Episode 31: Leftism, Liberty, And Lightsabers With Dave Rubin
In the thirty-first episode of The Babylon Bee podcast, editor-in-chief Kyle Mann and creative director Ethan Nicolle talk with Dave Rubin about freedom of speech, his journey from being a left progressive to a classical liberal, and how Star Wars: The Last Jedi was a total cinematic failure. Dave is an American political commentator, YouTube personality, stand up comedian, talk show host and total Star Wars nerd. He is the creator and host of The Rubin Report, a political talk show on BlazeTV and YouTube. You can now pre-order Dave Rubin's book: Don't Burn This Book: Thinking for Yourself in an Age of Unreason. Content creators, check out Dave's new Patreon-alternative Locals. Pre-order the new Babylon Bee Best-Of Coffee Table Book coming in 2020! Show Outline Introduction - Kyle and Ethan discuss the stories of the week. Story 1 - San Francisco Dogs Begin Bagging People Poop Story 2 - Democrats Call For Flags To Be Flown At Half-Mast To Grieve Death Of Soleimani Story 3 - Thousands Of Panicked Terrorists Surrender As Trump Deploys Jack Wilson To Middle East Interview - Dave Rubin Kyle and Ethan discuss with Dave Rubin the differences between the political left and right, his journey from left progressive to classical liberal. and how leftism is destroying comedy, journalism, and movies (like Star Wars). They also discuss which private mega-corporation should run the government in a libertarian utopia where everything is privatized. Hate Mail - an iTunes reviewer isn't a fan of our giggling. Paid-subscriber portion Story 1 - Woman Who Scoffs At Your Religion Still Checking Her Horoscope Every Day Story 2 - Woman Slapped By Pope Sells Hand For 1.3 Billion Dollars Story 3 - Castro's Campaign Fails As Democrats Realize His First Name Isn't Fidel Dave Rubin Interview (continued) We're putting some of this riveting interview with Dave Rubin in the Subscriber Lounge, so... Become a paid subscriber at https://babylonbee.com/plans
In a world of fake news, this is news you can trust.
News so controversial, it's been banned on seven of eight planets.
You're listening to the Babylon B with your hosts, Kyle Mann and Ethan Nicole.
Welcome to the only podcast that is 100% fact-checked and verified by all the fact-checkers at CNN.
Snopes.
Yeah, and BuzzFeed.
Good job.
That's a sick cultural reference, bro.
Trying to be on the cusp of things that are happening.
The other day, my son, my sons are not supposed to be on the internet, okay?
At all?
Well, if they say, hey, dad, can I Google this?
Oh, like surfing?
Just randomly surfing, yes.
And I saw them and they were on BuzzFeed taking a quiz to see which Harry Potter house they were in.
Stupid BuzzFeed.
Quizzes.
That's how they'd real people.
And they built their entire empire on stupid quizzes.
I know, it's crazy.
Dude, have you clicked on BuzzFeed lately and looked at the quizzes?
They're like, one of them is like...
What do you take me for?
We'll...
We'll tell you which Harry Potter house you are in based on which salad you like.
Like you tell them what salad you like and they were.
In what lab are they concocting these quizzes?
I want to know how are they drawing these conclusions.
So dumb.
But unlike BuzzFeed, we are verified.
You see those quizzes that people share where it's like, oh, I guess I'm a genius, and it shows like...
Oh, yeah.
It's like, are you falling for this?
Yeah.
They know you'll share it if it tells you you're a genius, you'll share it with your friends.
Yes.
And then everyone will click on it and they want to see if they're a genius.
And this isn't the irony by sharing it, you're showing that you're not a genius.
Yeah, I see that all the time on Facebook and stuff.
You sad.
Yeah, you see the person, someone you love, shares on a Facebook.
Oh, you sad.
That's so sad.
We should do a quiz on the Babylon Bee.
Like, take this quiz and we will steal your identity or just something.
We will call you a genius while we quietly steal your identity.
That is awesome.
We have some kind of a show planned for today, right?
I'm impressed that we're this far in the show and I haven't seen you since the last decade.
Oh, I forgot.
I was waiting for that.
Although our last podcast was published after the new year, right?
But we didn't record it until from before.
So this is our first podcast we recorded in 2020.
It feels like a new year, you know?
I think it is.
But it feels like them.
Yeah, it's weird.
Birds are singing.
It feels similar to when it turned to 2000, or it's a very futuristic sounding year if you go up to the 90s.
Yeah, 2000.
Yeah, it was weird when it turned to 2000.
I feel like everything was being called, like they would add 2000 to the end of it around that time.
Like movies or.
Yeah, you never spelled out 1999.
Yeah, it wasn't exciting.
2000.
2000.
The whole thing out every time.
I think there was Windows 2000 came out.
Although I guess they always do years, like 98.
But you're right.
Windows 95.
Windows 90.
It's never rarely.
Yeah.
And people are calling that decade the oughts, I think.
The oughts.
That's weird.
Yeah, it's weird.
It's not very fun.
That sounds kind of hillbilly or something.
2000s, 2010s, 2020s.
We're in the 20s now.
Yeah, I'm actually happy because it's easier to say 20.
The 20s.
Yeah, it makes a lot more 10s.
It doesn't.
Yeah, apostrophe 20.
But, you know, the 2020s, so we're going to have Prohibition this decade, I believe.
Oh, I think so.
We're going to have flappers and gangsters.
And little underground tunnels.
Yeah, and speakeasies.
Yeah.
Looking forward to good speakeasy.
Yeah.
So, I think there is a speakeasy down in San Diego.
There was one for a while.
Does it count if it's legal now?
Well, and it was like put up on social media, like you have to knock and say, John sent me.
You know, that was the whole fun of it.
I don't know.
I don't necessarily get the appeal, but Dan goes to a reformed church, which is basically like a speakeasy.
You just they press a button and it like all the panels turn into like this micro brewery.
So he's shaking his head.
You can't hear him, but he's shaking his head.
Okay, so we have a fun show planned for today.
Yeah, we do.
And what's going to happen on this show is that Dave Rubin is going to come on with us.
Yeah.
You might have heard of him.
He's not quite as big as we are in the podcasting world.
He's up, yeah.
He's up there.
He's got some fans.
One or two.
YouTubes.
Some YouTube.
Some YouTubes.
Some YouTube fans?
YouTubers.
I'm admittedly a big fan of Dave Rubin.
He does great interviews, like long-form, in-depth.
He'll have anybody on who will come on.
He's come towards libertarianism, I think.
Or he calls himself a classical liberal, but from being more left-leaning in the past.
And I believe he considers himself recently.
He's come away from being completely secular.
He doesn't call himself an atheist anymore.
I think that has to do with him hanging out with Jordan Peterson so much.
Because he went on a tour with Jordan Peterson.
Anyway, we haven't interviewed him yet as we're talking at this moment.
We're going to, and hopefully.
And yeah, so I'm looking forward to it.
He's somebody I've always wanted to meet.
Cool.
So I'm excited.
And I heard he has chickens at his house, so I want to see if it's true.
Well, we'll get to meet the chickens, maybe.
Maybe I don't know where we're meeting.
So we'll find out.
So we're going to vicariously interview Jordan Peterson through Dave Rubin.
And let's talk about some stories.
Stories of the week.
Every week there are stories.
These are some of them.
Our first story of this week.
San Francisco dogs begin bagging people poop.
I had to try not to laugh while I read the phrase people poop.
People poop.
I don't think that's a technical scientific classification.
You don't think there's people poop.
Like jars with that label on them and some lax.
A mason jar with a little masking tape.
This was an idea submitted to us by Babylon Bee subscriber Randall LeBrinz.
And he submitted it a while ago and it's been sitting in my drafts folder.
And I was on vacation and I said, you know what?
I'm going to throw this up.
And I did.
It's rare that you allow poop in a headline.
This is true.
San Francisco brought it on themselves.
And what was glorious is I actually found an already done Photoshop of a dog holding a bag of poop.
Yeah.
I just pasted it lamely, horribly on a background.
And I called it a day.
And then I played Star Wars Jedi Fallen Order the rest of the day.
So it worked out for me.
We're thinking about taking a trip to San Francisco this summer.
Me and my family.
And I'm a little frightened by all this talk of feces.
Yeah.
I'll bet it's a certain area, though, like maybe just the downtown.
Because that's how it is, like in L.A. People talk about a huge homeless problem.
And you can drive through LA and be like, I didn't see any of that.
But if you drive down certain streets, it's a Tent City.
We went to that event recently.
And did did you guys drive by the Tent City?
Yeah.
Yeah.
So, it kind of depends.
Yeah.
I don't have a lot to say on people pooping in the streets.
I feel like I I should I should have more to say on this.
I feel like this is like right up your alley.
Yeah.
Like we're talking about poop humor, toilet humor.
My daughter has decided that poop is endlessly hilarious.
Like she's my five-year-old.
Yeah.
Like, I don't know.
There's too much context of any story I would tell.
Except for, well, Calvin keeps saying that's never seen me before.
Yeah, I know.
I don't want to get carried away.
What is my two-year-old keeps saying?
He keeps saying something.
Oh, no, he keeps that, well, because they always ask for songs in the car.
He just started asking for the poop song.
There's no such thing.
But then she just laughs so hard for like five minutes, and then she says, Calvin, what song do you want to hear?
He says, poop song.
And goes again, and the cycle continues.
We woke up the other day to my three-year-old son in our room talking to our Alexa and saying, Alexa, play Raining Tacos.
Nice.
So we got to wake up to it's raining tacos at 7 or 8 a.m.
You know that guy, don't you?
Yeah.
I make that up in my head.
If you listen to my other podcast, Audio Mullet, he did the theme song.
Oh, nice.
Audio Molet.
Can you sing the whole theme song for us?
Or was that?
A mole at the body.
You're smashing you in the face.
Sorry.
Okay.
Well, so go to San Francisco.
Have you ever had to go to the bathroom outside on the ground?
I mean, pee.
When we would do like Oh man I have a horrible story.
Overnight.
Subscriber-only portion.
The story.
Camping.
I've done it camping.
I've done it backpacking.
It's bad.
Oh, man.
What is with you and like bodily functions and having a story about it every time?
I have a great one.
I have a great one.
I'd done it in a lake before.
Like swimming, and you're like, oh, I can't make it back to shore.
Yeah, I did that in a, we were in a creek.
And I thought I had gone the right direction.
But I went back to where he was swimming, and then suddenly it started to go, it's floating towards us.
Everybody's like trying to get out of the way.
It's like it felt like it was trying to attack everybody.
Well, we're probably popping a bunch of people's monocles right now.
We'll be talking about that in another.
There's a creek right next to a farm and there's a dead cow in it.
It was pretty gross.
I like all around Gross Creek.
I like the idea of the monocle.
Yeah.
So that's what's happening right now.
Welcome to the highbrow Babylon Beep podcast.
All right, what's our next story?
Next story.
Democrats call for flags to be flown at half mast to grieve death of Soleimane.
Solemani.
It's pronounced kalam.
Is it so?
How do you say it?
That's a throwback reference.
Yeah, that was from last episode.
Greg Coco.
A great episode.
Pretty proud of myself.
You guys didn't see that, listen to that episode.
It was a great episode.
It was great.
Solemani.
I haven't heard it pronounced out loud, actually, I don't think yet.
I've only been reading it.
Yeah, I never watch news broadcasts or anything, so I never get the pronunciations right.
The guy in Iran that Trump exploded.
You know how in other languages or in the past, or like in the Bible, it'll be like and his name meant one who sits upon rock or whatever.
I like the idea that that's what Selemani's name means.
What did you say, one?
He who Trump exploded.
The one who was blown into tiny bits by Trump.
So.
And just so you guys know, this story is not true.
True.
Yeah, the reason we're bringing this one up is because there was a tweet from a lady.
I don't know what her position was, but she was very calls herself like an internet fact check misinformation expert.
Yeah.
Like the scruff McGruff of the internet.
The crime.
She said, I just want you guys to see that this.
Maybe you can read the tweet.
I can, actually.
All right.
Do you do it in a female voice?
Sure.
Okay.
A post from a satirical website has been shared more than 500,000 times saying the DNC called for the flag to be at half-mast because of Salamani.
Some family members just called because their Republican friends on Facebook are circulating it like it's legit.
We have a lot of work to do.
You sound like Napoleon Dynamite's brother.
That was my kip.
Things are getting pretty serious.
I was so distracted by the voice that I didn't even listen to.
Pay attention to the actual words.
There was this concept that because this was being shared a lot, it's being misunderstood a lot.
Yeah, like it's all people thinking it's true.
And I'm sure there are some who were tricked or whatever you want to call it.
But then it was, so this was shared by a CNN reporter.
Yeah, so her tweet was shared by a CNN reporter.
And he was upset that this article was shared at least as many times as CNN and New York Times takes.
Like their top articles.
Yeah, their top articles of the week.
Yeah.
And then he says, having a disclaimer buried somewhere on your site that says it's satire seems like a good way to get around a lot of the changes Facebook has made to reduce the spread of clickbait and misinformation.
I assume he talks like that.
I don't know.
Yeah, they all do.
They all do.
It's a prerequisite.
So that kind of blew up this morning, and it was good to see a lot of B fans were defending us.
Swarming.
I just like this idea that we're doing this insidious tricking of people.
It's always the same thing.
It's the motive.
They assign that motive that you are.
Because we don't get the satire or don't because it's targeted the wrong way.
It's like.
Yeah, it's strange.
Why is anybody asking?
Why is this believable?
You mean in the sense of like maybe the response from some people on the left was so like why is it so believable that they would fly a flag half mast?
Right.
Why are they so close to satire?
Yeah.
I think that should be the question.
The concern.
Yeah, the bigger concern.
I don't know.
Everybody, I mean, that's just the internet.
Whatever.
Yeah, whatever.
That's just the internet.
Whatever.
That's probably true.
That's my hot take.
That's probably true.
It's hard to get you to care about anything.
Yeah, do you?
I care about it.
I just feel like either of us.
Well, we do care about things a lot.
This stuff, I generally don't care that much.
Yeah, it's flashing the pan.
We care about eternal things.
That's right.
We're too good for current events or something.
I don't know, whatever.
I feel like there's so many more qualified people to talk about this stuff than me.
Yeah, but you can make puns.
You can always make puns.
I can always make puns and stuff.
So anyway.
Yeah, it's weird to me.
So to me, I'm not sure that that striking Salamani was a great idea.
I don't know.
Time will tell, right?
I always feel like a military stuff.
Yeah, I don't know.
I don't have all the intel that went into that decision.
I don't understand people that think they could make all these decisions from their armchair.
Yeah.
The Twitter foreign policy experts.
It's kind of like, hmm.
But at the same time, I think you can be skeptical of the decision to kill him without sympathizing with actual literal terrorists.
And it just seems like that's a weird line that people don't understand.
Yeah.
A lot of people cross.
So anyway.
Well, in this bizarre thing where Trump announced that he's going to bomb 52 or yes, 52 sites.
It feels like a Batman comic.
It's so weird.
I will bomb the 52 sites.
I feel like that when Trump was tweeting back and forth with Kim Jong.
Yeah.
Like the same thing.
It's just so bizarre to hear these world leaders tweeting and tweeting.
I know, and these threats.
Iran's foreign policy guys on Twitter, which is just crazy to me.
You know, he's got a million plus followers and he's tweeting back.
And actually, blah, blah, blah.
You don't have to say.
Oh, really?
I didn't catch that.
It's just weird to me to see this guy in this country way over there that's like very strange.
You know, tweeting this stuff back.
I don't know.
It's a brave new world.
It is.
It's also the name of a novel.
1954-ish.
Aldous Huxley.
I didn't like it much.
Okay.
Yeah, I really thought of a guy I read it too, man.
Yeah, I thought 1984 was much better.
Okay, let's move on to our third story.
Thousands of panicked terrorists surrender as Trump deploys Jack Wilson to the Middle East.
Refresher, Jack Wilson is the guy from the Texas church.
The Texas church shooting, yes.
At the West Freeway Church of Christ.
So this is obviously one of those things where a lot of people were saying, oh, you know, maybe this is too far.
Maybe you shouldn't have joked about a shooting stuff.
And I actually sympathize with that.
Yeah, I totally do.
Especially because someone actually did die.
And didn't he kill one guy?
Two, I think.
Was it two?
It ended up being two.
I think it was one originally, and then someone else.
So I think I was more trying to give a tribute to this guy, this Jack Wilson guy.
That is always the other method.
I hate it when the headline says like two dead and the murderer and the victim.
Yeah.
One dead.
Yeah.
One dead.
And then another.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Sorry, I interrupted you with that thought.
No, I didn't really have a thought.
So I'm glad.
Yeah, I agree.
Using those situations as fodder for a joke always feels like.
Yeah.
So it's a fine line.
It's a fine line.
I was texting back and forth with Dan, and I was like, we have to have some kind of tribute for Jack Wilson because I was so I'm actually in awe of people like that.
They can just keep your cool in a situation.
Even if I had a gun, I would be like, ah, just firing in the air or something.
I wouldn't know what to do.
I mean, what was this guy thinking?
That's what I'm.
It's the shooter.
It sounded like he had mental issues and he was going to die.
He had come to the church before, I guess, and tried to seek for help, and he was having issues.
Because apparently this whole thing happened in 2.5 seconds.
It was crazy.
Jack Wilson stood up, just threw his hand one shot.
It was a headshot, I think.
Oh, really?
I know it was.
One shot, one kill.
That's crazy.
And there were like six other church members that pulled out their revolvers or pistols or whatever.
I wonder if the people that go to that church feel like they're living in a prison.
Like just all these people with guns everywhere?
Well, you know, that's the argument when you're just having bodyguards at schools.
They're like, oh, what's the school?
A prison?
Prison?
What kind of horror do we have to live in that there's guards with guns standing around?
Like every government building in existence.
One isn't any difference in prison because they're going to shoot the prisoners versus shooting someone who's going to be.
Isn't that the police state?
Yeah, that's weird.
I don't know.
They always act like that's so outlandish, but then this is such a great example of.
You know, I mean, if that guy, if he walked into a, what's a church that would not have a bunch of guns?
Any church here in California?
Yeah, Southern California of Hipster churches.
The church, the flannel church of beards and collage, coffee, collage of hope or something.
Collage of hope.
That's more realistic.
Mosaic.
That's another one called Mosaic.
In LA.
It's really artistic.
Erwin McManus.
Yeah.
I'm not trying to make fun of you guys if you go to this church.
Mariner.
Isn't there Mariner?
Because I also, I went to Ecclesia, which would also be a very gun-free zone.
But yeah, the hipster Hollywood Church.
He would have probably gotten a lot more shop than.
Yeah, I don't.
I mean, to me, it's like a totally different culture from us here on the left coast and seeing like six people pull out a gun, you're like, whoa, whoa.
Yeah.
And it's easy to get.
I don't know.
If you're going to pick a church.
Yeah, never mind.
That was dark.
I mean, I kind of grew up in that culture in small town, Oregon.
A lot more guns around.
But I get how people are afraid of them who aren't around that.
It's not that I'm afraid of it.
No, no, no.
Yeah.
I just mean like people think if there's a lot of people walking around that have guns, then a lot more shootings are going to happen.
And it's just generally not how it works.
Yeah.
All right.
Well, the news has been thoroughly covered.
Yeah.
And you don't need to turn in any other news sources because we've just given you all the most important stories of the week.
Yeah, because we are highly informed and educated.
And we're going to talk to Dave Rubin now.
Here he comes.
Presenting an exclusive Babylon B interview.
Beautiful.
All right.
Well, everybody, we are sitting here with Dave Rubin.
Now, I would like to just read his intro, but it comes off really wooden because, you know, it's straight off Wikipedia.
It's like off Wikipedia.
I'm already in trouble.
Dave Rubin is a far-right, extremist Nazi.
That's the good stuff on Wikipedia.
Yeah.
Yeah, I don't know.
I don't think Wikipedia has any good vetting of information there.
But he's an American political commentator, YouTube personality, stand-up comedian, and talk show host.
See, this doesn't really paint a picture here.
Yeah, this is just.
You mean it didn't say Koch brothers funded first?
That's not first anymore.
There's a whole section on that in the middle.
What a crap factory Wikipedia turned into, right?
Like, what a great idea Wikipedia was, this idea of really crowdsourcing and finding new ways of getting to some truth and some information.
And it's just become a place for bots and trolls and just the worst underbelly, awful people of the internet to manipulate information that they want.
And sadly, the mainstream media and the, you know, as I always put air quotes around journalists now, they still think it's some sort of like legitimate news source.
It's a state of everything, I suppose.
Yeah, if you're looking up like hippopotamuses or something, it's still not too bad.
It's not too, how are they?
They haven't been politically skewered so far.
Rhinoceros is definitely alt-right.
It hasn't hit the hippos yet.
The rhinos.
That's right.
The rhinos.
Yeah.
That was a good pun there.
Yeah.
The rhinos.
I got it.
I got it.
Yeah, that was totally intentional.
Excellent.
So for anybody who doesn't know, Mr. Rubin converted.
He was a Prager U.
He came out on Prager U. You used to be like Joseph Stalin, and now you're more like Adolf Hitler.
Can you tell us a little bit about that?
When did you have the come to Ron Paul moment?
Yeah.
It's funny the transition.
The way you said Joseph Stalin and Adolf Hitler, your hands weren't that far off.
Yeah, well, I made a horseshoe.
Yeah, I had your hands very close together.
Your hands could have been a little further to illustrate that.
Thank God this is audio.
Well, you know, it's kind of funny.
Yes, I was a lefty.
I was a progressive.
I was a Bernie supporter.
I worked at the freaking Young Turks.
You know, I are they still young, by the way.
Very curious about that.
They're not young, and supposedly the name, the Young Turks, has nothing to do with the actual young Turks who committed the Armenian genocide.
It's a total coincidence.
Total coincidence.
But yeah, I was a lefty.
The way I describe it really is that leftism is sort of the factory settings that we're all sort of brought up with.
If you grow up in America, there's sort of, and you go to public school and you listen to mainstream media and the rest of it, we're sort of brought up in the idea that left is good, right is bad.
Democrats like poor people, Republicans like money, Democrats want peace, Republicans want war.
This completely false sort of crazy thing that, you know, that we all just sort of accept.
We just accept as the base level of truth.
And I think that's why so many young people are attracted to the ideas of leftism and really now socialism, because it's just stuff that you kind of accept that all sounds right.
Give money to these people, take money from these people, the whole series of those things.
And sadly, I bought it like most people bought it.
And then when I was on the Young Turks, and now this is after about a year there, so around 2014, I just saw a series of things.
I was like, something is seriously not right here.
It cannot be that every single person that disagrees with these people is a racist and a bigot and a homophobe and an Islamophobe and the rest of these nonsensical buzzwords.
And then a couple of things really happened in a row that broke it for me.
The first one was the Sam Harris appearance on Real Time with Bill Maher that I'm sure you guys are aware of when he got into it with Affleck, where Affleck refused to understand the difference between people and ideas, meaning you shouldn't be bigoted towards people.
In this case, they were talking about Muslims, but you can criticize Islam the same way you could criticize Judaism or a political platform or anything else.
You should be able to criticize.
But not Christianity.
No, no, you can definitely criticize Christianity.
Yeah, no, no.
Well, for these people, that's their main living mantra is to endlessly criticize Christianity.
And sadly, I sort of bought into a lot of that nonsense until I had a couple of breaking moments.
That was one.
Charlie Hebdo was another one where suddenly the left was saying you can't do satire.
I mean, you guys might, that might be personally.
We've never encountered that before.
That might be, you've never encountered satire before.
That might be personal to you guys.
And then there were a couple others.
I was on air once and they were showing a clip of David Webb.
Do you guys know David Webb?
He's a Sirius XM guy, conservative, who happens to be black.
We were friends from my old Sirius XM days.
And I'm watching and they're talking about how he's, because he's a conservative and he's black, he's a sellout and he's an uncle Tom and blah, blah, blah.
And I'm thinking, they don't know this, but that's my friend.
This is a guy that I've been out to dinner with many times who's been to my house and his wife's been here and all these things.
He's my friend.
I know he believes these things.
But you guys, as the tolerant lefties and the people who love diversity, you see a black guy who doesn't think the way you want him to think and now he's evil.
Well, guess what?
That's actual racism.
So there were a series of things like that that woke me up.
And then I was just kind of open about my evolution.
And suddenly I realized there's a lot of people that are feeling this thing.
So there's a moment where you go from that being internal to it coming out external.
Like you actually, it bursts forth.
Where does that happen in your life?
Like where you actually go, I'm going to publicly be seen with despised people.
With these horrible people.
Well, first off, you know, what was the effect on your life?
Yeah.
Well, at first, I just started slowly talking about what I thought was happening.
So if you watch, you know, when we rebranded my show and it became really an interview show and I started talking more about free speech, this is now fall of 2015.
I just, I still felt I was a lefty.
I still felt I was a Democrat and all of those things.
And I was really just starting to talk about from a lefty perspective, what's going on here with this identity politics thing?
What is this really pernicious new racism and monster that's coming out of my side?
And then suddenly it was like all the liberals, all the remaining good liberals were like, yeah, me too.
I'm here too.
I'm here too.
So Sam Harris and Peter Bogozian and Gad Saad and a series of these people that are that are true liberals, classical liberals, but not crazy lefties.
And then I started finding some community around that.
And then the show really started blowing up because there were a lot of people seeing this thing.
But yes, to answer your question directly, it's a crazy moment when you just start saying things that not only are true, but are right and are really what you feel.
And then to suddenly get called all of the worst things known imaginable, Nazi and bigot and all of these things.
I mean, I grew up around Holocaust survivors.
So, you know, it's not just like throwing these flippant words at people and getting called these things by people who know you.
Forget the internet trolls and the anime avatars and, you know, all that nonsense.
I mean, literally people who were invited to my wedding, you know, texting me saying you're a racist now.
And then me responding and saying, well, I'm not a racist.
Could you point out how I'm racist?
And then they can't really do it.
And then they get angry.
So they start yelling at you more.
So actually, my book that's coming out in April, I mean, that really is what it's about, not just the evolution part, because I think a lot of people get that now.
It's how to survive after you sort of come out of the political closet.
But yeah, it's crazy.
And everyone has this story, right?
I'm sure you guys have a version of it too.
You know, unless you were basically a conservative from day one and you've been called evil since the day you were born, you know, as a white Christian male, let's say, everyone basically has some sort of political awakening.
And if you leave the left, and especially if you're a minority, by the way, so meaning if you're gay or black or Jewish or Asian or something like that, they can't have minorities walking.
And that's why they hate Candace Owens so much, because she's really, she's taking black America in many ways and saying, I'll be Moses.
Let's go, guys.
Let's get going.
Let me part the river and let's get going.
So they want to extract a really high cost if you are a minority and walk.
And again, that really shows their racism and their obsession with those immutable characteristics that conservatives and right-leaning people just don't care about.
Yeah.
Well, she is also, Candace Owens is also a white supremacist.
Yes, I know.
I was at her wedding and it was all white supremacists and the priest was a white supremacist.
It was really something.
Yeah, we interviewed her.
It was shocking.
She comes in with the swastika armband.
She's a great girl.
Candace is like, sometimes some of my more lefty crew will say to me, Dave, you shouldn't be so closely associated with her and friendly with her because she's a little over the top and whatever.
And it's like, do you realize that this girl who was basically a nobody YouTuber two years ago, when I first had her on my show, and that's the one that really put her on the map, she had like 40,000 subscribers.
She was just scrapping by to see if she can make something happen.
The girl is truly a worldwide phenomenon right now.
And we've become very, very good friends.
And it's like, does she sometimes say things that are a little over the top or like things that I disagree with?
Of course she does, as everyone might.
But it's like, it's not my job to control her.
What she has done is such a net good that if every now and again she says something that's a little nutty, you know, she said something about if you burn the flag, you should, you shouldn't be a citizen or something like something.
And it's like, yeah, and people were like, Dave, you have to, you have to say something about that.
And it's like, I'm not in the business of policing every one of my friends' thoughts.
You know, I know that's a, it's a good business to be in, but it's not the business I'm in.
Yeah.
Well, let's talk about that a little bit, free speech association.
Yeah.
I'm always curious.
You're a big free speech advocate.
I'm always a little curious, like, where that line is.
Yeah.
You know, and we were talking about this just before we came in.
You know, Nazis on the street corner.
Let's say, let's say we have a, let's say we have an uprising and there's five million Nazis marching around, but they're not doing anything.
Right.
They're just saying Nazi things.
So where's the line for you?
Yeah, well, Believe in the original ACLU argument, which I'm sure you guys are well aware of the case of Skokie, Illinois, where the neo-Nazis wanted to march in one of the most heavily populated Holocaust survivor cities in the United States.
And the ACLU defended their right to do that.
I do believe they should have been allowed to do that.
As long as they're not directly calling to violence, you're allowed to say awful things.
You are.
I mean, this is the trade-off of what the First Amendment is.
Everyone says I'm for free speech, and then someone says something offensive, and then you go, but not for that guy.
So, do I want horrible people to be able to say things?
I do, because otherwise, you just push all this stuff underground, and then you actually also give them the victim complex.
And then, because of the internet now, especially, you got all these people who can anonymously create whatever groups they're in, and then now they're victims too.
And you've done, you've actually added a lot of fuel to the fire.
So, for me personally, the way I do the show, I don't want, look, also, you guys are in my house right now, like, right?
We're in my garage.
You guys now know where I live.
So, I would I want a white nationalist who I would defend his right to free speech.
Do I really want him in my house?
Probably not.
Maybe I could do an off-site interview if I felt it was a worthwhile conversation, but there are some conversations that I'm not that interested in.
So, if your position, let's say, is purely you want America to be some sort of white identitarian country, or even if you want America to be a black identitarian country or something like that, that idea is so counter to everything I believe.
It's so counter to the ethos of what America is.
I really have no interest in that conversation.
But the direct answer to your question of where that line is, it's tricky because everyone's got a different, everyone's got a different threshold and tolerance for it.
So, I try to bring in into this very room as wide a group of people across the board.
What's interesting about it, though, is I can bring on a far lefty.
There's no, the left has no guardrail, right?
When you talk to anyone on the left, there's no left that's too far left.
So, right?
So, Linda Sarsour is pretty horrific, but she can be associated with Berndie Sanders, and then she can also be associated with Louis Farrakhan.
And it's like nobody really gatekeeps them on that.
But if you bring in Shapiro, you're suddenly too far right.
And it's like, actually, Shapiro is just saying the stuff that Ronald Reagan was saying 25 years ago.
So, if the Overton window has shifted that far, we're in a lot of trouble.
So, again, that's also why it's like everything that we're doing right now and talking about, I think Trump really has a great understanding of this, is that you have to stop playing by the left's rules because they don't even play by their own rules.
They set up rules for basically conservatives and right-leaning libertarians, classical liberals to play by, but they don't play by them themselves.
And Trump is basically like, I'm not going to play that game.
And that's pretty much why he's winning.
Well, he's also a genius.
And he's obviously a very humble genius.
Yes.
Whoa, whoa.
Wow.
He's implanted stereo viruses into people.
I mean, it also seems like the right does it.
Maybe this is what you were getting at, but the right does a better job of self-policing.
Yeah.
You know, where the right will say, oh, you're too far right, but the left won't say you're too far left.
Well, you see this all the time, right?
So all of the mainstream, let's say, I don't mean mainstream.
I mean all of like the YouTube podcast people that are popular on the right, say Shapiro and Jordan Peterson and me, if that's where I'm at, or all of, does he still have that podcast?
Yeah, yeah, they still let him on the iTunes story.
It's weird.
But all of those people, it's very clear we have some limits of who we'll talk to.
It's very clear.
But as I said before, yeah, it's like the left, you can just talk to anybody.
You can bring on crazy, crazy conspiracy theorists.
I mean, even look, if you look what's happening with Iran right now, the level of insanity that these people are spewing and MSNBC is literally, did you see this last night?
So the MSNBC has the analyst on who's repeating Iranian state propaganda that 30 American soldiers were killed.
It didn't happen.
So you have literally MSNBC repeating Iranian statement propaganda.
You know, you have so basically it's like we're in this very strange position where podcasts and YouTube shows and the rest of it and regular people.
People come up to me on the street and they're like, Dave, you're the only person I trust.
And I'm like, flowerbed.
We're in a lot of trouble.
You know what I mean?
Like that should not be.
I'm not a journalist.
I am telling you what I believe to be true and I'm interviewing people.
But that really shows you how far they've burned down the institution of journalism at this point.
Yeah, it's fascinating to me just looking at a couple of years ago.
I don't know that we'd be having this conversation.
There's this, you talk about strange alliances on the podcast.
Yeah.
You know, we're just two Christian guys that started making jokes.
And is that legal?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
But that's actually, you know, one of the things that I've really been moved by in the last year is what's going on with the Christian community at large.
I mean, I spoke at Liberty University, which is the largest Christian conservative college in the United States.
I spoke in front of 14,000 people.
Like it was a legit, it felt like a political rally.
Just to put that in context, when I toured with Jordan Peterson for, we did about 120 stops in about 20 countries.
The largest theater that we did was 6,000 people.
So really, I mean, 14,000 people.
Wow.
And these people were incredible.
Every single person that I met, I wandered.
I took a tour on campus.
Couldn't have been nicer.
I get invited to churches to speak now and all sorts of Christian events.
People know I have different theological differences.
They have lifestyle differences, whatever you want to call it.
And what I see is just consistent tolerance, ability to disagree, agree to disagree.
So there's something really nice happening there.
And it's great.
I mean, that's the life.
But the jokes, guys, could you just ease up on me?
Because we can't have you people being funny.
And that's how we refer to you, you people.
Yeah, I mean, I guess that's interesting to get into because you're a comedian, a stand-up comedian.
I used to be funny before all this.
Yeah.
And what is that?
What is the power of jokes?
Why is it why?
Well, what is it?
Why is it so triggering?
Yeah.
Well, Oscar Wilde, right?
If you're going to tell people the truth, you better be funny or they'll kill you.
I mean, that's the basic idea, right?
We don't want to be leveled with the truth just every day in some sort of dry fashion.
But the way you can smuggle truth in, you know, get it past security is by being funny.
So that's also what's so interesting right now about how comedy has crumbled as we're watching all of these institutions crumble.
Now, we've got a couple of good comics, right?
Chappelle is great and Rogan's great and what Ricky Gervais did at the Golden Globes was and Amy Schumer is amazing and that Chelsea Handler is just like, she's just resurrected Joan Rivers.
Those no, that is not true.
Yeah, then the comics who are intentionally not funny.
I mean, it's so stupid.
But it's not a coincidence that all of the institutions are crumbling.
And then at the same time, comedy's crumbling.
And not only just comedy, creativity in general.
I mean, you guys probably know I'm a huge Star Wars guy.
And it's like Star Wars has just imploded on itself, even though the last movie was fine and JJ tried really hard to fix the mess of Last Jedi.
But it's almost like, you know, Disney now owns Star Wars and the Marvel movies.
And it's like, we're just regurgitating all of the stuff that was written 40 years ago.
And we need new experiences.
We need new adventures.
But to relate that to comedy, comedians for the last 30 years basically just all became lefties.
And if you're a lefty, in essence, you're for the power.
You know, this is the funny thing about what the lefties do is they always say they're against the power, except all of their solutions are to give more power to government.
Government is the power.
So they'll be yelling at people on the right who generally are trying to take some power away from government, often fail at it and don't do it and campaign one way and govern another way.
But leftism is the ultimate suck up to power.
You know, they'll tell you the government's horrible, blah, blah, blah.
All we have to do is give it more money, you know?
And then comedy sort of got bamboozled by that.
And then you've got comedians that were in blackface, like Sarah Silverman now calling everybody else racist.
And Jimmy Kimmel, you know, calling people racist.
And he's been in Blackface.
They also dated.
I don't know if it was just they bonded over Blackface or what.
They were making out.
Yeah.
So there's a weird state of comedy.
But I can tell you this, that in the last year or so, as I've got back into stand-up a little bit.
So when I was on tour with Jordan, if we had an off night, I would just do the local club.
I have nobody open for me.
I do about an hour.
And I'm really more, I'm doing more of like a circus act than stand-up.
I'm giving away things and I have audience participation and Q ⁇ A and I bring people on stage and I'm just having fun because I don't really need it anymore.
So it's not really traditional stand-up in that way.
But we've sold out every club I do.
And it's really weird to go from, you know, I did the struggling stand-up life when you're making no money and nobody's showing up for you and you're working at crappy clubs and that whole thing.
And now it's like, I don't really need it.
And now people show up for me is a really strange dichotomy or something.
But I guess that's just the artist's adventure or something.
Well, I've got, you know, you brought it up in your speech there.
But in that very long self-serving speech.
You started talking about something really serious that we need to get into.
So The Last Jedi.
Yes.
Rise of Skywalker.
Yeah.
Well, Last Jedi is one of the worst movies ever made.
And it was very clear that Ryan Johnson doesn't like Star Wars.
I mean, his whole thing was to burn down Star Wars.
That's what he tried to do.
I mean, think of the ending of Force Awakens, that brilliant moment.
He's never seen it.
You've never even seen it.
They all blur together.
If you want to go get a water or something, it's playing.
I keep it playing in my bedroom all the time.
Well, I'll do the Star Wars thing kind of quick then.
But this wickedly brilliant moment at the end of Force Awakens with Ray handing him, handing Luke the lightsaber.
And then to have that horrible opening of Last Jedi with the, it's General Hucks, that phone call that doesn't work.
It's terrible.
And the bombs that drop in space.
You know, that stuff I can get over, though, because they've got some technology that reverses gravity.
I don't know.
Jump into hyperspace through a capital shit.
Mike, come on.
Yeah, that was stupid.
And why was it purple-haired Laura Dern?
You just introduce Laura Dern out of nowhere.
You give her purple hair.
And it's like, why is she doing it?
It should have been Akbar.
It should have been Akbar at the end.
Give him a fitting.
Give him a fit.
Instead, we kill him off camera.
Like, just every level of it was lazy nonsense.
Finn could have died in any of the movies.
It wouldn't have mattered.
What's her name?
At least they took her out in the last one.
The Asian girl Rose.
And she starts talking and they're like, why don't you just stay over here?
Which is what they did to Jar Jar, by the way, in the second prequel, right?
And in Attack of the Clones.
But I think JJ did everything he could to fix it as much as possible, but it's just irreparably damaged.
That being said, I keep tweeting this out and more and more people are starting to agree with me.
I think as the years go by, the prequels are going to look better and better and better.
You have to put aside a little of the stiff dialogue.
You have to put a little of the terrible act.
Yeah, I don't like, yeah, Sand, it's gritty.
You have to get rid of bad acting.
He's a horrible actor.
But if you get rid of that, the story of the prequels, putting aside the Jedi, the idea that Palpatine faked a war in effect to work both sides against each other.
There's something universal about that.
Yeah, it's a great libertarian story, actually, and it shows about accumulation of power and why you should be wary of politicians and all that.
And also, I think General Grievous was a cool character.
And I think Revenge of the Sith is actually a pretty great movie in and of itself.
Maybe they'll re-release.
I'll say about that.
Maybe they'll re-release those, what do you call them again?
Prequels.
Yeah, that's what they call it.
They'll CG in the acting that he always intended to be in it.
That's a great idea.
But also, that, you know, what I was saying about how Disney now owns all of these things.
It's like the new ones feel very much like big Hollywood things.
And of course, they are big Hollywood things.
But even as big as Star Wars was, when George Lucas did the prequels, it was still his operation, his shop, the original creator of all those things.
And by the way, that is why some of the flaws are there because the guy was biting off.
He was, you know, Jar Jar is the first CGI character, fully CGI character in a movie.
So he was doing technological jumps while at the same time trying to tell this massive story and direct it and produce it.
And maybe he just needed a little more help because, you know, he didn't direct Empire Strikes Backward Return of the Jedi.
But for the prequels, he directed all of them.
So I think the guy just needed a little more help, perhaps.
But I have nothing but love for George Lucas and all these people that hate everything all the time.
And George screwed it up and Han shot first.
It's like, dude, he gave you your dreams.
So he didn't do it exactly perfectly.
He gave you your freaking dreams.
Give him a break.
And he's also starting to look like a Star Wars character, which is pretty cool.
You know, he does.
Got that big neck.
He could be right in the tattooing bar.
I was surprised how much Rise of Skywalker pretty much specifically apologized for things in The Last Jedi.
Well, but that's what I'm saying.
Like looking at the screen and saying, hey, sorry about the last movie, guys.
We're going to move on with a real Star Wars story.
He literally did that.
I mean, when he catches the lightsaber.
You shouldn't do that with a lightsaber.
No, but he really.
Can I curse?
I can curse.
We believe that I believe it.
I mean, the movie was a flowerbed.
You.
It was a flowerbed.
You.
One more time.
The movie was a flowerbed to Ryan Johnson.
You could tell.
JJ did not like any.
I mean, even the fact that what's her name again?
Mary?
Rose.
The girl, Rose.
Yeah.
I like to remember you put her so much.
It's like when bad memories, you block them.
Yeah.
But even the fact that he only gave her two minutes was telling Ryan Johnson, you're a fool.
You know what I mean?
Like all of it.
The snoke line when he walks in and I created Snoke.
It was like, screw you, dude.
You were supposed to take care of that in the last movie.
So I like JJ.
He did everything he could do.
There's just not, there's just not enough magic left in the whole iconness of it.
There's just not enough magic left, unfortunately.
And it's like Chewbacca should have died.
I didn't want Chewbacca to die, but the idea that Ray was going to use the dark side and the electricity and accidentally kill Chewbacca, they give you an emotional moment and then they take it away from you a minute later.
And then C-3PO, his mind being erased, that's an emotional moment because it's like a death.
But then what happens?
He gets it right back.
So every time they have a moment where you're like, oh, something gritty happened, something shocking happened, they just hand it back to you.
Yeah, it feels kind of empty.
Yeah.
So C-3PIO is the robot, Ethan.
Yes, he's the gay robot.
You're allowed to say that.
Chewbacca's the bear.
Yeah.
You guys, it sounds like when you're around, like, there's like Filipino people and they're all talking and they keep going in and out of English.
And then you're saying really weird words that sound kind of wacky.
So yeah, are we done with Star Wars now?
We can be done with Star Wars.
Yeah.
The weird thing is I'm the fattest, nerdiest guy, but I don't know why I never got into Star Wars.
You look like a Star Wars.
It's complicated.
Yeah.
Thanks.
Weird.
Is that a compliment?
Well, he like draws comics.
He's in the whole entertainment industry, the whole comic industry, TV show industry, and doesn't like Star Wars.
There's other things you don't.
He doesn't like to watch Marvel movies.
I'm not into that.
He's just not into that.
I grew up in indie comics.
He's got a thing for simpler.
I don't know.
Yeah.
Have you ever heard of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turner?
You grew up on him.
Yes.
I remember being in sixth grade.
I was a big comic book kid.
You may have seen some comic books in the green room over there.
But I liked Star Wars.
I liked Spider-Man and X-Men and Batman and all that.
And I remember there was this super nerdy kid named Eric who had his locker next to me.
And in sixth grade, he walks in with the copy of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
Have you ever seen this?
Like the original black and white ones?
Were they black and white at the time?
Before they became like a big franchise, they started as black and white.
So maybe it was black and white, but he played through this.
They were really funny.
So it must have been that.
So this is probably like 19, I would think I was in sixth or seventh grade.
So this is like 1989 or something.
So really right at the beginning of it, maybe a little bit later than that.
And I remember thinking like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
Like this is literally the stupidest thing I've ever heard.
It worked out okay for those kids.
It did.
Yeah.
That's true.
So can you give us any candid Jordan Peterson stories from the road?
That no one's ever heard before?
That no one's ever heard before.
Crazy stuff.
Him complaining about the MMs in the green room.
Oh, he doesn't need MMs.
He only eats meat.
The beef jerky received jerky and the well, here, I'll give you.
The carcass of a cow on the side of the road.
Something like that.
Well, all right.
So I can give you, we were driving from like Kansas City to Des Moines.
And, you know, people think it's like we're flying everywhere first class and it's like all great.
But no, it's us and the tour manager and we're in some rented old SUV and the car got a flat on the road.
And, you know, Jordan and I had, you know, lunch at Denny's sitting in the parking lot with the gas station and the whole thing.
And he just, he just rolls with everything.
Like what I, what I can say on the nice side, I can say a lot of things on the nice side, but like everything that you guys know of Jordan and the ideas that he puts forth, I never saw him do anything that was counter to those ideas.
Like he really tried his best, I think, to live up to those 12 rules.
He really did.
On the funny side, there was one night where you may have seen the picture where we were in London and we had dinner at Douglas Murray's apartment with Douglas and Majid Noaz, who you guys might know and their wives or girlfriends or boyfriends, whatever it is.
We're having dinner and, you know, rule, is it rule 11 or rule 12 is if you see a cat on the street, you should pet it.
And the idea basically is, you know, stop and smell the roses, you know.
And Douglas has a cat and we're in there and I'm super allergic to cats.
So I'm kind of sniffiny, sniffly, and my eyes are watery.
And I just, I don't like cats, but whatever.
And we're in there for a couple hours and we're having whiskey and wine and everybody's having a great time.
And now it's like three, four hours in.
And I'm like, man, Jordan has not pet this cat.
And I was like, if he doesn't pet this cat, like the guy's a fraud, you know, like you got to pet this cat, man.
And now it's like five hours in and we're leaving and it's like 1 or 2 a.m.
And as we're walking out the door, Jordan literally sits on the floor.
The cat's bed was right in front of the door.
He sits on the floor, almost in the cat's bed.
You can kind of try to picture Jordan.
He's really tall and lanky and whatever.
And he gets down there and he sits there and for like five minutes just strokes the cat.
And I thought, all right, he's the real deal.
So he bathes it with his tongue.
He licked the cat and the whole thing.
No, he's just, he's a good guy.
You know, he's going through it right now, having some issues, but he's missed.
Do you guys feel that?
I sense there's like a little bit of a hole in the internet right now without you know, and I think that's caused actually a little bit of weirdness and a little bit of extra trolling and some bad ideas flourishing because I think he did such a good idea of fighting bad impulses for young people.
Well, really, we wouldn't have this issue in Iran if Jordan Peterson was around.
No, and also he was a foreign policy hawk.
Iran would be wiped off the map and we'd have no problems anymore.
Yeah.
How about that?
Thank you guys, by the way, for coming here during World War III.
Yeah.
You know, I'm sure it raises there was a little extra traffic because of it, but other than that.
Man, everything you need to know about how stupid these journalists are and the blue check Twitter people and everything, it's like you people who could not do anything.
You couldn't employ anybody.
You can barely tie your own shoes.
You don't know how to do anything but talk about all of this nonsense as if you're an expert or pretend you know things that you don't know.
It's like none of us know about what's really going on and what Trump's plans are and all of the personal relationships and the international policies and all these things.
And these people that ramp everything up so that good, decent, but confused people think that we're going into World War III.
It's like Trump actually just reinstated deterrence.
Like we killed a mastermind of terrorism and Iran did basically nothing.
You know, these rockets that they shot didn't kill anybody, although MSNBC said they killed 30 people.
But we're starting to reinstate deterrence and that's how you stay out of wars.
You don't stay out of wars by being like, oh, you could do whatever you want.
We're really nice.
You stay out of wars by saying, if you do some bad stuff, we're going to do some worse stuff to you.
And I think in that regard, Trump has actually done a major policy shift here.
But, you know, I guess World War III, too.
Ethan's a blue chick on Twitter, just so you know.
You're a blue chick?
A blue chick or a blue chick?
A blue chick.
He could be a blue chick.
He could be, you know, everybody.
I got it when they were handing him out like candy, though.
Yeah, the old days.
You see the people that have like fewer than 500 followers with the blue check.
Yeah.
Like, come on.
Yeah.
You're not fooling anybody.
How'd you get that check?
That's always the author of published Amazon book.
Nice.
Very nice.
No, not me.
I was making fun of people on that one.
Awesome.
Yeah.
Well, we don't need to tell anybody where to find you because you're a lot bigger than we are.
All right.
I don't know.
Is there anything you want to pump?
Well, I would say your book coming out.
So my book's coming out in April.
It's called Don't Burn This Book.
We had one copy here.
She took it out of here.
Oh, she took it out of here.
So that's coming out in April, and you can get that on Amazon or wherever.
But more importantly, I would say go to locals.com and just see what we've built.
We can build seriously slick custom apps.
You will get push notifications so that, you know, right now I've got a million two YouTube subscribers.
I have no way of communicating with those people because we know if I put a video out, the algorithm just crushes it.
Well, congratulations.
If you join us on locals, your people will actually get push notifications to their phone when your content comes out.
You set the rules of your community.
So if you want to be more strict on speech than me, you can boot people.
It's subscription-based so you get rid of all the bots and trolls.
And I think it's a bottom-up way of fixing a lot of the crazy internet stuff.
So that's where I would send people.
Locals.com.
It's not a dating site.
A lot of people think it's a dating site.
I guess it could be a dating site as we build it out.
I would tell listeners, if you haven't heard Dave Rubin's show before, this is what you do.
You hear about somebody and you hear the little sound bites about them, whether it's Tucker Carlson or just anybody that's been on your show.
Look up the video where Dave talks to him.
You'll get such a broader picture of that person.
You still may not agree with them.
It's so much healthier to see people like that than to just have the sound bites.
Well, listen, guys.
For me, that was me expanding my mind when I started listening.
And I started watching videos of people I thought I hated.
And I thought I was like, I hate that guy or I can't stand that guy.
And then, oh, no, he's actually human like I am.
Yeah, I appreciate that.
And, you know, in a time when everyone's burning bridges, let's build a couple bridges, right?
Like, why not?
Let's see what happens.
Kumbaya.
All right.
Thanks a lot.
Thanks a lot, Dave.
I couldn't let it end on Kumbaya.
Couldn't let it finish.
All right.
And that was great, but that was not the entire conversation.
As usual, we're tricky.
We're scheming.
We put the rest of this conversation into the portion that the paid subscribers access.
We also covered some more stories this time, and we put those into the subscriber portion.
Long story.
We'll get to it later.
But we do have some hate mail first.
I'm Miss Adam Ford.
Dan frantically scrambling for the hate mail button because I just don't slowly build into the transition at all.
I just dump it on him.
Dumped.
So we have hate mail.
This is a one-star podcast review.
All right.
And we're getting a lot of those lately.
I know.
What are we doing?
You know, we need to stop reading them because now people want to get on with the one.
Not for me.
Tried three episodes and I just can't get past the immature giggling and inside jokes that these guys start the show with.
I was drawn to the subject lines and was looking forward to hearing more about what was featured.
But the wandering dialogue lost my interest quickly.
Sorry.
I had high hopes for this.
Perhaps they'll see some of these reviews and refine the show a bit.
Give it another try in the future.
Do we have to stop giggling?
I don't know.
I don't say this is hate mail, but it is like dislike mail.
Yeah.
Strong dislike mail.
Kind of fair, Chris.
I don't kind of.
We said up front this show is not going to be for everybody.
We were very clear about that.
Yeah.
And I still feel like I'm happy that it finds people that it is for, but it's not going to be for everybody, especially in the world of, there's a lot of different ways to attack a podcast and we've just.
We're trying just to do it the most natural way for us because otherwise it would either be too much work and we'd never get them done.
Yeah, and honestly, I don't want to be.
You have the Daily Wire, people.
Yeah, you already have them.
We don't need to be the pundits or the talking heads that have the answers for you.
We want to be the guys who are laughing, sitting there giggling, and Ethan pointing at things and saying, hey, that rhymes with this.
That's a pun.
I'm self-conscious every time I laugh now.
Yeah, do you think the immature giggling was referring to you?
Probably.
Do you giggle?
That Frank giggle is pretty.
That's Frank's giggle's gold.
Yeah, that is gold.
Because I know that Frank was sitting alone in a closet.
Yeah, trying to record this.
He was sitting alone in his closet, giggling.
We used that.
What was he laughing at in that?
Do you remember in that little segment?
We did an early episode where we read submissions, very bizarre submissions we had been given.
That was the number he was laughing at.
Well, I remember the episode.
I just don't remember that specific laugh, what it was about.
So we'll have to go back on.
I can't remember the exact.
I have to go back and listen.
All right.
Well, that's the end of our show.
If you would like to continue on and hear full-length episodes, you can go to BabylonB.com/slash plans.
You can hear a full-length ad-free podcast.
We have access to a headline forum where subscribers can pitch headline ideas, and you get a gift and more.
But there are ways you can support us without spending any dollars.
You can drop us a review on iTunes.
You can share us with a friend.
Any feedback or love mail, go to podcast at BabylonB.com.
You can follow Ethan at Axe Cop on Twitter.
A-X-E, the British spelling, apparently.
Or you can follow Kyle if you want at the underscore man.
Kyle underscore man.
Underscore man.
On the tweeters.
Oh, and you can follow Dan.
He's a Babylon B fan.
Yeah.
What's the story of that?
Okay, so he signed up and.
Oh, sorry.
I'll let him tell it.
He's Twitter to name Babylon B fan.
So he likes, I was telling him about Twitter, and he's like, man, your dream really came true.
You're like, working for the Babylon Twitter you speak of.
So he signs up for it and it assigns him one of those names that looks like a Russian bot.
Yeah.
Like it's like Dan Coates, one, two, seven, eight, five.
So he just kept in it, and then he was like, yeah, I look like a Russian bot.
Yeah, I commented on something that you had posted, and someone had responded.
Don't listen to this guy.
He's just a bot.
And I'm just like, what?
So then he just changed his name to Babylon Bee fan.
So that's the whole story.
And now he's a Babylon B worker.
Yeah, a worker bee.
So, you know, whatever.
All right, everybody.
We'll talk to you next week.
Kyle and Ethan.
would like to thank Seth Dylan for paying the bills, Adam Ford for creating their job, the other writers for tirelessly pitching headlines, the subscribers, and you, the listener.