's not just what you do, but how you do it.
- [162:01]
A
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.
- [162:13]
B
There's this technology is incredible.
- [162:15]
A
Yeah. Yeah. It's. 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.
- [162:34]
B
Yeah.
- [162:34]
A
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.
- [162:45]
B
Right.
- [162:45]
A
Interesting conversations from people that aren't full of shit.
- [162:48]
B
Yeah.
- [162:48]
A
Turns out that's what people actually want. They just been dumped on with nonsense for so long that people got accustomed to thinking, no, that's. That's what you're supposed to get. You're supposed to get, you know, late night, late night talk show host version of what's happening in politics. That's what you're supposed to get.
- [163:05]
B
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, nah, we're gonna do it for real. If we're gonna do. I'll do it.
- [163:20]
A
Yeah.
- [163:21]
B
It's like there's just so many other people would have just compromised.
- [163:25]
A
I thought about it. I thought about, I'm sitting around like, how do I do?
- [163:29]
B
Sure, this is tough.
- [163:30]
A
I didn't know. There's a concept in Jiu Jitsu that the Gracies came up with about cooking someone. And the idea is like, someone can spaz out in the beginning, they could be real strong and pull out of submissions, but. But eventually I'm going to cook them. Eventually, I'm going to keep hitting my moves till I'm going to get to a dominant position and 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 you had a. 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 Hoyce Gracie an hour, that guy's going to get cooked. Cooked.
- [164:10]
B
Right.
- [164:11]
A
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, 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. You beautiful. 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, huh? 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. They don't know how to. Maybe they're not the best public speaker, maybe not the most articulate at forming sentences, but they have good ideas. And you got to get those people comfortable. You got to find out what, what, what is in there. And so my thought was, like, 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. Like, they had. Maybe they had a solution. They said, if he throws this at you, you're going to say this like, okay, we got it. Okay, let's talk. 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 prosecute prosecutorial record. You know, 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 want. I'll get to who you are. I want to get to who you are. I gotta cook you.
- [166:07]
B
Why wouldn't she do that?
- [166:08]
A
Because she didn't want to get cooked. Because it's scary. Because you could fucking bumble it. You could fuck up, you know, 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. Had 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 interview in the debate. Yeah, no, an interview 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.
- [167:00]
B
What were his ground?
- [167:02]
A
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, his. 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. If this is, 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 like critical policy issues that are going to affect the entire country. If you run into president, like, 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 you just. 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, where meanwhile, if she had time to consider that question and come up with a logical answer and then like rehearsed that logical answer and been ready, she might have done a much better job. So that's the fear of not having any power over editing. Because in, 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 Walsh was saying openly when he was on the campaign trail, is that free speech does not include hate speech. But it does.
- [170:03]
B
How do you define hate speech?
- [170:04]
A
Exactly. Exactly. Because your definition of hate speech might just be misgendering. Caitlyn Jenner. That might be hate speech. You know, 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, you, you know, 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.
- [170:39]
B
Church. The quote, my favorite Churchill quote, democracy is the worst form of government. 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.
- [171:04]
A
Yeah.
- [171:05]
B
What is hate speech? What's happening in England? It doesn't mean that there's not potential for someone to misuse it. 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.
- [171:25]
A
Right.
- [171:25]
B
There's problems to it.
- [171:27]
A
That's right. That's right.
- [171:28]
B
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 course. There's going to be potential flaws. This doesn't mean you have a better alternative. What is your alternative solution?
- [171:42]
A
Exactly. Exactly. Well, listen, man, I really enjoy 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.
- [171:54]
B
Warren Smith, Dash Secret Scholar Society on YouTube.
- [172:00]
A
And that's the only thing you're using currently?
- [172:02]
B
I'm on air X. It's WT Smith 17.
- [172:06]
A
For some reason, Secret Scholars is the handle on YouTube and on Patreon. You have a secret scholars thing.
- [172:16]
B
Oh, that's like. Yeah. If you go to Patreon, you can watch behind the scenes and exclusive.
- [172:19]
A
Beautiful.
- [172:20]
B
Perfect.
- [172:20]
A
You know, love Patreon. I love what they do. Thank you very much.
- [172:24]
B
Thank you very much. I really appreciate.
- [172:25]
A
It was awesome.
- [172:26]
B
Thank you.
- [172:26]
A
All right, bye, everybody. Sa.