David Pakman: Politics of Trump, Biden, Bernie, AOC, Socialism & Wokeism

00:00:00.000 | I tweet that and then I finished the day and I wake up the next morning and I glance at

00:00:04.740 | my phone.

00:00:05.740 | I'm seeing all these verified accounts that are, you know, quote tweeting it and demanding

00:00:11.000 | a retraction and whatever.

00:00:12.400 | And I go, oh, okay, this looks like it's getting, looks like it's getting some attention.

00:00:17.400 | I then continue about my day around noon.

00:00:21.520 | I hear from my dad that he got a hundred messages from you should have aborted your son to we're

00:00:29.300 | going to find all of you to whatever else.

00:00:31.560 | My dad has no idea what's going on.

00:00:32.840 | He's like, I don't know what this is, but I have a hundred DMS to everything else you

00:00:37.880 | can imagine.

00:00:39.200 | Um, and I start to get emails about, you know, we, you know, your Jewish faith, this and

00:00:47.280 | that and the other thing.

00:00:48.840 | And so at that point to me, I thought this is just going to get worse and worse and worse.

00:00:53.520 | And so I deleted the tweet and I really regret doing that because over the 48 hours that

00:00:58.240 | followed, yes, the attacks escalated.

00:01:01.880 | It went through Candace Owens and then at Fox news.com Newsmax kind of peaking with

00:01:07.360 | with Donald Trump Jr.

00:01:09.400 | And it was horrible.

00:01:12.640 | The following is a conversation with David Pakman, a left wing progressive political

00:01:16.680 | commentator and host of the David Pakman show.

00:01:20.320 | I hope to continue to have many conversations on politics with prominent, insightful, and

00:01:26.040 | sometimes controversial figures across the political spectrum.

00:01:30.160 | David and I have been planning to speak for a long time, and I'm sure we'll speak many

00:01:34.320 | more times.

00:01:35.500 | This conversation was challenging, eye opening, and fun.

00:01:39.660 | This is the Lex Friedman podcast.

00:01:41.400 | To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description.

00:01:44.680 | And now dear friends, here's David Pakman.

00:01:49.320 | Are there interesting differences to you between terms like liberal, Democrat, left wing, leftist,

00:01:55.400 | progressive, socialist, communist, Marxist, far left, center left, all of these labels?

00:02:00.200 | Is there interesting distinctions between them?

00:02:02.240 | Yeah, there's two sets of distinctions.

00:02:04.440 | One is if you just want to say, let's define each of these as political terms.

00:02:08.800 | They're all different terms.

00:02:09.840 | You can be a progressive ideologically, but not be a member of the democratic party.

00:02:14.400 | Many say the democratic party isn't even really very progressive.

00:02:17.120 | So these are certainly terms that we could define in order to have a conversation about

00:02:22.660 | the next thing, kind of as a precursor to a conversation.

00:02:27.300 | Sometimes the terms are used in order to tag someone with a certain ideology that's not

00:02:35.720 | really linked to policy or any particular political question, but they can be used positively

00:02:41.700 | or negatively to just kind of say, here is the image of this individual that I have in

00:02:46.600 | my mind.

00:02:47.600 | The term Marxist is right now very popularly being used by some on the right, um, to attack

00:02:54.740 | Democrats.

00:02:56.060 | There's very few actual Marxists, certainly not in positions of power in the United States,

00:03:00.440 | but even among the general population.

00:03:02.860 | Um, so I think it's important to distinguish.

00:03:05.080 | Are we defining these terms because we want to compare and contrast the ideas that a particular

00:03:09.940 | group might bring to the discussion or are we using them as insults or to stifle conversation?

00:03:15.020 | There are terms that can be used to start a conversation or to stop it.

00:03:18.700 | And the use of those terms is evolving rapidly month by month.

00:03:22.940 | So the term leftist, I think is a relatively popular term now to use in the negative context

00:03:27.500 | to describe, um, what an outraged left wing commentator.

00:03:34.940 | I think what you're kind of grasping onto is that there's probably some set of ideas

00:03:41.820 | that would apply to most of those who consider themselves to be on the left.

00:03:46.340 | The discussion of how that term is mostly being used is not about policy ideas.

00:03:50.940 | You're accurately kind of, uh, uh, identifying that.

00:03:55.060 | And it does seem like progressive is no longer being used as a smear and leftist is being

00:03:59.900 | used as a smear more at this point.

00:04:01.820 | Okay.

00:04:02.820 | But sometimes some of these terms are useful.

00:04:04.460 | Like can we try to pick the terms that are useful, like liberal and progressive and Democrat?

00:04:11.780 | Liberal and progressive.

00:04:13.380 | Is there an interesting definable distinction between liberal and progressive to you?

00:04:17.860 | That's a, maybe one of the most interesting ones.

00:04:20.540 | 10 years ago, liberal often meant progress.

00:04:24.600 | What now we mean by progressive.

00:04:27.540 | More recently, the progressive socialist leaning part of the political spectrum has started

00:04:34.900 | to use liberal to mean Joe Biden, to mean someone who is not really left enough.

00:04:42.680 | So liberals, very interesting because I remember talking with my audience years ago, maybe

00:04:46.540 | eight years ago or something like that, where I identified, I'm going to now use the term

00:04:51.020 | progressive more commonly to describe my own beliefs because liberal has now been made

00:04:56.580 | a smear.

00:04:57.580 | It's being shifted into something else.

00:04:59.540 | And it also means more of like a center left politics.

00:05:02.980 | So it's changed in some sense by necessity, by force, and also because the spectrum has

00:05:10.100 | shifted to some degree.

00:05:11.660 | So the term liberal has evolved now liberal meaning some kind of embodiment of the mainstream

00:05:20.100 | Democratic Party almost.

00:05:22.100 | To some degree.

00:05:23.100 | Sometimes I'm called, I'm written off by, you know, within my space, there are all sorts

00:05:28.380 | of shades of gray, which I'm sure we can talk about, about where I am versus should be,

00:05:33.740 | could be, or am wrongly placed.

00:05:36.220 | And sometimes an attack on me is he's just a lib, meaning I'm not left enough.

00:05:42.580 | I'm not progressive socialist wherever else you want to go.

00:05:46.900 | So yeah, the, the problem with a lot of these terms and they're used very casually by people

00:05:51.740 | who call into my show is that unless we actually define them each time, they very often mean

00:05:56.940 | very different things to different people and often come with an agenda attached to

00:06:00.740 | them.

00:06:01.740 | And so I find that they often stifle meaningful conversation rather than encourage it.

00:06:06.380 | Do you sense that there's a drifting of a, what is the threshold to be a progressive

00:06:12.020 | or is there, should we use progressive synonymously with a democratic socialist?

00:06:19.020 | I think we should not use it synonymously with democratic socialist.

00:06:22.500 | And this is where there's another linguistic confusion and a political confusion.

00:06:27.720 | So we'll first talk about the linguistic one, social democracy versus democratic socialism.

00:06:34.340 | Very similar words in a different order.

00:06:37.500 | Okay.

00:06:38.580 | My, the way I operate is democratic socialism is actually a form of socialism where one

00:06:46.420 | would seek to socialize ownership of the means of production.

00:06:49.760 | As an example, social democracy is a very, a highly regulated form of capitalism.

00:06:55.800 | The likes of which we would see in Northern Europe, Denmark, et cetera.

00:06:59.880 | These are very different things.

00:07:01.620 | I associate progressivism in 2023 with social democracy and would consider democratic socialism

00:07:08.960 | a form of actual socialism that is different.

00:07:11.360 | It is, we're no longer talking about a capitalist organization of society.

00:07:16.120 | So transition from one to the other is a fundamental shift in house, in how society operates then.

00:07:22.560 | Absolutely.

00:07:23.640 | And when you talk about social democracy, you're talking about socializing a couple

00:07:29.420 | more things than we could socialize in most modern capitalist countries.

00:07:36.040 | I had this conversation with Patrick bet David recently.

00:07:39.360 | Social democracy is okay.

00:07:40.760 | We've socialized the military already in the United States.

00:07:44.240 | We've socialized some healthcare in the sense of like the VA and Medicaid, et cetera.

00:07:49.700 | We're talking about socializing a couple more things still in a capitalist country.

00:07:55.880 | Democratic socialism would be something beyond that.

00:07:58.680 | And, and as someone who is not a democratic socialist myself, I'm, I'm maybe not the best

00:08:03.680 | advocate for explaining exactly how that system would function, but it would have some version

00:08:09.580 | of socializing ownership of the means of production, businesses, et cetera.

00:08:13.540 | So you mentioned you appeared on the PBD podcast with Patrick bet David.

00:08:20.040 | The debate was pretty intense.

00:08:22.040 | I should say I personally enjoyed it.

00:08:25.440 | I thought actually you did well and I thought Patrick did well and it was a good conversation.

00:08:30.760 | I mean, there was a little bit of tension and I thought that Patrick actually, so I

00:08:35.760 | disagree with the internet.

00:08:36.760 | I thought Patrick just took on a kind of devil's advocate.

00:08:39.120 | Like he was, he was purposely being stubborn to bring out the best in you.

00:08:43.880 | But the internet thought that he's being stubborn, not being open to your ideas.

00:08:48.320 | I thought the tension between ideas, um, I think a lot of the tension had to do probably

00:08:53.680 | with Donald Trump and Trump supporters.

00:08:57.200 | That certainly could be the case.

00:08:58.760 | And people wrote to me after people wrote to me the full gamut of everything you can

00:09:02.280 | imagine from this was your best thing you've ever done in public to you got humiliated

00:09:07.140 | and your mother should have aborted you.

00:09:08.800 | Okay.

00:09:09.800 | So every and everything in between.

00:09:10.800 | So, you know, take your pick.

00:09:11.960 | But um, the most interesting feedback I got was from people who asked me after was it

00:09:17.600 | incredibly tense and awkward and because it seemed so combative and I think for, I'm so

00:09:23.160 | used to those types of tensions in the discussions that I have that it's very comfortable to

00:09:28.000 | me.

00:09:29.000 | It's not like afterwards it's, it's, there's a grudge or it's tense or whatever the case

00:09:32.060 | may be.

00:09:33.060 | I'm very comfortable.

00:09:34.060 | Just, I, I disagree with people and that's it.

00:09:36.040 | So I did not find anything that happened inappropriate.

00:09:38.320 | I disagreed with a lot of the things he said.

00:09:40.200 | Certainly.

00:09:41.200 | Uh, so you also spoke on Michael Knowles.

00:09:43.560 | Um, I think about the idea of what is a woman.

00:09:47.000 | Do you, can you speak broadly about your conversations with people you disagree with?

00:09:52.440 | Uh, you know, some of the cases it feels like it's gone wrong.

00:09:56.920 | The conversations have gone wrong.

00:09:58.680 | Yeah.

00:09:59.680 | Yeah.

00:10:00.680 | I mean, I think there's a couple of different things and I'm the first to tell you that

00:10:04.720 | depending on who I'm talking to, I go in with a different attitude about how quote seriously

00:10:11.200 | I'm taking it in the sense of whether I think it's going to be a deep policy discussion

00:10:16.120 | versus where whether it's going to be more of a performance for an audience that is expecting

00:10:20.880 | a certain thing.

00:10:21.880 | And I think there's different types of shows.

00:10:23.360 | When I was interviewed by this guy, Jesse Lee Peterson in Los Angeles, it's very different.

00:10:27.240 | For example, than when I'm talking to Patrick bet David, just to give two, two examples.

00:10:32.040 | I think the reason I stopped doing the Michael Knowles show was the number of threats I would

00:10:37.600 | get after the fact.

00:10:38.800 | That's really the re, I was glad to engage with him to the extent that the interviews

00:10:42.360 | were interesting and you know, we could organize it reasonably efficiently.

00:10:46.040 | Um, but the reason I stepped away was sort of the aftermath.

00:10:50.480 | But I did find him to be someone who was abundantly clear about his view and where he comes from.

00:10:57.360 | And while I could not possibly disagree more with him in terms of politics and culture

00:11:01.560 | and our backgrounds, everything is just so, so different.

00:11:04.440 | I found it easy to engage in the conversation just because of how upfront and clear he was

00:11:10.160 | about what his beliefs were.

00:11:12.460 | But the number of threats, yeah, yeah, it was just too much.

00:11:16.320 | And this, um, you know, I don't know how much you saw about this recent Twitter dust up

00:11:21.040 | I was involved in that peaked with Donald Trump Jr tweeting about me and then that then

00:11:26.440 | declining from there.

00:11:28.000 | Let's talk through it.

00:11:29.000 | I didn't see it.

00:11:30.000 | I have to understand like a way you study Shakespeare.

00:11:32.000 | I have to study your Twitter.

00:11:33.360 | I have to understand some, how much of it is sarcasm.

00:11:36.720 | It's mostly sarcasm.

00:11:37.720 | I mean, here's the thing, and I know that there are people who will say, David, you're

00:11:40.880 | dealing with such serious issues.

00:11:43.120 | It's really not okay not to take everything you do completely seriously.

00:11:47.400 | But my view is it's so incredible that I've between chance and timing and so different

00:11:53.620 | things fallen into a position where this is what I do professionally and it's a career

00:11:58.780 | and it's financially sustainable and all these different things.

00:12:01.920 | I don't want to end up taking myself too seriously because I recognize the timing and lock and

00:12:07.720 | all of these other things.

00:12:08.720 | And this could have gone a completely different way.

00:12:11.040 | So my approach to a lot of this is let's not take ourselves too seriously.

00:12:15.400 | And in particular on Twitter, a platform that, you know, the degree to which it should be

00:12:19.560 | taken very seriously, maybe has changed over time.

00:12:23.360 | I'm always sort of thinking a little bit tongue in cheek on Twitter.

00:12:27.480 | What happened with Donald Trump Jr. or the full arc of it?

00:12:31.600 | Yeah.

00:12:32.600 | To give you a one minute arc and then we can pick whichever parts we want.

00:12:36.540 | After a mass shooting, now you might say there's like two or three a day.

00:12:40.440 | You're correct.

00:12:41.560 | After the Nashville mass shooting at a Christian school, I tweeted snarkily tongue in cheek

00:12:49.720 | to point that thoughts and prayers not only aren't particularly useful after a shooting,

00:12:56.560 | they also don't prevent shootings, that there's some confusion about how there would be a

00:13:02.560 | shooting at a Christian school, given that it is a place where prayer is taking place.

00:13:07.560 | I think I jokingly said something like, were they not praying enough or correctly?

00:13:12.480 | In my deep journalistic integrity, I have your tweet.

00:13:17.880 | This is the only display of journalistic integrity I will show today.

00:13:23.480 | And I have a couple of responses.

00:13:25.440 | And you deleted the tweet since then.

00:13:27.280 | Which I regret.

00:13:28.280 | Oh, interesting.

00:13:29.280 | And we can talk about that.

00:13:30.280 | I would love to, because it's such an interesting decision.

00:13:35.160 | Because when you tweet something, one of the things I've also learned is you don't often

00:13:39.080 | understand how it's going to be read.

00:13:42.880 | It's going to be analyzed, like I mentioned, Shakespeare.

00:13:46.640 | The use of certain words that you regret saying in a certain kind of way, maybe just because

00:13:51.800 | it wasn't as eloquent, as powerful, it didn't actually convey the thing, or it's a distraction

00:13:58.080 | to the main message, all that kind of stuff.

00:13:59.960 | Okay, the actual tweet is, "Very surprising that there would be a mass shooting at a Christian

00:14:04.000 | school, given that lack of prayer is often blamed for these horrible events.

00:14:09.240 | Is it possible they weren't praying enough or correctly, despite being a Christian school?"

00:14:15.600 | And a lot of people quote retweeted that, which I'm assuming was criticism.

00:14:25.960 | So Colin Wright wrote, "I used to consider you a reasonable progressive, but you clearly

00:14:30.760 | devolved into partisan hackery.

00:14:32.560 | I'm an atheist.

00:14:33.800 | It cannot begin to fathom using the murder of children and adults at a Christian school

00:14:37.800 | as an opportunity to dunk on the concept of prayer."

00:14:41.000 | And you responded, "I'm dunking on the people who send thoughts and prayers and do nothing

00:14:45.100 | else and the shootings continue."

00:14:47.200 | Okay, I'm sure there's a lot of other interactions.

00:14:49.600 | There's a few other hundred thousand.

00:14:52.160 | So do you want the arc leading to the leading?

00:14:55.080 | So basically, do you know what time of day I tweeted the original one?

00:14:59.280 | I feel like it was in the afternoon or evening on a Monday.

00:15:04.120 | 3.42 PM on March 27th.

00:15:09.760 | Which was a Monday, okay.

00:15:11.080 | So basically I tweet that, and then I finish the day.

00:15:14.040 | So you tweet, and then you go on with your day.

00:15:17.120 | I might've looked once at Twitter and it had 2,000 likes and a few people saying, "Eh,

00:15:22.880 | this might've missed the mark."

00:15:24.160 | But it's sort of like, it's one of my 20,000 tweets, I don't know.

00:15:28.220 | I wake up the next morning, my baby daughter did not sleep till 7.30 the way I would like,

00:15:33.160 | so she's up at 6 AM and I get up.

00:15:35.680 | And I'm just there starting to make breakfast.

00:15:38.120 | And I glance at my phone and I'm starting to...

00:15:40.880 | This was when verified meant a different thing than it means now.

00:15:44.240 | I'm seeing all these verified accounts that are quote tweeting it and demanding a retraction

00:15:50.280 | and whatever.

00:15:51.280 | And I go, "Uh-oh, okay, this looks like it's getting some attention."

00:15:55.920 | I then continue about my day.

00:15:59.240 | Around noon, I hear from my dad that he got 100 messages from, "You should've aborted

00:16:05.460 | your son," to, "We're gonna find all of you," to whatever else.

00:16:10.040 | My dad has no idea what's going on.

00:16:11.320 | He's like, "I don't know what this is, but I have 100 DMs," to everything else you can

00:16:16.520 | imagine.

00:16:18.600 | And I start to get emails about your Jewish faith, this and that, and the other thing.

00:16:27.320 | And so at that point, to me, I thought, "This is just going to get worse and worse and worse."

00:16:32.000 | And so I deleted the tweet.

00:16:33.700 | And I really regret doing that because over the 48 hours that followed, yes, the attacks

00:16:39.320 | escalated.

00:16:40.360 | It went through Candace Owens, and then at FoxNews.com, Newsmax, kind of peaking with

00:16:46.040 | Donald Trump Jr.

00:16:47.880 | And it was horrible.

00:16:48.880 | I mean, thousands and thousands of the...

00:16:52.200 | Okay.

00:16:53.200 | But once I told my audience about what happened, I got thousands of messages from people saying,

00:16:59.560 | "David, only someone who doesn't know you and is determined to interpret this in the

00:17:06.240 | worst possible faith would think you're blaming kids who died for getting shot.

00:17:12.000 | Of course you weren't doing that.

00:17:13.440 | I wish you hadn't deleted it so that it would still be up and you would now see the tide

00:17:19.360 | kind of turning on it."

00:17:21.360 | This was not a fun three days regardless, but I do regret having deleted it because

00:17:27.720 | it was a...

00:17:28.720 | I wanted to do the quickest thing I thought I could to get people to stop trying to find

00:17:34.120 | family members and send them threats.

00:17:36.560 | And so around noon, that's what I did.

00:17:38.840 | And the truth is the threats didn't stop anyway because everybody had screenshotted it.

00:17:42.880 | And I do wish I had left it up.

00:17:45.400 | Is there some degree, maybe stepping outside yourself, do you regret tweeting that in that

00:17:51.920 | it feeds the mockery engine that fuels Twitter?

00:17:57.080 | So does that tweet really represent what you believe?

00:18:02.560 | It absolutely represents the disgust with a politics that includes saying we can't touch

00:18:11.600 | guns.

00:18:12.600 | We just, we can't, but we're willing to point to mental health or say we need more prayer

00:18:18.420 | in schools or whatever.

00:18:20.120 | 1000% it represents that view.

00:18:23.820 | Is it the type of snark and sarcasm that I would use if given an hour to discuss the

00:18:29.260 | topic rather than whatever the number of characters is now on Twitter?

00:18:32.880 | No, definitely not.

00:18:33.880 | And so I am very cognizant of the fact that it was unnecessarily provocative how it was

00:18:41.280 | written.

00:18:42.280 | I think I asked a similar question to Ben Shapiro.

00:18:46.200 | Do you worry that this style of presentation can turn you from being a deeply thoughtful,

00:18:52.600 | subjective political thinker to somebody who's just a partisan hack or partisan, what's

00:19:01.200 | a good word?

00:19:02.280 | Talking head?

00:19:03.280 | Do you mean with regard to Twitter or the format of my show in general?

00:19:06.840 | So Twitter for now, let's start with Twitter for now.

00:19:09.160 | And can you silo your style of communication on Twitter from being a virus that affects

00:19:17.000 | your mind?

00:19:18.000 | Right.

00:19:19.000 | I don't have deep thoughts about the Twitter component beyond, I think across all sorts

00:19:25.000 | of disciplines.

00:19:26.000 | This is not the best way to most effectively solve problems and figure out solutions to

00:19:31.920 | complex issues.

00:19:32.920 | You're talking about Twitter now, right now I'm talking about Twitter.

00:19:35.240 | Yes.

00:19:36.240 | That being said, I think all of us to some degree have to adapt our content to the platform

00:19:43.520 | that we're using in the same way that what I post to YouTube is different than what I

00:19:46.960 | post to tick tock.

00:19:48.640 | What I post to Twitter is also different.

00:19:51.500 | Do I think Twitter has been an unmitigated good for society?

00:19:56.600 | No.

00:19:57.920 | Have I chosen to step into Twitter as one of the ways in which I get my message out

00:20:03.200 | with the good and the bad?

00:20:05.080 | Yes.

00:20:06.080 | And I think that there is a deep conversation to be had there.

00:20:10.400 | I think zooming out a little bit in terms of what I do, and I was hoping this would

00:20:14.320 | come up because I think it's really interesting.

00:20:16.680 | I will often get emails from people who say two things.

00:20:20.200 | I will get the, you would have such a bigger audience if you did X type emails.

00:20:24.560 | And usually they are plays to sensationalism, salacious and titillating content, more pop

00:20:32.040 | culture stuff, et cetera.

00:20:34.800 | On the other hand, it's folks who say, listen, what you're doing really isn't as serious

00:20:39.440 | as it could be.

00:20:41.060 | And it seems like you could do something more serious and you should consider doing deep

00:20:46.280 | dives.

00:20:47.280 | You know, once it was do a deep dive into Calvin Coolidge and I was like, nobody will

00:20:49.720 | watch that.

00:20:50.720 | So there, it's not by accident that my show is the way it is right in an hour.

00:20:56.600 | I'm thinking of all the platforms I'm on and I'm saying, okay, I want to do a relatively

00:21:01.800 | deep dive on the federal budget.

00:21:04.960 | And I want to talk about some of the, um, uh, political tomfoolery going on within the

00:21:10.280 | post office.

00:21:11.280 | And I'm going to do a segment about the wacky rally where Trump said crazy things and made

00:21:16.420 | up three words and said he endorsed a candidate who's named it.

00:21:19.320 | Right.

00:21:20.320 | I'm crafting that in total to find a balance between let's build this audience as much

00:21:25.720 | as I can in order to have a bigger base to get my message out there and include the more

00:21:31.840 | serious stuff with the hope that there's a little bit of something for everyone.

00:21:35.360 | And I'm finding a balance between those two sides of the spectrum.

00:21:39.560 | It's a deliberate thing and I'm aware that if I were producing my show 50 years ago,

00:21:44.320 | the balance would probably be different and it would probably change again if we didn't.

00:21:48.340 | If the show was audio only rather than having all these video platforms, it would also be

00:21:52.920 | different.

00:21:53.920 | But it's a decision that's proactively made to try to get the best and most out of the

00:21:59.560 | hour that I'm creating every day.

00:22:01.160 | Well, it just feels like there's an entire machine fed by Twitter and journalism that

00:22:07.080 | wants to divide people and the drama of that division, highlighting the partisan division,

00:22:14.800 | the drama of that division feels like it's a tension with objective, clear thinking sometimes.

00:22:20.200 | And so that's the, I worry that there's a drug to it.

00:22:26.040 | There's too much fun to mock ridiculous people on the other side.

00:22:33.560 | I think you're right about that.

00:22:35.640 | And the fact that that is true to me supports, I've talked with my audience about, you know,

00:22:43.960 | like the old food pyramid, which I guess was like wrong, but let's imagine that there was

00:22:47.560 | a pyramid that made sense.

00:22:49.800 | The bottom bread.

00:22:51.040 | I think like whole grains maybe.

00:22:53.560 | I don't remember.

00:22:54.560 | It's been a while.

00:22:55.560 | Sugar is on the top.

00:22:56.560 | Okay.

00:22:57.560 | Junk food is at the very top.

00:22:58.560 | I'm very open with my audience.

00:23:00.400 | The vast majority of what I do is the top of that pyramid.

00:23:05.400 | And I tell people very openly, I don't consume a lot of the type of content I produce.

00:23:13.020 | And I think it's really important to, as a base, be doing critical thinking, epistemology,

00:23:19.720 | how do we believe the things we believe, basics about the world.

00:23:24.840 | After that, reading history, economics, philosophy, et cetera.

00:23:30.040 | After that, now we're getting into current events.

00:23:32.360 | I would mostly be looking at consuming, um, primary source reporting things like associated

00:23:41.480 | press, whatever.

00:23:42.720 | I know everybody will have a different list of what counts there.

00:23:45.760 | After that is when I'd say indulge in some of the commentary type stuff that I do.

00:23:51.500 | If you find that I'm thoughtful enough to make it into that, but I'm very open.

00:23:56.960 | And really what I try to do on my show often is in being that at the top of the pyramid,

00:24:02.280 | tell people there's all this other stuff that should be forming your foundation that I hope

00:24:07.400 | you're consuming in addition to just watching me.

00:24:09.800 | And I'm very open with my audience about that.

00:24:12.140 | - What about the shape, the dynamics, the characteristics of your audience?

00:24:17.400 | Is there some degree to which you're through mocking maybe Republicans that there's a lean

00:24:26.280 | to that audience and then you become captured by the audience.

00:24:29.000 | Do you worry about the audience capture?

00:24:31.160 | - I worry about it.

00:24:33.040 | I'm relatively comfortable that it's not shaping the program to a great degree in the sense

00:24:41.600 | that at this point I have a pretty good sense of the things I can say that will upset what

00:24:47.480 | I might call my core audience.

00:24:49.000 | You know, one of the interesting things just to briefly go back to the Twitter thing was

00:24:53.920 | those people who were furious with me on Twitter and they contacted my advertisers and some

00:24:58.200 | advertisers dropped me and on and on and on.

00:25:02.160 | None of them are actually in my audience.

00:25:04.680 | None of them are regular consumers of my audience.

00:25:07.320 | They were kind of weaponized against me by people who said, Hey, look at this.

00:25:11.400 | The people who follow Candace Owens on Twitter, other than for their kind of shock value,

00:25:15.380 | they're not in my audience.

00:25:17.360 | And with my core audience, I know there are things I can talk about that will generate

00:25:20.840 | displeasure.

00:25:23.360 | I guess you could say with my audience, sometimes when I touch the Israeli Palestinian conflict,

00:25:27.200 | that will happen sometimes on vaccines.

00:25:29.600 | There's a portion of my audience that is more generally skeptical of vaccines, sometimes

00:25:36.100 | on some foreign policy issues or, you know, I'm not a big fan of Marianne Williamson nor

00:25:43.360 | Bobby Kennedy Jr's challenges to Joe Biden, not because I love Joe Biden, but because

00:25:49.660 | I don't consider them to be the most serious challengers.

00:25:51.860 | I know there's people in my audience who don't like that.

00:25:53.700 | They get, they get mad at me about that and I'm totally okay with that.

00:25:57.460 | Uh, and that tension with, with my core audience.

00:26:00.480 | So in that sense, I don't feel as though I've had that audience capture take place, but

00:26:06.320 | I know it can happen and I'm very open to, to being told ways in which it may be happening

00:26:11.360 | without me noticing.

00:26:12.360 | Uh, so I've, uh, made a call for questions on Reddit for this conversation.

00:26:20.140 | There's a lot of good questions that I'll probably bring up, but one of them was about

00:26:23.520 | Marianne Williamson, um, asking why David thinks she is a garbage candidate.

00:26:30.120 | Now, which of course I've never said, but perhaps you have more eloquently criticized.

00:26:35.880 | So let's, let's go there to the 2024 election.

00:26:40.400 | Okay.

00:26:41.400 | So Biden, Joe Biden officially announced that he's running again.

00:26:44.720 | Donald Trump officially announced that he's running again.

00:26:48.560 | And if that's the matchup, who do you think wins?

00:26:52.200 | If the elections held today, I think Biden.

00:26:56.120 | Why?

00:26:57.120 | Well, first of all, I believe he won last time.

00:27:00.800 | And if I start with the results from 2020 and I think to myself, what has happened since

00:27:07.200 | then that would push or pull voters one way or the other, I have a hard time making a

00:27:12.800 | case that Trump is in a better position today than he was in November of 2020.

00:27:19.480 | So that's kind of my starting point, which is it's a rematch of an election with a known

00:27:24.120 | outcome.

00:27:25.640 | What has changed?

00:27:27.200 | And I can't make a case for circumstances having changed in Trump's favor to give a

00:27:33.240 | couple of state level examples.

00:27:35.480 | Florida seems to be kind of moving more to the Republican side since 2020, but Trump

00:27:41.280 | won that state already in 2020.

00:27:44.160 | So it wouldn't really change the outcome.

00:27:46.760 | Arizona was close.

00:27:48.400 | I think Arizona has moved to the left since 2020.

00:27:51.080 | So I don't see Trump taking that one.

00:27:53.720 | Wisconsin, I think the same sort of thing applies.

00:27:56.160 | So being very like practical, that would be kind of the start of my reasoning.

00:28:03.600 | Do you think Joe Biden is a better candidate now than he was in 2020?

00:28:10.280 | I think he's a worse candidate.

00:28:14.080 | This is going to sound ageist, but I think he's a worse candidate in that he's even older

00:28:19.640 | and there already seems to be an appetite for younger candidates, particularly on the

00:28:26.640 | Democratic voting side.

00:28:29.480 | So he's going to be four years older and in a sense that could be a liability.

00:28:34.360 | However, he also is going to have four years of accomplishments.

00:28:38.520 | Now, you might not like the things he's done, in which case that would hurt him.

00:28:42.640 | But he has started to accumulate a not insignificant number of accomplishments.

00:28:48.620 | Some of the big things that are known, inflation reduction act and covid stimulus, you know,

00:28:53.640 | but also less well-known things like a bunch of little tweaks to health care, a bunch of

00:28:58.240 | little tweaks to student lending.

00:29:00.040 | There's been a lot of little things at the macro level.

00:29:04.420 | I don't actually think Joe Biden has that much to do with this the same way I didn't

00:29:08.820 | credit or attack Trump for a lot of the macroeconomic stuff.

00:29:11.960 | But inflation has started to come down significantly.

00:29:14.120 | The stock market's quite steady.

00:29:16.800 | These sort of things, I think, looking historically, it's a pretty OK environment for Joe Biden,

00:29:22.980 | with the exception that he was already the oldest president to be inaugurated in 2021.

00:29:27.940 | And he would beat his own record in January of 2025.

00:29:31.240 | And I just don't know how voters are going to see that.

00:29:33.840 | So in terms of just a public human being, how would you compare Trump and Biden?

00:29:39.200 | So if I were to give criticism towards Trump, it would be that he's chaotic, maybe to the

00:29:46.200 | point of being disrespectful to a lot of different groups, to a lot of different ideas, to a

00:29:50.960 | lot of different nations and leaders and all that kind of stuff.

00:29:54.380 | And then the criticism towards Biden would be that he, maybe perhaps because of age or

00:30:01.200 | any other kind of cognitive capabilities, is not really there mentally, as you know,

00:30:07.880 | in the way that perhaps you could say that Barack Obama was there.

00:30:11.160 | Just mentally being able to handle all kinds of aspects of being a public representative

00:30:17.440 | of a nation to the world and to the people of that nation.

00:30:21.840 | So which, in the competition of personality flaws, which do you think is more powerful?

00:30:28.280 | You've laid out fair and I believe accurate assessments of elements of both of those men.

00:30:36.540 | You haven't weighed in on to what degree you value each of those assessments, which is

00:30:41.940 | where I think the kind of meat of this question really is.

00:30:47.520 | I don't see, and I know that, you know, Biden's going to get us into World War Three, World

00:30:52.280 | War Three, that doesn't seem to be happening.

00:30:55.040 | I don't see the Biden deficits you listed, which I agree with you on.

00:31:01.080 | I don't see them as dangerous or threatening to the standing of the United States in this

00:31:08.520 | kind of environment with our Western traditional Western allies and geopolitics, etc.

00:31:15.720 | In the way that the sort of unhinged personality of Trump, combined with his lack of knowledge

00:31:22.080 | about most issues is a threat.

00:31:25.800 | So for me, if those two are the candidates, Biden would be my choice.

00:31:31.440 | Now are there people I would rather see on the Democratic side?

00:31:35.200 | Yes.

00:31:36.200 | If I knew the president would be a Republican, can I think of better options than Trump?

00:31:40.240 | Absolutely.

00:31:41.240 | You know, it's so funny when in 2012 it was Obama versus Romney.

00:31:45.900 | The difference seemed so significant between them.

00:31:50.040 | Looking back, I'm sure I would disagree with Mitt Romney about tax rates and his views

00:31:54.240 | on LGBT or I'm sure I know are different than mine, but it seems without looking at him

00:31:59.880 | with rose colored glasses, so comparatively benign given the four years of Trump.

00:32:04.840 | So that's kind of where I come down.

00:32:06.520 | Even McCain and Obama, the, the, the differences seem quite drastic.

00:32:12.360 | Yeah.

00:32:13.360 | McCain was interesting because Palin as his running mate opened the door to the sort of

00:32:17.640 | cartoonish stuff that we've started to see on the Republican side.

00:32:21.920 | Palin, Trump, Marjorie Taylor Greene, it started going in that direction, which has made the

00:32:27.760 | party a bit of a joke aside from what you believe the tax rate would be.

00:32:31.600 | Right.

00:32:32.600 | You can say taxes are too high, but Jewish space lasers, come on, you know?

00:32:36.680 | So, uh, but, but I agree with you on McCain also.

00:32:39.640 | So go back to the political terms we talked about.

00:32:42.360 | What, where in that spectrum do you place yourself today?

00:32:45.760 | Um, w w which of the label do you think captures your political views?

00:32:50.080 | Progressive social Democrat, um, which, which again is a capitalist.

00:32:54.320 | I own my own business.

00:32:56.160 | I pay the taxes I'm legally required to pay and not a penny more.

00:33:00.120 | And you know, all, all those things, that's where I place myself.

00:33:03.360 | Would you place yourself to the left of Joe Biden?

00:33:06.040 | Yes.

00:33:07.040 | Yes.

00:33:08.040 | Where does the AOC fit into that?

00:33:11.680 | It's a good question.

00:33:12.680 | What do you think about AOC as a candidate?

00:33:15.520 | Do you think she eventually runs?

00:33:17.600 | I think that if she doesn't run into some kind of scandal, and I don't mean scandal

00:33:25.040 | in the sense of some personal impropriety that, you know, but I mean some kind of major

00:33:32.680 | political problem.

00:33:34.840 | It seems that she has the staying power to be an American elected politics for a long

00:33:40.000 | time, whether she would even want to be president versus maybe going to the Senate or being

00:33:45.760 | governor or whatever the case may be.

00:33:47.160 | I have no idea what her ambitions are in that sense, but certainly like policy aside, she

00:33:52.800 | has this combination of charisma, likeability to some, but also something about her personality

00:34:02.160 | that angers the people who don't like her in a way that only fuels her sort of a presence,

00:34:08.400 | which I think applies to Trump as well.

00:34:11.720 | That I do think that she has the potential to be, to have significant staying power in

00:34:14.920 | American politics.

00:34:15.920 | President, I don't know.

00:34:16.920 | Do you think that's the future of political elections and politics in general is people

00:34:23.320 | who are able to skillfully piss off the other side like AOC and Trump did?

00:34:27.280 | I think it's an aspect of it.

00:34:29.040 | I think it's also understanding how to communicate policy ideas.

00:34:34.640 | Trump, I have things I can praise Trump about if we want to get to that segment at some

00:34:39.040 | point, you let me know when that is, but I do think that there are some things Trump

00:34:43.280 | is very good at and this is why it's very hard for me to believe that Ron DeSantis has

00:34:47.360 | what it takes to actually fight Trump in a national primary.

00:34:53.120 | And um, one of those things is Trump has a, even though he often says very strange things

00:34:59.360 | that if you transcribe them, you go, that's what language is that?

00:35:02.640 | That doesn't make any sense whatsoever.

00:35:04.320 | In the moment, the way he relates to, um, adversaries on stage, et cetera, is very good

00:35:10.840 | in that he is very much aware of how it is going to be seen by the audience.

00:35:14.820 | And so that's why a lot of times it's more about, doesn't matter that a word salad came

00:35:18.080 | out of his mouth, how he immediately responded and related to the person who was very good.

00:35:22.600 | So I think that knowing how to be good when clips are shared all the time, often out of

00:35:28.560 | context is extraordinarily important.

00:35:31.840 | Knowing how to use social media, which every election cycle, that means something different,

00:35:36.520 | but understanding how to use social media, very important.

00:35:39.560 | Those things are absolutely so important and whether you're able to do a deep dive on the

00:35:46.480 | deficit, it's certainly useful, but I would say it's a bad thing.

00:35:50.680 | It's becoming less important in terms of figuring out who we want to represent us.

00:35:53.920 | So just lingering on the AOC and then maybe let's throw in Bernie Sanders on that.

00:35:59.480 | Yeah.

00:36:00.480 | So where do you place yourself and how do you do the layout of the land of Bernie Sanders,

00:36:05.840 | AOC, Joe Biden, and David Backman?

00:36:10.280 | My instinct is, and I'm going to answer it.

00:36:13.840 | The thing that makes this tough is Bernie says he's a democratic socialist.

00:36:20.720 | He ran as a social Democrat.

00:36:22.880 | He didn't run on anything that was really socialism.

00:36:27.440 | So I'm going by their public facing platforms.

00:36:31.000 | I've been listening to him for many, many years and all the way back to the Tom Hartman

00:36:34.840 | show and I think using the terms as you've been using them, he has, I don't think ever

00:36:40.680 | been a democratic socialist.

00:36:42.560 | I haven't heard him speak about socialism.

00:36:46.200 | I think I've heard him speak about social programs and the value of social programs

00:36:53.440 | throughout the history of the United States and how they've been beneficial.

00:36:58.240 | My understanding is very similar to yours, although there may be stuff from the seventies

00:37:02.080 | where he really was talking about bonafides.

00:37:04.200 | We all did some shit in the seventies.

00:37:06.720 | You and I even who weren't around, we were doing stuff in the seventies.

00:37:10.720 | My sense would be, Biden is like center left and then I'm to the left of that, but maybe

00:37:17.620 | just inside of where AOC and Bernie are very, very similar to Bernie.

00:37:22.960 | I mean, I identify with a lot of Bernie's ideas, maybe their implementation.

00:37:28.620 | I'm more flexible on, I'll give you one example, Medicare for all.

00:37:33.600 | One way of trying to get healthcare to everybody, which Bernie's very big on is you take the

00:37:38.700 | current Medicare program, you just eliminate the age limit, make it available to everybody,

00:37:42.880 | pay for it through taxation.

00:37:44.720 | Interesting.

00:37:45.720 | However, I'm open to other models if they get everybody healthcare that is good quality

00:37:52.200 | and affordable.

00:37:53.520 | Singapore has an interesting model.

00:37:55.720 | Germany has an interesting model.

00:37:57.400 | I am more agnostic about how we do it than just saying, let's expand Medicare.

00:38:02.880 | Whether that puts me to the right of Bernie, I don't know, but I'm not like exactly right

00:38:07.600 | there on it has to be Medicare for all.

00:38:09.440 | Yeah.

00:38:10.440 | That's more of a, that's more just flexibility versus dogmatism.

00:38:15.080 | So I don't know if that puts you to the left or to the right.

00:38:17.000 | I don't either.

00:38:18.000 | What do you think about the, we could term manipulation or the corruption in the DNC

00:38:23.720 | that perhaps tipped the scales against Bernie in the election?

00:38:27.560 | Do you think there was such a thing?

00:38:29.240 | In 2016 or 2020?

00:38:32.240 | Both, I would say.

00:38:35.720 | In different, the dynamics there were different with Hillary Clinton and the pressure from

00:38:41.320 | Hillary Clinton as a candidate and so on.

00:38:43.360 | Yeah.

00:38:44.360 | So was there, why didn't Bernie win?

00:38:47.800 | I guess is one, one way to ask.

00:38:50.120 | Okay.

00:38:51.120 | I think there's a couple of things here.

00:38:52.720 | First the DNC, I'm not a Democrat, just your audience may not know.

00:38:57.880 | I'm just a independent.

00:38:59.120 | Yeah.

00:39:00.120 | I mostly vote for candidates that end up being Democrats in local elections.

00:39:03.560 | Often there's no party designation.

00:39:05.160 | So, okay.

00:39:06.160 | I'm obviously on the left.

00:39:07.160 | I'm not denying that, but the democratic party as an institution has never really been interesting

00:39:10.320 | to me.

00:39:11.320 | So you're not a rebel that resist belonging to any institution.

00:39:15.000 | Exactly right.

00:39:16.000 | Exactly right.

00:39:17.000 | And whether it matters, I don't know.

00:39:19.560 | The DNC and the RNC really are organizations that to some degree exist to justify their

00:39:26.640 | own existence because if they were no longer necessary, they would go away.

00:39:32.300 | And so they have to assert their value and their importance.

00:39:36.760 | They do this in a number of different ways, organizing the way that the nominee is chosen,

00:39:41.720 | the convention, uh, working with States on everything from redistricting to whatever

00:39:46.680 | else the case may be, setting the order of primaries and having some involvement in how

00:39:51.100 | that's all going to happen.

00:39:52.960 | And also coordinating behind the scenes.

00:39:55.880 | Uh, I guess they would describe it as making sure our candidates don't get in each other's

00:40:01.680 | ways.

00:40:02.680 | And we might see it and say they're picking the, the winner.

00:40:07.400 | There's nothing illegal about them being involved in picking the winner, but we might say it's

00:40:11.200 | not in people's interests.

00:40:12.920 | I think the 2020 primary was really interesting.

00:40:16.400 | Bernie supporter myself.

00:40:18.840 | I started telling my audience after a couple primaries and even before based on polling

00:40:24.720 | and different things, I see a real uphill battle here for Bernie and it's really important.

00:40:32.260 | People in my audience are not the average, you know, union worker in Michigan who is

00:40:36.620 | mostly working and raising a family and then goes to vote on primary day and goes to vote

00:40:41.180 | on election day.

00:40:42.660 | If you spend a lot of time on Reddit and Twitter, you're going to have an inflated sense of

00:40:46.620 | Bernie's popularity within the democratic party.

00:40:50.600 | That was my sense.

00:40:52.500 | And to some degree we saw that in certain States.

00:40:57.040 | I don't have the exact primary order and results in front of me or in my head, but the big

00:41:01.780 | turning point was South Carolina.

00:41:03.820 | South Carolina was when Joe Biden won and won handily understood to be because of the

00:41:10.560 | larger African American population in South Carolina.

00:41:14.360 | And right around that exact same time, I actually don't remember now whether it was the day

00:41:18.420 | after or the day before some of the smaller democratic candidates, smaller in terms of

00:41:22.460 | support got out and said, I'm endorsing Joe Biden.

00:41:27.360 | And to some degree, of course it was all organized and timed to help Joe Biden.

00:41:32.940 | There's no doubt about that.

00:41:34.560 | This is what the DNC does.

00:41:37.240 | It's hard for me to be mad at the DNC because this is sort of like if, if we believe they

00:41:44.020 | were there to be unbiased arbiters and to stay as much on the side as possible, it would

00:41:48.820 | make sense to be furious that they've gone against their stated, you know, kind of mandate.

00:41:53.940 | But we know that the DNC negotiates and is working behind the scenes and has a favorite.

00:42:00.800 | That favorite was Hillary in 2016, 2020.

00:42:03.420 | So I share the frustration about the power that the DNC has, but for people who were

00:42:08.240 | saying they did something illegal or whatever else the case may be, that that doesn't seem

00:42:12.360 | to be the case.

00:42:13.880 | But this is part of why, I mean, I would love there not to be this duopoly of Republicans

00:42:18.740 | and Democrats, and there's probably four major changes that have to happen in order to make

00:42:22.880 | that a reality.

00:42:23.880 | But I share the frustration of folks while recognizing that Reddit was not accurately

00:42:30.240 | representing Bernie's level of popularity.

00:42:33.200 | Still I wish that the bias wasn't towards the, uh, what could be negatively turned the

00:42:37.500 | deep state towards the bureaucracy, towards the momentum of the past, which I think Joe

00:42:42.680 | Biden kind of represents, uh, versus new ideas, which is funny to say that Bernie Sanders

00:42:48.600 | somehow represents new ideas cause he's also an older gentleman.

00:42:53.080 | Well it's a frame, it's a lot of framing.

00:42:55.720 | And the other aspect of that is on paper, Joe Biden's platform was arguably the most

00:43:02.400 | progressive of any democratic candidate who won the nomination.

00:43:07.280 | Now of course there were people who challenged the nominations who were to Joe Biden's left.

00:43:11.440 | A lot of this is perspective and it, you know, that's how you end up saying the guy who's

00:43:17.400 | a couple of years older than Biden is actually the guy with the fresh perspective, which

00:43:21.120 | is interesting because I don't disagree with you.

00:43:23.080 | Yeah.

00:43:24.080 | And then you also have to say the perspective doesn't always align with the policies.

00:43:27.800 | You're right.

00:43:28.800 | And you know, the actual policies of Joe Biden are different than the, maybe the perception

00:43:32.960 | of Joe Biden or what he ran on.

00:43:34.720 | I mean, just two examples I would give are during his campaign, he played up a little

00:43:40.000 | bit his interest in doing student loan forgiveness and something on cannabis.

00:43:45.080 | I never bought it.

00:43:46.080 | I told my audience, I think he's saying this stuff because this is the way the tide is

00:43:50.960 | kind of, the wind is blowing and he's being advised to say this stuff.

00:43:54.320 | I don't think he's going to do very much on either of these things.

00:43:56.360 | He did actually do some student loan stuff, but that would be two examples I think.

00:44:01.960 | Okay.

00:44:02.960 | Let's go to the, something you alluded to, which is the pros and cons of a particular

00:44:08.840 | candidate.

00:44:09.840 | What to you as a critic of Trump, what to you are the pros, the strengths of Donald

00:44:18.560 | Trump and what you are as big as weaknesses.

00:44:21.440 | The strengths of Trump, let's see how I can frame them in a way that is both accurate

00:44:26.600 | and accurately assesses my feeling about it.

00:44:30.200 | And can be taken out of context most masterfully through the clipping process.

00:44:34.440 | Yes.

00:44:35.440 | Trump's strengths are mostly superficial and in terms of presentation, Trump was able

00:44:43.840 | to, I call it a grift.

00:44:46.600 | Some on the right say he's just so good at relating to different types of people.

00:44:51.240 | Trump as a rich guy from New York city was able to convince people that he spent most

00:44:57.300 | of his life trying to be kept isolated from that he had their best interests in mind,

00:45:04.080 | that he knew why they weren't doing well in the 2016 economy and that he had solutions

00:45:12.040 | that he was going to bring forward.

00:45:14.200 | The truth is he never really liked those people and as soon as they weren't useful to him

00:45:19.600 | for a brief period of time, he, you know, that, that love affair with his followers

00:45:24.360 | stopped and then now it's back that he needs them again.

00:45:27.140 | He didn't really understand the causes of the problems that those folks were experiencing

00:45:31.880 | and his solutions were laughable, right?

00:45:33.600 | Like Jared was going to solve the Israeli Palestinian conflict in year one.

00:45:37.720 | He was going to replace Obamacare in 2017, things that were never going anywhere, anywhere.

00:45:43.240 | But what he did really well was he put up a united front of, I know what is ailing you.

00:45:50.160 | I know how to fix it and I know how to fix it, I guess because he's a businessman and

00:45:55.680 | he's been above the fray of politics for so long knowing how to use political donations

00:46:00.660 | to his advantage.

00:46:01.660 | He's called that smart, et cetera.

00:46:02.660 | I think that's his greatest strength.

00:46:04.780 | Why do you say that the, the, the, the Jared plan for Israel, Palestine and the plan for

00:46:10.920 | healthcare to improve Obamacare, why, why do you say that's laughable?

00:46:14.880 | Well, only someone, I would include the North Korea plan as well, which I'm glad to talk

00:46:19.320 | about.

00:46:20.560 | Only someone who doesn't know anything about the size and scope of these issues could so

00:46:29.140 | arrogantly say that they could solve them in that way.

00:46:32.560 | And on that timeframe, I'm all for optimism and, and bringing a new face to things.

00:46:38.720 | Absolutely.

00:46:39.720 | Without a doubt.

00:46:40.720 | But, you know, a wall with Mexico that Mexico will pay for at the end of my first term.

00:46:47.040 | I know there are people who believed it because they would call into my show and say, I'm

00:46:50.560 | voting for Trump because of it.

00:46:52.520 | But it's hard to believe that anybody serious would fall for that unless you were deliberately

00:46:57.960 | wanting to just believe whatever was being fed to you or you just hadn't ever thought

00:47:02.580 | about these issues before.

00:47:04.200 | The healthcare plan, you know, in 2017 they proposed one would have led to 24 million

00:47:10.240 | or so people ending up without healthcare.

00:47:12.160 | Didn't go anywhere cause it was so terrible.

00:47:14.120 | And then in August of 2020 Trump said in, in two weeks I'm going to finally have my

00:47:18.440 | healthcare proposal.

00:47:20.200 | It's 2023 we, we still never got it.

00:47:22.280 | You know, with all of these things, when you think them through, it was just sort of arrogance.

00:47:26.580 | And I get the perspective of, I want optimism and I liked that optimism.

00:47:31.280 | It worked.

00:47:32.280 | I mean, fair.

00:47:33.280 | A lot of people saw it and liked it as someone who followed a lot of those, those issues

00:47:36.880 | closely.

00:47:38.260 | They seemed of course like impossible promises.

00:47:40.600 | Well, it's a double edged sword.

00:47:42.000 | So to push back a little bit, if you look at the things I have a little bit more knowledge

00:47:48.480 | about, which is the space of artificial intelligence, there's a company called DeepMind and there's

00:47:54.080 | a company called OpenAI that we laughed at for a long time when they were talking about

00:47:59.400 | that they're going to solve intelligence.

00:48:01.880 | And now they've made, especially DeepMind and now most recently OpenAI with GPT, they've

00:48:08.200 | made progress that most of the AI community would not have imagined they'd be able to

00:48:13.400 | make.

00:48:14.640 | Everything from AlphaGo beating the WorldGo champion, just all the different steps in

00:48:21.160 | progress they can get into were a surprise to everybody and they are legitimately, fearlessly

00:48:30.120 | pursuing the task of solving intelligence.

00:48:33.720 | The other aspect, he gets a lot of criticism now, but another example is Elon Musk.

00:48:41.160 | I can say a lot of things like SpaceX, so commercial space flight, he was laughed at

00:48:46.600 | for a long time that that's possible.

00:48:49.800 | Same thing with autopilot in Tesla, autonomous vehicles, his approach was harshly criticized

00:48:55.060 | by all the experts and still criticized, to this day deeply criticized.

00:49:00.680 | And I as a person that I believe objectively can look at the progress of autopilot as a

00:49:06.520 | semi-autonomous vehicle system has been incredibly surprising.

00:49:11.640 | The reason I mention that is sometimes it feels like you need the guy or the gal who

00:49:19.880 | makes those preposterous, ambitious statements like, "We're going to solve healthcare this

00:49:26.200 | year."

00:49:29.200 | And then there's experts like yourself that are looking, thinking, "Have you read anything

00:49:35.680 | about the history of Israel-Palestine?"

00:49:37.840 | Israel-Palestine is a good example of that.

00:49:40.240 | Do you know there's a history there?

00:49:42.720 | Do you realize how complicated, how many people have tried, how many people have failed, how

00:49:47.240 | many millions of people hate each other in this little place, in this land?

00:49:56.280 | Sometimes the expertise can really weigh you down.

00:49:58.360 | So to push back, sometimes you have to have the, almost be naive and stupid and just rush

00:50:04.040 | in with an optimism in order to actually make some progress.

00:50:07.880 | I agree with you 100%.

00:50:09.360 | I think it's interesting that all of the examples you gave of successes are from the technology

00:50:14.600 | space.

00:50:15.600 | Not politics, yes.

00:50:16.600 | Not from politics, which, I mean, listen, I would love to be able to make headway on

00:50:20.680 | some of these issues more quickly, without a doubt.

00:50:22.760 | I do think at some point though, when it comes down to voting and saying, "One of these people

00:50:27.640 | is going to be ostensibly in charge for four years through all of the departments and secretaries

00:50:32.400 | and choices that they make," we do want to apply some level of realism with the understanding

00:50:38.600 | that your examples are from the tech space and they're good examples.

00:50:42.160 | There's no question about it.

00:50:43.600 | One thing I'll add to this, I recently read Bradley Hope's new book about North Korea.

00:50:48.880 | And it's really about an activist who, it doesn't even really matter, but in the background

00:50:55.380 | of the book, it's written, much of what is written about happens during the Trump era.

00:51:00.800 | And when Trump did the first and then the second, I guess you'd call them summits with

00:51:04.760 | Kim Jong-un.

00:51:06.440 | And it actually did seem like to some degree, Trump's, "We're going to handle this like

00:51:12.720 | I do a business deal" approach to Kim Jong-un.

00:51:16.320 | In some sense, it actually was logical because of Kim Jong-un and the way that it was so

00:51:23.960 | ego-driven and they both as sort of authoritarian strongmen types to different degrees wanted

00:51:29.080 | that.

00:51:30.080 | There was actually a kernel where I actually thought as I read it, Trump's initial idea

00:51:34.440 | wasn't crazy.

00:51:35.440 | The problem was he knew nothing about the backstory of the relationship.

00:51:38.200 | He fell for all sorts of lies from Kim Jong-un and he made offers that didn't make any sense

00:51:43.240 | to me.

00:51:44.240 | It fell apart, fine.

00:51:45.240 | But that's an example where I think Trump's personality was not actually at its base,

00:51:50.560 | the problem when it came to North Korea.

00:51:52.520 | Well, there's other things of this nature that could go in, or some people argue goes

00:51:56.840 | into the strengths and pros of Donald Trump.

00:51:59.720 | China, for example, tariffs on China.

00:52:02.840 | Can you make the case that there's some positive outcomes of the way Donald Trump acted with

00:52:08.880 | China?

00:52:09.880 | It's really tough.

00:52:10.880 | And I'll give you a couple of reasons why.

00:52:11.880 | Okay, then also cons.

00:52:12.880 | I'll give you, it's tough to make.

00:52:14.280 | So the China thing is really, so just very recently to when we're recording this, Trump

00:52:21.960 | was on Fox News interviewed by a guy named Mark Levin and Trump proposed a new, I call

00:52:27.840 | it a conspiracy theory.

00:52:29.200 | Maybe it will strike you as something different about China, covid and tariffs.

00:52:33.980 | And Trump's suggestion was that the tariffs cost China so much money.

00:52:39.160 | China sent the U.S. so much money in tariffs that they released covid as punishment.

00:52:45.800 | Now there's a couple of problems with that.

00:52:48.000 | One American companies pay the tariffs.

00:52:52.000 | Trump still doesn't seem to know this.

00:52:53.820 | Trump seems to believe that when he puts a tariff on Chinese imports, someone in China

00:52:59.740 | is cutting a check to the United States.

00:53:02.940 | American companies buy the stuff from China and then American companies cut a check to

00:53:07.540 | the United States for the tariff.

00:53:10.500 | Trump doesn't seem to get that, but it still has a sting to the Chinese economy.

00:53:14.300 | You can make the argument that if there is a suitable alternative domestically or from

00:53:19.200 | a different country that it will reduce imports, but it didn't happen.

00:53:24.020 | And we actually have reports now that the tariffs on China cost about a quarter million

00:53:30.420 | American jobs.

00:53:32.520 | The other problem with that idea is China created and released the virus in order to

00:53:38.820 | hurt you.

00:53:41.160 | But as of today, five point seven of the six point eight million deaths were in other countries.

00:53:47.220 | It's a very indirect way.

00:53:48.640 | You're mostly killing people in other countries to hurt Trump.

00:53:52.760 | Maybe there was a, this is the sort of thing where when I think about how Trump dealt with

00:53:57.560 | China, it's very scary because given another four years, who knows what he might do if

00:54:03.980 | he still doesn't understand how tariffs work.

00:54:06.720 | The geopolitics operates in complicated ways with carrots and sticks.

00:54:13.080 | And Henry Kissinger has written quite a lot about this.

00:54:15.960 | And in some sense, the positive aspect here that Donald Trump is willing to take big risks

00:54:23.040 | in a, in the game of geopolitics with this a giant superpower that is China and a lot

00:54:29.800 | of others are too afraid, too afraid to call them out, to come to the table and criticize.

00:54:37.800 | I certainly think that's an argument that can be made.

00:54:42.320 | My question would be what tangible positive outcomes did it lead to?

00:54:47.820 | And it's tough to identify any, but I think it's a great thing.

00:54:51.040 | I mean, listen, one of the things you're kind of getting at maybe indirectly is that there's

00:54:57.400 | been this sense that politics has been done very similarly for a long time.

00:55:02.080 | And even between Democrats and Republicans still, even with some policy differences,

00:55:07.120 | there's still the kind of feeling that it's disconnected folks in DC mostly dealing with

00:55:12.360 | issues that don't directly affect.

00:55:14.480 | I get that.

00:55:15.480 | I'm with you on that.

00:55:16.480 | I think the question as to whether Trump's bluster was positive rather than extraordinarily

00:55:22.240 | humiliating in many ways.

00:55:23.960 | I just come down on, it was an absolute and total humiliation.

00:55:27.440 | But I understand that you can recognize Trump doesn't know a lot of stuff, but his attitude

00:55:32.440 | was refreshing in some way.

00:55:34.320 | That's a reasonable position for someone to take.

00:55:35.960 | I disagree with it, but I understand it.

00:55:38.320 | Well, it's trying and failing better than not trying.

00:55:42.200 | This goes well beyond politics.

00:55:44.120 | You know, Wayne Gretzky is weighed in about this.

00:55:46.440 | Michael Jordan is weighed in about, I mean, this is a, yeah.

00:55:49.320 | Is it better to have tried and failed than never?

00:55:51.280 | Is it better to have loved and lost than never to have loved?

00:55:54.280 | I don't know.

00:55:55.280 | I mean, listen, we live through four years of Trump.

00:55:58.040 | We know what that four year term was like.

00:56:01.960 | And it's very hard for me to say that the things he tried were, were overwhelmingly

00:56:07.960 | reasonable.

00:56:08.960 | But I get the point you're trying to make and I appreciate it.

00:56:11.520 | And it's, if we don't do any of it, then where do we end up?

00:56:14.520 | Sure.

00:56:15.520 | We know where we ended up with, with Trump and it was pretty embarrassing.

00:56:18.000 | Uh, okay.

00:56:19.240 | Let's linger on some more strengths.

00:56:22.280 | We didn't start any new wars.

00:56:24.660 | We didn't start something to that.

00:56:26.520 | Yeah, that's, it's, it's interesting.

00:56:28.240 | There's a few different approaches to dealing with that.

00:56:31.680 | Um, first it's really important to remember that the counterpoint to that from the folks

00:56:37.600 | who like to say that was that Hillary Clinton was going to start three wars.

00:56:41.600 | Sometimes they say four wars, sometimes they say five wars.

00:56:45.000 | Okay.

00:56:46.000 | Um, the geopolitical situation during the four years that Trump was in office, I don't

00:56:50.920 | know that they obviously lent themselves to wars that Trump just barely was able to keep

00:56:56.000 | us out of.

00:56:57.000 | I think the Russia thing is interesting because now it's very popular to go back and say,

00:57:02.920 | you know, the reason Putin didn't do the Ukraine thing when Trump, right.

00:57:06.920 | And to somehow give Trump credit for that.

00:57:10.040 | There's a counterpoint to it, which is Putin under Trump, particularly if Trump got four

00:57:15.580 | more years would have been able to maybe consolidate power in other ways because of his relationship

00:57:21.240 | with Trump.

00:57:22.240 | I'm not coming down on one side or the other.

00:57:23.560 | It's not my area of expertise, but it's not the open shut slam dunk that, you know, Trump

00:57:28.120 | likes to say it is Putin didn't invade because he knew I would crush them.

00:57:32.040 | Okay.

00:57:33.040 | So it's not obvious to me that there were imminently wars that would have started during

00:57:38.680 | that time.

00:57:39.680 | That being said, um, you know, for all the criticism of Obama during Crimea, Trump seemed

00:57:48.480 | to just kind of forget about that after all the criticism and say, I'm not actually going

00:57:51.840 | to do anything about that.

00:57:53.200 | And so there's, there are foreign policy, uh, criticisms that, that could be made, but

00:57:57.800 | it is true.

00:57:58.880 | No new wars were started under Trump.

00:58:01.120 | And I, I like that.

00:58:02.200 | I don't like wars.

00:58:03.200 | What do you think about his handling of COVID?

00:58:05.800 | Can you say what are the pros and cons of his handling of COVID?

00:58:09.840 | The con for him is he'd be president right now if he had handled it differently.

00:58:14.440 | I think it's abundantly clear, um, early on.

00:58:18.700 | And there's now a lot of really good reporting about the conversations he was having with

00:58:21.800 | Jared Kushner and others.

00:58:23.880 | He became convinced either because of things he was being told or because he decided this

00:58:28.120 | is the way it's going to be.

00:58:29.480 | This is going to go away.

00:58:30.640 | Fine.

00:58:31.640 | It's in China.

00:58:32.640 | Okay.

00:58:33.640 | It's in China and Italy.

00:58:34.640 | Okay.

00:58:35.640 | We have 15 cases, but it'll soon be zero.

00:58:36.640 | We'll be open by Easter of 2020.

00:58:40.360 | None of it happened.

00:58:42.700 | If he had handled it in the following way, and I've said this to Rogan and I've said

00:58:47.760 | this to Patrick, bet David, and they tend to all see my side of this.

00:58:52.800 | If Trump had said, listen, we don't know how bad this is going to be, but I care too much

00:58:59.760 | about the American people to take a shot.

00:59:02.620 | So it's not going to be two weeks.

00:59:04.480 | It's going to be a little bit, but I need your help.

00:59:07.480 | We're going to bring everybody together.

00:59:08.960 | I don't care if you're a Democrat or a Republican, we're going to have MAGA masks and you could

00:59:12.960 | have kept 50 cents on the dollar to pay off stormy or whoever.

00:59:16.440 | Right.

00:59:17.440 | But it would have been, I think he wins reelection because the perception was, and reality is

00:59:24.280 | a version of that.

00:59:25.520 | The perception was that he was way too cavalier about it early on.

00:59:31.280 | People died who didn't need to die.

00:59:34.080 | And I think that it was arguably the one area where he could have all but guaranteed that

00:59:42.000 | he was going to get himself reelected.

00:59:43.360 | - Well, to push back on that, I mean, because you mentioned sort of masks and lockdowns

00:59:47.480 | kind of a solution to COVID.

00:59:49.480 | - I didn't mention lockdowns, but I'm glad to talk about policy.

00:59:52.360 | - Sure, quarantine.

00:59:53.360 | But there's several solutions to a pandemic, broadly speaking.

00:59:58.040 | And one of them is vaccine.

01:00:00.080 | And so you didn't mention that.

01:00:02.640 | He fast tracked the development.

01:00:05.720 | His administration fast tracked the development of the vaccine, which surprising, he didn't

01:00:10.720 | really take much credit for.

01:00:12.400 | I think he did.

01:00:13.400 | I think he tried.

01:00:14.400 | There's a couple, there's a lot there.

01:00:15.400 | - Well, to me, it seems like you could make the case with the Trump hand gestures that

01:00:23.880 | his decisions for fast tracking the development of the vaccine saved tens of millions of lives.

01:00:29.280 | You can make, he could in the Trumpian way make that case.

01:00:33.560 | - So couple different things.

01:00:34.720 | I know you don't necessarily follow Trump's rallies as closely as I do, and I'm jealous

01:00:39.860 | of you for that.

01:00:41.080 | But he did tout the vaccine stuff hugely for a while until his audience turned against

01:00:49.920 | him.

01:00:51.000 | And then he had to draw this line where he was going, I made the vaccines, which none

01:00:56.400 | of you have to take, by the way, freedom.

01:00:58.620 | You don't have to take them, but it's fantastic.

01:01:00.780 | And nobody else could have done it, but don't worry, nobody's going to make you take the

01:01:03.360 | vaccine.

01:01:04.360 | And he actually got booed at a couple of his own rallies when talking about the vaccines.

01:01:08.220 | But let's back up a little bit.

01:01:10.080 | Fast tracking.

01:01:11.080 | My understanding of what he did is he did what any president in his situation would

01:01:15.960 | do and what many world leaders elsewhere did as well, which is he agreed to pre-purchase

01:01:21.920 | supply of vaccine in order to provide money to pharmaceutical companies to scale up the

01:01:27.140 | manufacturing, which is absolutely fine.

01:01:30.600 | But he wants, one of the stories he tells is it usually takes 12 years to develop a

01:01:35.520 | vaccine.

01:01:36.520 | We did it in nine months, thanks to me.

01:01:39.840 | Decades of mRNA technology being developed, created the platform in which you can make

01:01:46.040 | a particular vaccine in nine months.

01:01:48.640 | Didn't have anything to do with Trump.

01:01:50.440 | He did pre-fund and say, we will buy huge supply and that provided liquidity to the

01:01:55.120 | pharmaceutical companies.

01:01:56.120 | But he also delegated control to, to people, to experts that enable that kind of fast tracking

01:02:05.160 | of vaccines, right?

01:02:06.540 | He was very eager for the FDA to approve it because he saw that there would be a political

01:02:10.540 | benefit.

01:02:11.540 | He didn't get in the way, I guess.

01:02:12.540 | He didn't get in the way.

01:02:13.540 | Fair.

01:02:14.540 | I think now we're on the same page.

01:02:15.540 | He did not get in the way of vaccines being developed, which is good.

01:02:19.780 | Presidents and bureaucracies have a way of getting in the way.

01:02:24.580 | I don't disagree with that.

01:02:26.060 | I'm not aware of really any governments that got in the way.

01:02:28.580 | I mean, it seemed given the global situation, everybody, European countries were pre-purchasing

01:02:34.260 | vaccine.

01:02:35.260 | African countries were, who were going to be later to receive vaccines were partnering

01:02:39.920 | with the European countries that had pre-purchased.

01:02:42.920 | But the most interesting thing about all of this is Trump did play up the vaccines for

01:02:46.500 | a long time until his, his crowd didn't want to hear about it anymore, which was crazy.

01:02:50.980 | It was sort of like he became a victim of the monster he created to some degree.

01:02:56.340 | One of the effects of all this that makes me truly sad is this division over the vaccines

01:03:01.020 | has created distrust in science.

01:03:03.460 | And also what makes me sad is the scientific leaders, Anthony Fauci being one of the representatives

01:03:11.740 | of that community, I would say completely dropped the ball.

01:03:15.740 | - In what way?

01:03:18.140 | - They spoke with arrogance.

01:03:20.500 | They spoke down to people.

01:03:22.520 | They spoke in a way that a great scientist does not speak, which is they spoke with certainty

01:03:30.060 | without humility, like they have all the wisdom and all of us are too dumb to understand it,

01:03:35.540 | but they're going to be the parent that tells us exactly what to do versus speaking to the

01:03:40.900 | immensity of the problem, the deep core of the problem being the uncertainty.

01:03:46.740 | We don't know what to do.

01:03:49.500 | The terrifying thing about the pandemic, we don't know anything about it as it's happening.

01:03:53.500 | And so you have to make decisions.

01:03:54.820 | You have to take risks about, well, maybe you have to overreact in order to protect

01:04:00.780 | the populace, but it's in the face of uncertainty that you have to do that, not empowered by

01:04:07.460 | science somehow and the deep expertise that somebody like Anthony Fauci claims to have.

01:04:14.780 | So I just am really troubled by, yeah, the distress in science that resulted from that.

01:04:21.460 | And you have to blame the leaders, I mean, to the degree, leaders take responsibility.

01:04:26.380 | And I think Anthony Fauci was the scientific leader behind the American response to the

01:04:31.860 | pandemic and I think he failed as a scientist, as a representative of science.

01:04:38.020 | - I'm less, I don't know if interested is the right word, but the kind of, the Fauci

01:04:44.740 | review is less interesting to me in terms of what comes next than the first part you

01:04:50.500 | mentioned, which is the distrust in science.

01:04:53.700 | And sometimes I'll get voicemails or emails from people in my audience who say that I

01:04:58.980 | have had to backpedal on certain things related to this.

01:05:03.660 | And one of the things I tried to do from the beginning was not speak in certain terms when

01:05:09.740 | we really didn't have complete information.

01:05:11.460 | So there was this period where hydroxychloroquine was first sort of mentioned as a possible

01:05:16.900 | treatment prophylactic or proactive treatment for COVID or active treatment for COVID along

01:05:23.900 | with a bunch of other stuff.

01:05:25.020 | There was ivermectin, there was vitamin D, there were all sorts of different things.

01:05:30.540 | And I tried to be careful to say, right now, we don't have rigorous science that tells

01:05:37.100 | us that some of these things work.

01:05:39.020 | It doesn't mean that won't come in the future, at which point, if there was something as

01:05:43.420 | cheap as hydroxychloroquine that treated COVID effectively, unbelievable, fantastic.

01:05:49.100 | It's not, there's no way it ever will be determined.

01:05:52.180 | We don't have that information right now.

01:05:53.740 | So it's not super wise right now to go and start taking this stuff.

01:05:58.040 | We eventually learned like with vitamin D, having an appropriate vitamin D level does

01:06:03.700 | seem to be based on what I've most recently read, generally protective and a good thing

01:06:10.140 | when it comes to infections of different.

01:06:12.140 | Great.

01:06:13.140 | So that's something we figured out.

01:06:14.980 | One of the really difficult things is that the quote truth about the vaccines did change.

01:06:20.900 | And the original, again, this is all, I don't pretend to be an expert, but just someone

01:06:24.820 | who's synthesizing the medical data and writing about it.

01:06:29.340 | Originally the first vaccine related to the wild type strain did seem to be very effective,

01:06:37.740 | not only at preventing death and serious illness, but also transmission.

01:06:42.500 | There were people then saying it doesn't prevent transmission over time as the variants came

01:06:49.340 | forward, the vaccine became less effective at that.

01:06:52.980 | At that point I started telling my audience something different because as far as I was

01:06:56.620 | concerned, the reality on the ground had changed.

01:06:59.540 | In my mind, that's how science works.

01:07:01.480 | It's not backpedaling.

01:07:02.480 | It's we're adjusting our beliefs to what is taking place in the real world.

01:07:06.980 | Well, to be fair, the scientists, many of whom are my friends, virologists and biologists,

01:07:12.980 | they have way more humility than people like Anthony Fauci who are speaking about this

01:07:17.300 | or the CEO of Pfizer who are speaking about this.

01:07:20.380 | This is the fundamental problem here is the way science works is there's usually a lot

01:07:27.040 | more humility and a lot more transparency about what we know and what we don't know.

01:07:32.300 | And people like Anthony Fauci thought it would be beneficial for the world if he speaks with

01:07:39.820 | more certainty.

01:07:41.940 | But because of the political division that formed around that, that certainty resulted

01:07:46.020 | and became completely counterproductive that people didn't trust anything about the vaccine,

01:07:51.500 | didn't trust any institutions that contained the experts that actually knew what they were

01:07:56.580 | doing and basically didn't trust anything that was coming out of the mouths of scientists.

01:08:01.820 | Some large percent of the population.

01:08:04.580 | So that made you completely ineffective at scale as a society trying to respond to a

01:08:12.340 | terrible pandemic.

01:08:13.740 | And that's where I put a lot of blame on leaders.

01:08:17.100 | So political leaders and scientific leaders are the ones that should inspire us to all

01:08:22.260 | get together and respond.

01:08:24.900 | That should be the case for the pandemic.

01:08:26.980 | That should be the case in a time of war, all this kind of stuff.

01:08:31.300 | I generally agree with you.

01:08:32.660 | And for me, it's really about shared blame.

01:08:35.220 | And there were a lot of different reasons why that the early communication wasn't good.

01:08:39.820 | Part of it was, I mean, for me, I prefer accuracy rather than overconfidence.

01:08:45.860 | I would prefer, listen, we don't really know right now whether masks do X or Y.

01:08:51.580 | What we do know is the supply is really limited of this type of mask.

01:08:55.260 | We're going to try to keep them for the frontline workers.

01:08:57.340 | I love that.

01:08:58.580 | That's the way I want to be communicated to.

01:09:00.940 | A call was made to do it differently, which was to say the masks don't actually help.

01:09:05.740 | But the real reason is they want to keep them for health care workers.

01:09:08.420 | And then later the masks are what's going to solve.

01:09:11.340 | I'm with I'm with you 100 percent.

01:09:13.180 | I think the other layer to it is you can't ignore the political situation at the time.

01:09:19.780 | If Trump had won reelection and the vaccine distribution had taken place while Trump was

01:09:24.840 | president rather than Biden, my belief is that the same number of Democrats would have

01:09:30.360 | gotten vaccinated, but way more Republicans would have as well because they were following

01:09:34.780 | not science, but political leaders.

01:09:36.860 | And when it was Biden in D.C. instead of Trump, a lot of those people said, I don't trust

01:09:41.040 | the vaccine, but wait, it's Trump's vaccine, I thought.

01:09:44.060 | Yeah, but something about the way Biden's distributing it.

01:09:46.660 | So I do think you can't ignore that political layer.

01:09:49.420 | I agree with you.

01:09:50.420 | The communication was a disaster.

01:09:53.340 | Let me ask you about Joe Biden.

01:09:54.760 | What are the strengths and weaknesses of Joe Biden?

01:09:57.900 | Weaknesses, I think, are some of the things you've identified.

01:10:01.600 | He is not seen as high energy.

01:10:05.640 | He is not the same Joe Biden that debated Paul Ryan in 2012 and ran circles around him

01:10:12.540 | and just an incredible debate performance.

01:10:16.600 | He is not inspiring in the way that someone like a Barack Obama was to people coming up

01:10:24.680 | and starting to get interested in politics.

01:10:26.840 | I think a lot of those are fair criticisms, I think, on policy.

01:10:32.020 | He's not interested in a lot of the things that younger voters are interested in.

01:10:36.640 | I mentioned cannabis reform.

01:10:39.400 | I mentioned student loans.

01:10:41.260 | So I think that that's a deficit for Biden.

01:10:44.580 | I think the upside to Biden is when it comes to foreign policy, diplomacy, high level negotiations,

01:10:53.460 | knowing how to engage with allies in a productive way.

01:10:56.820 | It's tough to find someone with more experience than Biden.

01:11:00.120 | I know that there are counterpoints to what I'm saying, and those include that was the

01:11:04.420 | old Biden.

01:11:05.420 | The new Biden doesn't have it.

01:11:06.820 | That includes that's just a sign of rot because he's been around for so long.

01:11:10.500 | Nobody should be around that long in politics.

01:11:13.140 | Perfectly reasonable criticisms to talk about.

01:11:15.660 | But I do see that as one of his strengths.

01:11:17.840 | And he also is good at knowing when he can work with Republicans and when he can't and

01:11:25.460 | not wasting more time than is sort of expected for posturing reasons.

01:11:31.020 | And I think that that's a good thing.

01:11:32.340 | Do you think he's actually there?

01:11:34.600 | So in day to day operation of government, given his cognitive capabilities, do you think

01:11:39.380 | he is an active and practicing executive?

01:11:44.140 | I don't know that I can say that it's because of what may be going on cognitively.

01:11:50.120 | But my sense from the people I talk to is that he's very much involved in the highest

01:11:56.620 | level geopolitical and big domestic economic stuff.

01:12:01.900 | But that a lot of the smaller issues that presidents might or might not be in sort of

01:12:06.740 | plugged into that he's not plugged into the details of a lot of the lower level stuff.

01:12:11.260 | I mean, you could probably apply the same exact criticism even more so towards the Donald

01:12:15.380 | Trump administration in terms of being a practicing active executive who's paying attention.

01:12:21.060 | Like for example, like Vladimir Putin is somebody who loves the role of the executive, has a

01:12:30.060 | huge amount of meetings, has constantly tracking information about agriculture and all the

01:12:35.180 | different subsystems of government.

01:12:38.260 | Stalin, funny enough, was also extremely good at this.

01:12:41.820 | So certain people just love the job of being an executive.

01:12:45.660 | And I'm not sure if Donald Trump did.

01:12:51.100 | And I'm not sure if Joe Biden in his current state has the cognitive capability to.

01:12:57.260 | It's a good question.

01:12:58.260 | Kim Jong-un's another one, by the way.

01:12:59.780 | You know, there's videos of him examining a pottery, you know, a factory where they

01:13:04.460 | make plates and making very specific comments about how the plates should be made.

01:13:08.940 | I think that in that case, there's a lot of propaganda value to it with Trump.

01:13:13.340 | I think you're probably right.

01:13:15.420 | You know, he did get involved in the minutia of things.

01:13:17.460 | I mean, once he pulled out a weather map and with a Sharpie drew a different hurricane

01:13:22.300 | path that was more politically convenient to him.

01:13:25.020 | That's pretty micro, you know, saying the weather channels.

01:13:27.780 | I see what you did there.

01:13:29.020 | This is OK.

01:13:30.020 | I see what you did there.

01:13:31.020 | Micro.

01:13:32.020 | He went to Puerto Rico and he gave out paper towels after a hurricane.

01:13:35.060 | Now, he was shooting them like free throws, which didn't look very good.

01:13:38.340 | So he will get involved in the micro when it's advantageous.

01:13:42.100 | You know what I mean?

01:13:43.100 | But I do agree with you that he wants to just kind of make it so build the wall.

01:13:46.300 | I don't know.

01:13:47.300 | Just build it, figure it out, get it done.

01:13:48.300 | Quick pause.

01:13:49.300 | Bethenbry.

01:13:50.300 | Sure.

01:13:51.300 | Yeah, you're hilarious.

01:13:54.300 | And just for the sake of completeness, I should mention the subreddit.

01:13:57.180 | What Biden has done is also what Trump has done, but it's not as active.

01:14:02.260 | And it has like this master list of all the accomplishments.

01:14:05.340 | It's I recommend people look at it because there's a kind of rigorous and interesting

01:14:11.700 | with links list of all the things he's done.

01:14:14.620 | Just list some of them.

01:14:16.860 | Restored daily press briefings.

01:14:20.020 | Cancel the Keystone pipeline.

01:14:21.500 | Reverse Trump's Muslim ban.

01:14:22.980 | Required masks on federal property.

01:14:24.340 | Rejoins the Paris climate agreement.

01:14:26.660 | Extend student loan payment freeze.

01:14:28.860 | Extend eviction freeze.

01:14:30.940 | Historic stimulus bill, as you mentioned.

01:14:33.500 | Hence funding for border wall and so on and so forth.

01:14:37.620 | Border strengthening of DACA.

01:14:39.660 | Rejoins the World Health Organization.

01:14:40.980 | And the timing of this, of course, is important.

01:14:44.860 | Yeah, several historic stimulus bills, which of course you could criticize or support.

01:14:51.180 | Raised the minimum wage for federal contractors and federal employees for $15.

01:14:56.620 | There's a lot.

01:14:57.620 | There's a lot.

01:14:58.620 | It makes you realize with both Trump and Biden that there's a bunch of small details that

01:15:05.060 | matter.

01:15:06.060 | Yeah.

01:15:07.060 | Like that matter on people's lives, like actual little policies.

01:15:11.460 | Trump did a lot of stuff as far as I heard for the military.

01:15:15.580 | Like not big stuff, but small stuff.

01:15:18.700 | Yeah.

01:15:19.700 | I'd be curious what you're thinking of.

01:15:21.460 | I mean, I know one of the big things under Trump was we're going to get trans people

01:15:24.700 | out of the military.

01:15:27.260 | That's not what I was referring to.

01:15:28.260 | You weren't referring to that.

01:15:29.580 | He Trump that tell you, Trump's hilarious with these stories that he tells.

01:15:33.820 | And one of the story and you get to know them if you, if you follow him at all, he tells

01:15:37.740 | the story, you know, when I came into office, the generals came to me and they said, sir,

01:15:42.220 | the cupboards are bare.

01:15:43.440 | We have no bullets.

01:15:45.060 | And so I rebuilt the military.

01:15:46.500 | You know, the cupboards were bare when Obama left it and it was just terrible.

01:15:49.940 | But I rebuilt it and the generals, I've got the best generals.

01:15:52.420 | They said, sir, it's incredible what you were able to do.

01:15:54.660 | You look into it and it's like, yeah, that's not really true.

01:15:57.460 | Like it is true that there are armaments that just like on a schedule do get replaced and

01:16:01.020 | that's part of the military industrial complex.

01:16:02.980 | But there's nothing like special Trump really did.

01:16:05.380 | But these stories become, they take on like a life of their own.

01:16:09.520 | And it's interesting to sometimes try to dig down and figure out like, was there any policy

01:16:12.940 | connected to that or is that just a story?

01:16:15.460 | Do you think it's possible to have a good conversation with each of them, Donald Trump

01:16:19.420 | and Joe Biden in a pot, in a podcast context or in a debate context?

01:16:24.500 | Absolutely.

01:16:25.500 | Yeah.

01:16:26.500 | You're saying like, could I with either of them?

01:16:27.900 | Oh, a hundred percent.

01:16:28.900 | Yeah.

01:16:29.900 | Joe Biden too.

01:16:30.900 | Sure.

01:16:31.900 | Yeah.

01:16:32.900 | But can you dig into that a little more?

01:16:33.900 | Well, I mean, I don't know what, I think there's maybe something implicit in your, in your question,

01:16:38.540 | but this deeper about the nature of politics and politicians.

01:16:42.260 | Yes.

01:16:43.260 | I think with either of them, I mean the political differences wouldn't be an impediment to having

01:16:48.780 | a good conversation with either of them.

01:16:52.260 | I think one of the things that's really tough in my experience when talking to elected officials

01:16:57.660 | is they could be super interesting about a hundred different topics, but handlers decide

01:17:05.140 | or try to get you to talk about something you don't really care about and something

01:17:09.420 | really narrow, which doesn't bring out your best nor their best.

01:17:13.220 | And that's a frustration.

01:17:14.960 | But I think that given an unstructured three hour conversation, I think it would be interesting

01:17:18.720 | to talk to both.

01:17:19.720 | I mean, listen, with, with Biden, aside from his view on cannabis or whatever, his background

01:17:25.580 | and the incredible unimaginable family tragedy that he had in his first wife and you know,

01:17:32.140 | multiple kids dying.

01:17:33.140 | And I mean, it, it's just incredible, you know, and, and with Trump, I think also you

01:17:39.220 | could have an interesting conversation.

01:17:40.380 | Yeah.

01:17:41.380 | Those, the human beings with a life story there that, and they're some of the most successful

01:17:46.600 | humans who have ever lived to have rose to this highest office in interesting, complex

01:17:54.180 | ways.

01:17:55.180 | Yes.

01:17:56.180 | I mean, one of the things I'm troubled by maybe you can speak to is why we're so negative

01:18:00.420 | towards presidential candidates and presidents.

01:18:03.120 | Why it's just, they go through this shit storm no matter who they are.

01:18:08.740 | Yeah.

01:18:09.740 | They're like hated.

01:18:11.000 | Like all the conspiracy theories and just, just the dynamics of how we talk about them

01:18:18.220 | is vicious.

01:18:19.220 | If you, if you just look at replies to even Barack Obama on Twitter, it's like, what is

01:18:25.360 | going on here?

01:18:26.360 | Why, why?

01:18:27.360 | Like, cause we look at other leaders in other spaces and we're generally positive about

01:18:31.800 | it.

01:18:32.800 | Yeah.

01:18:33.800 | There's a couple different things.

01:18:35.720 | There's this dynamic, which is really unfortunate, which is you ask people, do you approve of

01:18:40.860 | the job a particular president is doing?

01:18:43.780 | And very often if at any point while they were in office, they did something you don't

01:18:47.700 | like, people will say, I don't approve.

01:18:49.500 | And so by its nature, what that means is just like the longer you're in office, the lower

01:18:53.020 | your approval rating is going to be.

01:18:55.140 | And very often that's the way it works.

01:18:56.980 | I mean, there's major events like nine 11 spike George W. Bush's approval to an incredible

01:19:02.460 | level.

01:19:03.460 | Then it came back down with the Iraq war.

01:19:04.800 | But there's this unfortunate thing that when, when people are just asked, you think Biden's

01:19:08.140 | doing a good job?

01:19:09.540 | If four months ago Biden did something on healthcare that somebody didn't like, even

01:19:14.180 | if you like most of it, a lot of people from that point forward will say, I don't approve.

01:19:18.880 | They might still vote for him because they like him better than the alternative or whatever.

01:19:22.860 | It's just the dynamic of politics.

01:19:24.900 | And I agree.

01:19:25.900 | It's, it's very, does it have to be that way?

01:19:27.820 | I don't think it has to be that way, but to unwind it, so many things would have to change.

01:19:33.460 | I think our election system is part of why politics is the way it is, where you have

01:19:39.040 | two choices and it's first past the post and we have this electoral college so that depending

01:19:44.560 | on which state you vote in, the kind of meaning and significance of your vote is different.

01:19:49.120 | If you vote in Montana, it's the Republican candidate's going to win and that changes

01:19:53.600 | the day the dynamics.

01:19:54.640 | I think that's part of it.

01:19:56.680 | I think that at a personal level, I've experienced this in my life a lot.

01:20:03.220 | We've become, and by we, I mean people in the United States to some degree who talk

01:20:07.340 | about this stuff.

01:20:08.340 | We've become uncomfortable when there is disagreement and it bleeds over into now we can't have

01:20:14.100 | a normal interpersonal relationship anymore.

01:20:16.620 | I'm from Argentina and in Argentina it's really common.

01:20:19.940 | Even in my family, there are incredibly heated political debates at the start, the middle,

01:20:26.220 | the end of some kind of gathering.

01:20:27.940 | But then everybody just goes back to like, okay, we disagree on some things, but that's

01:20:32.060 | okay and we can now go and you know, finish cooking the beef or whatever it is that we're

01:20:37.740 | doing.

01:20:38.940 | And I experienced this even with people who come up to me on the street and they go, just

01:20:43.300 | earlier today, a guy came up to me and he said, RFK all the way baby, talking about

01:20:49.080 | Bobby Kennedy Jr.

01:20:50.820 | And I just kind of, you know, I said, oh, all right, you know, let's see what happens.

01:20:55.220 | And then there was another moment where the guy ended up standing next to me for maybe

01:20:59.180 | longer than he thought.

01:21:00.180 | And I could tell this guy's getting so awkward because it was an utterance he thought that

01:21:03.740 | would just be on the fly and he'd be gone.

01:21:05.420 | But now we're standing next to each other waiting for our sandwiches.

01:21:08.620 | It's like no big deal.

01:21:09.620 | You know, it's just, oh, okay.

01:21:10.880 | You like Bobby Kennedy Jr.

01:21:12.580 | I don't plan to vote for it's fine, you know?

01:21:14.900 | And that's like a sociocultural thing.

01:21:16.460 | I think there's lots of other countries.

01:21:17.820 | I've spent time in Italy.

01:21:20.420 | I have relatives in Israel where like shouting at each other is sort of like normal and then

01:21:24.780 | you just go back and finish the, it sounds like shouting.

01:21:27.020 | I'm sort of exaggerating, but very animated.

01:21:29.860 | What seemed like big disagreements and then everybody's cool.

01:21:33.020 | I wish it were more normal.

01:21:34.660 | - So maybe the mechanism of going from shouting to being cool again needs to improve.

01:21:40.580 | Because maybe we can't solve the shouting at each other.

01:21:43.060 | - Maybe not.

01:21:44.060 | - So maybe we need to somehow figure out the deescalation, like making up.

01:21:48.380 | I've had a few recent fights with friends like that.

01:21:51.260 | - Really?

01:21:52.260 | - Yeah.

01:21:53.260 | - For politics?

01:21:54.260 | - No, but political style, emotionally drenched stuff.

01:22:00.300 | And it was interesting to go through that full process and then make up at the end.

01:22:06.260 | But it was a process and it was a process that required being in person and talking

01:22:11.300 | through it.

01:22:12.940 | And it was stressful, the whole thing.

01:22:15.660 | And maybe because most of our interactions are online, we don't get a chance to do that

01:22:20.420 | in person making up again.

01:22:22.340 | - I don't know, but do you think it's a feature or a bug of the system that we're so, we just

01:22:27.460 | hate the powerful?

01:22:29.680 | - You mentioned the online part.

01:22:31.300 | I think it's, you mentioned it earlier perfectly, which is you take contentious political issues,

01:22:38.680 | you create a platform that rewards controversy and disagreement and limits the number of

01:22:45.740 | characters you can use to express yourself.

01:22:48.480 | You kind of throw it into a baking dish and mix the entire thing up.

01:22:53.320 | It's complete and total chaos.

01:22:54.740 | And one of the things that, I've talked before about all the angry emails and threats and

01:22:58.940 | stuff that I get.

01:22:59.940 | I'm acutely aware that if I had in-person conversations with most of these people, the

01:23:05.500 | conversations would basically be like, "Oh, we have different views about how to solve

01:23:09.660 | some of the problems we're facing.

01:23:11.300 | We probably agree about what the problem is and we probably share many values, but on

01:23:17.240 | these particular four issues, we may have very different views, but that's okay."

01:23:23.260 | Online that's not the case.

01:23:25.300 | And it leads to, you know, the mess that we get ourselves in.

01:23:29.620 | But I think that it's a feature of a lot of the systems that are being used to disseminate

01:23:33.500 | information.

01:23:34.500 | - Again, let me linger on that.

01:23:36.260 | Do you regret some of the mockery and the snark you use on Twitter and even in your

01:23:43.620 | show that kind of feeds that division?

01:23:46.980 | - I don't regret it in the sense that it's a calculated part or tool that I use in addition

01:23:55.620 | to figuring out how to simplify complicated concepts and choosing stories that I think

01:24:00.980 | are underrepresented.

01:24:01.980 | And, you know, it's all part of like the package of what I'm doing.

01:24:05.360 | I recognize that my show is not the audio visual version of a peer-reviewed, you know,

01:24:14.700 | randomized controlled trial about views on abortion or whatever the case.

01:24:18.340 | Like I'm very much aware of that, but I don't regret including it as a tool that I've used

01:24:25.820 | to build the community in some total that I've built over the last more than 10 years.

01:24:30.300 | - I guess I could ask about the different trajectories you think your show might take.

01:24:35.020 | So you know, the dynamic you had with Donald Trump Jr. and maybe Candace Owens is the more

01:24:40.580 | appropriate comparison.

01:24:42.500 | Are you okay having that dance for the next few years between you and Candace Owens and

01:24:48.220 | just kind of the mockery, the derision that's a part of that process and taking part in

01:24:55.020 | that, you know?

01:24:56.660 | - I'm fine with it in the sense of personally, I tolerate it well until it crosses the line

01:25:07.620 | and people pull my family in and people, right?

01:25:10.300 | So that's the part that's difficult.

01:25:11.300 | - If you set the family stuff aside.

01:25:12.500 | - If I set that aside.

01:25:13.500 | - Just in the digital space.

01:25:14.700 | - I'm glad to mix it up.

01:25:16.180 | Now the truth is Candace Owens has had me blocked for years up until this incident.

01:25:21.460 | She unblocked me just to tweet about what I tweeted about.

01:25:25.060 | I don't know the backstory of that genuinely.

01:25:26.940 | I have no idea.

01:25:28.460 | So I don't have a sense that she's super interested in engaging with me on that.

01:25:32.440 | But all of these people, I mean, Candace Owens is welcome on my show anytime.

01:25:35.660 | Don Jr.'s welcome on my show anytime.

01:25:37.940 | It's been a decade since I had Ben Shapiro on.

01:25:40.300 | He's welcome at any time.

01:25:42.100 | I'm glad to have these conversations and I think it's an important thing.

01:25:46.740 | And also I wish that everybody was willing to have the conversations in good faith rather

01:25:51.540 | than as performance, it's not even really performance art, rather than being simply

01:25:55.980 | performative for an audience that you have.

01:25:58.340 | - In terms of your motivations, do you see, do you worry about the effects of something

01:26:02.380 | you spoke about offline, like the YouTube algorithm?

01:26:08.220 | Do you, are you driven by the number of views your videos get or are you driven by something

01:26:14.980 | else?

01:26:16.220 | - So in my world, I guess I would say the number of views that any platform generates

01:26:23.420 | is a metric that I can choose how to interpret.

01:26:27.620 | I can choose to interpret it as I've created content that's interesting to people or I've

01:26:34.020 | created content that's really angering people and that's why they're showing up.

01:26:37.580 | They don't actually like it.

01:26:38.580 | It's because they're angry or whatever else the case may be.

01:26:41.020 | But it is true that there are algorithmic changes that can take place.

01:26:45.140 | Something happened in early January that affected us on YouTube or there are periods on Tik

01:26:49.460 | Tok where you can tell we're doing all the same things, something has happened and then

01:26:54.940 | you never usually figure out what it is.

01:26:56.780 | So for me, it's sort of just like a general tool to see what is the level of interest

01:27:02.220 | in what I'm doing and are the numbers so out of whack with what I would expect that I should

01:27:06.900 | look into whether something deeper is happening.

01:27:09.100 | Has there been some change to an algorithm or whatever the case may be?

01:27:12.180 | I had a debate once with someone who accused me of using clickbait to generate views and

01:27:18.620 | we had a really interesting conversation where I said, tell me really what you mean by that.

01:27:23.460 | Is your argument that I'm using titles that don't actually represent what's in the video?

01:27:30.500 | No what's in the title is in the video.

01:27:32.020 | I go, okay, so it's not that the title is dishonest.

01:27:34.780 | Are you saying, saying I'm deliberately picking titles that will garner a larger audience?

01:27:40.660 | And they said, yeah, that's kind of what I mean.

01:27:42.220 | And I said, isn't that kind of what we're all doing?

01:27:44.420 | The alternative would be choosing titles to generate a smaller audience, which seems like

01:27:48.620 | a real kind of waste of time.

01:27:50.420 | So I'm trying to navigate and play the game in a way that's comfortable, but use the metrics

01:27:57.620 | more as a tool than as something to obsess over.

01:28:00.700 | Nevertheless, the metrics are what they are in that they are able to affect your psyche.

01:28:09.220 | It's very difficult, which is why I have a Chrome extension that hides all the views

01:28:13.480 | and all that on YouTube for me.

01:28:17.940 | It's difficult not to let it affect how you think about ideas.

01:28:22.980 | So maybe your extensive exploration of a particular topic like healthcare generated very few views.

01:28:30.020 | It's difficult for you to still care about healthcare.

01:28:33.620 | There's some aspect of the human mind that starts being affected by those views.

01:28:38.860 | And I think that's a really dangerous thing.

01:28:42.020 | Mostly it's probably beneficial because it probably makes you a better presenter.

01:28:48.560 | If you do care about a topic a lot, you become more charismatic, you learn sort of in a Jimmy,

01:28:54.900 | Mr. Beast way how to present the ideas better.

01:28:58.020 | But it also can affect which topics you choose to cover, what you choose to think about those

01:29:02.980 | topics, the audience capture those topics.

01:29:06.180 | And that's a really scary effect.

01:29:07.820 | I'm really worried about my own mind and that.

01:29:10.460 | So I run from that aggressively.

01:29:13.820 | - One of the things that I include in my overall approach is I don't think about any one clip.

01:29:20.220 | I think about an entire show or a week of shows or a month of shows.

01:29:25.060 | And so it's less about does any one clip do well?

01:29:28.620 | My view going in is I'm going to do stuff that won't do that well, but I think it's

01:29:33.700 | really important to do.

01:29:34.860 | And I want to make it part of my show.

01:29:36.580 | And so when I did a clip with 10 ideas for reducing gun violence, I know that that's

01:29:41.700 | not going to get 500,000 or a million views.

01:29:43.780 | I know it's just not going to.

01:29:45.700 | And the first day it'll get 12,000 and I'll go, I don't care.

01:29:50.460 | That's fine.

01:29:51.460 | There's a group of people in my audience that values this stuff and I want to keep doing

01:29:54.660 | this stuff.

01:29:55.660 | I'll end up surprised sometime.

01:29:57.780 | And two weeks later has 150,000 views because it started being shared.

01:30:02.340 | Great.

01:30:03.340 | But I don't go into it thinking these all need to be home runs by that metric.

01:30:08.620 | I always go in saying, I want to put out a diversity of content, including stuff that

01:30:13.140 | is less titillating and salacious, but is important to do.

01:30:16.580 | It's more researched, et cetera.

01:30:19.100 | And so that's the way I try to resist exactly what you're talking about.

01:30:22.100 | - And I think you have to probably know yourself.

01:30:23.980 | Like for me, metrics, I just like numbers too much.

01:30:27.140 | And for me, metrics do affect me.

01:30:28.820 | This is why I don't pay attention at all.

01:30:30.500 | Like I can't, I would love to hire somebody in the team who cares because we currently

01:30:34.980 | have folks who just all of us just don't care.

01:30:39.900 | Because he probably is good to care enough to kind of just do good thumbnails and this

01:30:44.100 | kind of stuff to pay attention.

01:30:46.020 | But to me personally, I just find inner peace and focus if I don't think about the numbers

01:30:51.300 | at all.

01:30:52.300 | Because I find myself, I just remember a long time ago when I started a podcast, I

01:30:58.540 | would think that I failed if it didn't do well.

01:31:03.740 | Like if I didn't celebrate the person well enough, I didn't do a good job enough of a

01:31:08.500 | conversation.

01:31:09.500 | Well, that's not necessarily at all what that means.

01:31:12.780 | It's hard not to--

01:31:13.780 | - This is tough stuff.

01:31:14.780 | I mean, yeah, I know exactly what you're saying.

01:31:17.060 | And part of it is, I mean, it starts in my, you have a little bit of a different situation

01:31:23.380 | than me because you're doing long form conversations with people and the prep is a little bit different.

01:31:28.860 | One of the things in my space, because I'm reacting mostly to what's going on in the

01:31:32.380 | news and then also picking topics to dive into it a little bit more deeply, is I have

01:31:36.340 | very little control over the news cycle.

01:31:38.580 | And there is a metametric or a macro metric that affects me that will quadruple my audience

01:31:45.820 | and then take 75% of it away, which is the seasonality of election cycles.

01:31:51.420 | And the first few election cycles, it's very tough because I go, it's October.

01:31:56.220 | I'm like, at this rate, we're going to have 20 million subscribers by next, these numbers

01:32:01.100 | are unbelievable.

01:32:02.660 | And then it's January 30th, the inauguration's over.

01:32:07.060 | The debate is about the debt ceiling and nothing's going on.

01:32:10.620 | And I go, nobody's watching my content.

01:32:13.060 | I must've forgotten to upload a, something must be wrong.

01:32:17.380 | It's completely beyond my control.

01:32:19.540 | So I just, and I think part of what you're saying is I try to focus on the things I can

01:32:23.900 | control and understand those that I really have no control over whatsoever and try not

01:32:28.600 | to worry about them.

01:32:31.460 | - And try to do the things that make you happy at the end of the day.

01:32:35.740 | You mentioned RFK, the guy you met.

01:32:37.460 | What do you think about some of the other candidates outside of Joe Biden in the Democratic

01:32:42.940 | Party, RFK Jr.?

01:32:45.900 | What do you think of him as a candidate?

01:32:47.620 | - I've met him.

01:32:48.620 | We once had dinner and we have a number of friends in common, which is what makes this

01:32:51.980 | a little more awkward.

01:32:54.620 | But I think his campaign is basically sort of like a chaos candidacy to raise awareness

01:33:02.880 | and maybe raise money either for his book or his anti-vaccine organization, Children's

01:33:06.940 | Defense Fund, I believe it's called.

01:33:09.380 | I think there's some reporting that Steve Bannon really liked the idea of him running

01:33:13.860 | as a Democrat, again, to just generate chaos.

01:33:17.500 | I don't find it super interesting.

01:33:19.180 | I don't find it worthy of that much discussion.

01:33:23.500 | Smart guy, nice guy, has been doing anti-vaccine work that I don't find particularly inspiring.

01:33:30.660 | - So it's not just anti-COVID vaccine, it's more broader than that?

01:33:34.180 | - He's been in that space long before the COVID vaccines.

01:33:36.740 | Yeah, yeah.

01:33:37.740 | I don't find it super interesting.

01:33:38.740 | - Well, he also wrote the book, "The Real Anthony Fauci," is that the name of the book?

01:33:44.660 | - Did he write that?

01:33:45.660 | That's interesting.

01:33:46.660 | I don't know.

01:33:47.660 | I'm not sure about that.

01:33:48.660 | I'm aware of that book.

01:33:49.780 | I didn't know he wrote it.

01:33:50.780 | - I think I did, but it's been on my reading list to get...

01:33:55.260 | I've been trying to get a good balanced reading list about the COVID pandemic to understand

01:34:02.060 | what the hell happened.

01:34:04.020 | And anytime I start to try to go into that place, I'm exhausted by it.

01:34:09.820 | - Well, it's interesting to me that you wouldn't wait longer before delving into those books

01:34:14.820 | to have maybe a more clear hindsight.

01:34:18.460 | - But I think this is a pretty good time.

01:34:21.580 | You don't think so?

01:34:22.580 | This is...

01:34:24.540 | It depends on your goals.

01:34:26.220 | If you're thinking of it as a historical event, yes, you should probably wait longer.

01:34:31.180 | But if you're thinking about understanding what is broken about our system that we responded

01:34:38.440 | so poorly, that there was so much division, what is broken about our political system

01:34:43.860 | that it didn't unite us, it divided us, who's to blame?

01:34:49.340 | There's probably a lot of different narratives, but I feel like the more you learn about this,

01:34:53.940 | the better you can understand.

01:34:54.940 | I read, on just Vladimir Putin, I read like five biographies already, maybe more.

01:35:01.260 | Just it helps to really understand the people involved, the organizations involved.

01:35:06.620 | I don't know.

01:35:07.620 | Everything from the scientists to the political leaders.

01:35:11.500 | It felt like the blog posts and the tweets didn't quite capture this.

01:35:14.540 | - They didn't quite capture.

01:35:15.540 | No, one of the things, I read a ton.

01:35:17.420 | I don't read any modern political books, so I don't read the memoirs of elected officials.

01:35:24.140 | I don't read any, I just feel like I get enough of it in my job.

01:35:27.580 | So my reading list is just other things.

01:35:30.340 | It's history, it's narrative nonfiction, economics, et cetera.

01:35:34.780 | And that's my bias because I'm so overloaded with a lot of the stuff you're talking about.

01:35:38.460 | I haven't read any of Obama's books.

01:35:40.580 | I didn't read John Bolton's book.

01:35:42.580 | I don't read any of that stuff, although I'm sure there is value to be gleaned from it.

01:35:50.660 | - What about the other candidate that, according to the subreddit, and as you mentioned, you've

01:35:54.820 | criticized it a little bit, Marianne Williamson.

01:35:59.060 | Do you think, what are the pros and cons of her as a candidate?

01:36:03.700 | - This is another area where many in my audience really are angry with me.

01:36:08.580 | I don't find her candidacy super interesting.

01:36:10.940 | I'll tell you the pros and the cons as I see them.

01:36:13.700 | I do think that we have elected officials in the US, particularly presidents, from a

01:36:19.020 | really narrow range of backgrounds.

01:36:21.060 | So it's lawyers and sometimes business people, very, very often lawyers.

01:36:27.420 | I think we would benefit from a much greater diversity of backgrounds.

01:36:30.800 | And I once said, and that would include people from education, people from the science world,

01:36:36.580 | people with backgrounds maybe running nonprofits, et cetera.

01:36:38.780 | Now, Marianne Williamson did, I guess at one point, run some kind of small nonprofit.

01:36:42.300 | And some in my audience thought that credential alone would make me fall head over heels in

01:36:46.940 | love with the idea of a Marianne candidacy.

01:36:49.140 | I've interviewed for her.

01:36:51.020 | It's just not for me is the way I like to say it.

01:36:53.700 | It's the background of the woo woo type stuff is a bit off putting to me.

01:37:00.500 | I understand that someone with literal Christian Bible beliefs that also I don't like, maybe

01:37:07.100 | I'm more willing to accept as most of our presidents, of course, have had those views

01:37:12.620 | because they're otherwise more qualified.

01:37:15.700 | But some of the things that she says just strike me as, I just, I just don't know.

01:37:20.180 | I'll give you an example.

01:37:21.920 | When she was on with Russell Brand, she said, there's no such thing as clinical depression.

01:37:27.520 | It just means someone in a clinic told you you have depression.

01:37:31.980 | I don't believe that to be the case.

01:37:33.380 | I think we have an understanding there's two types of depression.

01:37:36.040 | There's like a genetic predisposition depression.

01:37:38.380 | There's like a acute, something's happening in my life.

01:37:41.460 | Temporary depression.

01:37:42.460 | Okay.

01:37:43.460 | And when I asked about it recently, she said, I didn't mean it.

01:37:46.900 | I was just trying to impress Russell Brand.

01:37:51.200 | I don't know if I'm more bothered by the things she first said or that by the fact that she

01:37:55.140 | wanted to impress Russell Brand, but it's just like, it's just really not for me.

01:37:59.500 | And I agree with her on, we need to take the climate more seriously.

01:38:03.960 | We need to expand access to hell.

01:38:05.820 | I'm with all of that stuff.

01:38:07.180 | Now I want to say one other thing about this.

01:38:10.240 | Anybody who wants to run should run.

01:38:12.340 | I am not suggesting there should be an uncontested primary for Joe Biden.

01:38:17.780 | Absolutely.

01:38:18.780 | So you think it should be contested?

01:38:20.420 | Well, what I mean by contested is, so there's two parts to what we mean by contested.

01:38:23.860 | Will the DNC organized debates and we'll get to that in a second, but should, should anybody

01:38:28.540 | who's on the left get out of the way because Joe Biden is president and he's running for

01:38:32.340 | reelection?

01:38:33.340 | Absolutely not.

01:38:34.420 | The question about should there be debates?

01:38:37.340 | I would like there to be debates.

01:38:39.520 | The DNC pretty clearly isn't going to organize them.

01:38:42.940 | I think if you did them, you would have to say at what polling level do you qualify?

01:38:48.700 | And I don't know exactly where you put that number, but I think it would be a great thing

01:38:51.940 | to put Joe Biden on a stage with if you can get what, 6%, 8%.

01:38:56.500 | I'm not really sure what the number would be.

01:38:58.200 | I'm totally all for that.

01:39:00.180 | Why is this set of candidates, at least from my perspective, so weak?

01:39:05.660 | Do you have, do you have an understanding?

01:39:07.140 | There's a lot of different answers to this.

01:39:10.440 | One aspect of this, which I think is more of a sociocultural thing, which I've recently

01:39:14.680 | read about to some degree is the job actually turns off the people who would be best at

01:39:20.800 | it because of what you need to do to become president.

01:39:23.880 | And it includes all but completely abandoning your existing day to day life job, which you

01:39:31.440 | may depend on and family to some degree.

01:39:35.360 | It's horribly negative as we already talked about.

01:39:39.800 | And at the end of all of that, you either lose and then have to rebuild and maybe you're

01:39:44.360 | not in a position to be able to do that or you win.

01:39:47.400 | And then now you've got four years of being one of the most hated people, no matter how

01:39:52.380 | good a job you do.

01:39:53.720 | So I think by its nature, it turns off a lot of people that would otherwise be good.

01:39:58.340 | I also think that there's a lot of posturing from within the parties about, well, you might

01:40:03.160 | be good, but it's not your time yet.

01:40:04.620 | So you should wait.

01:40:05.620 | And then let's talk about maybe a Senate seat here and there.

01:40:08.240 | So it's like, it's like a company essentially.

01:40:10.000 | And they're figuring out where they want to place people.

01:40:12.600 | I think all of these things make it so we end up with candidates.

01:40:16.220 | Most people aren't super thrilled with.

01:40:17.980 | So it's difficult for somebody who's young or an outsider to, uh, to quickly become a

01:40:24.560 | candidate.

01:40:25.560 | I think that that's true.

01:40:26.560 | And I think also in a lot of ways, it's just not, I mean, would you want to be president?

01:40:31.640 | No.

01:40:32.640 | I mean, I can't be, cause I wasn't born in the U S.

01:40:34.480 | So it's easy for me to say, but, um, if everyone says no, then we're get the people that we

01:40:40.320 | have.

01:40:41.320 | No, I understand.

01:40:42.400 | So I would love to help somehow.

01:40:44.680 | Sure.

01:40:45.680 | And I feel like there's not even a mechanism for helping except through the democratic,

01:40:50.360 | through the voting process, but I'm just annoyed how little technology there is in the whole

01:40:55.600 | process, how little innovation there is in the whole process.

01:40:59.840 | All of this.

01:41:00.840 | And the sad thing is this is written about a lot, which is there's this thing called

01:41:06.720 | political hobbyism.

01:41:09.000 | And I think there's a good chance that some of the people in my audience are political

01:41:14.020 | hobbyists in the sense that they follow this stuff as entertainment to some degree.

01:41:20.680 | And I've written a lot about how, uh, I've read a lot and talked a lot about how, okay,

01:41:26.280 | we vote every two years or every four years in our local elections, et cetera.

01:41:29.960 | And then we think about politics all the time.

01:41:32.280 | Uh, Neil Postman wrote about this in his book, amusing ourselves to death.

01:41:36.480 | But what are you actually going to do about the kids starving in this country and the

01:41:41.600 | nuclear buildup in that country?

01:41:43.400 | It's okay.

01:41:44.400 | If everybody refocused their attention on their immediate communities, and that could

01:41:48.160 | mean any number, it could mean the town or city you live in, or it might mean, um, an

01:41:52.320 | athletic club or whatever.

01:41:54.520 | If everybody, this time they spent on political hobbyism, they moved somewhere else, which

01:41:58.320 | might put me out of a job.

01:41:59.440 | That's okay.

01:42:00.440 | I'm willing to lose my job because I think it would be so beneficial.

01:42:03.080 | Then our communities would just be that much better because you can actually affect change

01:42:07.320 | in a much more tangible way locally, whether it's obvious people talk about potholes, but

01:42:11.200 | other things as well.

01:42:13.240 | Yeah.

01:42:14.920 | And I wish our system was more amenable to that kind of contribution.

01:42:18.800 | Hopefully through the digital space, it would be.

01:42:20.920 | Uh, let me ask you about on the Republican side, Ron DeSantis, what do you think of him

01:42:27.080 | as a candidate running against Donald Trump?

01:42:30.080 | I think in the couple of weeks before our discussion today, his campaign, which hasn't

01:42:36.480 | even started, has sort of started to implode.

01:42:40.520 | And this was something that I started thinking about in September, October.

01:42:45.360 | He really doesn't seem ready for prime time in the sense that just being confronted and

01:42:50.520 | confronted is not even the right word.

01:42:51.960 | Just being asked about some topics he didn't really seem to want to talk about.

01:42:57.960 | He responded in such a sort of disproportionate, unhinged way.

01:43:02.920 | During his recent trip to Asia, he was asked about why aren't you or why are you responding,

01:43:08.800 | but in this weird way to Trump's attacks on you.

01:43:12.000 | And he went into this weird bobblehead thing with a weird smile and something came out

01:43:16.640 | that didn't make any sense.

01:43:17.720 | And he sort of got mad at the reporter.

01:43:19.520 | And it was just like, if you can't handle that, you can't be on a debate stage with

01:43:23.800 | Donald Trump.

01:43:24.800 | And again, for all my criticisms of Trump, the guy gets you on a debate stage.

01:43:28.200 | He can make you look pretty silly.

01:43:30.480 | He was recently asked about his role at Guantanamo Bay when he was an officer in, I forget which

01:43:37.200 | branch of the armed forces.

01:43:39.200 | And he just sort of attacked the journalist asking the question and it just looked very

01:43:44.200 | bad.

01:43:45.580 | And there are increasingly big Republican donors who are not fans of Trump and were

01:43:49.040 | sort of hoping to put their eggs in the Rhonda Santas basket who are saying, this guy just

01:43:52.680 | doesn't have what it takes.

01:43:53.680 | I don't think he can do it.

01:43:54.880 | So I don't know if DeSantis will be able to get away once you're polling 20 something

01:43:59.520 | like he is and you haven't even announced it's very attractive.

01:44:03.320 | And he probably to some degree is thinking, if I wait till 2028 I might not have this

01:44:08.120 | opportunity again.

01:44:09.840 | But Trump's polling 52 53 which means even if DeSantis gets all of the current non Trump

01:44:15.680 | vote, he has to figure out how to take something more from Trump.

01:44:19.520 | I just don't know how he does it.

01:44:21.640 | First of all, the implosion aspect, that's part of the process, isn't it?

01:44:24.640 | You kind of implode a bunch of times.

01:44:29.400 | And then rebuild yourself.

01:44:30.400 | And rebuild and because the new cycle kind of forgets.

01:44:33.440 | It's possible.

01:44:34.480 | The problem is if the first debate is in August, so that's only a few months away and the decision

01:44:41.280 | is going to have to be made pretty soon.

01:44:44.000 | And unless he can get a new momentum going, uh, I just don't know how he gets what he

01:44:49.640 | needs in order to really have a shot.

01:44:51.780 | So would anyone else run against Donald Trump?

01:44:54.080 | It's very tough right now.

01:44:55.080 | I mean, there are other people running.

01:44:56.400 | There's this guy, Vivek Ramaswamy, who's running a Nikki Haley is running her campaign basically

01:45:01.760 | dead on arrival.

01:45:03.200 | Um, Trump actually does better in polls.

01:45:05.620 | The more people run when, when it's just him and DeSantis, that's the best scenario for

01:45:10.160 | DeSantis.

01:45:11.240 | It's not great for DeSantis, but it's, it's certainly better.

01:45:15.000 | Um, but I think the difficulty is this is a question for Republicans to figure out the

01:45:20.880 | people who rightly recognized in 2016 that this guy is not good for their party.

01:45:25.800 | Um, still believe this guy is not good for their party, but many of them recognize that

01:45:30.800 | most of the voters are still behind him.

01:45:34.360 | You can always say it's early.

01:45:36.720 | His polling doesn't really mean anything.

01:45:38.320 | Anything could happen.

01:45:39.320 | Anything major would have to happen for Trump to lose that lead.

01:45:42.400 | If he got more, uh, if he was arrested two more times and had more indictments and it

01:45:46.480 | just became like this guy can't even campaign because he's so busy going from court to court,

01:45:51.440 | maybe that would make a difference.

01:45:52.720 | It's really tough to imagine.

01:45:55.520 | You said that there are three categories of people who vote Republican and uh, that Trump

01:45:59.880 | introduced the fourth one.

01:46:01.400 | Well, can you go through the four categories?

01:46:04.920 | Sure.

01:46:05.920 | So you've got like your pro business, low tax Republicans.

01:46:09.100 | These are mostly people like Mitt Romney.

01:46:11.520 | Mitt Romney has a bit of the social conservatism as well.

01:46:13.920 | He's Mormon and that's there.

01:46:15.120 | But Mitt Romney primarily, particularly as a Northeast sort of Republican.

01:46:18.080 | I mean, I know Utah, but governor of Massachusetts, he is like a low tax pro business type guy.

01:46:23.960 | Um, you've got your libertarian type Republicans who are primarily about freedom and liberty.

01:46:30.520 | Often they are actually more socially liberal where they go, I don't care about gay marriage,

01:46:34.240 | liberal, you know, I don't care so much about abortion.

01:46:37.360 | Um, and that overlapped a little bit with the tea party movement in 2010 although tea

01:46:42.740 | party did have a religious component, but sort of like the libertarian freedom minded

01:46:46.700 | folks and then the religious conservatives, people that support candidates like Josh Hawley

01:46:50.720 | or uh, Ted Cruz, et cetera, where their big thing are social issues.

01:46:56.180 | Often they actually want a Christianity being civil government.

01:47:00.940 | They don't want separation of church and state.

01:47:02.880 | Those are traditionally the three Republican groups.

01:47:05.460 | The one that Trump introduced was people who just didn't really pay attention to politics,

01:47:10.000 | but either followed celebrity or had grievances that they didn't yet have a scapegoat for.

01:47:16.140 | Um, and we're sort of right leaning culturally even though they didn't attribute that to

01:47:21.720 | Republicanism and Trump was able to bring them into politics often for the first time

01:47:27.020 | as voters.

01:47:28.120 | They could be part of any of those three groups if they get more into politics or kind of

01:47:33.680 | be their own thing.

01:47:34.880 | But they're more kind of like cult of personality.

01:47:37.940 | I'm here for Trump types.

01:47:39.400 | Did it have to do anything about the culture wars and the identity politics, all that kind

01:47:43.840 | of stuff?

01:47:44.840 | Yeah.

01:47:45.840 | I mean, so in 2016 when Trump mobilized them, those weren't really issues the way they are

01:47:50.080 | now.

01:47:51.080 | So I think at the top at that time it certainly was not a factor.

01:47:55.160 | What was the mobilizing issue?

01:47:56.600 | I know it was a just anti Hillary in 2016 there.

01:48:00.000 | He did a good job on anti Hillary, but a lot of it was identifying real economic problems,

01:48:06.680 | wage depression, lack of jobs in parts of the country, you know, Ohio and Indiana.

01:48:11.520 | Trump rightly identified like we have an issue here, we don't have enough entrepreneurship,

01:48:15.320 | et cetera.

01:48:16.320 | Um, but there was also a lot of scapegoating that was, you know, China and people coming

01:48:20.600 | through the U S Mexico border were popular scapegoats for a lot of those problems.

01:48:25.920 | This gets us kind of to populism.

01:48:29.040 | Populism is a rhetoric and populism as a rhetoric doesn't necessarily come with particular

01:48:35.680 | policies.

01:48:36.680 | You can be a populist, a user of populist rhetoric and propose solutions that would

01:48:43.000 | be more aligned with Bernie or Tucker Carlson.

01:48:46.800 | Populists will often identify the plight of the middle class.

01:48:50.400 | The difference would be Bernie will say, we've got to put some restrictions on how much a

01:48:56.080 | billionaires can make and we've got to reinvest in these social programs.

01:49:00.600 | Tucker will say BLM taking your house and a brown person from Mexico taking your job

01:49:07.520 | are what we need to deal with.

01:49:09.680 | So the, the populist rhetoric can lend its lend itself to very different policy and Trump

01:49:14.600 | used that very effectively in 2016.

01:49:17.120 | What do you think Hillary Clinton was hated as intensely as she was by a certain percent

01:49:23.000 | of the population?

01:49:24.440 | It feels like, um, that's the first election I witnessed where there's a lot of hate.

01:49:30.800 | Maybe I'm misremembering.

01:49:32.920 | I don't remember Obama.

01:49:36.080 | I don't remember the degree of hate.

01:49:37.800 | There was a conspiracy theory that he wasn't born in this country, but I don't remember

01:49:42.080 | hate towards Obama.

01:49:43.960 | Record death threats under Obama more than any previous president.

01:49:47.360 | Towards who?

01:49:48.360 | Towards him.

01:49:49.360 | Yeah.

01:49:50.360 | Do you mean more hate between voters or between voters?

01:49:53.280 | Between voters.

01:49:54.280 | But like, that's, I guess what I was speaking to, but that hate was directed towards, um,

01:50:01.120 | the narrative, the thread that connected all of that in 2016 was Hillary Clinton.

01:50:07.440 | Few different things.

01:50:09.080 | Um, and I'm not ranking these.

01:50:12.220 | These are just all things that come to mind.

01:50:14.920 | One is Hillary Clinton had been around in the political space for a long time from her

01:50:21.560 | time as first lady through a Senator, Secretary of State, et cetera.

01:50:26.560 | So I think that there was enough time for different groups to develop an antipathy towards

01:50:34.040 | her for different reasons.

01:50:35.440 | So time.

01:50:36.920 | Um, secondly, Trump's branding of her as crooked was very effective where there were so many

01:50:45.040 | people demanding that she be imprisoned.

01:50:48.020 | If you ask them what is the crime, they don't know, but she should definitely be locked

01:50:52.440 | up.

01:50:53.440 | That became a very big thing.

01:50:55.480 | The email story as it were, and, uh, James Comey doing a second public event about that

01:51:03.720 | investigation, even though there wasn't any actual news about it, just doing a second

01:51:06.740 | event about it at the last minute, I think hurt her and also generated some hate.

01:51:12.060 | And I don't find Hillary Clinton to be particularly likable, although I voted for her, I thought

01:51:16.240 | she was the better candidate.

01:51:18.280 | And I think that there are others who also didn't find her particularly likable that

01:51:23.720 | those are a lot of impediments to becoming president.

01:51:26.040 | I was trying to understand why there's so many conspiracy theories about Clinton's general

01:51:30.960 | Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton.

01:51:33.640 | And I, maybe I'm not researched well enough of the why of it.

01:51:39.920 | The why of it, actually the extent of the conspiracy theories, the sort of the, the

01:51:44.360 | conspiracy theories that they've killed a lot of people, this kind of stuff.

01:51:48.240 | It's hard for me to speak to them because I'm aware that they exist, but I'm not an

01:51:51.440 | expert in them because they seem so obviously baseless to the degree that I've researched

01:51:57.040 | them a little bit and then I move on.

01:51:58.840 | And, uh, you know, it's been years since I've looked at this stuff.

01:52:01.440 | I know there's the Seth Rich one and there's the Clinton body count one.

01:52:06.480 | I think there was one connected to Epstein if I recall correctly.

01:52:10.040 | There's all sorts of these different ones.

01:52:11.960 | Um, without speaking to any of them specifically because I'm not the expert on Clinton conspiracies,

01:52:17.000 | uh, it does seem as though this stuff for so long has generated an audience.

01:52:22.800 | I mean, I remember in the supermarket when Bill Clinton was president at the checkout

01:52:27.880 | seeing the tabloids and there were stuff about Hillary birthed an alien baby and you know,

01:52:32.680 | all the, it seems like it's been titillating to people for a very long time.

01:52:36.520 | Well, another question from Reddit, speaking of aliens, uh, I would be curious to hear

01:52:41.400 | David's views on conspiracies and conspiracy theories, the extent to which real conspiracies

01:52:47.280 | happen and why conspiracies that have little evidence behind them managed to be so compelling

01:52:53.960 | to people regardless.

01:52:55.440 | Also, please bring up aliens and UAPs.

01:52:58.480 | Okay, where do we start?

01:53:00.640 | The conspiracy.

01:53:01.640 | What, uh, so what in general as a person who, uh, thinks about politics, uh, thinks about

01:53:09.640 | this world, like where do conspiracy theories fit in for you?

01:53:13.800 | I think there have been conspiracies and by conspiracies I'm using a colloquial definition,

01:53:19.480 | which is basically, uh, individuals working together to, um, in a clandestine way, uh,

01:53:26.640 | impact or affect some kind of event or phenomenon.

01:53:30.840 | Uh, very, very broadly.

01:53:32.640 | I mean, certainly that those things have happened.

01:53:36.040 | Um, the, to pick, to jump around to some of the things that were in there.

01:53:40.440 | I think the reason that conspiracy theories are so compelling is that it's really tough

01:53:47.520 | for a lot of people to accept.

01:53:50.640 | There are random events, not predictable specifically at a stochastic level.

01:53:56.440 | We might be able to predict them, but specifically unpredictable, bad events in many ways.

01:54:02.920 | I could be the victim of one or you could, or my family could.

01:54:06.600 | That's really scary to a lot of people, understandably so.

01:54:09.740 | And for some people it's less scary and more soothing in a way to say there aren't really

01:54:15.760 | random events like this.

01:54:18.160 | Somebody planned it and if we had just known who planned it, it just could have been stopped

01:54:23.000 | because we would have known exactly when that's just a psychological level easier to accept

01:54:29.640 | for people.

01:54:30.860 | And I get that to some degree because listen, it's, it's not the most exciting thing that

01:54:36.900 | everything can just be going fine and something absolutely horrible happens and kills who

01:54:41.440 | knows some number of people or.

01:54:44.040 | So I think that's the biggest attractor to a lot of these conspiracy theories.

01:54:48.040 | It doesn't apply to all of them though.

01:54:49.440 | But yeah, but there's still kind of a basic understanding of human nature where people,

01:54:55.520 | some people are greedy and want power and are corrupted by power.

01:55:00.420 | So there's kind of these compelling narratives that stick that, I don't know, the vaccine

01:55:09.720 | is a, is a opportunity for a powerful billionaire to implant chips into you so he can control

01:55:16.120 | you further.

01:55:17.120 | - Right.

01:55:18.120 | - It doesn't seem, what do I want to say?

01:55:24.120 | It's like for some reason that doesn't seem as crazy as it should.

01:55:29.280 | (laughing)

01:55:30.280 | 'Cause you think like maybe Hollywood contributes to that.

01:55:33.240 | But you think, yeah, you could imagine an evil person, a person that wants more control,

01:55:39.160 | more power, and is also at the same time able to convince themselves, as history shows,

01:55:45.240 | that they actually have the best interests of the populace in mind, that they're trying

01:55:48.880 | to do good for the world.

01:55:51.040 | So they do evil while trying to do good.

01:55:53.240 | You can kind of imagine it.

01:55:55.040 | So it's like, why not?

01:55:57.400 | And you listen to people in power, authorities, they kind of look and sound shady, you know?

01:56:06.600 | Like the transparency, especially the older ones, I think younger folks are better at

01:56:12.680 | being like real and transparent and just like revealing their flaws and the basic humanity.

01:56:18.000 | But people that are a little bit older in the positions of power, they're more polished.

01:56:21.960 | They're more like, it feels like they're presenting a narrative where the truth is hidden in the

01:56:26.520 | shadows.

01:56:27.520 | So-

01:56:28.520 | I don't think there's anything wrong with suspecting maybe a public figure isn't giving

01:56:33.800 | me the full story.

01:56:34.800 | Yeah.

01:56:35.800 | Totally reasonable thing to question.

01:56:38.320 | I don't think there's anything wrong with exploring a lot of these different things.

01:56:43.800 | I think the problem becomes, and I know you've talked about this in so many different ways

01:56:48.240 | with other guests, the problem becomes when we lose a shared understanding of how we would

01:56:53.600 | assess whether any of these things are true and then both alleged evidence and an absence

01:57:01.200 | of evidence both become supportive of the conspiracy theory.

01:57:05.960 | Because if there's bad evidence, you manipulate it and say it's good evidence.

01:57:09.520 | If there's no evidence, you say the evidence was obviously hidden by the people who carried

01:57:13.280 | out the thing or whatever.

01:57:15.500 | So unless we can have a shared understanding of how we would determine what's true, these

01:57:19.400 | are common conversations often between atheists and religious folks.

01:57:23.800 | How can we deter, like is, is my faith in something or my desire for something to be

01:57:28.440 | true a good way to evaluate whether it is true?

01:57:30.960 | They're really similar questions.

01:57:32.480 | Well, let me ask you about Trump on that front, about the election, 2020 election, and maybe

01:57:38.960 | the better question is about January 6th.

01:57:40.920 | Do you think January 6th was a big deal?

01:57:44.040 | I do.

01:57:45.600 | How big of a deal compared to what?

01:57:49.000 | Uh, civil war.

01:57:50.000 | I think it was less of a big deal than the civil war.

01:57:53.440 | Okay.

01:57:54.440 | No, I mean, so you, well, it's a very interesting thing though, right?

01:57:57.080 | Because we have not only the, the event that's, that's clever actually.

01:58:00.840 | It's not only the event, but it's what led up to it and what has happened since and did

01:58:07.680 | it change what is considered on the table that citizens can, should or might do if they

01:58:17.360 | disagree with the results of an election.

01:58:20.220 | So I think that there are further reaching consequences than just was the six hour period

01:58:25.280 | on January 6th, a bigger or smaller deal than the civil war.

01:58:29.320 | And there's so much wrapped up into it.

01:58:32.360 | Um, many conspiracy theories flowed from January 6th as well.

01:58:37.160 | Uh, 60 minutes recently featured a guy named Ray Epps who was targeted by some on the right,

01:58:42.280 | um, claiming that he was an instigator or an agent of the FBI or something along those

01:58:46.520 | lines.

01:58:47.520 | Uh, there were people claiming that no real, it was like a no true Scotsman sort of thing.

01:58:52.760 | Like Trump supporters wouldn't riot.

01:58:55.260 | So by definition it must have been Antifa, uh, police let him in or police, you know,

01:59:01.120 | all these different things.

01:59:02.120 | I think it was a big deal in a lot of ways because it completely made us have to go back

01:59:05.840 | to the top to say, okay, what are the parameters of valid discussion and activism in the United

01:59:12.120 | States?

01:59:13.120 | But what aspect of the January 6th was bad for you?

01:59:18.880 | Well, I mean, if you're thinking of from a big philosophical political perspective, so

01:59:27.880 | presumably the number of people hurt and the number of people who died is not the only

01:59:35.040 | metric to consider here.

01:59:36.720 | Absolutely.

01:59:37.720 | I think the sum total of what it means about how the United States operates is what's most

01:59:45.480 | concerning and I'll kind of just like flesh it out a little bit.

01:59:48.520 | So summer of 2020 Trump's already saying they're going to cheat.

01:59:55.600 | Now the polling is close, but it shows that Biden's in a good position.

02:00:00.960 | People aren't happy with Trump.

02:00:02.880 | Any reasonable person would look and say it's going to be close, but Biden certainly wouldn't

02:00:07.520 | be a crazy thing.

02:00:08.520 | If Biden won, Trump's already saying they're going to cheat with mail in ballots or they're

02:00:12.400 | going to cheat with early voting or you're going to cheat with machines or we should

02:00:15.600 | do only in person or whatever else the case may be.

02:00:18.760 | We have the election.

02:00:20.640 | We knew in certain states how the vote count was going to go.

02:00:24.840 | Some states stop counting at 10 PM.

02:00:26.840 | Some states count all of the mail and stuff up front.

02:00:28.960 | Some don't.

02:00:30.320 | Everything was completely predictable.

02:00:33.120 | At 2 a.m. Trump comes out and says, I won.

02:00:36.080 | Okay.

02:00:37.080 | Where are you?

02:00:38.080 | Where are you getting that, sir?

02:00:39.080 | As he claims, people always refer to him.

02:00:40.800 | Where are you getting that?

02:00:42.440 | And with that statement, immediately we see that there is a large portion of this country

02:00:49.040 | that either is unable or unwilling to say, wait a second, the polling all said this was

02:00:54.920 | a real possibility.

02:00:57.120 | The counting schedules are all being adhered to all, but Trump won.

02:01:02.680 | That doesn't make any sense.

02:01:04.160 | That doesn't happen.

02:01:05.520 | It builds.

02:01:06.600 | People are donating millions to Trump for supposed audits, which nobody can define and

02:01:11.600 | lawsuits which go nowhere.

02:01:13.160 | And it builds and builds and builds.

02:01:14.880 | And we have a total separation from a factual reality.

02:01:17.880 | There's no reason to think by December 1st, right?

02:01:21.080 | Give three weeks to look through some of this stuff.

02:01:23.540 | By December 1st, there's no reasonable case to be made that Trump actually won.

02:01:28.220 | But it doesn't end there.

02:01:29.520 | It goes into maybe we can just like send different electors, even though Biden won Arizona.

02:01:35.800 | Let's just like send.

02:01:36.800 | I don't remember how many electors it is in Arizona.

02:01:38.840 | Let's just like send Republican electors to say we vote for Trump.

02:01:42.040 | But that's that's not democracy.

02:01:43.440 | That's not the way the system works.

02:01:45.440 | Let's make sure we're ready, ready for what exactly.

02:01:49.280 | And then it builds to maybe Mike Pence can just like prevent Biden from being president

02:01:55.280 | or maybe we can just interfere in this other way.

02:01:58.320 | And then it gets to let's break into the Capitol.

02:02:02.560 | It's the height of saying we no longer comport ourselves attached to what is a verifiable

02:02:10.960 | factual reality.

02:02:13.000 | And when we no longer do that, we're also willing to commit crimes, property crimes,

02:02:20.000 | violent crimes, different degrees in order to try to have something other than democracy.

02:02:25.840 | It wouldn't be democracy if any of those things had happened.

02:02:29.840 | Yeah, I think it's not the height of it.

02:02:32.480 | I think there's still a case to be made that that did not leave the realm of protest versus

02:02:42.240 | a violation of the principles of democracy.

02:02:45.040 | So to me, the height of what could happen on January 6th is if Donald Trump was much

02:02:51.960 | better executive, he could take control of the military.

02:02:55.800 | If it had succeeded.

02:02:56.800 | No, not even succeeded.

02:02:59.200 | The attempt would have been more empowered.

02:03:03.840 | I understand.

02:03:04.840 | So like the way not to bring up Hitler, every other word, which is something your subreddit

02:03:09.800 | also told me not to do.

02:03:12.000 | It's kind of an important figure.

02:03:13.720 | It's interesting to study that moment in history because it reveals so much about human nature

02:03:17.800 | and that all of us are capable of good and evil.

02:03:20.200 | But thank you, dear subredditor or Redditor for your contribution to the conversation.

02:03:25.240 | I will keep bringing up Hitler and the Third Reich and I'll keep bringing up Stalin.

02:03:29.880 | There's so much to learn from that.

02:03:32.320 | Anyway, an effective practice of authoritarian could roll the tanks out into the city streets

02:03:42.160 | to establish order and in so doing, pause the process of democracy as opposed to a few

02:03:51.160 | protesters breaking in to a questionably protected building.

02:03:57.000 | I agree that what you're saying would be worse.

02:03:58.680 | I don't want to use it to minimize what the protesters were intent on doing.

02:04:03.000 | They failed, fortunately.

02:04:04.000 | I was both to you.

02:04:05.120 | The intention was there.

02:04:06.120 | Well, the intention was Trump should remain president.

02:04:10.280 | That's the intention.

02:04:11.280 | And to what length they would have been willing to go if by the evening, early evening, they,

02:04:17.320 | you know, were sort of like forced out.

02:04:18.520 | I don't know.

02:04:19.520 | I agree with you that Trump trying to use the military would absolutely be worse.

02:04:23.680 | You know, there's these reports that he tried to seize voting machines, which is kind of

02:04:26.920 | funny because it's like once you get the machine at Mar-a-Lago, what do you do with it?

02:04:30.600 | Exactly.

02:04:31.600 | I don't know.

02:04:32.600 | There's a like a comedic element to Trump sitting around with voting machines, but he

02:04:35.240 | did float trying to do some other things.

02:04:39.080 | I don't believe there's reporting that he actually tried to use the military.

02:04:43.880 | I wonder to what degree this opened the door to further things like this with other other

02:04:49.520 | candidates on, you know, even in the Democratic Party also.

02:04:55.240 | Do you think there'll be more and more questioning of the election results?

02:04:59.040 | There has been already.

02:05:00.200 | It's very clearly the playbook.

02:05:02.160 | Carrie Lake lost.

02:05:03.680 | She ran for governor in Arizona, 2022.

02:05:05.920 | She lost.

02:05:07.000 | What I mean by that is her opponent received more votes.

02:05:09.240 | It's like very clear what it means that she lost.

02:05:12.360 | She insists to this day that she won.

02:05:15.040 | To this day, she did the same grift Trump did about donate.

02:05:19.920 | We've got a case.

02:05:20.920 | We won in the case.

02:05:21.920 | You didn't win.

02:05:22.920 | They just set a court date like that's not what doesn't know what you know, lies upon

02:05:26.560 | grift upon lies.

02:05:28.080 | So they did it then.

02:05:30.440 | It is I it's extraordinarily saddening, but it seems like this is now going to be part

02:05:36.320 | of the playbook.

02:05:37.320 | Do you think people on the left will start doing it?

02:05:40.400 | I don't have a reason to believe that that is going to happen, but I'm not going to say

02:05:44.360 | it never could.

02:05:45.360 | Absolutely.

02:05:46.360 | It certainly could.

02:05:47.360 | People on the left could start using it as a tactic right now.

02:05:49.440 | There's not a sign that that's going to happen, but it's certainly good.

02:05:52.400 | My expectation is, and I'm not a betting man, but I would bet money if Joe Biden loses in

02:05:57.760 | November of 2024, he will say I lost.

02:06:01.720 | He will call the winner.

02:06:03.760 | He will concede and he will leave the White House in an orderly fashion.

02:06:07.700 | You don't think there'll be claims of a hacked election?

02:06:10.880 | The ability to hack elections is becoming, uh, more and more effective with the developments

02:06:17.900 | on the artificial intelligence side.

02:06:19.860 | The difficulty is you're basically saying, will something happen without me knowing anything

02:06:26.180 | about the election?

02:06:27.820 | Imagine there really was evidence of a hacked election.

02:06:30.280 | Then I would want those claims to be made.

02:06:32.660 | But the way elections have gone in the past, I don't expect that that's a claim that would

02:06:36.860 | be made.

02:06:37.860 | No.

02:06:38.860 | Speaking of evidence of things, uh, that were claimed, what do you think about the Hunter

02:06:44.240 | Biden laptop or as you tweeted the laptop from hell, the laptop from hell TM, right?

02:06:52.020 | Uh, to what degree was this, uh, laptop story important and to what degree was it not?

02:06:58.780 | At this point, I have said many times if there is any reason to believe that Hunter Biden,

02:07:07.340 | Joe Biden, Naomi Biden, Jill Biden, Hillary Obama, Doug M. If there's any evidence, any

02:07:15.540 | of them committed a crime, they should be investigated, they should be charged and they

02:07:21.240 | should be tried.

02:07:22.860 | Period.

02:07:24.260 | The Hunter Biden laptop thing has been floating around for so long and we still have zero

02:07:31.280 | actual, uh, pieces of evidence of any crime, particularly involving Joe Biden.

02:07:40.020 | There's the claim from some that references to the big guy are about Joe Biden getting

02:07:45.540 | 10% for some illicit.

02:07:47.540 | It's been years they've been saying this, that they've not been able to bring forward

02:07:50.940 | any evidence on it.

02:07:52.780 | So my, um, assessment of the Hunter Biden laptop is it seems to mostly be a story about

02:08:02.120 | nude images released without someone's consent, which is illegal in most states and violates

02:08:08.660 | Twitter's own policies.

02:08:10.800 | That's the main story to me.

02:08:12.740 | Beyond that, I don't know how many people have a copy of this hard drive at this point.

02:08:17.180 | Rudy had it.

02:08:18.180 | Tucker, do you remember when Tucker, this, this is, this is unbelievable.

02:08:22.340 | Tucker said that he mailed himself a copy, a USB stick and it got lost in the mail.

02:08:29.740 | You, you have the mother load proving the criminality of Joe and Hunter Biden and I

02:08:35.700 | don't, you just dropped it off with a stamp and it got lost in the mail.

02:08:38.380 | You don't have a backup copy.

02:08:39.380 | You don't.

02:08:40.380 | So I'm ready for the evidence to come forward.

02:08:43.060 | Hunter Biden has nothing to do with Joe Biden's administration, but as a person who, if he

02:08:47.740 | committed a crime, charge him, investigate him, whatever.

02:08:50.500 | But it's, it's getting, it's almost getting satirical the degree to which they're talking

02:08:54.180 | about the Hunter Biden laptop.

02:08:55.420 | Uh, what do you think about the, the social media aspect of this, that that story got

02:09:00.220 | censored and what do you think about censorship in general on social media, that that story

02:09:06.820 | during an important time in the electoral process got censored?

02:09:11.340 | So I, uh, as a matter of principle, I think we have to define what we mean by censorship,

02:09:17.720 | that I'm against censorship short of illegal content, I guess is the way I would put it.

02:09:22.660 | I do respect the company's right to have terms of service and to enforce them as long as

02:09:27.820 | they're not illegal.

02:09:29.060 | If Twitter were to say, we don't publish content from Jewish people.

02:09:32.140 | Okay, now we've got a problem on our hands.

02:09:35.100 | But um, what, what is dubious to me is the claim that had people been able to see Hunter

02:09:43.120 | Biden's genitals, they would have voted for Trump, which I know it's like, David, you're,

02:09:48.480 | you're making light of.

02:09:50.200 | And but at the end of the day, what exactly is the claim that if you had known more about

02:09:55.800 | Hunter Biden, I guess, allegedly hiring prostitutes and having a drug problem and seeing pictures,

02:10:02.000 | you wouldn't have voted for Joe Biden.

02:10:04.040 | I mean, I know me as a voter, I don't feel that way.

02:10:07.880 | I think, uh, it's less about the content of the story and about the actions of, uh, a

02:10:14.760 | social media company to control what you see and what you don't see.

02:10:19.680 | So you can imagine a social media company like Facebook and Twitter making the same

02:10:23.400 | kind of decision about our more impactful story than a few dick pics on a laptop.

02:10:29.280 | Well, I think if that happened, then my view might be different, right?

02:10:33.420 | But I do my, my general view though on the Hunter Biden story is had the articles not

02:10:38.580 | contained those images that were illegal in many states and violated Twitter's policies,

02:10:44.360 | I would say publish it.

02:10:46.220 | Absolutely.

02:10:47.220 | I don't think it would have had an impact, but I would be in favor of it being of the

02:10:50.540 | links being allowed a hundred percent.

02:10:52.900 | Okay.

02:10:53.900 | Uh, you mentioned Tucker.

02:10:54.900 | What do you, what do you think about talking and getting fired from Fox?

02:10:57.540 | Um, you're a media person that works independently.

02:11:01.620 | Yes.

02:11:02.620 | Um, Tucker was a media person who doesn't work independently.

02:11:06.380 | Right.

02:11:07.380 | Uh, yeah.

02:11:08.380 | What do you, what do you think about that particular situation?

02:11:12.020 | Is it representative of some big shift that's happening in mainstream media?

02:11:16.220 | What would the shift be?

02:11:18.940 | Uh, basically mainstream media freaking out because the funding is getting less and less

02:11:23.700 | and less and less, and there's going to give more power to individual commentators.

02:11:29.020 | Basically Tucker Carlson just starting a podcast.

02:11:32.100 | So YouTube channel, I think that's what he should do.

02:11:34.540 | I think that's the most profitable path rather than maybe going to work for Newsmax or whatever

02:11:39.140 | the case may be.

02:11:40.140 | But the firing fundamentally was not a politically oriented firing that suggests Fox news is

02:11:46.060 | changing its tune politically in any way.

02:11:48.220 | There's no evidence of that whatsoever.

02:11:50.100 | Um, Tucker Carlson basically became a legal problem for Fox news.

02:11:54.060 | There's really four points to it.

02:11:56.000 | One is the $787 and a half million settlement with dominion partially was because of the,

02:12:03.320 | um, claims that went out on Tucker Carlson's program.

02:12:06.960 | So to some degree Tucker's program was a prominent, uh, node of the problematic claims that became

02:12:15.000 | the subject of the lawsuit.

02:12:16.160 | That's number one.

02:12:17.160 | Number two, smartmatic, which is another voting machine company, still has a similarly sized

02:12:22.160 | lawsuit against Fox news based on the exact same sorts of claims.

02:12:25.640 | It may cost Fox news again.

02:12:27.220 | So this is now two problems that Tucker's a big contributor to.

02:12:30.540 | Number three, former Tucker staffer has brought a lawsuit and I don't remember the exact claims,

02:12:37.300 | but I know that there are claims of different types of discrimination.

02:12:41.080 | It seems like it has legs and that may be a third payout related to Tucker Carlson.

02:12:46.160 | And based on the 60 minutes piece from a few weeks ago, Ray Epps saying Tucker ruined his

02:12:50.400 | life by fomenting conspiracies about him around January 6th.

02:12:54.480 | That's ripe for another lawsuit.

02:12:56.400 | So to me, Tucker's firing was a risk mitigation strategy, uh, of many that will be employed

02:13:04.320 | as, as these lawsuits come forward.

02:13:06.160 | There's no evidence that it's because Fox didn't like, and what we mean by that, who

02:13:11.000 | are we talking about?

02:13:12.000 | Rupert Murdoch doesn't like, or the PR, I don't know, but I don't have any reason to

02:13:15.480 | believe it's because Tucker's ideas were no longer welcome on Fox.

02:13:19.320 | Certainly the audience liked them.

02:13:20.320 | So interesting.

02:13:21.320 | It's not about, it's not even about the ratings.

02:13:23.720 | It's about just the legal costs.

02:13:27.240 | Fox is interesting.

02:13:28.240 | The ratings question is interesting because Fox, unlike most other or every other cable

02:13:33.080 | news channel, um, they negotiate a fee from every cable subscriber.

02:13:38.480 | If you have Fox news as a channel, even if you don't watch it, Fox gets a little bit

02:13:41.760 | of money.

02:13:42.760 | They are dramatically less dependent on ad revenue than CNN and MSNBC.

02:13:47.800 | So the ratings question is an interesting one, but Fox's position is different on that.

02:13:52.400 | Another question from Reddit, "Both sides are the same" is a meme notion that has spread

02:14:00.840 | far and wide in American political discourse on the internet.

02:14:04.320 | To what extent do you agree or disagree with this notion and why do you think it is so

02:14:08.600 | popular?

02:14:09.600 | Now, this Reddit comment also says that podcasts like Russell Brand and Joe Rogan or the legendary

02:14:15.580 | comic George Carlin are examples of big proponents of this notion, all of which I kind of disagree

02:14:21.960 | with.

02:14:22.960 | Uh, Russell Brand, Joe Rogan, and George Carlin claim that both sides are the same and use

02:14:31.000 | that, you know, all politicians are crooked and suck and this kind of thing.

02:14:35.000 | I don't know if they're, I don't know if that's true.

02:14:38.760 | Maybe George Carlin.

02:14:40.000 | Anyway, leave that aside.

02:14:42.600 | To what degree do you think, uh, do you agree with this notion that both sides are the same?

02:14:47.840 | Left and right, the crooked corrupt politicians, they do what politicians do.

02:14:53.360 | I don't agree that it's the same.

02:14:54.480 | I think there are different factions that like to say that, um, for different reasons.

02:15:01.280 | There are some individuals who want to present themselves as kind of being above the fray

02:15:06.520 | of partisan politics.

02:15:07.840 | And so it's, I call it enlightened centrism.

02:15:10.680 | Um, do you mean that positively or negatively?

02:15:13.800 | No, I mean it negatively.

02:15:14.800 | Yeah.

02:15:15.800 | It's, it's a bit of a pejorative.

02:15:16.800 | I mean, I think that I am not going to fall for being a Democrat or a Republican.

02:15:22.840 | I can see that these are just two sides of the same coin equally bad lying to every,

02:15:29.120 | okay, so that's one.

02:15:30.720 | It's sort of like it's popular at dinner parties in some circles to go, but with all these

02:15:35.200 | politicians, you know, left and right.

02:15:37.120 | So that's one side of it.

02:15:38.800 | The other side of it is that it's often used when, when your side has really stepped in

02:15:45.960 | it.

02:15:47.280 | It's a popular way to acknowledge that your side has done something wrong, but while framing

02:15:55.200 | it as it's not uniquely wrong and it's not worse than what anybody else does.

02:15:59.600 | And I find that it's one of the lamest and most kind of cringe inducing things to hear

02:16:05.960 | because of the what comes next.

02:16:09.440 | And usually what comes next is not a good, accurate criticism of something that took

02:16:15.520 | place and a discussion of how to solve a real problem that we have.

02:16:19.160 | I find that a conversation Stifler, it also is used to kind of suppress voter turnout.

02:16:24.720 | Not actively.

02:16:25.720 | It's not that the people who say that go around saying don't vote.

02:16:28.440 | But the idea of course is the more people that believe that it doesn't really make a

02:16:32.240 | difference who you vote for.

02:16:34.200 | It's going to suppress voter turnout.

02:16:35.800 | And I want voter turnout to be as high as possible, not as low as possible.

02:16:38.920 | So I also dislike it for that reason.

02:16:41.480 | So is it possible to say that one side is worse than the other in, in modern current

02:16:46.200 | political climate?

02:16:47.760 | Listen, I'm a person on the left.

02:16:50.860 | I'm not pretending to come here as, as, and not knowing that my view is biased because

02:16:56.200 | I'm a person of the left.

02:16:57.200 | If you ask Ben Shapiro, he'll tell you something different.

02:16:59.600 | I think in 2023 sum total the influence of the American right wing, if the American right

02:17:07.000 | wing were to get everything it wants, it would be a horrifying reality.

02:17:12.840 | If the left were to get everything it wants, we'd have to figure out a few things, including

02:17:18.200 | exactly how we pay for certain programs, but they're mostly noble goals.

02:17:24.360 | And I believe that they are more supportive of an individual self determining what they

02:17:30.160 | want to do in life and how they want to live and is more in line with the idea of freedom

02:17:34.800 | and liberty than what the right is currently proposing.

02:17:38.040 | That's my view.

02:17:39.780 | And of course people will disagree with me all day.

02:17:42.440 | Now we get to freedom and liberty the way that the right wants to do it.

02:17:45.120 | Okay, well we can have that conversation.

02:17:47.080 | So I think you've implied in your answer, it was kind of focused on policy.

02:17:54.920 | It felt like it was focused on policy.

02:17:57.280 | There's other stuff that people worry about.

02:17:59.200 | Sure.

02:18:00.200 | Particularly with the left, what may be termed the woke mind virus.

02:18:06.040 | Where have I heard, who's using that term a lot now?

02:18:09.680 | I'm trying to think.

02:18:10.680 | I'm not sure.

02:18:11.680 | Not sure.

02:18:12.680 | Not sure where it comes up.

02:18:15.120 | But the cultural aspect of this.

02:18:17.360 | Sure.

02:18:18.360 | That if you give a lot of power to people on the left, as you gave as an example, there

02:18:25.080 | would be a lot of censorship and suppression of speech and a kind of dividing up of a society

02:18:33.160 | of who is allowed to, basically a reallocation of resources not based on merit, but based

02:18:40.120 | on some kind of high ethical notions of what is right.

02:18:44.200 | And only a very small percent of the population gets to decide what is fair, what is right.

02:18:50.520 | Which is, you know.

02:18:52.500 | We already have a small portion of the population deciding fair.

02:18:55.720 | Okay.

02:18:56.720 | Yes.

02:18:57.720 | But I don't know how many different ways I can say kind of a negative characterization

02:19:02.600 | of folks on the left when we're now comparing it.

02:19:06.520 | Just as to play devil's advocate.

02:19:07.920 | Sure.

02:19:08.920 | And that's something that you worry about.

02:19:10.520 | So setting policies aside, wokeism.

02:19:14.320 | Yes.

02:19:15.320 | How big of a problem is it?

02:19:16.600 | This is a great conversation.

02:19:18.040 | So let's, two sides of it.

02:19:20.400 | Okay.

02:19:21.400 | We have new polling that seems to suggest so-called wokeism is kind of more popular

02:19:27.020 | in the United States than anti-wokeism.

02:19:29.680 | And I'll tell you what I mean by that.

02:19:31.520 | This is the less interesting part.

02:19:32.720 | We'll go to the more interesting part second.

02:19:35.840 | Sometimes what people mean by wokeism is an overreaction to a perceived injustice that

02:19:44.160 | goes beyond what would be fair and equitable.

02:19:48.600 | There was this really interesting poll and it asked questions like, for example, do you

02:19:52.240 | believe society has gone too far, not far enough, or just about the right amount in

02:19:59.080 | dealing with issues affecting the trans community?

02:20:03.720 | The woke position, which is society hasn't gone far enough, was far more popular than

02:20:09.960 | we've gone too far.

02:20:11.440 | Now the right wing media narrative is we've gone way too far.

02:20:14.440 | This is out of control.

02:20:16.620 | And there are lots of other similar answers.

02:20:18.280 | It's not a huge margin.

02:20:19.360 | A lot of these are like 58 to 42, 60 to 40.

02:20:23.140 | It's not like 90 to 10, but by a small margin, the so-called woke perspective of we actually

02:20:28.880 | haven't yet done enough to fix some of these issues is a little bit more popular.

02:20:34.440 | So if we went back to DeSantis, this is part of why I think DeSantis is anti-woke agenda

02:20:39.800 | may just be a political misstep.

02:20:41.800 | That's really interesting result.

02:20:43.120 | I wonder how the questions are framed, but it's still interesting nevertheless, no matter

02:20:49.320 | what to hear that people are majority of people in America are woke and not in the negative

02:20:58.460 | sense of the word.

02:20:59.560 | The poll didn't use the term woke, right?

02:21:01.360 | Right.

02:21:02.360 | So this is a critical thing.

02:21:03.360 | Let's use the term woke positively.

02:21:04.360 | The term has kind of been perverted.

02:21:08.440 | Four years ago when the term was started to be used, I would have said, oh yeah, woke

02:21:12.200 | just means like I have become aware of problems that are bigger than any one person can fix

02:21:19.740 | for themselves that relate to the system.

02:21:23.160 | I think that's what, and we might disagree on which problems fall into that category,

02:21:26.960 | but like it was kind of benign.

02:21:28.320 | I think now it just means like outrageously left wing, maybe even with socialist or Marxist

02:21:36.160 | undertones.

02:21:37.160 | It's become a pejorative at this point.

02:21:38.560 | But also like bullies, like people-

02:21:40.760 | Bullies, sure.

02:21:41.760 | Censors.

02:21:42.760 | Yeah, but people that go around calling others racist, sometimes, oftentimes without any

02:21:50.880 | proof of that or justification.

02:21:53.200 | Fair.

02:21:54.200 | And that's a few folks on Twitter you're saying, like the polling is starting to show that

02:22:00.200 | like, no, they're still, most of the Americans still care about these issues and want to

02:22:07.400 | improve and want to make progress.

02:22:08.880 | I think that's the case and they want to do it in a genuine way that doesn't suppress

02:22:12.120 | or oppress anybody.

02:22:13.280 | But now let me get to like, to what degree do I think that actual, when it goes too far

02:22:18.120 | is a problem?

02:22:19.480 | It absolutely exists.

02:22:21.480 | We can find instances of where this exists on the left.

02:22:24.880 | I've been told many times that as a Jewish Argentinian immigrant to the United States,

02:22:32.820 | I actually don't qualify as oppressed enough because Jews are privileged now in the U.S.

02:22:42.200 | and my family had just enough money to leave Argentina.

02:22:45.640 | So there's this kind of like oppression Olympics thing where I've been told you don't get to

02:22:50.000 | comment for example, like a topic in the Latino community now is, are you familiar with Latin

02:22:56.440 | X?

02:22:57.440 | Okay.

02:22:58.440 | In Spanish there's an analogous movement where words by their nature sort of like have a

02:23:05.200 | gender.

02:23:06.400 | So like the word for friend is amigo, but if it's a woman, you would say Amiga.

02:23:14.200 | So right from there you can tell the gender that we're talking about.

02:23:16.940 | And if it's a mixed group, you say amigos, it's the male with an S, but it could include

02:23:23.080 | both.

02:23:24.080 | There's a movement now which wants to do away with that and put the letter Ian.

02:23:27.280 | It's a new word.

02:23:28.280 | Okay.

02:23:29.280 | It's a gender neutral word.

02:23:30.840 | Amigas, totally new.

02:23:33.440 | I don't like that.

02:23:35.000 | And I don't know anyone, no one in my family uses it.

02:23:37.720 | And I think it's kind of like a strange imposition from someone kind of with, with a solution

02:23:42.600 | in search of a problem.

02:23:44.160 | I've been told you moved to the U S long ago and like your English is good and like you

02:23:48.380 | look wide and said like you don't get to weigh in on that.

02:23:51.900 | That I think is an example, if I understand correctly, of the type of thing you're talking

02:23:56.100 | about.

02:23:57.100 | I'm, I'm kind of being bullied.

02:23:58.100 | I'm fine.

02:23:59.100 | I'm surviving fine, but I'm being bullied over it and disqualified and saying you don't get

02:24:02.360 | to speak on this issue.

02:24:03.820 | All of those example, all of that stuff I am completely against.

02:24:08.560 | And I tell people on the left, we're actually hurting our own movement with this stuff.

02:24:12.460 | I just don't think it's as big as some others believe.

02:24:16.940 | You don't think it's an existential threat to our civilization in the West to what?

02:24:21.180 | No, I don't.

02:24:22.180 | And, and I mean, look, we've got a Biden administration.

02:24:24.620 | I see Biden as center left.

02:24:27.140 | Those who see Biden as extreme far left, this stuff has played almost no role whatsoever

02:24:32.700 | in the first two plus years of his administration.

02:24:35.100 | What does people that see him far left as far left?

02:24:38.360 | There's people on the right who, I mean, Trump says Biden's a Marxist socialist communist.

02:24:44.360 | I haven't heard that because I don't think that would stick very much.

02:24:48.440 | I think that every rally, which I love how jealous that you don't watch these things.

02:24:54.240 | It's like how deeply researched you are in Trump.

02:24:57.160 | I can only imagine how good your Trump impression is at this point.

02:25:00.080 | It's not very, sadly, it's not, it's not.

02:25:01.880 | All right.

02:25:02.880 | No, but, and I'll say one other thing on that, you know, take trans because trans, just to

02:25:06.600 | talk about it a little bit, we haven't dealt with it much.

02:25:09.460 | The trans issue has become huge, I believe because the right is obsessed with it.

02:25:13.720 | The right is very much not concerned with gay men anymore.

02:25:16.520 | It used to be that gay men is like, Oh, we have to stop gay men from adopting and unnatural

02:25:20.600 | and pedophiles.

02:25:21.900 | Now it's trans it's drag shows, et cetera.

02:25:25.300 | I do think that there is a fair question to say, how do we deal with trans women in a

02:25:34.200 | very small short list of sports?

02:25:37.660 | That's real.

02:25:38.660 | Okay.

02:25:39.660 | My view though, is I go, okay, we have all issues.

02:25:43.760 | We have issues related to gender and sexual orientation.

02:25:47.760 | We have issues related to trans within that we have specifically sports.

02:25:53.440 | You can eliminate from that a trans men.

02:25:57.120 | Nobody's worried, right?

02:25:58.440 | About women, biological women who are trans.

02:26:02.040 | And then when you say it's only in certain sports that it matters, Hey, I'm right there.

02:26:06.760 | I think it's a complicated question.

02:26:08.160 | I don't know how we deal with it.

02:26:09.800 | I would ask leagues that have experienced with this already and whatever.

02:26:14.780 | The problem I have is pretending that the, the, uh, Vanguard of left-wing politics right

02:26:20.940 | now is trying to force trans women into sports.

02:26:26.180 | It's like, it's just not the big issue that the right is reacting as if it were, but perhaps

02:26:33.100 | because of the right, it's forcing the left, uh, to, to continue discussing it.

02:26:40.060 | I mean, I, I feel like it, uh, even in the institutions, even at universities, it feels

02:26:45.240 | like these ideas of diversity, inclusion, and equity are taking some of the air out

02:26:50.540 | of the room of, um, what a university should also care about, which is, uh, merit.

02:26:59.020 | And it feels like reprioritization is going a little too far the other way.

02:27:05.700 | Meaning, uh, prioritizing this kind of amorphous concept of diversity is moving away, is giving

02:27:13.220 | power to people that don't care about merit.

02:27:15.860 | And I just want to bully people with a big stick that says racism or sexism or, um, anti-diversity.

02:27:26.300 | And it, it, it kind of suffocates the people that, uh, care about merit, about meritocracy,

02:27:34.900 | about inspiring people from all kinds of backgrounds to succeed.

02:27:38.420 | And it's just, you kind of observe that.

02:27:40.460 | I'm sure that happens in all kinds of institutions.

02:27:43.020 | And the concern, I think the people that are concerned about wokeism are concerned about

02:27:47.780 | at scale, what impact does that have on a society when there's so much conversation

02:27:52.380 | about racism and a decre, a pressure not to talk about merit?

02:27:58.620 | Like who's the actual good person in the room?

02:28:01.740 | The best person in the room.

02:28:03.100 | Generically, that's a concern to me.

02:28:05.180 | The degree to which it's happening at different institutions, I think is worthy of exploration.

02:28:11.380 | I know people who work in academia that are getting out of academia because they don't

02:28:16.580 | like the environment on their campuses for exactly the reason you're saying.

02:28:19.660 | So it exists.

02:28:20.780 | There's no question about it.

02:28:21.820 | I also think that the idea of a perfect meritocracy is, is maybe not necessarily the goal in the

02:28:27.580 | sense that, um, when you talk about perfect meritocracy, someone wrote a book about this

02:28:34.340 | who I interviewed about a year and a half ago and whose name escapes me.

02:28:37.900 | There are problems with a perfect meritocracy.

02:28:39.700 | I think what we want to do is generate roughly equal, um, uh, opportunity for people understanding

02:28:49.540 | that there is going to be an outcome on a gradient or a bell curve, allowing people,

02:28:55.580 | generally speaking, to determine the path that they want to take and giving them if

02:28:59.940 | it's possible, the ability to, uh, pursue that without suppressing, limiting.

02:29:05.260 | I mean, this is like relatively uncontroversial stuff among, I would argue 95% of the left

02:29:12.020 | with the caveats of what you're talking about, which I agree exist.

02:29:15.060 | It would be nice to know the actual data.

02:29:17.340 | Sometimes people blow stuff out of proportion.

02:29:19.620 | What is, it's hard, it's hard to measure how much self-censorship happens at university

02:29:24.780 | campuses.

02:29:25.780 | It's hard.

02:29:26.780 | That's true.

02:29:27.780 | I think also it's sort of like the, the pit bull bite stories thing where when a pit bull

02:29:31.940 | bites a person, it's more likely to be reported on because it fits a certain narrative.

02:29:38.100 | And there are right wing publications that are very interested in making this seem as

02:29:44.040 | if it is an epidemic.

02:29:45.700 | I'm the first to say it is happening to a degree.

02:29:49.540 | I don't know the degree that it's happening to.

02:29:51.300 | I know a lot of people in academia, only a couple of them say that it's an issue.

02:29:57.340 | Would they say it though if they believed it?

02:29:59.140 | I think they would say it to me, these are just personal contacts.

02:30:02.660 | It's not like I'm going to go blabbing.

02:30:03.940 | To push back, I kind of agree with you, but at the same time, most, I mean, I'm deeply

02:30:10.940 | connected in academia, I have a huge number of colleagues.

02:30:14.580 | Most people self-censor by not thinking about it at all.

02:30:19.260 | They're like, screw it.

02:30:20.780 | That's deeper.

02:30:21.780 | Whatever.

02:30:22.780 | I'm just going to focus on the thing I love doing, which is the work.

02:30:25.900 | And they don't think about, they basically remove themselves from politics and social

02:30:32.740 | issues and they just kind of say, I'm going to do my engineering, I'm going to do my mathematics.

02:30:37.780 | The problem with that is it's kind of, you can't go anywhere further to figure it out.

02:30:41.580 | It's sort of like, there's this funny clip where Jordan Peterson says, even atheists

02:30:45.700 | are actually religious, they just don't know it.

02:30:47.860 | And it's like, it's hard to test that.

02:30:49.420 | I don't know.

02:30:50.420 | Okay.

02:30:51.420 | I mean, I don't, but it's a fair point.

02:30:52.940 | I mean, there may be some people, if it has become so toxic for some people, they may

02:30:57.300 | have repressed it way down into their subconscious, but I don't know how we would know that.

02:31:01.620 | But you, you, you know, symptoms of it because when certain people speak up kind of lightly

02:31:08.660 | and then a 19 year old or a 20 year old responds and is outraged.

02:31:14.260 | The fact that the administration listens to that 19 and 20 year old and then reprimands

02:31:20.140 | whoever spoke up a little bit.

02:31:22.660 | That's a really dangerous sign to me.

02:31:25.460 | And I don't really care about these.

02:31:26.940 | So I'm more with you.

02:31:28.340 | I don't think it's a big issue, but then I notice it.

02:31:31.300 | I wonder, wait a minute, would this kind of environment allow a young Noam Chomsky to

02:31:36.140 | be around?

02:31:37.420 | Would this environment allow like, I don't know, like what tenure was designed for, which

02:31:43.860 | is to have controversial thinkers and not kind of weird controversial things, but really

02:31:50.140 | people that challenge things that should be challenged.

02:31:53.500 | Yeah.

02:31:54.500 | I sympathize with that significantly.

02:31:56.420 | I always try to look at specific examples and sometimes I'll look at people, I'll ask

02:32:02.180 | for them and people will send me five.

02:32:04.220 | And one of them is a legit bonafide example of what we're talking about.

02:32:07.860 | And four are kind of like, eh, there was a complaint and it was investigated, but the

02:32:12.740 | teacher's tenure was never in jeopardy.

02:32:14.900 | And I don't know that I chalk this up to a big woke event.

02:32:19.260 | What do you think the kind of apparatus of the four year degree in college is going to

02:32:23.300 | look like in 20 years?

02:32:25.220 | Oh, that's, I mean, we're like day by day that seems to be changing with GPT.

02:32:31.460 | I don't know if you've gotten a chance to interact with chat GPT.

02:32:34.340 | Absolutely.

02:32:35.340 | My entire show now is written by chat GPT.

02:32:37.380 | I mean, there's a, that's partially a joke.

02:32:43.460 | It is only because it stopped looking at the internet in 2021.

02:32:47.240 | If it was current, I could completely just tune it out.

02:32:49.460 | No, I'm kidding, but it's a fascinating tool.

02:32:51.700 | And it's changing the nature of how we do homework assignments.

02:32:55.980 | It's changing the nature of how we learn, how we look up new information, how we explore

02:33:00.700 | information, how we care about things we're interested in.

02:33:02.980 | I think it, I don't think we'll have value for university degree in 20 years the way

02:33:11.740 | we do now.

02:33:12.740 | I just think it changes everything.

02:33:14.380 | I think language models, Google search has already, and Wikipedia has already transformed,

02:33:22.460 | I would say our civilization, but it's, there was still a value for basic education.

02:33:28.360 | I don't, I think that starts to dissipate with chat GPT.

02:33:32.800 | So I don't, I don't know.

02:33:35.240 | I really, I really don't think there's a university the way we think of a university in 20, 23

02:33:40.380 | years.

02:33:41.380 | And I have a personal interest in it in that my daughter is 10 months old and I'm doing

02:33:45.620 | the five 29 account.

02:33:46.840 | I'm going through the motions as if, but I also recognize, you know, if she went to the

02:33:52.840 | schools I went to just with the rate of tuition increase, you're talking 200 K a year by the

02:33:59.380 | time she's 18.

02:34:01.460 | And what happens with wages relative to that?

02:34:03.700 | This is like separate from the technological thing.

02:34:07.280 | And in my mind I'm thinking, is this going to continue being the right path?

02:34:12.680 | What I would love to see is so many people that I interact with just by virtue of what

02:34:17.600 | I do have no foundation in critical thinking, epistemology, philosophy, media literacy.

02:34:24.200 | And if there were some way to make that the core of some basic education that everybody's

02:34:30.960 | receiving, which goes beyond, you know, chat GPT can do so many things, but I've not yet

02:34:38.260 | seen good examples of how it can teach you to think.

02:34:41.400 | Maybe you have a different view on how chat GPT can teach a user to think, but those skills

02:34:47.940 | seem to be so lacking.

02:34:49.520 | And so many of the people I interact with, if there's any positive change to come from

02:34:53.120 | a changing dynamic with higher education, I wish it would be to go in that direction.

02:34:58.240 | - Well no, chat GPT is actually much better at helping me think than any educator, even

02:35:04.680 | books that I've encountered, because it's very good at presenting the full picture,

02:35:09.760 | even better than a lot of Wikipedia articles.

02:35:12.520 | You know, on questions like, did the virus leak from a lab?

02:35:16.840 | Did COVID leak from a lab?

02:35:18.320 | It just presents to you all the different hypotheses, the amount of evidence available

02:35:21.760 | to it.

02:35:22.760 | It's like a full, calm, objective picture of it.

02:35:27.560 | There's no partisanship.

02:35:29.080 | It's like a really nice list of things that's available.

02:35:31.640 | - But I guess what I mean is, does it tell you how, as a thinking human, you should evaluate

02:35:38.100 | the strength of each of the paragraphs it presents to you?

02:35:41.040 | - You can literally ask the question.

02:35:42.120 | - You can ask it to do, oh fair, okay, yeah.

02:35:44.400 | - And then it's actually a fun, it's fun to ask chat GPT that question, 'cause you'll

02:35:50.080 | get good answers.

02:35:52.080 | And so you'll basically have a kind of Socratic, like a deep, intimate, like great podcast

02:36:01.040 | style conversation with an AI system every single day for as many hours as you want,

02:36:07.040 | especially as it improves, and as the interfaces by which you communicate with the thing improves.

02:36:12.200 | So yeah, I think it will do exactly that, which is teach you how to think, because you

02:36:17.440 | will offload the memory of facts and equations and whatever else school teaches you, you'll

02:36:26.680 | offload that to AI.

02:36:29.120 | And instead you'll be using your human mind, which is what it, for now, is uniquely good

02:36:34.680 | at, which is asking good questions, thinking through the complexities of issues when there's

02:36:40.920 | multiple perspectives on it, all of that.

02:36:43.080 | - Well then I stand corrected.

02:36:44.680 | Then I don't know what college is gonna be in 20 years.

02:36:46.880 | - Well, but you were sort of commenting, I see, to the financial aspects of it, like

02:36:52.520 | why does it even make sense at this point?

02:36:55.800 | I am thinking about the transformative effects of AI, and what, it starts to ask, what is

02:37:03.320 | even education?

02:37:04.320 | - Right.

02:37:05.320 | - What are you supposed, what is the purpose of education?

02:37:08.920 | So one is to give you kind of a background knowledge on a bunch of different topics,

02:37:13.800 | but the other is to discover the thing you're truly passionate about, and the thing you're

02:37:17.680 | really good at, such that you can make money, and you can contribute to society, and have

02:37:22.520 | a fulfilling life.

02:37:24.160 | - Yeah, and also learning to interact with other people, relationships are built, socializing,

02:37:30.480 | and so many other things as well.

02:37:31.960 | - But is that, that is the big value of university.

02:37:36.640 | And maybe it should be called something else.

02:37:38.940 | - Can you get that for less than 200K a year somewhere else?

02:37:41.360 | Yeah, no, it's a fair question.

02:37:42.720 | - It's a kind of social club.

02:37:44.000 | - And you know, one of the things I think about also is people who are well-connected,

02:37:47.920 | I mean, this has always been, this isn't new, right?

02:37:49.760 | But if you're well-connected, and you have a sort of drive towards entrepreneurship,

02:37:55.360 | and doing your own thing, and you're not pursuing a field that is very licensing dependent,

02:37:59.120 | like medicine or law, getting started four years earlier with some internships can be

02:38:04.840 | a privilege in some cases.

02:38:06.040 | But again, that path is available to the people that would likely do well, regardless of whether

02:38:11.400 | they went to college, and so it's a very privileged self-selected group anyway.

02:38:17.840 | - Another question from Reddit, "Ask David to explain why American-style libertarianism

02:38:24.080 | is an unserious philosophy."

02:38:26.440 | - I don't know what they mean by American-style libertarianism.

02:38:30.080 | I've talked before about these kind of utopian libertarians, where, you know, we have, we

02:38:38.040 | don't have police, you just kind of like hire a for-profit company if you want protection,

02:38:45.360 | and if there's a conflict between two of these private security companies, then I don't know,

02:38:50.280 | you figure it out somehow.

02:38:51.440 | - So it's almost like anarchism, so take it to that degree.

02:38:55.000 | - I don't know what the question means by that American-style libertarianism, but in

02:38:58.920 | general my problems with libertarianism, as it is often presented, come from the work

02:39:05.340 | of sociology as well as human psychology, which is the reality that once you get a group

02:39:11.180 | that's bigger than 150 people, you really have to start centralizing some decisions,

02:39:18.360 | unless you're going to subdivide the 150 endlessly into 275s that now no longer have contact,

02:39:25.480 | but then that's not really one society, now it's two.

02:39:28.120 | I've not seen good evidence, and I've read a fair bit about this, that once you get beyond

02:39:33.000 | 150, you can keep all decisions decentralized, and once you say some things need to be centralized,

02:39:40.560 | then it's a matter of how you do it, and it's going to be some version of government that

02:39:45.480 | conflicts with aspects of libertarianism.

02:39:48.000 | - Well, it could be companies, right?

02:39:50.160 | It could be more market-driven, which is the idea of anarchism, that you don't give any

02:39:56.920 | centralized entity a monopoly over violence.

02:40:02.120 | You know, and then if you think that the markets are efficient at delivering, especially in

02:40:08.120 | this 21st century and beyond, where a market could have perfect information about people.

02:40:15.880 | So one of the issues is that you can manipulate markets because there's not perfect information,

02:40:20.640 | but now in the digital age, we can be higher bandwidth participants in the market.

02:40:29.000 | So if you're choosing between different security companies, or you're choosing between different

02:40:33.960 | providers of different services, you can do so more efficiently and more effectively in

02:40:39.880 | the digital space.

02:40:41.320 | So you can kind of imagine it, but we haven't successfully done it without governments.

02:40:48.240 | - Yeah, and I think there's a practical, once you get beyond 150, you also start specializing.

02:40:56.900 | It just is a matter of fact, you don't have, everybody isn't growing their own food.

02:41:01.080 | Some people grow the food and other people do other things.

02:41:03.600 | And you come across a lot of the problems that started at the agricultural revolution.

02:41:09.400 | And whether you say that it's a company that's solving it or a government, the problems are

02:41:13.640 | going to be very similar.

02:41:15.120 | And I've not read anything that to my satisfaction explains how you deal with that.

02:41:20.520 | - Well, there's underlying principles of libertarianism, which is putting priority at the freedom of

02:41:25.280 | the individual, right?

02:41:27.760 | And that's a compelling notion.

02:41:29.760 | - Yeah, whenever I do these various political compass things that put you on two axes, on

02:41:35.720 | the authoritarian libertarian axis, I am way down on the libertarian side as a left libertarian.

02:41:42.060 | So my tendencies are always anti-authoritarian and towards that option when it makes sense.

02:41:51.340 | So I sympathize with that a lot.

02:41:53.920 | - Another question from Reddit, "Ask David what issues he disagrees with you on."

02:41:58.380 | Is there something you-- - I have no idea.

02:41:59.880 | - Okay, that's good.

02:42:00.880 | There you go.

02:42:01.880 | There's no issues.

02:42:03.320 | Perfect agreement.

02:42:04.320 | - What's your view on Tesla?

02:42:06.400 | - That's a good opportunity to ask.

02:42:08.080 | What do you think is strengths and weaknesses of Elon Musk?

02:42:13.720 | You mentioned Twitter.

02:42:14.720 | Have you paid your $8?

02:42:15.720 | - I have not paid my $8.

02:42:16.960 | I don't see the point in paying for it.

02:42:18.520 | I have no problem paying for services.

02:42:20.160 | I use a ton of services.

02:42:21.520 | I'll try the free.

02:42:22.520 | I'll go to the paid.

02:42:25.000 | Right now, so the way I used to use the verified feed was I would post a tweet and then the

02:42:33.520 | next day when I review what's going on in my social media, I would look at the replies

02:42:37.400 | to the tweet, which give me a mix of replies from verified and unverified people.

02:42:41.640 | But then I would also look at the verified and see who that are verified public folks

02:42:49.120 | have responded to me or maybe I want to engage with or whatever the case may be.

02:42:54.560 | I don't even understand why I would look at the verified feed anymore.

02:42:57.640 | So I never do because it's random folks who I don't know.

02:43:01.640 | It sort of lost its utility to me.

02:43:04.000 | - Yeah, sorry to interrupt.

02:43:06.120 | But the idea is if everybody who's human pays the $8, it shows to you that it's not bots.

02:43:12.720 | It's at least humans.

02:43:14.480 | - From the reports about the number of people that have bought the blue check mark, I think

02:43:18.080 | we may be a thousand years from enough signups in order to make that sort of like a reality.

02:43:23.440 | I don't know.

02:43:24.440 | - That was the idea.

02:43:25.440 | - That was the idea.

02:43:26.440 | It's an interesting idea.

02:43:27.440 | Honestly, from my experience, obviously I was seeing all sorts of attack comments, some

02:43:33.360 | of which were I'm sure from bots, but I'm ignoring all of those comments anyway.

02:43:37.520 | So it really didn't affect my experience that much.

02:43:39.400 | I mean, here's the thing about Elon and I say this, people sometimes are like, David,

02:43:43.240 | you obviously hate Elon or you obviously love Elon.

02:43:46.520 | I was an investor in Tesla starting in 2015.

02:43:50.040 | I've since sold all my shares.

02:43:52.320 | Great run.

02:43:53.860 | I'm on my second Tesla right now.

02:43:56.600 | I probably won't get a third one because I think that electric vehicle technology is

02:44:02.440 | now maturing such that when my lease is up, I'm going to have many more options with the

02:44:07.560 | range and charging network that's important to me.

02:44:09.920 | But I could be wrong.

02:44:10.920 | Maybe, you know, I don't know.

02:44:11.920 | I have no, the cults of personality around people, they mean nothing to me.

02:44:16.480 | So for me, it's just like people are people.

02:44:19.200 | Nobody has only good ideas.

02:44:20.920 | Fine.

02:44:21.920 | I think that what Elon Musk did accelerating and pushing forward the battery and electric

02:44:27.440 | vehicle technology is unbelievable.

02:44:30.200 | It's it's a it's a one person wrecking ball in the best sense of saying we're not going

02:44:36.720 | to slow play this and do OK.

02:44:39.560 | Now Toyota has a Toyota hasn't actually entered, but now whoever we've got a 90 mile range

02:44:45.160 | car and next year it'll be 110.

02:44:47.280 | And it's just like we're doing this right now.

02:44:49.520 | You can compete or you can opt out and look at what's happened.

02:44:53.000 | Fantastic.

02:44:54.080 | On the Twitter side of things, I don't really get the whole plan.

02:44:58.960 | I don't know if it started maybe as kind of a goof of some kind and it developed into,

02:45:03.800 | I guess I have to buy it.

02:45:05.600 | And I think something about it ended up with there was a clause invoked where I think he

02:45:09.920 | did try to get out of buying it, but then was forced to to some degree.

02:45:12.440 | He was forced.

02:45:13.440 | So the way Twitter used to work was you followed people and when you looked at your feed, you

02:45:19.200 | either saw the posts from the people you were following in reverse chronological order or

02:45:24.480 | posts from the people you followed algorithmically tailored to what you're most likely to want

02:45:29.800 | to see.

02:45:31.440 | And if you didn't follow someone, you generally wouldn't see their posts unless it was like

02:45:36.600 | a sponsored tweet or someone you follow quoted or retweeted them.

02:45:40.800 | Fine.

02:45:41.800 | Now, the For You feed, Tik Tok, I believe first had a so-called For You feed.

02:45:46.920 | The idea is this is stuff you might like based on, I don't know what, either demographic

02:45:53.060 | data about you, your other habits, whatever.

02:45:56.040 | And so it's useless to me.

02:45:57.120 | It's just, it's just basically mostly right wing content that that is not interesting.

02:46:00.400 | Why do you think that is?

02:46:01.400 | I mean, so the, the signals that are used to generate the For You page is looking at

02:46:07.160 | all your likes, all your comments, all your blocks and mutes and all that.

02:46:14.720 | It should know that.

02:46:15.720 | I mean, I don't know what it's looking at.

02:46:16.720 | Okay.

02:46:17.720 | So it's supposed to be very pleasant for you.

02:46:20.120 | I'm sure other people go, wow, this for you thing is awesome.

02:46:22.760 | And I'll get like if you had insert some right wing or sitting here, they would go, Twitter

02:46:27.480 | used to suppress right wing voices and now finally they're getting the fair shake that

02:46:32.480 | they deserve in the For You feed.

02:46:34.480 | Okay.

02:46:35.480 | So I wonder if there's left wing folks setting their feelings of Elon aside that are enjoying

02:46:41.880 | the For You page.

02:46:43.480 | That's a really important question because it's supposed to be people on the left and

02:46:46.520 | people on the right should be enjoying the For You page.

02:46:48.520 | Sure.

02:46:49.520 | Yeah.

02:46:50.520 | I mean, so for me, my thought on Elon is some incredible successes.

02:46:53.960 | I don't know about Twitter.

02:46:55.480 | I do think that I don't believe Elon is a right winger.

02:47:00.400 | And when you see interviews with him, um, certainly at least socially and in many ways

02:47:06.660 | culturally seems very moderate or even somewhat on the left in my experience.

02:47:11.720 | So I don't think it's Elon's a right winger.

02:47:13.680 | I don't, that's not an interesting critique.

02:47:15.800 | It does seem though that throughout the Twitter escapade, he certainly ended up closer to

02:47:22.800 | some voices that may be influencing him in a particular way.

02:47:27.080 | Uh, that's giving some people that impression, you know?

02:47:30.020 | But as far as like the Elon hate or the Elon love, it's just, it's just a person who's

02:47:35.140 | done some interesting things, some of which I like and some of which I could kind of leave,

02:47:39.040 | leave aside.

02:47:40.040 | I have seen, uh, folks drift towards the right more in response to just the viciousness of

02:47:52.200 | attacks from the left.

02:47:54.160 | Like who?

02:47:55.160 | I, well, Elon and...

02:47:56.160 | So, so you do, you do think he's drifted towards the right?

02:48:00.260 | Uh, in a, so I don't think at the core, but I think on the surface, I think, uh, and I

02:48:07.220 | think Joe Rogan has as well on the surface.

02:48:09.900 | Cause I think maybe you can correct me, but it feels like people on the left attack more

02:48:15.420 | viciously.

02:48:16.420 | Um, that has not been my experience.

02:48:19.700 | Well, it hasn't?

02:48:21.620 | No, this, so, so yeah, let me know because my sense was that they attack people on the

02:48:25.960 | left viciously as well.

02:48:27.960 | Left attacks its own because you're not progressive enough.

02:48:31.640 | You're not, uh, you know, it's just this kind of bullying that happens very intensely.

02:48:36.280 | No, you're a hundred percent right that when the left has attacked me, um, it's almost

02:48:45.200 | as vicious as when the right attacks me.

02:48:47.840 | The difference in my experience is it's a smaller contingent on the left that's willing

02:48:53.560 | to levy those attacks against me, but I'm on the left.

02:48:57.160 | So to some degree you could say, well that that's to be expected.

02:49:00.400 | Um, there is toxicity on the left, but it's intense, isn't it?

02:49:04.960 | Like, and that's what I mean, like the attacks on people who are on the left, just, uh, you're

02:49:09.480 | not left enough.

02:49:10.480 | Yeah, that's no, that's the, and it is a small number of people.

02:49:13.240 | I can't deny that that is absolutely, uh, absolutely a real phenomenon.

02:49:18.880 | And um, it depending on what sort of topics you take on publicly, you are going to suffer

02:49:24.880 | the wrath of that to a greater or, or lesser degree.

02:49:29.080 | But with all of these things, what I always go back to is, you know, I probably would

02:49:32.960 | have more disagreements with Rogan today than the last time I was on his show, which was

02:49:36.440 | like at the beginning of the pandemic.

02:49:38.400 | But there would be zero and I've done clips critical of things that he has said substantive.

02:49:42.760 | Of course, to me it's sort of like, oh yeah, I could sit down with him and do a podcast

02:49:48.080 | and it would be zero big deal.

02:49:50.520 | And I would tell him I stand by everything I said about what you said and I would say

02:49:53.520 | it to you right now.

02:49:54.600 | There are people who write to me and go, oh man, things must be really, really tense now.

02:49:59.960 | If you were to, Rogan would never have you on because you disagreed and it's, he loves

02:50:04.480 | you.

02:50:05.480 | I'm sure he's just not thinking of me.

02:50:06.480 | I'm not the most important thing to Joe Rogan.

02:50:08.600 | I think both of us would be able to sit down and talk about every one of my criticisms.

02:50:13.920 | It would not be taken personally and then we would move on and it would be the next

02:50:17.600 | day.

02:50:18.600 | You get attacked a lot.

02:50:19.600 | How do you not let that break you mentally?

02:50:23.160 | Well, I don't know.

02:50:25.240 | So let's see.

02:50:27.100 | I try to, I mean I'm in a toxic space.

02:50:30.440 | The news and politics, partisan news and politics, partisan news and politics on the internet

02:50:35.840 | with a social media component, just completely and totally toxic from a personal perspective.

02:50:40.640 | When I'm done producing my last show of the week until Monday, I try to completely tune

02:50:45.720 | out from news and politics altogether.

02:50:48.040 | Um, and also make an effort to just not look at feedback and what's going on.

02:50:53.600 | I also really limit my vis my visibility.

02:50:58.560 | Uh, I don't need to read every comment.

02:51:00.600 | I don't need to look at every email or every tweet.

02:51:03.800 | I have 15 minutes each day where I go through my social media platforms, look at generally

02:51:09.320 | what is the reaction been, maybe include that in my assessment of how I want to tackle a

02:51:14.800 | certain issue if I missed a good point or something like that and basically try to move

02:51:18.160 | on when something like we talked about at the beginning happens, it becomes obsessive.

02:51:22.760 | I mean it's unhealthy, right?

02:51:24.240 | Where I'm going, oh my God, who's attacking me now that scrolling, it becomes, uh, you

02:51:29.000 | know, I'm sweating.

02:51:30.000 | It's horrible.

02:51:31.120 | But I think just like limiting exposure to that and remembering that it is impossible

02:51:35.760 | to please everybody.

02:51:37.280 | And so I'd really rather have fresh, genuine views each day rather than views that are

02:51:43.200 | sort of like, uh, restricted and flattened by what I perceive to be people's preferences.

02:51:50.360 | Uh, so just can you speak a little more to the full process of creating the David Pakman

02:51:55.360 | show?

02:51:56.360 | Like what you wake up cause you're doing five shows a week.

02:51:59.920 | I have the Letterman schedule, which means I do five shows in four days.

02:52:03.440 | I shoot Monday to Thursday, but we're doing five episodes.

02:52:07.360 | Basically, uh, our guests, we schedule in advance.

02:52:11.440 | I'm picking six to eight stories each day that are, like I said, a blend of stuff I

02:52:16.560 | think will be interesting things I want to talk about and things where there's, it's

02:52:22.280 | being discussed at one layer and I want to go deeper on it and I feel like I'm able to

02:52:26.320 | do that.

02:52:27.320 | So I choose those stories in the morning record in the early afternoon and we put the show

02:52:31.920 | out by that afternoon.

02:52:34.320 | What the preparation, what's the, how do you take notes?

02:52:38.360 | Uh, are you on a sheet of paper?

02:52:41.280 | No sheets of paper anymore.

02:52:42.480 | I used to do sheets of paper.

02:52:43.840 | I found something about it like it worked, the tactile nature of it.

02:52:48.160 | It became inconvenient for sharing the notes with my team, but basically we use a wiki

02:52:53.680 | type system.

02:52:55.320 | It's called media wiki, which is basically like a Wikipedia clone.

02:52:58.600 | Old school.

02:52:59.600 | Yeah.

02:53:00.600 | Old school.

02:53:01.600 | So we can have pages for every guest, every topic.

02:53:03.080 | Oh, that's interesting.

02:53:04.080 | I haven't heard that.

02:53:05.080 | Yeah.

02:53:06.080 | We, I don't know anyone else who's using it.

02:53:07.080 | It works really well.

02:53:08.080 | It, it's so fast and it takes up almost no space.

02:53:11.520 | So it just is a really good tool.

02:53:13.840 | Uh, when my team, you know, when we book a guest and they have notes from the publicist,

02:53:19.200 | they'll put it in there and then I can access it.

02:53:21.560 | So I'm basically working off of notes rather than a script.

02:53:24.160 | Um, I'll pull any audio visual stuff that I want so that that's available.

02:53:28.600 | Um, and it's, I mean it's, it's really a, uh, very seamless, you know, we're doing this

02:53:34.560 | every day, four days a week.

02:53:36.000 | And so we have it down to a well-oiled machine.

02:53:37.920 | Where do you get ideas from everywhere?

02:53:40.840 | Um, I have a bunch of subreddits that I follow that I think are talking about interesting

02:53:46.640 | things.

02:53:47.640 | I have a curated list for which I still use Twitter and it is very good for this.

02:53:52.160 | It's a curated private list of journalists that I think are doing interesting work.

02:53:56.880 | So I'll see what's there.

02:53:58.640 | Look at the sort of standard news reporting, uh, wire services, AP and Reuters glance at

02:54:05.720 | what, um, everything from drudge to CNN to whoever is covering that day.

02:54:11.320 | Look at Google news.

02:54:13.580 | How do you try to fact check stuff on your show?

02:54:17.440 | So like is there sources or is there a process?

02:54:19.440 | I always try to get to a primary source first and foremost for the facts of the story.

02:54:25.400 | And then I'll use other tools for background research.

02:54:29.320 | Oftentimes Wikipedia is footnotes I find to be useful tools.

02:54:33.840 | Chat GPT is a good one.

02:54:35.840 | It, I, you really have to fact check it, but it'll give you ideas of where to do the fact

02:54:41.080 | checking, which I think is fantastic.

02:54:42.680 | Sometimes it gives me information that's flat out wrong.

02:54:44.820 | And when you ask for the source, it's like, oh yeah, that, that actually is not real.

02:54:48.320 | Um, which is, Hey, it's part, part of the process.

02:54:51.240 | Yeah.

02:54:52.240 | But, um, and then when there's like an expertise type of thing, if it's a breaking legal matter,

02:54:56.440 | I'll just call like a friend who's a lawyer or call a friend who's a doctor or something

02:55:00.400 | like that.

02:55:01.400 | If it lends itself to that.

02:55:03.000 | Let me ask you about the nature of truth.

02:55:05.880 | Do you think it's becoming more and more difficult to know what is true and will become continuously

02:55:12.480 | continue to get more difficult, especially with GPT?

02:55:16.040 | I think the big difficulty is in getting people to agree as to what is a statement of fact

02:55:23.400 | and what is a statement of opinion.

02:55:25.360 | I think once we can do that, reasonable people can more or less agree on how to get to the

02:55:30.760 | truth or if we can't get to it, at least figure out how we would if the information were available.

02:55:36.520 | But the, the bigger challenge I'm having is someone will call in with an opinion, but

02:55:42.960 | say they want to talk about facts.

02:55:45.680 | And I have to explain to them, you're talking about an opinion and not a fact.

02:55:49.880 | And this goes back to the lack of critical thinking and lack of media literacy.

02:55:54.360 | Uh, but that's the bigger challenge for me right now.

02:55:57.440 | But I mean, I think the big statements are always going to be somewhat opinions like,

02:56:02.920 | um, was the elect was the 2020 election fair.

02:56:09.680 | I think any answer to that as an opinion.

02:56:12.440 | I disagree.

02:56:14.140 | If we define fair.

02:56:16.000 | Well, yes.

02:56:18.600 | So then I don't think it's possible to define fair in a way that's not several paragraphs

02:56:23.760 | where each sentence it now has, has facts, right?

02:56:27.720 | So what do you, what do you mean by fair?

02:56:30.360 | Is it a, who could show up to vote?

02:56:32.560 | What was the process of how easy it is to vote?

02:56:35.200 | Uh, was there actual, uh, cheating going on in different, like what is the evidence of

02:56:40.360 | that cheating?

02:56:41.360 | It's hard to actually get to the actual like details of a thing, high level, you know,

02:56:46.480 | uh, everything is just going to be an opinion.

02:56:48.760 | It feels like, and you can approximate that to be like, it's a well founded opinion.

02:56:56.360 | Well, most of science is an opinion.

02:56:58.160 | Even physics is an opinion.

02:56:59.700 | So like, I think there's a threshold beyond which an opinion becomes like, uh, this is

02:57:05.000 | a pretty reliable thing to assume for now that this is true.

02:57:08.920 | Okay.

02:57:09.920 | So let me revise.

02:57:10.920 | Maybe better said, I think that the difficulty, I mean it is the process you described is

02:57:20.240 | probably the right process and is it's exhausting for mundane things and that causes major problems.

02:57:26.400 | If we were to say, is it better for the economy to have a tax rate on people making over a

02:57:34.360 | million dollars, that's 20% or 50%.

02:57:37.680 | Okay.

02:57:38.680 | What do we mean by better for the economy?

02:57:41.600 | It's not an overwhelming task to decide on that.

02:57:44.280 | We could say, well, we'll say it's better for the economy by looking at what was the

02:57:47.820 | unemployment rate based on the tax rate on million, you know, people earning a million

02:57:51.180 | a year and what was GDP and whatever.

02:57:54.560 | Okay.

02:57:55.560 | We've, we've agreed this is a statement.

02:57:58.260 | We are now in the realm of just determining what is given the parameters that we've established.

02:58:03.800 | I think that that's, that's relatively doable.

02:58:06.360 | The issue is with the bigger ones like you're talking about where, what do we mean by a

02:58:12.040 | fair election and fair in whose eyes and, but I am with you that it often devolves into

02:58:18.560 | a conversation about opinions about what is fair rather than an ascertainment of the facts.

02:58:24.720 | Yeah.

02:58:25.720 | And it feels like maybe avoiding some of these big, maybe there's some trigger words to maybe

02:58:31.640 | avoiding them allows you to actually talk about the facts and through that educate yourself

02:58:36.840 | and learn about like whether the virus leaked from a lab or not.

02:58:43.060 | To me it was always a super interesting question.

02:58:45.200 | I don't know why everybody got super touchy about it.

02:58:48.040 | Mostly people I know, colleagues, biologists thought it's pretty good likelihood that it

02:58:54.800 | leaked from a lab given everything.

02:58:56.680 | They just didn't, the evidence is not there for either one.

02:59:00.920 | And so like you should be able to just openly talk about it unless you're in a high political

02:59:06.000 | office where there could be geopolitical consequences to your statements.

02:59:09.600 | But in general it's an interesting question.

02:59:11.360 | You should be able to talk about it, but there's no, first of all there's not many facts around

02:59:15.040 | there unfortunately.

02:59:18.120 | And a lot of very conclusive statements about it, especially in the early days, were just

02:59:21.520 | opinions.

02:59:22.520 | And so you have to, the idea of what is true or not becomes a little, even mentioning the

02:59:29.720 | word truth in that context, it feels divisive.

02:59:33.280 | Yeah, I completely agree with you, which is strange.

02:59:37.520 | Like it really, you think it shouldn't.

02:59:39.680 | One of the really good opening questions that I've had work to my advantage when talking

02:59:45.000 | with people who I know disagree with me about a contentious topic is how do you think we

02:59:50.240 | would figure out X?

02:59:52.280 | And it often gets people thinking first collaboratively.

02:59:57.560 | And obviously we might have very different opinions, but with something like the COVID

03:00:01.040 | lab leak, I think it's an interesting one because if you say, okay, maybe it leaked,

03:00:05.240 | maybe it didn't.

03:00:06.400 | How would we figure that out?

03:00:07.680 | Who would we trust to weigh in on that?

03:00:09.720 | What evidence would count?

03:00:11.360 | Now we're kind of on the same team.

03:00:14.220 | And then if we can establish that, then we're on a search for capital T truth together or

03:00:19.160 | whatever.

03:00:20.160 | It's kind of pie in the sky, but in some conversations I've actually had success with that.

03:00:23.880 | And then you can kind of realize if a, if there's no amount of evidence that's going

03:00:28.640 | to prove a show to you that you're wrong in your current opinion, that that's probably

03:00:34.000 | a really bad sign for you.

03:00:35.520 | It's a waste.

03:00:36.520 | It may be a waste to pursue the conversation further at that point.

03:00:38.840 | Yeah.

03:00:39.840 | I mean, yeah.

03:00:40.840 | What?

03:00:41.840 | Oh, so, okay.

03:00:42.840 | You think Trump was a good president.

03:00:43.840 | How do you determine that and what evidence might exist that would change your mind?

03:00:47.860 | There is no evidence.

03:00:48.860 | Trump was the best president ever.

03:00:50.220 | I think the conversation is probably done except Abraham Lincoln.

03:00:53.400 | Right.

03:00:54.400 | Uh, you mentioned Israel, Palestine.

03:00:56.520 | Well, what do you think about the situation in Israel and Palestine?

03:00:59.760 | Something you've thought about, spoken about for quite a time.

03:01:02.520 | Do you think we'll ever see peace in this part of the world?

03:01:05.760 | I don't know.

03:01:06.760 | Yeah.

03:01:07.760 | I mean, uh, I could say yes.

03:01:09.920 | I could say yes.

03:01:10.920 | I, I, the, you know, one of the problems is, and I'll give, you may not know that the,

03:01:19.040 | there are people on the left of my audience who call me a Netanyahu shill, even though

03:01:24.760 | I've never been a supporter of Netanyahu and I'm, I'm on the left.

03:01:28.480 | I just don't think that some of the, uh, kind of black and white characterizations about

03:01:36.300 | Israel are even remotely accurate.

03:01:38.840 | And I think most people, uh, it's become a sort of litmus test.

03:01:42.360 | Are you criticizing Israel enough?

03:01:43.960 | Are you showing us that you're actually left wing?

03:01:45.960 | I don't do any of that stuff.

03:01:47.040 | I sort of really look at the situation for what it is.

03:01:49.400 | That's become a litmus test in American politics, uh, in the spectrum of American politics.

03:01:55.200 | Yes.

03:01:56.200 | Um, my view, big picture is that, uh, I don't think we're going to really get anywhere until

03:02:07.200 | some pre negotiated terms are set and the parties to do the negotiating are all good

03:02:14.800 | faith parties.

03:02:16.080 | For example, I don't think Israel's right wing party Likud is a particularly good faith

03:02:22.160 | arbiter of peace because I think Likud benefits from there not being peace and the threat

03:02:28.760 | of violence.

03:02:30.100 | And there is violence.

03:02:31.100 | It's not just the threat of violence.

03:02:32.480 | I don't think Hamas is going to be an arbiter of peace for the Palestinian people either.

03:02:38.720 | I think the Palestinian authority is a question mark.

03:02:40.800 | I'm not sure.

03:02:42.200 | So I think that there needs to be some pre conditions that would need to be set with

03:02:46.960 | regard to everything from settlements to a lot of this minutiae.

03:02:52.200 | Big picture though, if I imagine what the most likely solution looks like, it doesn't

03:02:57.000 | mean it's a perfect solution and obviously it's a solution.

03:02:59.840 | Many people will say it's not, it's not going to happen.

03:03:02.560 | I think it's a solution where the borders are similar to what was being discussed in

03:03:07.400 | the Clinton era to some degree.

03:03:10.240 | As many of the settlements as possible have to go understanding that some of the bigger

03:03:16.420 | ones are just not going to go and there's going to have to be meaningful land swaps

03:03:20.560 | with which Yasser Arafat seemed to be amenable to when he weighed in on it.

03:03:25.520 | I believe it was in the 90s.

03:03:27.640 | The topic of the temple Mount and Jerusalem, et cetera, is a complicated one.

03:03:33.540 | But I think that almost certainly, um, East Jerusalem is going to have to be part of an

03:03:40.240 | eventual Palestinian state.

03:03:41.960 | You know, I mean like we can go as kind of as far as, as we want to with a lot of this

03:03:44.920 | stuff.

03:03:45.920 | What role does us have to play in this coming to the table with good faith parties?

03:03:50.840 | I don't know whether the, I go back and forth between believing that the us should play

03:03:56.160 | a big role to the us should play essentially no role whatsoever because, uh, of course

03:04:03.340 | of the funding of, uh, Israel that the us provides, will the you, I don't, it's not

03:04:09.840 | that I have a personal problem with American involvement and somebody like Bill Clinton

03:04:14.140 | was arguably relatively well positioned to try to make something happen.

03:04:17.920 | It's more just, will there, will it be seen as credible on the global stage?

03:04:22.100 | And that's, I think the most important thing because at the end of whatever negotiation

03:04:25.060 | takes place, both sides need to agree that this is where we are renouncing all past claims.

03:04:31.700 | And in the future, if there's a disagreement, we can't go back to that thing from the eighties

03:04:35.620 | or the nineties.

03:04:36.620 | That's just like a critical piece of this.

03:04:37.940 | Yeah.

03:04:38.940 | It has to be stable and uh, you know, um, materialize it to something stable over years.

03:04:48.540 | Yes.

03:04:50.620 | Another difficult conflict going on in the world is the war in Ukraine.

03:04:55.940 | What do you think about the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February, 2022?

03:05:00.220 | I don't pretend to be an expert on this issue.

03:05:03.380 | I think you probably know more about this than I do.

03:05:05.780 | Just from the brief conversation we had before we started filming my view as a general observer

03:05:11.760 | of geopolitics and the way that this area, this part of the world is related to American

03:05:16.220 | presidents over the last several cycles is I don't think it's controversial to say that

03:05:22.580 | this was a war of aggression, an invasion of aggression and active aggression by Vladimir

03:05:28.340 | Putin.

03:05:29.340 | Um, I do believe that if Trump had been reelected, Putin may have seen himself as having other

03:05:41.040 | tools with which to try to, um, expand influence that may have been different than geographical

03:05:48.480 | pursuits, geographic pursuits.

03:05:51.260 | Uh, but I, we don't know that for sure.

03:05:54.300 | Um, I also have a really hard time imagining what the end of this looks like and that's

03:06:01.560 | very scary because sometimes the most benign and seems to be that Putin ends up out of

03:06:10.260 | power either through no longer being alive, uh, or deposed in some way.

03:06:17.980 | It doesn't feel like that ladder is super likely the former there's reports about his

03:06:22.220 | health.

03:06:23.220 | I don't know how accurate they are.

03:06:24.460 | It's just hard to imagine a face saving exit that is going to be, um, even remotely, uh,

03:06:33.100 | what's the word?

03:06:34.100 | It's not even a question of acceptable.

03:06:35.260 | It's just, um, it's not satisfying either.

03:06:38.580 | Just, just not tragic, I guess, is what I'm looking for in terms of, uh, Putin speaking

03:06:43.820 | to the Russian people and being able to figure out what to say, what kind of narrative to

03:06:48.660 | say why this war made sense.

03:06:50.500 | Yes.

03:06:51.500 | Um, the same on the Ukrainian side to figure out how to exit this war.

03:06:55.500 | Yes.

03:06:56.500 | Uh, I mean to some degree it requires Russian troops leaving Ukraine and that is somewhat

03:07:03.780 | under the control.

03:07:04.780 | I mean, if of course it's not up to Ukraine whether the initiative continues, but what

03:07:10.900 | I am not thrilled with are some of the reflexive, you know, if Trump had been in power instead

03:07:17.660 | of Joe Biden, a lot of the reflexive, uh, comments about, oh, you're, if you, if you

03:07:24.860 | say Ukraine is just acting defensively, you're supporting neo Nazis or some of these things

03:07:30.780 | that have come out of the American Republican Party seem both wacky and like they would

03:07:35.800 | be saying completely different things if Trump happened to be in the Oval Office.

03:07:39.660 | They're really proxy attacks on Joe Biden.

03:07:41.820 | Yeah.

03:07:42.820 | Well that in some sense, Ukraine is also kind of political litmus test of how you speak

03:07:49.220 | about it.

03:07:50.220 | I think because of the huge amount of funding that's going, uh, from us to Ukraine.

03:07:56.020 | Um, maybe you can correct me if I'm wrong.

03:07:59.140 | Um, but it seems to, it seems to me that this topic has become politicized already.

03:08:03.780 | A hundred percent.

03:08:04.860 | There are people like Marjorie Taylor green and others saying we should be doing nothing

03:08:08.300 | for Ukraine.

03:08:09.300 | Zelensky is a comedian and we're supporting neo Nazis.

03:08:13.420 | That's it.

03:08:14.420 | Full stop.

03:08:15.420 | And you either subscribe to that, um, or you don't.

03:08:18.060 | And it very quickly becomes, um, it very quickly becomes as partisan as so many other issues.

03:08:23.660 | And it's really the most disappointing thing is that some of these issues become incredibly

03:08:28.380 | the devices divisive, but they're simple.

03:08:30.780 | Like for example, a conspiracy theory that we know isn't true.

03:08:33.540 | It shouldn't be devices divisive because it's so simple.

03:08:36.420 | Other issues become divisive and they are simplified, but in reality they are extraordinarily

03:08:41.900 | complex and you lose the ability to talk about the complexity because they're becoming partisan.

03:08:46.900 | Uh, do you think there will always be war in the world as a bunch of folks in the subreddit

03:08:51.980 | that were interested in your different complex perspectives on foreign policy?

03:08:56.620 | So let's talk about war.

03:08:58.780 | You look at the war in Ukraine, you look at what's going on in Israel and Palestine, you

03:09:04.540 | look at the wars across the world.

03:09:06.140 | Do you think there will always be war as a Redditor put it?

03:09:09.460 | Is it a necessary evil in the game of geopolitics?

03:09:13.140 | I used to have what I now believe is an extremely naive perspective, which is that if we somehow,

03:09:21.180 | if a intelligent aliens arrived here, it would be so momentous for homo sapiens that all

03:09:27.860 | of our differences would immediately be exposed to so insignificant.

03:09:33.100 | We would never fight again and we would realize that intelligent life.

03:09:36.640 | And then I spoke to people who deal in space exploration and other, other scientists and

03:09:42.020 | they all said that David, that's extraordinarily naive.

03:09:44.560 | There would be a period during which this was as momentous as you're imagining and then

03:09:49.300 | it would become normal and then we would go back to many of the same conflicts that we

03:09:53.800 | have now, sectarian, et cetera.

03:09:56.700 | I think that in all likelihood there will always be conflict between factions, whether

03:10:04.480 | it's what we currently think of as war, probably not.

03:10:08.060 | I mean, it seems as though the tactics will evolve and it will be less about missiles

03:10:14.180 | and I don't know where it's going to go.

03:10:16.380 | I don't know whether it's going to become more biological or cyber or certainly something

03:10:20.860 | we haven't even considered yet.

03:10:22.620 | But um, I think there will always be conflicts we would refer to in that way.

03:10:27.060 | Do you agree with Chomsky on the, his general harsh criticism of us foreign policy in war?

03:10:33.540 | That's many actions, military actions in the United States are criminal in nature, almost

03:10:39.940 | terrorist in nature.

03:10:41.500 | I am not, it's been a decade or more since I've read any Chomsky and I don't keep up

03:10:48.460 | with everything that he has recently said.

03:10:50.780 | So I don't want to mischaracterize any of it.

03:10:54.500 | In general, Americans are sold the view that we're the good guys spreading freedom across

03:11:01.460 | the world.

03:11:02.460 | And no, Chomsky takes a perspective that, yeah, but if you look at the number of civilians

03:11:07.380 | you kill while doing it, it's incomparable to any other military actions across the world.

03:11:11.460 | Right.

03:11:12.460 | So I very much disagree with those who take the view that the U S is this, um, wonderful

03:11:19.280 | global police force that's spreading democracy and fixing problems.

03:11:24.260 | Very, very much wrong.

03:11:25.860 | I think where I've had disagreements with Chomsky in the past is more he framed, he

03:11:30.340 | seems to frame the U S as a uniquely bad actor in some of these cases.

03:11:36.220 | And I think it's more an outcropping of the size and wealth of the U S and less about

03:11:42.740 | uniquely negative intentions.

03:11:45.260 | And so I think that would be my general disagreement with Chomsky based on stuff I read a decade

03:11:49.300 | ago.

03:11:50.300 | Well, he says that he lives in the United States, he's an American, and so he feels

03:11:54.520 | his focus of criticism should be in America.

03:11:57.020 | And I think that's one of the great things about being an American and being in America

03:12:02.300 | is the freedom to criticize harshly.

03:12:04.980 | Sure.

03:12:05.980 | While being a university professor, by the way, um, he's basically the embodiment of

03:12:12.140 | why 10 years are really valuable thing.

03:12:14.100 | I agree.

03:12:15.100 | Whether you agree with him or not.

03:12:16.780 | A question from Reddit, ask David what he plans for his garden this year.

03:12:23.500 | Is this a joke or is this a recipe?

03:12:24.500 | It's not a joke.

03:12:25.500 | I got into gardening a few years ago.

03:12:27.740 | Honestly, I'm with the baby.

03:12:30.660 | I can't do a garden this year.

03:12:32.140 | It's just, and I have a lot of travel coming up, so everything would die.

03:12:35.580 | But I did start to try to figure out gardening.

03:12:38.300 | If you're stressed by the toxicity of the social media world, gardening is a great hobby.

03:12:43.420 | It really is.

03:12:45.340 | But it is extraordinarily time consuming, so I have no garden planned this year.

03:12:49.340 | Um, other books, uh, or maybe movies in your life that had a big impact on you that, you

03:12:56.580 | know, you're thinking about that diet.

03:13:00.660 | Has there been stuff you read, forget it, about even just books, like blogs or writers

03:13:05.780 | or just sources of information that had, uh, that molded you into the intellectual, into

03:13:14.340 | the political thinker that you are?

03:13:17.060 | It's so hard to, this is sort of like, you know, you win an Oscar and you want to make

03:13:21.660 | sure you thank all the right people.

03:13:23.580 | I read so much and have been reading for so long that it's really hard to say, but I think

03:13:29.180 | certainly, um, for me, narrative nonfiction has been a fantastic genre to learn not only

03:13:39.300 | about history, but also about people and psychology.

03:13:43.180 | And very often when people say, I don't really read, like, what can you recommend to me that

03:13:48.060 | might be interesting?

03:13:49.260 | I'll, depending on, you know, knowing them to some degree, I'll give recommendations

03:13:55.180 | there in terms of, of, um, just things I picked up recently that, that I think are interesting.

03:14:00.420 | Um, I've been reading, uh, a bunch of Neil Postman.

03:14:05.020 | I read a Jenny Odell has a new book on time and the concept of like saving time, spending

03:14:11.180 | time, et cetera.

03:14:12.180 | She just published it.

03:14:14.120 | Super interesting.

03:14:15.120 | I just read, um, Lansing's book about the Shackleton voyage in Antarctica in 1914, 15

03:14:22.300 | and 16.

03:14:23.640 | Super interesting.

03:14:24.640 | I'm really all over the map.

03:14:25.940 | I have that one on audio book.

03:14:27.180 | I've been meeting to listen to it's very interesting and it seems inconceivable how these guys

03:14:31.780 | survived it in completely inconceivable.

03:14:34.620 | And yet they did.

03:14:36.340 | Oh, it kind of inspires you to think of a space exploration and taking on similar kinds

03:14:42.380 | of risky and dangerous journeys.

03:14:44.380 | Uh, in narrative nonfiction, I grew with you very much.

03:14:47.100 | I've been reading a lot of 20th century history, um, about Stalin and about Hitler rise and

03:14:53.840 | fall of the third Reich.

03:14:54.840 | I've read twice now and I recommend, what did you get out of reading at the second time?

03:15:02.020 | Uh, so what I, uh, so the second time I listened to the audio book as I ran, I get the same

03:15:12.100 | thing from it, uh, as I get maybe reading a man search for meaning, which is, um, all

03:15:19.740 | the troubles of day to day in the modern world kind of, uh, fade away and dissipate when

03:15:25.460 | I'm thinking about the, uh, you know, basically the embodiment of evil at scale, uh, at that

03:15:33.980 | recent time in human history.

03:15:35.980 | So it's, it makes me sort of appreciate all the, it fills me with gratitude to have all

03:15:40.180 | the freedoms, all the just simple joys of life that we have today.

03:15:44.860 | And um, I think the second time I was, uh, as I was reading it, uh, because William Shire

03:15:51.140 | was there, he's the author, he was there through the whole thing.

03:15:54.460 | You start to pick up little details as opposed to like big things.

03:15:57.660 | You start to pick up the little quirks of, uh, how history turns and just like these

03:16:04.620 | little events, you notice of the dynamics between people in a room during a meeting

03:16:10.220 | with Hitler.

03:16:11.220 | You just notice these little things that are mentioned because he was either there directly,

03:16:14.820 | or heard it the next day.

03:16:16.660 | So you get, that's why to me, um, Rise and Fall of the Third Reich is interesting is

03:16:20.940 | because it's by a guy who was there, who's reporting on it, um, versus a sort of a more

03:16:28.100 | distant, uh, displaced, uh, retelling.

03:16:31.540 | And I also like biographies.

03:16:32.540 | I'm a big fan of biographies.

03:16:35.060 | And um, Walter Isaacson has just written some incredible ones, and Steve Jobs and Einstein,

03:16:39.500 | all that kind of stuff.

03:16:41.860 | Um, Victor Frankel's book is one I've read a bunch of times and it's so short and you

03:16:46.220 | know, reading in general, I know a lot of people who read way more than I do.

03:16:49.620 | And I also know a lot of people who don't read at all.

03:16:51.780 | I mean, they haven't read a book since, since college essentially.

03:16:54.960 | To me, it's almost like the amount I get from it, it's almost like a secret weapon where

03:17:00.040 | when I think, you know, in two or three or 400 pages, which I can read in whatever, 10

03:17:05.300 | days or however long it takes reading 30 pages a day, the amount of information insights

03:17:12.060 | into so many aspects of the human psyche that I can get, it's sort of like, it's not like

03:17:17.580 | I'm in a competition for anything in particular with anybody.

03:17:20.540 | I just do my show.

03:17:21.540 | But it's sort of like if I'm reading dozens of books a year and you're reading zero, I'm

03:17:27.140 | exposed to so many different things and ideas that are not even in your universe.

03:17:32.560 | It just seems like the power of reading just seems overwhelming.

03:17:36.700 | And I had, speaking of getting attacked, I had a fun time getting attacked a few months

03:17:42.300 | ago for publishing a reading list.

03:17:45.020 | Some reading at least a book a week, read 18 or 19 books from the beginning of the year.

03:17:52.700 | You got attacked for the books you chose or for this?

03:17:55.700 | I don't know for what, but it became quite viral.

03:17:59.340 | Attacked for reading.

03:18:00.900 | That's something.

03:18:01.900 | So it's basically what happened is that people, I actually don't, it's not worth, folks who

03:18:08.740 | know know, folks who don't, don't even worry about it.

03:18:13.240 | What I really loved about being attacked for it is it shows that you can get attacked for

03:18:18.580 | anything.

03:18:19.580 | Apparently.

03:18:20.580 | So it's not like I did something wrong.

03:18:22.380 | It was kind of a beautiful thing.

03:18:24.180 | It was just the most intensely beautiful display of absurdity of Twitter and the internet that

03:18:33.860 | there would be, there were articles written about me with the book list.

03:18:38.940 | There's no bad books on it.

03:18:40.940 | The thing I was being mocked for is reading Dostoevsky, reading stuff that sounds like

03:18:47.460 | a high school reading list.

03:18:48.820 | Oh, I see.

03:18:50.060 | Or all these kinds of aspects of the reading list which doesn't stand up to any sort of

03:18:57.100 | legitimate kind of criticism.

03:18:58.660 | But the fact that people are just looking for single words, single aspects of a tweet

03:19:03.420 | and so on to criticize.

03:19:05.540 | It actually forced me to, because I released a video about summarizing my takeaways from

03:19:12.660 | one of the books and I've been meaning to do more and more, but every time I start to

03:19:16.020 | like want to record it, I have this negative feeling.

03:19:20.940 | They kind of ruin the fun of sharing with others.

03:19:23.300 | I know exactly what you're talking about.

03:19:25.380 | My advice on that is don't do it.

03:19:29.100 | Just don't record it.

03:19:30.100 | Yeah.

03:19:31.100 | Because, and is that what you basically did?

03:19:32.620 | Yeah, for now, but I think time cures it, but for now I decided not to.

03:19:37.020 | Yes.

03:19:38.020 | It's just until I feel joy when I do it, yeah.

03:19:41.220 | We are in such a privileged position to even be able to do this sort of thing, right?

03:19:46.100 | I have taken on projects and then it sort of sounds good or I end up doing it because

03:19:51.460 | there's some third party that brings the idea and I feel like I can't really say no or whatever.

03:19:56.700 | And then when I get in front of the camera or I have to write something for a while,

03:19:59.900 | I did a newspaper column that I hated doing.

03:20:03.540 | I realized that I'm ruining the exact thing that I have worked to build, which is that

03:20:08.860 | I can just do whatever I want.

03:20:10.500 | Why am I doing this?

03:20:11.500 | And sometimes it takes me a week to realize it.

03:20:13.180 | Sometimes it takes me a year, but just don't do it.

03:20:16.660 | That's the thought.

03:20:17.660 | In this case in particular, it's also that there's a private thing I enjoy, which is

03:20:21.460 | reading.

03:20:22.460 | Right.

03:20:23.460 | And if sharing that private thing you enjoy is not fun, then just don't share it.

03:20:29.300 | That's, yeah, there's certain things, there's certain private things that should remain

03:20:34.820 | private.

03:20:35.820 | That's like, which is one of the first things ever.

03:20:38.780 | I'm the same person privately as I am publicly, but the books, it's like, man, I don't get

03:20:44.340 | to share, I guess through these conversations I can share some of the stuff I'm reading

03:20:48.740 | and enjoying it.

03:20:50.060 | Because it sucks.

03:20:51.460 | It sucks to get attacked for stuff and it sucks to get attacked for stuff you love.

03:20:56.420 | Yeah, especially reading.

03:20:57.700 | I mean, that's the bottom of the barrel.

03:21:01.300 | I have these ideas where I'll go, you know, maybe for my next thing, I'll go from politics,

03:21:07.180 | which is so toxic, I'll go to travel blogging.

03:21:09.740 | Because there's so many travel bloggers I follow and there's so many interesting places.

03:21:14.380 | And then I go, wait a second, I like traveling and just hanging out.

03:21:18.300 | Now traveling is going to be my job and now I've got to bring two cameras with me and

03:21:21.780 | I've got to get shots and I've got to film my food.

03:21:24.420 | I'm not going to do that.

03:21:25.420 | I'm just going to do what I'm doing, but then I'll travel when I want to take a vacation.

03:21:30.020 | And of course some of it could be fun.

03:21:31.260 | I mean, I have to say when I did one video on a book in 1984, I really enjoyed it.

03:21:38.220 | The whole process was fun.

03:21:42.300 | I don't think I've ever thought as hard about a book when I had to make a video about it.

03:21:47.740 | Because I had to like, you know, I read 1984, I don't know how many times, probably five,

03:21:51.780 | ten times, I don't remember.

03:21:54.620 | I read Animal Farm way more.

03:21:57.820 | But I don't think, I was like, what do I think about, what are the key takeaways for me?

03:22:02.300 | I didn't really know.

03:22:03.300 | Like if you ask me what I think about even Animal Farm, because I haven't done that one,

03:22:07.300 | and I've read that one, I don't know, over 50 times, it's probably my favorite book.

03:22:12.580 | I would have to struggle.

03:22:14.380 | And making a video about it, basically a little mini lecture, forced me to actually have an

03:22:18.740 | opinion about the details of it and to do enough research to think like, okay, what

03:22:23.940 | is the historical context of this book?

03:22:25.580 | I mean, it allowed me to say interesting and to think interesting stuff about the book.

03:22:31.060 | I found it to be really rewarding to basically, the old Feynman thing, one of the best ways

03:22:36.820 | to learn is to teach.

03:22:38.180 | Yeah.

03:22:39.180 | I can't think of one thing I would say about Animal Farm.

03:22:42.140 | And I read it, again, not that long ago, but I don't know what commentary I would have.

03:22:45.260 | You kind of have a generic comment about like authoritarianism and so on, whatever.

03:22:50.460 | But there could be interesting quirks of the book and the characters and how corruption

03:22:56.780 | happens.

03:22:57.780 | You could say all kinds of stuff that may be contrasting it.

03:23:01.580 | Like even when 1984 allowed me to contrast with Brave New World and how that 1984 was

03:23:09.500 | politicized and how it's used by the Republican Party of today.

03:23:13.180 | You could say a lot of interesting stuff if you think about it and write it down on a

03:23:16.860 | sheet of paper.

03:23:17.860 | Maybe you don't need to make a video about it.

03:23:19.060 | So I found it to be really rewarding in general.

03:23:22.460 | So I probably will do more of it, but not always, not as a main profession, just like

03:23:27.140 | with the travel blogging.

03:23:28.140 | I agree with that.

03:23:29.140 | I mean, you get threatened a lot.

03:23:31.260 | You get attacked a lot online.

03:23:32.780 | Do you think about your mortality?

03:23:34.940 | Well, the other day I went to the doctor and he said, "Next physical, we're going to be

03:23:39.420 | talking about a lot of new things."

03:23:42.420 | And so I was thinking about it a lot that day.

03:23:44.860 | Yeah.

03:23:45.860 | No, I mean, it's funny.

03:23:48.380 | I recently did a bunch of estate stuff.

03:23:51.580 | And when you have intellectual property, there's a question of like, okay, I have my assets,

03:23:57.300 | but also if I died tomorrow, especially in a particularly fiery death, my YouTube channel

03:24:04.960 | would probably for a while generate more money because it would be like, oh my goodness,

03:24:08.940 | this person died in a terrible...

03:24:11.220 | What happens with a future revenue stream and all these different things?

03:24:13.980 | And it got me thinking about legacy and about the fact that people who do this sort of thing,

03:24:19.500 | it's kind of a new thing in a sense.

03:24:22.060 | And so, you know, if you work at ABC News, at some point you just retire and someone

03:24:26.300 | else fills in for you.

03:24:28.740 | How does my career wind down given...

03:24:31.380 | I don't actually know the answer.

03:24:32.900 | I'm not sure.

03:24:34.740 | What is it?

03:24:35.740 | I just one day stop posting videos, but all my content stays up, getting fewer and fewer

03:24:41.700 | views or do I delete everything?

03:24:44.420 | I don't know.

03:24:46.300 | What is the legacy?

03:24:47.300 | - And if you die, I mean, so my trip to Ukraine, 'cause I knew I was going to the front, is

03:24:50.980 | the first time I did, I recorded a video if I die and I posted it and I gave instructions

03:24:56.860 | to folks what to do.

03:25:00.340 | So like there's a closure.

03:25:02.900 | But it's an interesting process.

03:25:04.060 | Like what happens to your...

03:25:06.900 | At which point does GPT take over and continue tweeting for David Pakman?

03:25:10.900 | - Well, the tweeting I care less about right now, unless blue becomes something unbelievable,

03:25:15.100 | I'm less worried about Twitter.

03:25:16.940 | But some of my audience members have been saying, you know, some of these tools, David,

03:25:20.780 | are getting good enough that we could clone your voice and also make it match video.

03:25:29.020 | And with scripts, you could just keep pumping out content even if you were gone.

03:25:33.420 | And I said, now that I'm interested in, that I want to learn more about.

03:25:36.700 | - Boy, it's going to be a weird future.

03:25:40.540 | What advice do you have to young folks that are facing this future?

03:25:46.140 | - Almost always, it's some version of start right away.

03:25:50.540 | And that applies in so many different ways.

03:25:52.940 | So if you're thinking about...

03:25:55.060 | Oftentimes the context is people want to do what I do.

03:25:57.720 | And I always say, do not sit around for a year thinking about lighting.

03:26:03.220 | This is how you never do anything.

03:26:04.580 | And I, dozens of people who I felt obligated to talk to on the phone because of a personal

03:26:09.620 | connection, I go through all the advice and I can tell they're not going to do it.

03:26:14.900 | They just, it's already sounding too complicated.

03:26:17.820 | And so instead they'll sort of say, well, I got to get the right lighting in the right

03:26:20.980 | room and blah, blah, blah, blah.

03:26:22.700 | The best thing you can do no matter what you're doing is just start right away.

03:26:26.020 | And that applies in this business and in whatever else you're doing.

03:26:29.100 | If you want to learn a new thing, find a new hobby, the ability to get data right away

03:26:34.820 | about what's working, what's not working, and whether you even like this approach that

03:26:38.380 | you're taking is so valuable and it will allow you to iterate.

03:26:42.540 | And the sooner you do it, the cost to a change of direction will also be lower.

03:26:47.380 | If there's any, I don't do like self-help or generic advice type stuff, but the one

03:26:51.100 | thing that applies in so many situations is just try it right away and iterate from there.

03:26:57.860 | Yeah.

03:26:58.860 | Start today and then do it every day.

03:27:01.820 | Or decide, hey, you know what?

03:27:03.020 | I figured out I don't actually want to do it.

03:27:05.020 | Yeah.

03:27:06.020 | Hence iterate.

03:27:07.020 | Yeah.

03:27:08.020 | And usually you'll discover you do.

03:27:12.500 | You think we'll make it out of the century, humanity, human civilization?

03:27:16.380 | Out of the century, so like to 2100?

03:27:18.140 | Yeah.

03:27:19.140 | How much we got, 80 years?

03:27:20.140 | Yeah.

03:27:21.140 | 77.

03:27:22.140 | I think we're going to make it.

03:27:24.700 | You think so?

03:27:25.700 | Yeah.

03:27:26.700 | What are the biggest threats facing our civilization?

03:27:29.380 | If not wokeism.

03:27:31.180 | If it's not wokeism, it's hard to say.

03:27:35.500 | I actually think that if you believe that we are on an inflection point of sorts in

03:27:44.460 | changes to society and acceleration of technology, et cetera, I think it's really tough to know

03:27:50.740 | in 2090 what will actually be the biggest threat.

03:27:54.660 | So I don't know.

03:27:55.660 | It's so cliche to say nuclear and climate change and another pandemic.

03:28:02.620 | That world might look so different that it's almost unimaginable.

03:28:06.980 | What it means to be human is unimaginable.

03:28:09.580 | And also the degree that we make progress out into space is also unimaginable.

03:28:16.140 | I think space is super interesting and there's people on both the left and right who for

03:28:20.360 | different reasons are kind of not into the whole space exploration thing.

03:28:24.580 | The people I hear from, the ones on the right think it's just kind of dumb.

03:28:29.140 | The ones on the left think it's an excuse not to fix problems here.

03:28:33.380 | I think you-

03:28:34.380 | And also they say it's the play thing of billionaires.

03:28:36.820 | Sure.

03:28:37.820 | Which is another funny kind of concept.

03:28:39.460 | Yeah.

03:28:40.460 | I mean, someone's got to pay for it.

03:28:43.700 | Why not be people who have a lot of money to-

03:28:45.300 | You could either be billionaires or governments that are trillionaires.

03:28:50.540 | Somebody has to pay for big ambitious moonshot projects.

03:28:54.340 | To me, the most interesting thing is that in getting closer to the next step of space

03:29:00.740 | exploration, we may well learn things that can then be used to improve circumstances

03:29:07.540 | here.

03:29:08.540 | For me, it's not one or the other.

03:29:09.540 | And I recently read a long piece about why, why not Mars?

03:29:14.620 | Because it's terrible in every way for supporting life.

03:29:17.940 | Okay.

03:29:18.940 | So like that's one perspective, but still in so exploring, who knows what we might end

03:29:24.180 | up learning.

03:29:25.180 | So I'm big on it.

03:29:26.180 | I don't share the view of some on the left about it.

03:29:29.100 | So I guess to add to your advice to young people, if a thing seems terrible, you still

03:29:33.060 | might want to consider doing it.

03:29:34.300 | I would say so.

03:29:35.660 | Yeah.

03:29:36.660 | How many things I've seen?

03:29:37.660 | I mean, listen, there are so many trips where the day before I say, why am I doing this?

03:29:46.140 | The jet lag, I've got to do this and that.

03:29:49.260 | And now who, if my guest host falls through, I should just stay and work.

03:29:53.820 | And I go, hold on.

03:29:55.780 | You do this every time.

03:29:57.460 | Just go.

03:29:58.460 | You never regret it.

03:29:59.460 | You learn something, you try something.

03:30:00.860 | I never regret the trip.

03:30:04.820 | This hopefully applies to the conversation we had today.

03:30:07.540 | David, I'm a big fan of yours.

03:30:09.820 | Thank you so much for talking today.

03:30:12.420 | Thank you for being patient with me.

03:30:13.580 | We tried to talk earlier.

03:30:15.900 | Please continue doing what you're doing.

03:30:17.300 | Please continue being objective and thoughtful and fearless on the internet.

03:30:22.380 | Thank you.

03:30:23.380 | I'm a big fan of yours as well.

03:30:24.380 | I appreciate it.

03:30:25.380 | Thanks for listening to this conversation with David Pakman.

03:30:28.380 | To support this podcast, please check out our sponsors in the description.

03:30:32.660 | And now let me leave you with some words from Mahatma Gandhi.

03:30:36.700 | What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans and the homeless, whether the

03:30:42.140 | mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or in the holy name of

03:30:47.700 | liberty or democracy?

03:30:50.900 | Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time.

03:30:53.980 | [END]

David Pakman: Politics of Trump, Biden, Bernie, AOC, Socialism & Wokeism | Lex Fridman Podcast #375

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