Anarchy, Joy, and Fleeing New York | The Michael Malice Interview
On The Babylon Bee Interview Show, Ethan and Dan talk to our Anarchist scholar, Michael Malice. They talk about Augustine, leaving New York, and the benefits of humor in dark times. This is Michael Malice's fifth time on The Babylon Bee podcast. He has been one of the leading voices for the Anarchist movement appearing on The Joe Rogan Experience and many more. He has written several books, including organizing his newest book, The Anarchy Handbook, available wherever you get books. He also hosts the podcast "Your Welcome" available on wherever you get podcasts. Be sure to check out The Babylon Bee YouTube Channel for more podcasts, podcast shorts, animation, and more. To watch or listen to the full podcast, become a subscriber at https://babylonbee.com/plans Topics Discussed Malice being mentioned in a Bee article Finding humor in the darkness The Cave and The Light Augustine Plato vs Aristotle Ronald Reagan Forgetting name trick Michael Malice's Twitter following What makes a good tweet Liz Cheney and war mongering Liz Cheney or Caitlyn Jenner for president USA today on current Republicans Moving to Austin Current state of New York Michael Malice's new hobbies Learning to drive The Anarchist Handbook Process of self-publishing Chesterton's Gateway Chesterton's Fence Jordan Peterson Benefits of humor Gavin Newsom and The French Laundry Do not give into evil Pure beauty Helping people feel less alone Donation story Safety valve for the mind Terrible experiences being a good thing Chasing your own hat High end collectibles Senses of humor in people Subscriber Portion Cryptocurrency 10 questions for an Anarchist War Political parties Alexander Hamilton America
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Real people, real interviews.
I just have to say that I object strenuously to your use of the word hilarious.
Hard-hitting questions.
What do you think about feminism?
Do you like it?
Taking you to the cutting edge of truth.
Yeah, well, Last Jedi is one of the worst movies ever made, and it was very clear that Brian Johnson doesn't like Star Wars.
Kyle pulls no punches.
I want to ask how you're able to sleep at night.
Ethan brings bone-shattering common sense from the top rope.
Hey, find me.
How double dare you?
This is the Babylon Bee interview show.
Oh, man.
Where have you been, Kyle?
Oh, man.
I've just been all around the world.
Hmm.
Statues crumbling before you?
Yes.
That's like a Sugar Ray song reference or something.
They called me Mr. Worldwide.
So you weren't here for this, but this is an interview.
And we interviewed Michael Malice again.
He's Zach.
So I'm joined here today by my guest, Ethan Nicole, and I'm going to interview him about what happened in the Michael Malice interview.
So Michael was in town for a very specific time.
You couldn't make it at that time, but we had to talk to him.
So Dan filled in.
How did it go?
It was great.
Michael Malice, I can't keep up with him.
He's like a million times a minute.
So, yeah.
I mean, if you've liked the past, Michael Malice, we talked about humor in the darkness and dark times, why joking is great.
He loves the Babylon B.
He kept talking about how we're more savage than he is.
What else do we talk about?
We talked about his new book on anarchists.
He liked a bunch of old essays from anarchists and stuff.
He's an anarchist.
Did you know that?
I did know that.
Did he say anything problematic that I'm going to have to worry about?
Yeah, we had to edit some things.
Oh, really?
Okay.
And we also, in the subscriber portion, we had to ask him another set of three of, because he's the first person to do a second set of 10 questions.
So now he did another set of questions geared for anarchists, which really was like, I think somebody just like Googled like questions for anarchists or something.
But it was a very fun interview.
We talked about Chesterton.
We talked, we talked about all kinds of stuff.
How would you rank this in terms of the three or four three Michael Malice?
Huh?
Round five.
This is round five, I think.
This is not our fifth time with Mal.
I think it is.
Including guest hosting.
Oh, yeah, including guest hosting because he was on, at least one of the times we had him on, he interviewed and guest hosted.
So where would you rank this one in that pantheon?
I think they keep getting better.
I don't know, because we get more comfortable around him.
Yeah.
At first, you know what to make of the guy, you know?
Yeah.
I mean, the first interview was rough because that was a mess.
How would you rank it in our all-time interviews?
I don't know.
I hate ranking things.
Would you put it in top 10?
What do you think, Patrick?
I was only here for two.
Top 20.
I would say for all of our interviews, though.
Every interview.
Of the ones you've seen.
Make it the top five.
Top five?
Top five, okay?
I thought it was fun.
All right, everyone, buckle up.
That's partly because Kyle wasn't here to ruin it.
That's part.
Yeah, I'm like, wait a minute, top five, and I wasn't here.
I guess we found the secret to a good interview.
So buckle up, everyone, because here comes Michael Malice and Dan Coates.
Oh, hello there.
Well, here we are.
The Babylon Bee podcast with an old guest, a guest we've had on, I think this might be the fifth time.
This is round five.
It's round five.
Michael Malice here, our most regular guest.
Is that true?
Yeah.
Well, you were our first guest.
Yeah, I was.
I think Ali Beth Stucky had in our first interview.
But you're the first guy to come on as a guest host.
Yeah, you go way back to the days of me and Kyle in the garage recording the podcast.
Yeah.
Now, so what do you think of our growth?
I absolutely hate it.
It's against everything I stand for.
Capitalism?
Of course, I'm a huge Babylon Bee fan.
One of the things I, there's several bucket list things that I have under my belt.
The fact that I got mentioned in a Babylon Bee article is really one of those things.
That's your birthday.
Well, it's supposed to be for my birthday.
It came way later.
That's fine.
So, and just you guys are just more savage than me on a regular basis.
So it's something I admire enormously.
But I also think it's just very important to give space for people who are religious and be like, you know, just we talked about this before.
Like, I cannot wrap my head around this Calvinist idea that like God doesn't have a sense of humor.
Like to me, anytime you see math or beauty or any kind of semblance of the sublime, that to me is like divinity, you know, in reality.
So like to not to find humor as somehow opposed to the creator to me just seems completely deranged.
Hey, Patrick, can you bring in like Calvin's Institutes?
And we have a Calvinist sitting right here.
Well, he already knew you were going to ask for that.
The problem with Calvinism is, you know, all the punchlines already.
But is Calvin anti-humor?
I didn't know that.
No, but I mean, just the Calvinist ethos that like some people are destined to suffer in perpetuity, you know, and then it's, it's, it's not, you know, they're very suspicious of pleasure and things like that.
Maybe I'm using Calvin as a shorthand for something, some certain sex Christianity.
Yeah, and that's where we're kind of, yeah, we were going to kind of talk about that.
I mean, in the midst of suffering or bad times or dark times, why make jokes?
I think you cover that in your new right.
You get into that quite a bit.
I think you talked about joking in the gulags or the concentration camps in your book?
Sure.
Yeah.
And I talk about that on Twitter a lot.
There's actually something interesting.
I just read this masterpiece of a book by Arthur Herman called The Cave in the Light, which is basically Plato and Aristotle throughout history.
Yeah.
I've gotten about three-quarters of the way through that.
It's amazing.
It's amazing.
And what he really changed my mind about was Saint Augustine.
You know, because Saint Augustine is really this regarded as this dour figure.
You know, Lord delivered me from temptation, just not yet.
You know, while he's the Archbishop of Hippo, I think was his title.
He's seeing the church being Rome being sacked by vandals and all this other stuff.
And, you know, How Arthur puts it in his book is that Augustine is a optimistic figure, which you'd never consider.
You think of him as just have this really negative view of, he's like, no, no, it's important that we go through this darkness and this almost kind of purging this emetic, because if you do have faith, if you believe in this message, it's still going to work out, you know, in the long run.
There's something we have to go through in the short run.
That's, I'm, I'm kind of butchering what Arthur said, but it's, it was really kind of revelatory to regard Augustine in kind of a different way and to learn how to pronounce it correctly.
Yeah.
Like that's something I learned from Augustine.
I say Augustine.
Augustine.
I've heard other people say it and they're smarter than me.
So that's exactly what I said.
Maybe they're right.
Yeah, I don't know.
Frankenstein.
Yeah.
He wasn't the monster.
It was the doctor.
Frankenstein.
Yeah, that book's really interesting because it basically breaks down all of Western thought into Plato versus Aristotle.
Yeah.
And how it's this constant battle between the people that believe in science and believe in our senses and using reason and logic.
And then Plato is more like, no, it's the forms.
It's the ideas.
It's the idealist, I guess.
Right.
And also just to have, I didn't realize like St. Thomas Aquinas, who's like the be-all and end-all for like us Aristotelians, that he was a pariah in his lifetime.
And they basically, like, he had to flee to France, France, you know, and do his work.
And he was only kind of rehabilitated way after his lifetime.
I didn't realize that at the time.
It's just interesting.
I read the entire Chesterton biography of Augustine and didn't know that.
But I don't retain things I read.
Well, maybe I'm completely getting it wrong.
Yeah.
Patrick?
He's Catholic.
Sure.
I feel like I'm kind of like you.
Like when I read a book, I'm enjoying it.
I'm munching on it.
I'm chewing up the ideas and eating them.
I'm like, oh, yeah, this is really good.
And then afterwards, I walk away and I'm like, what did I just read?
I don't even remember what I just read.
Do you retain?
You seem like a guy who retains.
I do.
It's also when you write books about the stuff.
Well, it's also counterintuitive what you do, retain, what you don't.
Like, like, I was just telling my friend the other day, I read Reagan's autobiography many years ago, and there's literally only two things I remember.
It's like 800 pages.
One is when he was a kid, he bit into a tomato thinking it was an apple and was so traumatized he never ate tomatoes again.
Like that's that stuck.
And his trick, which I think he stole from Babe Ruth, is you're governor, actor, president.
Everyone knows who you are.
You meet millions of people, probably literally.
You don't know who they are.
So his trick was: here's what you do: someone comes up to you and it's like, hey, Mr. Reagan.
And it's like, I'm sorry, you forgot, I forgot your name.
And it's like, oh, it's Ethan.
He goes, Ethan, I remembered your name.
I just didn't remember your last name.
And then you feel stupid.
I'm like, that's a good trick.
Do you do that?
When do you know you're at the level you need to do that?
Just start now.
Just start doing it.
Anybody meet?
Yeah.
It's like dress for the job you want.
Yeah.
You got to start doing that now.
So what job are you dressing for today?
I'm guessing record store employee.
He's a Babylon B merchandise.
He's the guy at the table selling D D Vs. Yeah.
I'm promoting the swag.
Okay.
Yeah.
Dan's going to change.
Is there swag here?
Yeah, I want swag.
Did you get the book yet?
I don't think I did.
The book was on your goodness.
We got to get him a copy for you might have some shirts laying around too.
I'm not sure.
Size youth medium, please.
I gained some weight.
I don't think we've got that size here, but we can get that on order for you.
So he's got 200,000 Twitter followers, huh?
Yeah.
I think when we met, you were like 70-something.
I have a file, so I'd be able to tell you.
Well, I think it's useful to have.
I was a business major.
I think it's useful to go by the data, see what people like, see what people don't.
I'm sure you guys crunch your numbers or articles all the time.
What do you notice gets the most?
Like when you see certain tweets get you certain spikes, or you're always just, you're always going full.
The tweets that get certain spikes are inevitably the ones that I writ right when I'm on the on the can 100% correlation, like the opposite.
For me it's like this is a really crappy tweet.
Well, I guess not.
Yeah, so it's surprising, it's I. What I'm finding, which I am um pleased by, the tweets that do recently get the most are when they're not complicated and they're completely ruthless.
When it comes to warmongers like going after people like Liz Cheney, like I'm so ecstatic that so many people on the right have turned anti-war and have realized what war means in practice.
Now I can, you could easily make the argument for me that war is a necessary thing that's.
That's an easy argument to make.
But when people aren't going to pretend what the price of that means not only American lives, but also children and women and innocent people overseas to just hand wave that away to me is just completely depraved.
So I'm so and also to that to have it posited as this kind of being sane and being moral.
It's just like this might be a heavy cost that we're driven to pay, but to be like yeah, this is great.
It's just horrifying to me.
Yeah, we were gonna ask him, um, who would you rather have as president, Liz Cheney or Caitlin Jenner?
Yeah, you stole that.
I was out at dinner with Dave Rubin and a few other people and you know they were denouncing some.
Liz were denouncing Caitlin's.
Understand what's good for the Republican Party.
I'm obviously not a Republican and I'm like this would be a good Twitter poll question, and the great thing I recently started doing on Twitter is when I have these polls and they're binary choices and the choices are horrible, like it's not going to be, which would, because they always like uh, the like, like it's gonna be Liz Cheney or um, Caitlin Jenner, and they'll be like, why don't you like include Ron Paul in that?
Because everyone's gonna pick Ron Paul, like literally everyone, even Dick Cheney's like I don't know man, she's a problem.
So the point is, it's some in life, it's just the fun thought experiment for me is, given two horrible choices, what you're gonna choose.
So I would.
I would clearly choose Caitlin Jenner because she only killed one person, whereas they were uh you, USA today had this article saying that because, after the Republicans ousted Liz Cheney.
They're more of a threat to America than the 9-11 hijackers.
I saw that and I just replied.
Liz Cheney killed more Americans than Muhammada, so put, take that in your pipe and smoke at Usa today.
What could he mean by that?
I think that more like 9-11 was a I didn't even bother reading I can.
Let's try to make, let's Steel MAN this argument.
Make it as smart as possible.
9-11 was a finite event.
The death was took place over a day whereas, if you're going to argue, the Republicans are undermining our our, our democracy, which always means our hegemony.
Uh, they're much more of a long-term threat because this is going to be systemic and if America gets torn down, that's it's collapsed all over the world.
Blah blah, blah.
So that would be an argument as strong as you can make it.
I think the idea that somehow the Liz Cheney isn't going to destroy the Republican Party doesn't match the data, because in 2008, you had Barack Obama and you had Democratic supermajorities in both houses, which they didn't have since Watergate.
So the idea that like this wing is healthy for the GOP also doesn't match the data.
So it's just complete lies and warmongering, and i'm so glad these people are just being treated with the complete contempt that they deserve.
All right.
So Caitlin Jenner, I mean, given those two, like the two bad choices, I'm going to have to go with Caitlin Jenner.
All right.
You know what else is fascinating?
You know, in this day and age, people are getting vaccinated, but you can also identify as whatever you want to, right?
So that's crazy.
There's a lot of jokes to be made about that.
There's at least one.
At least one.
And so what if you said I identify as vaccinated?
That would be a great shirt.
Yeah.
So our CEO, Seth, was sitting by his pool of money.
He's sipping a Mai Tai.
And he's like, get Kyle on the phone.
And he's all, Kyle, I identify as a vaccinated shirt.
Get it up now.
So then you called Edward.
I called Ethan like, Ethan, identify as a vaccinated shirt.
Get it up now.
So then I designed it.
I sent it up to Nico and said, Nico, identify as a vaccinated shirt.
Get it up now.
Yeah.
So it just went down.
Yeah.
You know, it rolls down.
But it happened fast.
And we made the shirt, and it's available now in all of its glory at shop.babylonb.com.
There's colors and variations and hats and women's styles.
We may have created an army because there's a lot of people buying it.
And we're basically pivoting from a satire site to a shirt sales company now.
Yeah.
So including a hat that says, I identify as vaccinated on that.
Exactly.
And remember, if you're a premium subscriber, you get a discount.
It's in your email.
Check your email.
Check your email subscribe.
You got a code.
And you get a little discount and everything in the store.
So do that.
So you recently moved away from New York.
Are you going to move?
Are you going to move?
I'm moving to Austin.
100%.
What prompted that?
It was a series of things.
You're like not a lifer, but you've been there a long time, right?
Since I was two.
Okay, pretty much life.
So it's close to lifer.
I despise what they've done to my beloved city.
It's really like your ex-wife like adopting your kid and just beating your kid in front of you.
Like I'm perfectly glad to burn it to the ground seeing what they've done to all the cool like indie restaurants and stores that were unique and gave New York flavor and character.
They've been completely decimated by these insane lockdowns.
There's no sympathy for them.
There's no concern that this happened.
You even saw big stores like Times Square, the rent for like, I think it was Victoria's Secret and some of these other huge chain stores.
They're like, why are we paying these outrageous rents?
You know, there's no tourism.
It doesn't make any sense.
So it's, and the sub, you know, New York and the subway in the 70s was not a fun place to be.
Obviously, I'm not that old, but you could see the pictures.
And now in the last six months, it's become normalized that people are just going to bring their music everywhere and start playing it.
And this, but this was very correlated with, you know, this kind of broken window theory.
If no one's going to stop the guy from playing the music, then who's going to stop me from robbing you?
Right.
And who's going to stop me from assaulting you?
It's just kind of this, once you let the little things go, you don't know when they're going to stop the big things.
I haven't been to New York, obviously, during, since the pandemic.
What is the subway like during that?
Has anything changed down there?
Because it seems like that would be a pretty bad place for disease.
Well, for the first time, I think in New York history, it wasn't 24 hours.
So they would close it down overnight and clean it from top to bottom.
Because right before that, there was a huge problem with the homeless.
Doesn't that put more people on the train at once, though?
Well, there was nobody on the train at all because this was kind of during the quarantine kind of stuff.
So it was social distancing.
People were sparsely traveling the train.
Right before the lockdowns, you would have homeless people with all their possessions.
So you'd have to go into, and it was escalating.
So, like, literally every train car, there'd be one homeless guy with like stacks and stacks of stuff made as little kind of the kind of things you see in LA with these kind of intense cities, but instead of a tent, he's got a train car.
So, and nothing was being done.
Not only was it not hygienic, it just smelled.
And you don't know if this person is mentally ill or drunk or something.
They weren't sitting there, you know, all prim and proper with a cup of tea.
So, it's just awful what's happened.
I've had enough.
I thought I would never say this.
I always, as a New Yorker, you pride yourself on your masochism.
Like, people tell you it's dirty, it's overcrowded.
No, you're just weak.
You don't understand.
Like, I'm tough.
I get it.
Yeah.
And Lauren Chen, who I don't know if you guys had on the show, who's not yet.
She's amazing, Canadian podcaster.
And I was on, she was on my show, and her dad had cancer.
And he, for like a year or something crazy, wasn't able to get treatment or even looked at because it was like COVID.
And the line she said to me, let's watch our language.
The line she's, there's some Christians here.
Substitute teachers still teach.
There was a line she said to me.
You know, sometimes people say something and it's just matter of fact.
And like in a movie, like you hear it half hour late in your head, you're like, boy, oh, she goes, why am I funding my own oppression?
And I'm like, holy yeah, like, why am I paying this money for misery and for furthering these policies, which are just really malevolent?
So I thought the real estate in Austin would be like 80% of New York.
It's like a third.
Yeah.
So all my friends left.
A lot of my podcasting people are moving there.
I'd be a big fish in a medium pond.
I am very, very blessed because like my entire crew, they're like, whatever reason you come up with not to come here, we're going to make sure it's resolved.
So one of my, I don't know how to drive.
My friend's like, I don't know either.
I'll take lessons with you.
My friend Matt, who I adore, I have a lot of books.
He goes, I will go to your house and pack every single one of those books.
So there's the go.
So it's just like, at a certain point, it's like, I can have a nice aquarium.
I can have succulents.
I can have a yard.
I'm going to have two dogs or three.
So it's going to be absolutely great.
That was one of my questions, actually.
What are some unknown Michael Malice hobbies?
What do you do when you're not ranting about the government and stuff?
I go down rabbit holes.
They're old rabbit holes.
They're pretty small.
There was this caterpillar and he had this pipe and he was asking me who I am.
And I'm like, are you high?
Aquariums.
I used to be very into saltwater aquariums.
I'm going to get a nice big one when I move in just for an angler fish, which are really, really cool.
Maybe a porcupine fish.
I'm going to get some succulents.
The things I like, my friend came up with the term God's mistakes because if you look at what's in the deep sea, like God created these monsters, like, oh, I'm just going to toss it down there.
No one's ever going to see this.
And then we found that he's like, well, it wasn't me.
It was the devil.
That's why it's closer to hell.
See?
But like, there's lots of like, I'm into like plants that just look horrific and nightmarish.
You know, if you want to look up Adenia globosa, that's one example.
It's a wart-covered sphere that puts out spine-covered tendrils and it's then it's it's toxic.
So it's really cool.
You have a pet one of those?
I have one, but it's not going to grow much in Brooklyn.
That's the thing.
Like I got into succulents and then I go to LA and in my house, it's going to be the size of like a walnut and in LA, it's the size of a Buick.
And I'm just like, oh, because they're desert plants.
So if I'm in Austin, I could put in the ground, get some cool trees with exfoliating bark.
It's going to be awesome.
Sweet.
So you said something that struck me.
You don't know how to drive a car?
Correct.
Well, I probably do because I'm a I probably do because I'm a guy, but like legally, I don't haven't done it.
Is that like a New York thing?
Yeah, you just don't need it.
Correct.
Okay.
I was going to say, you're probably going to have to learn in Austin, huh?
Yeah, I'm not going to learn in New York.
Yeah, I remember when I went to be on your show, I was kept sending all these questions about where should I park?
What should I do?
And I don't know.
These words mean nothing to me.
Theoretically.
This is the worst experience ever that trying to park, man.
So you've written a book, The Anarchist Handbook.
Organized it, yeah.
You've organized a book because it's a collection of writings, essays.
Yeah.
Okay, and that's kind of out, gonna be out.
So as we're recording, so for this is of interest to people, because Marla, I want to give thanks to Marla.
I was doing a live stream.
Being an anarchist, like I'm probably one of the most prominent ones, people are always asking me questions about anarchism.
And I'm also enough of an angry old man to be like, oh, why are you bothering me?
Leave me alone.
And there was no place I could really send them to get more information.
And there was a book from the 60s called Patterns of Anarchy because there's different schools.
And it was very hard to find.
And Marla says, why don't you do an audio version of this?
Because this is all public domain.
And then I'm like, wait a minute, why don't I just do something contemporary that will be historic and up to date through current year?
So I did that.
But so the idea happened in February.
It's to market in May.
Whereas if I went through a mainstream publisher, if I sold the book in February, it would probably be out February 2022.
So it's all the major figures are covered.
I think all the big issues are covered.
And I'm very, very excited that I can stop having to tell people, stop bothering me.
And I can just say, read a book.
Cool.
So, and you're running into issues with.
Oh, yeah.
So here what happens.
So when you upload your book to Amazon, you have to upload it twice.
You upload the Kindle and you upload the paperback.
I'm going to later upload the audio book.
I'm going to record that.
I got two emails back once, and they both said, this looks like it's under copyright.
We need more information.
I sent them back the information they wanted.
Kindle said approved.
So the Kindle is up and out.
And the paperback said, we need even more information, which I just sent them this morning.
So it's interesting that even though it's the same house, literally the same exact contents, one's out, the other.
But I'm sure the other will be out in a matter of hours, possibly.
Yeah, I was just saying, I'm going to run into the same thing probably because I'm releasing a collection of Chesterton essays that I would recommend to somebody who has never read Chesterton.
GK Chesterton.
Because I always get asked.
What's your title for it?
Chesterton's Gateway.
Oh, I like that.
I like the Gateway.
I was going to call it On the Fence.
On the fence.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So, yeah, you're going to get hooked on Chesterton?
Yeah.
Oh, yeah.
Hey, kids.
So, and Kennedy, you were saying that you were making sure that I would get that in there, Chesterton's Gate.
Is the Gate the Fence?
No, no, the Gate the Fence.
That to me is the best defense of conservatism I've ever heard.
And I think he absolutely nails it.
And even though I really don't like him at all, that is.
No, I think he's horrible.
He's staring you down.
Oh, I know.
I'm aware of his baleful glare.
Him and Gavin Newsom, I guess you have all the big villains on the walls.
Yeah, the monsters of history.
You like Chesterton's Gate?
Yes.
Yes.
I love that concept.
But as an anarchist, don't you just rip gates down?
Fences?
I switch it to gate.
It's fence.
Gate, fence.
He says gate in the passage, too.
We bomb them.
Bomb those fences.
No, no.
Anarchism is about fences.
It's just because the government is tearing down faces.
It's parks.
Right.
You don't know where one person starts, the other one ends.
You support the wall.
Oh, yeah.
I was on, this is really funny.
This was really funny.
I was on Fox a few years ago, and we were talking about that, about drug dealers and something like that.
And I said, I was referring to journalists, I think I said, and I said, how are we going to put people up against the wall if there isn't any wall?
Everyone just kind of paused and I go, I'm just asking questions.
It's more like.
I was on Jordan Peterson's show, which hasn't dropped yet.
Okay.
Okay.
And he's like, Michael, you know, the word you're talking, I can't do the voice or whatever.
The way you talk about academics, you know, where do I fit in in all this?
And I go, well, Jordan, you're going to have to be the last one put up against the wall.
And he laughed, thankfully.
But yeah, he's a good dude.
I'm friends with his daughter, Michaela.
She's on the connection, too.
We were supposed to interview her.
It hasn't worked out yet.
Oh, okay.
Yeah, it's in the works.
Kind of, yeah.
I'm trying to convince her to move to Austin too, and that looks like it might happen.
So you were going to start your anarchist hectopia in Austin?
I think we're going to try to call one of the neighborhoods West Williamsburg just to mess with the Austinites because we're taking over the Brooklyn people.
Okay.
Cool.
Well, now where are we going here?
Well, one of the things that we had talked about earlier, Michael, was how do you find joy and humor in the darkness?
I think that's how you phrased it.
I'm wondering if you have thoughts or if you have recent stuff in your life that has made you think about that topic or well, you guys do it very well also.
And I think it's of enormous use because I think it is very easy.
And I think it's by design that especially in the last year, I think there was a conscious attempt and an unconscious attempt to really break people's spirits.
And, you know, the mental side effects is something that has been discussed fairly regularly, but it didn't seem to ever factor into the decision making.
And when you see things like Gavin Newsom eating out a French laundry while people are locked in their homes, like you laugh, but this is why I'm an anarchist.
Like the idea that this is a human being who should be treated with anything other than the most violent contempt and rage is beyond me.
I think when you are talking about people who've had family businesses for decades and they're not given the option to just, you know, pay their employees or, you know, have peaceful exchange with one another simply by fiat.
I mean, this is, you know, this is my time to raise the black flag and wave it high.
So it's, but at the same time, I think it is important to have that ability to realize, like Augustine, this too shall pass and always keep your eye on the long term.
And also the importance of if you're going to go down, I'd much rather go down fighting than just shrug and be like, well, they're going to win anyway.
So it's like, fine, like let them win, but I'm going to, you know, fight the good fight in the meantime.
And I think there is something very Christian about that mindset.
It's just like, you know, Nikade Malis, do not give in to evil.
And I absolutely think the word evil is applicable.
I've got a bunch of t-shirts, governors togethermo.com, which is my compromise solution to this problem.
Send them all to Gitmo.
Was that Nikade Malice?
Tunicade Malis.
Tunicade Malis.
So if you ever have kid, you can name him Tunikade.
Yeah.
Well, I have a couple of friends who have that tattooed on their forearm.
So I always say they have my name tattooed on them.
Yeah, do not give in to evil, but proceed ever more boldly against it.
Yeah.
And I think that's just, that's the motto of the Mises Institute.
And I think it's, it's, This is, I fight the black pill on social media all the time, all these young kids who are just, they'll have some rationalization for, you know, why it's hopeless.
And I'm like, okay, let's suppose it is hopeless.
Don't you think it's going to be a lot of fun to really mess with them as you're being taken out?
Like, at least go out in a blaze of glory.
Right.
Yeah.
It is kind of how it feels.
It's like, it feels like the whole, the culture that's, it's winning seems like it.
So I'm just like, ah, screw it, make jokes.
Yeah.
But I mean, those jokes are, don't you think those jokes, I mean, it's very hard when you're doing what we do to maintain any kind of perspective.
But I do think we take it for granted, or we don't appreciate rather, excuse me, how much we affect people on a day-to-day basis and how it's very hard to maintain this dour defeatist perspective if you've had a genuine laugh that day.
Like as long, like, you know how like if you look at someone who, a woman who's a model, you know, it's hard to think that like happiness is impossible because once you've seen, or even like a beautiful horse or a statue or art, once you see like pure beauty, it's hard to be like, well, nothing good can ever happen.
It's like, well, you've got data to the contrary.
This is some pure, beautiful, wonderful thing.
So it's very hard to be like, you know, screw it, everything sucks holding Caulfield where it's like, you had a laugh today.
So there's at least some beams of sunshine coming through.
And just because there's some, doesn't that imply there could probably be more?
It doesn't mean it's certainly, but it's certainly a possibility because it's happened once.
Right.
And I remember when I didn't work for the Babylon B when I just was a reader and I'd catch articles now and then that made a joke that like made me feel so not alone.
Yes.
The joke and just see, because I, I'd click like, but I would never admit it out loud, but it was like you could, it's like a little secret revolution, like all the likes and things on a joke that probably most of these people wouldn't, they wouldn't voice it, but we gave them something to like click like on and just like say, oh yeah, I agree with the, I feel the same way.
I didn't, I get that on a, I think, close to daily basis when people say those exact words, like you make me feel not alone.
And like, I got to block them because I don't need these needy stalkers around me.
But at the very least, I did a good thing.
It's like, sorry, loser, I'm not going to be the Bart Simpson to your mill house.
So I'm going to be, I'm going to find myself blocked here.
Oh, you're already blocked.
You've been pre-blocked.
But don't you, do you not have that in the back of your head when you are doing the work?
That's my hope.
But there's definitely posts for sure that we do where I'm like, no, I'm feeling like there's a thing, like, nobody's saying this.
We got to make a joke about this.
Yeah, but I've gotten a lot of messages of people.
Like, it just happened recently.
This is a good story.
People send me money sometimes just like as a tip jar.
And I'm always kind of stunned because it's like, it's such a sign of respect.
Like, hey, let me buy you a drink.
And it's like, that's five bucks that this person could buy themselves a soda or their family.
So if they feel the need to send it to me, I'm just like very, very grateful.
And I do not expect it at all.
What was my point with all this?
You want to give a Venmo address or anything?
Oh, you're buykamalas.com slash contribute.
I take Monero and Ethereum and Bitcoin.
Oh, no.
So one time someone sent me whatever it was, 20 bucks, and it goes, my wife and my newborn kid are in intensive care and newborn intensive care.
Like your tweets are keeping me sane.
I just want to throw some cash your way.
And I'm like, okay, we're going to rectify this.
So I sent it back and I said, let's get 500 bucks for the wife to waste on something that'll bring her joy.
I got first hundreds on me.
People chipped in, you know, and we gave her 500.
I asked him, what store could she waste this money on?
It has to be wasted.
It can't be like diapers.
Like, I want her to have pleasure and happiness.
And, you know, he's like, Sephora.
I go, great.
Here's like a $500 gift card to Sephora.
The kid's healthy.
Mom's healthy.
They leave the hospital.
He sends me a picture.
This is me and my family.
But the broader point is there are a lot of people who are in really bad places.
And humor is the best mechanism, at least for me.
And apparently for a few of my fans and you guys, where this is the one way where they cannot think about that hospital they're in right now and have that very spiritual moment of just having happiness and joy and not taking it so seriously.
Because if you take everything so seriously all the time, even though it is serious, this is your newborn kid, you still, you're going to go insane.
So it's like a safety valve of the mind.
Yeah.
I always kind of make a connection in my mind with humor, the idea that this is not the end.
This is not, this isn't it, that it's going to keep going and there's a, there's a wider arc to your story.
Yes.
And I think laughter helps you realize that like when you stub your toe, it's painful.
But then afterwards, if you learn about it, you learn to do this, you start laughing.
I can't believe I did that again.
And you're going to probably do that 12 more times, but it's like the, it's kind of like breaking you out of that moment.
I always feel like that laughter takes you out of that moment.
I love going, not intentionally, but I love ending up at like a horrible restaurant, right?
Because if you're with your friend, first of all, an hour late to see you, then they get your order wrong, then the food's cold.
At a certain point, it's so many degrees removed from what's appropriate, it becomes a story.
It's like, okay, this has been a horrible experience, but we'll be able to long term laugh about it.
And then it becomes, you're in a movie.
It's like, okay, are they going to get the dessert wrong too?
Like their pattern has been established, but just because you flipped a coin four times in a row and it was heads does not imply unless the coin is loaded that it's going to be heads the next time.
So it's like, all right, let's just see how this dessert works out.
And then you guys leave.
And I think it's so useful just psychologically, because life often can be very tough to, you know, I hate that expression, but don't sweat the small stuff and be like, guys, if the worst thing that happened to you is you got a little hungry and your food came cold and an hour late and it wasn't what you wanted.
If this is the worst thing in your life, you are in a hectopia, a utopia, an anarchist utopia.
That's another Chestertonism.
I don't know if you've read his essay on chasing after your hat.
No, please.
But he talks about how personal.
He's not chasing anything.
That guy would be in Walmart on one of those mobility screens.
And those teeth don't get me started.
It's like corn of the cob.
Well, that's kind of how he looks on the cover art that you did.
Yeah.
And that's like him after he went on.
So that's Slim Chesterton.
Slim Chesterton.
Dad, what a repulsive.
That picture you drew for the cover of Chesterton's Gateway.
Oh, I love that picture.
Yeah.
I think it looks good.
He's a big guy.
I do love his signature, though.
I think he's really cool.
I got a signed book right there.
How much was it?
My brother bought it for me as a gift, but I think it was $1,500.
Yeah, that sounds about right.
The thing is, I just recently bought a very expensive book.
So let me tell you a story what just happened and you make that noise.
So The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath.
She was a poet, married Ted Hughes, and she killed herself by putting her head in the oven.
So the book, The Bell Jar, her novel, her one and only novel.
What do you mean?
It's just carbon monoxide.
Oh, just breathing it?
Yeah, yeah.
She like sealed the windows and opened her.
I thought she cooked her head.
No, What happened was her autobiographical novel, The Bell Jar, was published under a pseudonym during her lifetime.
Later, she was out as the author.
So there's two printings under the pseudonym of Victoria Lucas.
So the first printing and the second printing.
And they're both very, very expensive.
The first printing is, of course, much more expensive.
The other.
And I was talking to Ethan Suppley, my friend you share a name with, and I didn't know which one to get.
And he goes, when you're dealing with these kind of high-end collectibles like a sign Chesterton, you have to think of it as an investment.
You can sell that book tomorrow.
It's not losing its value as opposed to like if I bought you a trip, which all that money's lost.
And Ethan goes, it's the difference between buying a painting and buying a print.
So even though the better one is going to be much more expensive, it's also going to hold the value better and appreciate more.
So I got that first printing.
And so I think that's, but that is so cool that you can hold a book that Chestin held.
Yeah, there's something really kind of cool about it.
Did you cry when your brother got that for you?
That's super touching.
Yeah.
I mean, I didn't weep, but no, but that's that's, I mean, when someone gives you a gift that is so personal and so expensive as a gesture of love, I mean, there's that book love language is like, how do you show affection?
It really means a lot.
Yeah, it does.
Yeah, so I've always wanted something.
My buddy Doug had a really cool sign thing.
Just, yeah, just something about it.
I don't want to read too much into it, but knowing that he was there, he signed that book.
Let me, I should, I don't know if consider just getting like a little shelf just for it and an easel and just having it on display.
Not open because that'll hurt the spine, but like it should be in its own little mini shrine.
Yeah.
I think it's an ugly book, but yeah, it's sort of cool singing.
He's an ugly man.
And as ugly as he is in the outside, he's worse than the inside.
I'm chasing your hat.
He says the guy who chases his hat shouldn't have an angry look on his face.
He should be enamored with how much joy he's giving the world and how he's bringing laughter into the world.
Oh, I love that.
I love that.
Yeah.
He goes into all these things.
The guy who's a drawer is jammed at his house and he's trying to break it loose.
He goes in this whole rant about how he should be imagining he's trying to rip the sword out of the stone of King or whatever.
But it's true.
It's just like it's stop.
You know, it's very easy to have that bad day.
Oh, nothing's going right.
But it's just like, don't you see the absurdity to that?
Don't you see how comical it is that like your hat and then the drawer and then you're slipping in a banana peel at a certain point, you're like Charlie Chaplin and Charlie Chaplin's awesome.
Yeah.
He loves him.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So why are there so many humorless people walking around?
Do you have a thought on that?
Like what Scott Add says was like 25% of people have literally no sense of humor.
Is this a literal thing or is that a no?
He's saying that he's like literally, I don't know if it's 25 or 30.
I'm sure you guys, someone can find it, but have no, are incapable of perceiving humor.
Do they still pretend to laugh?
Like do they still go to like a Will Farrell movie or whatever?
Or at least like 25%?
Why would you laugh at a Will Farrell movie?
I'm just trying to say that.
I still think of 25% of people that actually think because that means I should know some.
No, because it's not a random population that we're dealing with.
So they're all in like Bangladesh or something?
That's racist.
Let's have some respect for other cultures, please, sir.
The Bangladeshi are known to be the most humorous of the Indian subcontinent.
They're all on banana peels over there.
Just banana peels and hats flying.
And hats and drawers.
None of those drawers in Bangladesh open.
But you see it.
I think it's probably a lot with like Northeastern Wasps where they're just kind of, they'll find something witty, but they won't find something funny.
I don't know.
That number seems pretty high.
Why are there so many humorless people?
I think most, this is one of the reasons I'm not a Christian.
I do not think every individual has a soul.
I mean this quite literally.
Okay.
I think in this people get them though.
Only some of them have them.
Some are born with them and some are just the same thing as like dogs don't have souls, right?
So like I think that I'm dead serious.
I think the distinction between human and non-human animals is overblown.
And many people do not have this semblance and sense of something profound and divine.
And I'm not incapable of getting it.
If someone says to you, dolphins are way smarter than humans.
What do you, here's your reaction to that?
Cool story, bro.
And I'm like, there's no point.
That's literally my reaction is uh-huh.
And I just, I'm like, there's no point in talking to this person.
I'm a big zoology person.
That's nonsensical.
That's so ridiculous.
When you scroll Facebook and you count on Facebook to give you the content that you want to read, it's like you're going up to Mark Zuckerberg every morning, knocking on his door and saying, hey, Mark Zuckerberg, what should I read this morning?
Or you could just support the Babylon Bee.
BabylonB.com slash plans, you can subscribe.
You get full-length podcasts, ad-free podcasts, you get ad-free web browsing on our site, premium content.
At certain levels, you even get access to a little social network that our friends at Not the Bee have created.
Yeah, be part of the community, the in-crowd, the B crowd.
Well, want to go to the subscriber portion?
Sure.
Oh, that was fast.
Okay.
Yeah.
Was that running a little bit crunching a little?
Well, yeah, we usually do about 40 on the main.
Bye-bye, jerks.
We're here for the pay group.
Yeah, we're going to the pay group now.
We got you've already asked two sets of the 10 questions.
Did I?
No.
Oh, you're talking about Michael.
Yeah, the star.
Michael.
Yeah, because you did the first 10 questions and then we created it.
You're one of the only people that's done the second 10.
Is that true?
Yeah.
We've only gotten me and Kyle answered them just to answer them.
Yeah.
I don't know if we've given to anybody else yet.
I'm so flattered.
No, I don't think so.
Yeah.
This means a lot.
We've written you 10 more questions.
Okay.
But for anarchists.
Let's do it.
And then we'll talk about whatever else we want to.
Yeah.
So we're going over to the subscriber lounge, put on our smoking jackets, and hang out.
Cool.
Rest of you.
Good day.
All right.
Coming up next for Babylon Bee subscribers.
How do you make a Molotov cocktail?
And you need to prefer like a certain year aged singlemont scotcher.
So Molotov cocktail.
I know Elon Musk has been tweeting about Bitcoin lately.
So yeah, I am against Unity.
I'm for people.
I don't think we need to all be locked into the same polity on everything.
It's just crazy to me that enjoying this hard-hitting interview.
Become a Babylon Bee subscriber to hear the rest of this conversation.
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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.