Steven Crowder and Ben Shapiro revisit their contentious past, debunking claims about Crowder's attire while debating the nature of comedy versus politics. They explore Crowder's conservative roots in Quebec, his "Change My Mind" format designed to enlighten rather than troll, and his critique of modern media for prioritizing slogans over substance. Ultimately, they argue that cultivating genuine skill is essential for the conservative movement's future, contrasting this with the current trend of promoting mere provocateurs. [Automatically generated summary]
So here we are on the Sunday special with Steven Crowder, who lacks pants.
And we will get to all of the questions for Steven Crowder.
We will ask him why, indeed, he feels that it is necessary and appropriate for him not to wear pants and thus to show his junk to the entire world.
But first, let's talk a little bit about Talkspace, the online therapy company that lets you message a licensed therapist From anywhere at any time.
Look, Steven Crowder could use a therapist and you might need to as well.
All you need is a computer with internet connection or the Talkspace mobile app.
That means you can improve your mental health even if you had trouble making time for it in the past.
There's no stigma attached.
You know, I am a big advocate of if you got something on your chest and you need to get it off your chest, you should talk to somebody who knows what they are talking about.
And that's why you should be talking about everyday challenges at work or at home.
You can chat about life.
There are no extra commutes, no leaving the office.
No judgment.
Remember, therapy isn't just about venting those thoughts or digging into childhood memories.
It's about practical, everyday strategies for stress management and living a happier life.
Having a therapist simply provides you a designated person for you to talk to who's trained to listen and help you make positive changes.
The Talkspace platform has over 2,000 licensed therapists who are experienced in addressing life challenges we all face.
To match with the perfect therapist for a fraction the price of traditional therapy, go to Talkspace.com slash Shapiro.
Use that promo code Shapiro.
At $45 off your first month, show your support for the show.
That's Shapiro.
Talkspace.com slash Shapiro.
And again, $45 off your first month.
I'm a big advocate, as I say, of if you need help, talk to somebody and Talkspace can make it happen for you at a fraction of the price to going to a therapist.
I mean, I'm the one wearing pants, so all I can say is that before we began this interview, Steven Crowder was, in fact, wearing pants.
He walked into the room not wearing pants to make me specifically uncomfortable because, as most people know, I am deeply uncomfortable with the male body.
You know, but Crowder is sitting here, and people should know, the way that I got to know Stephen Crowder was, in fact, as his lawyer.
So many, many years ago, we got to know each other because I was recommended to Stephen for some odd reason as somebody who might be able to negotiate a contract.
And then the first time that we met in person, Steven Crowder came to my condo.
I can't remember why you were there at all.
I mean, you just sort of appeared, this giant Canadian.
And we're upstairs and I'm about to do a radio show or something.
And you decided to demonstrate your Brazilian jiu-jitsu skills by putting me in a headlock and then The guillotine choke, but you said you had a hernia only after I put you in the choke.
Same thing you did with my Fox News contract early on because, you know, listen, at that point I wasn't really, obviously I wasn't looking for anything special, but I remember I just said, I know some people don't own the rights to their own names.
It's always good that my legal skill is talked up at the beginning of a show, so I appreciate that.
Well, Steven is indeed the creator and the host of Louder with Crowder, which is the most successful comedy show on the right, I think, pretty clearly and obviously.
And he has a second-rate mug, which we've allowed him to actually bring in here, pour his water into.
Obviously, this right here, the Leftist Tears Hot or Cold tumbler, is far superior It's taller, it has more bulk, sort of the reverse of our bodies.
I want to compliment you there, because this is one thing I know that bothers you and bothers me.
A lot of people say, oh, it was because I was right-wing.
No, in this case, it's true.
Because anyone out there who knows your background in law, and listen, I despise you, of course, all that, but you are supremely qualified, and it's clear that there was a bias against your political worldview.
Yes, but I know you get bothered when people say, well, I didn't get accepted because I was at Schenectady Community College and I bombed out.
It's like, well, no, it's not because you were conservative.
It's the same thing with a lot of sort of conservative Self-professed comedians sometimes.
Like, I know every single conservative in the comedy, in the entertainment industry, certainly comedy.
And a lot of people just say, well, it's because I was right-wing.
It's like, well, hold on a second, it's because you're not there yet.
I don't mean to say they're not good, but they're not there yet.
So in that case, I want people to know that it is entirely legitimate that it was because of your worldview, and probably because you couldn't keep your mouth shut about it.
Well, so on my resume, the name of my second book was Porn Generation, How Social Liberalism is Corrupting Our Future.
In one particular interview with Gibson, Dunn, and Crutcher, the partner who was interviewing people, I walked in, before I even sat down or said my name, he said, I walked in the door, I remember this clear as day, and he says, it has always been my contention that conservatives and religious people in general have a Freudian fear of sex.
He hadn't even shook my hand yet.
And at that point, I was like, I'm not getting this job, so go F this guy.
In any case, let's get back to the question that you completely avoided here, which was, how did you go from being a giant Canadian to a giant Texan and also, did you always want to do political comedy or did you want to do pure comedy?
See, I was all about Letterman until later on when he became a grumpy man, but early Letterman, like the Larry Bud Nelman, Rupert's Deli, that was really- You were more sophisticated.
And it's not really a, it is a right-leaning show, but it's really just a late night show where conservatives don't need to fear being sucker punched. - You know, you have a bit of a harder job than I did, to be honest with you because I get to be a political pundit who's occasionally funny but when you're in the comedic space when people expect you to be funny all the time then your hit rate had better be really incredibly high.
And he said, I had such bad PTSD and I was suicidal.
He said, watching your show is what kept me sane because I was able to sort of consume the news.
I was able to digest it, but I didn't want to kill myself.
You know, we don't want to be the only show people watch.
We do more sourcing, I think, than anyone.
Honestly, we have a rule.
We have to have two completely unbiased sources for every claim that we make.
We put them on air, or a leftist source.
So as a matter of fact, sometimes we'll actually have a source from Daily Wire and I'll be like, we can't use Daily Wire because people will say, Daily Wire is bullcrap.
So we go to the PubMed study, which you guys just sort of, you know, obviously were summarizing.
But unfortunately, people will say it's not legitimate because, you know, you're shekels and all that.
So, yeah, so I feel a tremendous responsibility if people are choosing Louder With Crowder to be their last show before their head hits the pillow.
I've always said this to people who work for me.
I go, listen.
They don't know the last show.
Assume that everyone walking in is walking in for the first time, and they've never seen your prior performances, and earn it.
Earn their dollar, earn their laugh, every single time.
That's how I've tried to approach it, and it really comes, the pressure comes from more of a sense of responsibility in realizing how much this means to other people, which, that's something I wasn't ready for.
Honestly, when I was just doing stand-up in smoker clubs where drunks were mad at you or doing open mics, you didn't expect someone would come up and say, hey, I didn't kill myself because of your show.
This is something I know you've touched on.
I think we've sort of struck a chord in culture right now.
People are othered all the time.
There is no group out there right now who have been othered more than anyone under the age of 35 who's right-leaning for a long time.
They feel really isolated.
They feel really alone.
And so, obviously, our show is a comedy show, and yours is more, like you said, sort of political punditry?
So, well, to give you an idea, I'm up 4.30 or 5, and I'm working by 5.30, writing the jokes, writing the pitches.
Because if I write 20 jokes, maybe two will work.
And we have a couple other people now who help with some jokes.
Owen Benjamin comes in hourly and is really helpful, but really for the first, well, three years we did it on radio, and then The Daily Show was just me.
And now Brodigan helps a lot.
He's a brilliant joke writer who writes for the website.
And then we go and we do the pitch meeting.
So I'll put in a bunch of material before the actual pitch meeting occurs, which will occur at around 8.30 in the morning.
They go in, add some of their ideas, or see how they're going to delegate the tasks, because we'll typically have like Two sketches, three or four photoshops, as far as original comedy bits, and then some punchlines.
And then we do a dive-in segment, or meet segment, everyone has a different term for it nowadays, where we're kind of staking out one topic.
That's what usually goes to YouTube.
That's the clip people see who aren't Mug Club members.
And with that, that's where we go, okay, we have a beginning, middle, and end in a self-encapsulated segment that people can digest.
And whether it's taking on the top five AR-15 myths, you know, of that day, or it's doing a rebuttal to whoever, Vox or Young Turks, we have to be really, really meticulous about our research.
Because we're actually held to a higher standard, funny enough, as comedians.
Well, what we really do is if we have a guest we really don't like, then after the show, we strap them down, we shine it really bright in their face, and then we just beat them.
Let me preface this with, I don't know if it was Phyllis Diller who said this, or it might have been Dennis Miller who repeated it.
I don't know the original person who said it.
to whom this quote is attributed.
But basically, nothing is off limits except the helpless.
So in other words, you don't go down to a special needs baby and ha, unless you're a liberal and you want to abort the Down syndrome baby.
Apparently, they're okay with that.
So nothing is really off limits.
Now, I have limitations as to what I'm comfortable doing.
And everyone will have their As a society, I'm very uncomfortable with saying, this is, these are the list of appropriate words, these are the list of inappropriate words, like we were just talking about before, uh, on DMX.
You know, I was listening to his music, the N-word, MF-er, B-word, talking about killing people, and the, do we have to bleep me?
I mean, there's no question that I know where the line is and I know how to walk up to it and dance on the line and pull it back.
You know, if I cross the line, it's very deliberate.
I don't think that's the case with President Donald Trump.
I genuinely don't think he knows.
But one thing that I do think is interesting about Donald Trump, because obviously you weren't a big fan of his, and in a lot of ways still aren't, and I was not at all during the primaries, and in a lot of ways I'm still not.
I think we're seeing a transition with President Trump that you've seen with a lot of young conservatives who we reach.
I think he was a guy who gave to Democrats for most of his life.
He was doing business in New York.
I don't really think he was a dyed-in-the-wool Democrat either.
But how do we deal with the fact that he's You're not toxic in the same way to young people.
So young people watch your show because they know you're a comedy guy.
They're willing to give you the benefit of the doubt when you say something that's offensive because, as you say, you know what's offensive, you know what's not.
And if you're being offensive, it's generally being deliberately offensive for comedic purposes.
President Trump just sort of says things.
And he's very toxic for young people.
I mean, there's no question.
You look at the polls and among young people, he's wildly unpopular.
How do we continue to maintain lines or draw lines?
So I think that's what's important about President Donald Trump.
I think even though people may not like him, I think a lot of young people are happy to see the burdens, the shackles of political correctness kind of be thrown off, and he has helped pave the way for them.
That's a real thing, and I actually had some good friends who are former UFC champions, and I used to go see a psychologist, and I didn't get a lot out of it.
And the psychologist I go and see is actually a sports psychologist, an executive psychologist.
It's really more about time management.
It's really more about, okay, how are you being disciplined about your rest?
You know, I was talking with Dennis Prager about this.
You kind of have to fight against your nature.
There is, a lot of comedians are lazy.
I'm not one of those people.
I would border on paranoid as far as, we actually just printed out just the jokes that we wrote last, that I wrote last year and not including the research, the auxiliary, it was thousands upon thousands upon thousands of pages just in jokes for the show.
That's including the ones that made it.
So it genuinely has helped me a lot seeing the right kind of psychologist who's talked about how to schedule your life and taught me to be more disciplined about rest.
That's not always feasible.
Um, but I realized I was running on, you know, four or five hours of sleep every single night.
And they're like, okay, you don't need to shoot for eight or nine, just shoot for seven consistently.
Uh, shoot for a few five-minute breaks where you can do something that's not work-related because, you know, with what we do...
And a very attractive lady, your wife, you've done very well for yourself.
And with us, with what we do, because like you said, it's disrespectful, my show is substantially more of a workload to put a daily show, like a late night show.
Yes, and we do the sketches and the production, you know, it's really difficult.
So it's kind of like, we had Brian Shaw, world's strongest man on the show recently.
We had Daniel Cormier, current UFC heavyweight, light heavyweight champion.
And it really is a partnership where their wives have to support them in a way that's not typical.
And I know some women are going to be furious when they hear this, but it is a volunteer role.
But my wife has kind of accepted that, okay, Stephen's going to need a little more support because if I don't help him with lunch, he's not going to take 20 minutes to eat.
And that comes down to, you know, when I'm done working, listening to her, making sure that her needs are met.
That's a really important thing.
If we're going to bitch about feminism, then we need to talk about being real men.
And that means, yes, I know it sounds namby-pamby, but meeting your wife's needs, making sure that, and that's just, that's not just physically and financially we're talking about, spiritually, emotionally, making sure that they feel heard, that they feel safe.
So it really has been a learning process.
And I will say that contrary to some people who we know, my wife's a very strong, Have you ever met my wife?
There are certain pressures that come with your position, my position, that a lot of people don't... This isn't the celebrity... Insulating yourself from the possibility of sin is a definite must in any position where you are prominent at all.
You've got to take the proper precautions.
You've got to determine what is a worthy risk and what isn't.
What's a worthwhile risk for a guy who painted Muhammad in menstrual blood?
The irony is not lost on me.
But no, I wouldn't have been able to accomplish what we have, you know, what moderate success we have and I'm grateful for without my wife.
Okay, so I want to talk to you a little bit about sort of your mental state and then we'll get into some politics and social media and all the rest of this stuff.
Whether you're in a cafe or a hotel, we often rely on public Wi-Fi to use the internet on the go.
But something as simple as paying your bills online from a Starbucks could leave your data exposed.
A hacker could easily intercept your information, stealing passwords, credit card numbers, or the pornography that Steven was browsing just before the show.
It's not just hackers, either.
Government agencies like the NSA, they're monitoring the entire internet.
They could be scooping up your activity.
So what can you do to defend yourself?
The software I use to protect my online activity from spies and data thieves is ExpressVPN.
ExpressVPN.
has easy-to-use apps.
They run seamlessly in the background of my computer, phone, and tablet.
ExpressVPN secures, anonymizes your internet browsing by encrypting your data, hiding that public IP address.
Using ExpressVPN, I can safely surf on that public Wi-Fi without being snooped on, having my personal data stolen.
So check out ExpressVPN.
It costs less than seven bucks a month, and it comes with a 30-day money-back guarantee, so you got nothing to lose.
To take back that internet privacy today and find out how you can get three months for free, Go to ExpressVPN.com slash Ben.
And this is not a rip on you, this is just the nature, partly, of being in comedy.
That most people who are in comedy, I've never met anybody who is a full-time comedian who doesn't have edges, right?
Who doesn't have to be a wild man, has to be on all the time.
So what do you think is the relationship between comedy and mental health, between comedy and being a wild person and having a normal life and still having to be on all the time trying to make people laugh?
And then all of a sudden... All of a sudden, yeah, it happened very, very late.
Think about when people, this is one thing that really bothers when we talk about mental health.
And I've tried to be forthcoming with a lot of people out there because it seems the only time people talk about it is when it's virtue signaling, you know, and Heath Ledger passes away.
And it's like, everyone's like, ah, I mean, I've struggled with this.
And so I've talked with parents with their kids and they say, you know, what's the advice you would give to my kids?
And I've seen them just react horrified where I've said, don't go to college if you don't know what you want to do.
Take some time, figure it out.
When people say, were you ever suicidal?
Picture this.
Someone like myself, sun up at school, staring at a board in a way that I couldn't possibly learn in a socialist province for nine hours.
You try to want to wake up the next day.
And it wasn't like I was, I wasn't going to David Carradine myself.
It was nothing like that.
I just remember there were times in my life in high school where I just thought like, man, I just, I just wish I didn't have to wake up tomorrow in the sense that I just, I hated my life so much.
It'd be like me saying, you have to coach swimming starting tomorrow morning for the rest of your life.
You know, because at that point in your life, high school is everything.
You know, grade school and high school, that's all you know.
Oh, someone else who we know, we use the word irregardless.
We both think is very smart.
That's where it was.
You said supposedly, allegedly, which I'll still argue is redundant because I don't think we're getting legal.
But give me that one.
But there's someone we both know who we both really respect as smart.
And he said like irregardless four times.
It's not an accident.
When you're sticking the landing like the fourth time irregardless, you're going, okay man, you think that's a word.
So I really did, I think a lot of the time what we see as mental illness or mental affliction is just people process things differently.
Because once I went to college, my first semester before I bombed out doing stand-up, I was an A student all of a sudden.
Because I was studying film, I was studying creative arts.
And I was in my element.
And I did pretty well pretty quickly in the areas where I was interested in.
In the areas where I was interested.
See, I was just redundant there.
Because I'm trying to tread lightly here on the issue of mental health.
So with myself, I think I've just had to learn how I process information.
And I had to get very organized.
When people use this term ADHD, and by the way, I'm totally against obviously drugging up kids and putting them on Ritalin.
That being said, I've actually done, you know, not just a questionnaire.
But EEG testing, genetic testing, we've done a lot.
You're in the top percent.
It's not even close.
Like super, super severe.
And you know Andrew Breitbart obviously was a prime example of that.
There are people, Winston Churchill would have been an example of that.
A lot of people are.
And you find just as many people, by the way, with ADHD or in the gutter as you do, great world leaders.
Almost every great world leader, to some degree or another, was Mentally afflicted, whether it was bipolar or ADD.
And I don't know what you have.
I don't know what it is.
A computer war tennis shoe syndrome?
I have no idea.
So I think it's important to talk about with people because I think there are a lot of kids out there who think there's something wrong with them and there's really not.
There's a lot wrong with our public education system today.
There's a lot wrong with the way we raise young men.
There's a lot wrong with the way we discuss mental health of the society.
But a lot of the time there's nothing wrong with these people.
I totally agree with a lot of that, and mental illness runs in my family as well, so I totally get where you're coming from.
We actually didn't get the full chronology of how you got from a socialist province in Canada where you wanted to kill yourself in a classroom to you living in Texas and making comedy.
And I remember being at an open mic— The first time I met Stephen Harper, I asked him if he—Barack Obama was president—I asked him if it was possible he would invade.
If you're rolling the dice on that, if you're going to look at the statistical likelihood, you know, it's just a guy in a diesel plane with a shotgun.
It's not going to do very well.
But so I remember an open mic night when I was starting out doing stand-up, it was when he had gotten elected and all the comedians were bitching and moaning about Stephen Harper getting elected.
And now you have people like my friend Mike Ward, who back then I'm sure would have been a liberal, are now being put before human rights tribunals for speech, for unpopular Have you had him on your show at all?
His joke was, in French, something might be lost in translation, like a kid who had a make-a-wish in Canada, was their equivalent, and his make-a-wish was to be on Canadian Idol.
So here's the thing, I guess it turned out the kid wasn't as terminally ill as we thought, because he's still alive.
And he was really bad.
He was a really bad singer.
And so this guy's bit, Mike Ward was saying, you know, everyone was behind him and this was great.
He said, but now he just won't die.
That was his joke.
It's a joke, obviously.
And he was put before a human rights tribunal for $50,000 and lost, and now he's in an appeal.
So a lot of these comedians, I remember back then thinking, You idiots!
Do you understand that there's only one political party in this country?
Well, two, technically, because it's a parliamentary system, but the NDP is just super far left liberal.
There's liberal and NDP.
Sorry, we're getting into the minutiae of Canada nobody cares about.
The judges still wear funny wigs sometimes.
But the point is, I remember they couldn't realize it all.
Back then, they wouldn't even be able to comprehend a Jordan Peterson, this compulsion of language.
And I remember at that open mic night going, wow, these people have no idea what's coming.
They have no idea that even if they're pro-abortion, even if they want to smoke weed, the flip side of the coin of Stephen Harper, who also, by the way, helped prevent the housing crisis in Canada.
Who actually helped the middle class do pretty well, whereas here they ended up footing the bill under Barack Obama for years.
Canada actually, for the first time, I think, was higher on the economic freedom index.
But the freedom of speech, it's not a constitutionally enshrined right.
And for me, doing stand-up early on, I just, I wasn't really super political.
But I felt as though I had to speak.
I felt as though I had to argue with every single comedian.
George Bush sucks.
And at that point I was like, what?
John Kerry?
John Edwards?
Do you have any idea the alternative in places like Canada?
These people do want, they want to jail you for speech.
And I felt like Chicken Little.
And no one was listening.
But now people are, unfortunately.
And I think unfortunately because this Trudeau guy, who's a national embarrassment, if they legalize- Handsome Bernie.
It's like that scene from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, where they start off at one end of the room, and by the time you get to the other end of the room, everybody's sort of crouching down.
And then Trump's a big dude, so I imagine he actually has to Crisco himself up and just wedge himself through the doorways to get around there.
So I was just doing stand-up, and funny enough, that you bring this up, my first manager was a guy named Tony Camacho, who was black, in New York.
And the reason he brought me on as a client was because I ended my whole stand-up set on the N-word.
I ended it as N-word.
Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen.
And it was actually a bit, it wouldn't work now to English, but it was about French Canadians who would rap.
And you would actually hear French rap songs with English cuss words, including the N-word.
And you would hear it on the radio.
So it'd be a bunch of friend and then just N-bomb.
And so it killed in Canada.
And he said, man, it takes a lot of guts for a very white guy like yourself to do that.
And I really enjoyed the bit.
And he would not be a conservative at all.
He was a Christian guy, family values guy, he was a conservative who didn't realize it.
So he brought me to the States and I just started doing stand-up, some really crappy clubs, but got some pilots with MTV and then got some films and commercials and that took me full circle.
So I was in LA and back in New York and LA and New York again.
Okay, so this is a part that a lot of people don't know.
So, there were no conservatives on YouTube.
My brother and I had done some YouTube videos that had gone viral early on, like, 2006.
There was a really bad— I don't know if you remember, there was a rash of bad impression videos on YouTube early on.
Like, 101 impressions in three minutes.
And it's just some guy doing the Family Guy cast and Kermit the Frog.
And I was like, this is terrible.
So we did a YouTube video where it was called BEST IMPRESSIONS EVER, all caps.
And it was me doing really bad impressions.
My brother was my Ed McMahon laughing.
And the reason it went viral was because in the comment section you had people who were like, these are the worst impressions ever, you suck, you know, go kill yourself.
Then you had people saying, this is satire, you don't get it, go kill yourselves.
Then you had some people saying, no, actually, these are really good impressions, you guys are wrong.
And then you had some people who just thought, got the joke, but didn't think it was funny.
So everyone just started fighting.
And we learned, wow, this is how you make something go viral, is you get something that strikes a chord.
But I didn't do anything politically until, I would say, 2008, 2009.
And at that point, I had just finished filming.
Doing a Christian film in San Diego and I had done some episodes actually on an ABC Family show where that was an experience where I was actually talking with a guy on set about South Park and he was talking about how much he liked it and he said some things that made me think he was conservative like in on the gag but then I just realized he didn't get the satire and he told on me to the director.
Where I was like, yeah, I know, I love the way they lampoon the left, liberals.
And he was like, what are you talking about, bro?
You don't get it.
I'm like, no, no.
Like, Trey and Matt, they were speaking at you, like, they can't stand liberals.
And he was like, no, man.
I don't think you know what you're talking about.
And I was supposed to have a multi-series arc.
The character, I think, was supposed to be named Jace.
And instead it was just like drunken frat guy number two.
And I was like in two episodes.
So I learned very early on.
So after this, my parents said, okay, you better have to get a job.
And I never had to work a job before if I was going back to stay home.
And really I was going back to stay home because I was burnt out.
And I said, okay, how about this?
I'm going to, for the next six months, treat YouTube like a full-time job.
I'm going to upload a video every week, just put up a blue bed sheet on the wall, and I actually messaged people every single day for six hours a day saying, hey, you might want to check out my channel and responding.
And that's how I got the first 10,000 subscribers, the first semi-viral video was Crazy Pete's Abortion Barn.
I actually read from the Planned Parenthood website because they sounded like a used car salesman.
And that was when I learned early on, if I just actually read Planned Parenthood's transcript effectively, it doesn't matter how offensive I am as a used car salesman selling abortions at half price.
And then the Quran challenge, and things sort of became viral, and then I had heard Andrew Breitbart on the Dennis Miller show, and just called him.
And you know, Andrew spoke with me for like 30 minutes, so he put up some of my old stand-up, and people liked it, so I started writing articles.
PJTV came along, and I started working with them, and then Fox News, when I was working here at PJTV in Los Angeles, they said, hey, do you want to come appear on our network?
And I said, sure, and I didn't know, by the way, we can talk about it now, but I didn't know about the rivalry between O'Reilly and Hannity.
So Hannity called, and I said yes, and then the O'Reilly people called right afterward, and I said yes, and then they called back and said, well, hold on a second, we didn't know you were doing Hannity, you have to pick one, we're the bigger show.
I said, well, I gave them my word, and then I was persona non grata.
So what happened was I think they brought me in to lose because I was on a debate when they first brought me in and I think it surprised a lot of people that I did relatively well.
I think they weren't used to someone who was a little bit quicker as a comedian.
Well, I'm definitely going to ask you about sort of where your political perspective was formed and also You know, the areas of your career where you've gone serious, mainly the change my mind stuff.
So I'm going to ask you about all that in just one second.
First, let's talk about jeans, because this dude right here doesn't have any pants.
But he could use some pants, because come the hell on, it's just terrible in every possible way.
If you are looking for quality jeans that look great, fit great, feel great, and used to cost you hundreds of bucks, Mott & Bow has permanently changed the game with $200 designer jeans for half the price.
Introducing MottAndBow.com, where you can get the most comfortable premium jeans You will ever wear for half of what you would pay elsewhere for AG or 7 Jeans.
I mean, these are luxury jeans for $100.
You can only get them at Mott & Bow.com.
I wear jeans every day.
Mott & Bow is fantastic.
Most comfortable because they use the best in-comfort technology.
They've got Dynamic Stretch Premium because they only source their denim from two of the most well-respected denim mills on planet Earth.
To make sure that your jeans fit you perfectly, they have an at-home try-on program as well.
You request a second pair with your order, you try on both, You keep one, you send back the other one in the same box with the prepaid label.
These are $200 designer jeans for half the price.
Plus, their September savings event means that you save 20% on everything at mottandbow.com slash ben.
That's M-O-T-T and B-O-W dot com slash ben for 20% off everything.
This is their best deal anywhere.
It is only available for the month of September, so now's the time to do it.
Save 20% during Mott & Bow's September savings event at MottAndBow.com.
Again, that's MottAndBow.com.
Don't get caught without pants like this gentleman who's sitting right here in front of me.
So, I was raised in a Christian household, though, and then I started working really young, and so my dad taught me about taxes.
It was really that simple.
And I found that almost everyone I really liked or enjoyed Later on in life, I found I was a conservative, like John Stossel.
I used to wait for his Give Me a Break segments after TGIF in 2020, where he would just take a steaming one, he'd just drop it all over something, like New York liberals, and I didn't even know what a liberal or a conservative was as a kid, but he'd, give me a break.
He'd talk to this head of Navajo Nation, the white man forced me to live this way, and he said, but you're wearing jeans.
And as a kid, I was like, I wanna be this guy, if I can merge him and David Letterman.
Inherently, I was always kind of an individualist.
And I had, just like Woody Allen, I had a general problem with authority.
So I think that just sort of culminated in what you see before you, what you ogle before you.
Yes, yes, I know, I know exactly what you're talking about.
It's always been a mix.
You know, and that was one thing I hate, you know, a lot of people, I don't want to be put in a box, because the truth is, people come to the show to laugh, to be entertained, but people also really enjoy... I mean, our rule on our show, as I tell people, if we are creating content, or if I create content that does not meet this criteria, Cut it.
Tell me to cut it.
It either has to be, well, first off, it always has to be entertaining, and it either has to be informative or enlightening.
And informative means, you know, we're breaking news, like the people who wanted to stab supporters at the University of Utah.
Remember that call when I told them, like, hey, listen, they handed out a knife to us and they're handing out, you were like, they're handing out ice picks?
Yes, Ben.
And your security camera, like, what do you have?
Like, here's the footage.
They're like, oh my God.
And that guy from Nightline who was following you, no interest in the story at all.
Like, he handed us a knife and ice picks.
We had to deal with the FBI.
So, it's always been a mix.
I actually think our show has led to more arrests or charges than any other conservative program accidentally because of the research that we've done and we've just kind of fallen into because we stay in character.
So change my mind, though.
You know what's funny?
That's basically, I was turned down by every major conservative publisher.
I think.
There might be one or two out there who didn't.
When I pitched a book, and back then it wasn't called Change My Mind, but it's what has become Change My Mind.
And I remember the words actually being spoken.
Conservatives don't buy comedy, they don't buy funny books, they buy Obama doomsday books at this point.
I think at that point the Obama blueprint was really big.
So that's what people really wanted to do.
And it just wasn't what I wanted to do.
I don't know if there's anything wrong with the book.
I'm not insulting the book, it just wasn't Change My Mind.
You're very sharp, obviously.
You're very smart.
And it's formidable for people to watch you in a debate.
But I know that a lot of people can watch you, or even sometimes myself, I've had people say, well, I can't do that.
And I go, hold on a second.
Actually, yeah, you can.
Particularly when it comes to a conversation with somebody whose mind can be changed.
Most people who are left don't They haven't yet rationalized their positions.
Now, it is also very different when you have a microphone and a stage, and I do, or we're on cable news.
It's a different dynamic.
And I remember always saying, man, I just wish that we could sort of capture these conversations that we have with people, you know, whether I'm getting my hair cut or I'm in an Uber.
I'll have these conversations with people.
And it be completely unedited so that people could see it's not that hard to do.
That almost anyone can do it.
You don't have to win an argument.
You just have to know how to rationalize your position.
That's really what it stemmed from, and it just happened to strike a chord.
It's the exact opposite of everything we've been taught in media.
And I know in podcasting, though, there's this pride in, like, we don't have any kind of prep or show map or anything.
But then they go on four-hour rabbit trails, you know, about duck genitalia or whatever the hell it is.
We pick a topic, and we stick to the topic, and we make sure that people rationalize their positions.
So there is a direction with it.
It's not completely random and haphazard, but it's very genuine.
And I think that a lot of people just appreciated how it was antithetical to what we've known.
I couldn't tell you exactly why it's worked as well as it has, honestly.
So, you know, I think both you and I have been in a space where we've both been very irritated by the sort of stodginess of conservative media, by the fact that so much of conservative media seems stuck in a rut, unwilling to kind of move out of that rut.
What do you think that rut is?
How do we define it?
How do you break out of it?
How do you think that the conservative movement can move past its image of stodgy?
Because, I mean, you know me, I'm about as stodgy a human being as it's possible to be.
Well, first off, I know that you really hate the, sort of, the provocateurship, if that's the word, just for the sake of it, and I appreciate that you've delineated between what we do and people who just go out there and say something, you know, racist.
I appreciate that, because I know, listen, we could get in hot water, and I know that you know our heart and where we come from, and our goal is never to actually just...
to denigrate people, or even necessarily ideas.
Oh, some of them, like Bernie Sanders, that's fine.
But yeah, you know, here's the solution, what you're doing and what I'm doing.
And I think this will actually be the closing segment on this week's show, this Thursday.
We see people all the time say, won't somebody do something?
I mean, how many rooms did we sit in with these underground organizations that, I think the cat's out of the bag with that one.
We were like, where's the conservative late night?
You know, where's the answer to the daily show?
And I was at Fox pitching the show that I'm doing for day in and day out for four and a half years and I'm just saying, no, it's not going to work.
They paired me up with a guy who was like, he was like 90 years old with four-year-old kids.
Like, that's Old Testament Abraham.
I don't even know how that happened.
I remember it was so bizarre and he had these ideas for like a monkey on roller skates.
And what it is, is just people, and this is true, I know it sounds random, I'm trying to piece things together in my time there.
People say, why don't we have this?
Isn't someone going to do something?
Just be the guy who does something.
We're doing the show that we wished had existed.
People told me there was no market for it.
I'm very grateful for the market that there is for it.
And every time we gain a new subscriber or a new Mug Club member, we've raised the ceiling.
And we really are just incredibly grateful.
I think there are two ways to handle success.
To either exalt yourself or to feel genuinely humbled by the responsibility of how much it means to people.
And that's honestly, like, when I got off stage at SMU, I remember walking into the bathroom and, like, crying for a little bit.
Because for me as a kid, stand-up, that was kind of a dream come true.
To have, you know, 2,700 people roaring and cheering.
Like, for someone else, it didn't mean a whole lot.
But for me, that was something that I thought about ever since I was a kid.
And you go, oh, what do I do from here?
How do I hang on to this?
And some of these people were crying because they had left Islam, and now they couldn't talk with their parents, or giving me their Navy Cross.
So just be the person who does something.
We're doing the show that we wanted to do.
And I know that you, for a long time, listen, you did a lot of AM radio, and you appeared on a lot of- We both slogged in a lot of trenches.
But you finally just, I know that you were going, why doesn't somebody do something?
I know, behind closed doors, Sometimes people who are more high-profile, respectfully, you think they're idiots.
And I know that you're like, man, I'm ten times smarter than that guy.
And I was like, yeah, you are, but this is just the way the system works right now.
And now you're doing it.
And now we're doing it.
So I just think for people, how does it change?
It changes with what we're doing and hopefully more people out there are doing it.
You know, I don't see many Ben Shapiros on the horizon.
There are a lot of people who are young and smart.
There's no one else out there as far as young comedians.
That's what kind of worries me.
For me to retire, I would love to pass that torch to somebody.
It's going to be 10 years before someone's coming up.
But you didn't look a day past 14, so that's what really counts.
But I would love to be the person who said to a young Steven Crowder, this will never work.
Change my mind is not a book that people want.
Late night comedy is not something that conservatives want.
I would love to be the guy that goes, okay kid, you're talented, let's see how hard you work at it, and let me be a wind in your sails here.
I'd love to be able to do that eventually.
It's really not about myself, because if it dies with me, then it's all for nothing.
Unfortunately, there aren't many conservative, I don't even say comedians, but entertainers out there.
Because the system, kind of like you said, it breeds sort of young, CNN Crossfire era Tucker Carlson lookalikes, when you go to a lot of these conventions.
And that's changing now.
That's changing a lot.
You're seeing a much more diverse group of people, like when I went to speak at YAF.
You're seeing a lot of alternative people.
You know, people there with tattoos and mohawks.
You're seeing a lot of people who are not afraid to at least explore their options.
So, that's what's important.
I mean, I would really love to see some more people coming up.
And I've seen it even with you, because I've known you long enough.
I mean, I've known you for a decade.
So I've seen how, even in the time we've known each other, your comedy has really progressed to the point where, I mean, you were always good, but now you're just terrific in a way that you weren't a long time ago.
And that is through cultivation of skill and effort.
And I feel the same way about my own career.
You know, I've been doing this since I was 17, which means I've been doing this for 17 years now.
And I feel like I've gotten better at it because you put in the time and you get better.
Like at a certain point, you really have to cultivate a skill.
It feels like the movement spends an awful lot of time promoting people who have not actually spent the time cultivating the skill, if you either mouth the platitudes, or alternatively, if you troll.
And these are the two paths to fame and glory in the conservative movement, which is you say a bumper sticker, or you say something really troll-y just to get attention, and then you are celebrated by the people who are glad that somebody said something offensive.
That's not, I think, where the future of the movement lies.
Because there was a period, like you and I both know, there was a period not that long ago where we thought our careers were in doubt because it was just the whole kind of troll-y or bumper sticker slogan.
We were like, man, I don't know if this is the end of this where it's a bumper sticker or just saying something outlandish, but that's not what we do and we're not going to change who we are.
I always sort of vicariously live through your success.
I'm glad to see that someone can do what Ben does because he's doing what he wanted to do for a long time.
It is more substantive.
It is not what media used to be.
And guess what?
People have been craving it.
That means a lot to me.
One of my favorite films, like we talk about We're talking sort of about Passing the Torch.
Did you ever see The Shootist?
Was John Wayne's last film?
Okay, so for people who don't know, it's about this guy who wants to live out his last day.
He's this famous shootist, you know, he's a shootout artist, and he wants to die.
So he wants to live quietly, but unfortunately a young Ron Howard lets the word out that this guy is in town and everyone wants to take their crack at him.
And at this point John Wayne has a death wish.
He wants to die.
So at that point, he goes out publicly to the saloon, and he can see all of the guys there who are ready to shoot him.
And it's a very powerful scene for me, because it's the end of the movie, the end of the film, and there's a shootout.
And at a certain point, actually, he shot everybody, but there's, I think, one guy left with a shotgun trained on him.
And he pauses, because he knows he could let this happen, and he wants to die.
But instead, he turns around and shoots the guy, and finishes his drink, and it's kind And it's because he wanted to be taken out but he wasn't going to give it to him.
And that's kind of how I want there to be someone else eventually but it's got to be someone who Same thing, I'm sure, with you as you get older and when you retire.
It's got to be someone who you can entrust with what we've built.
I want to hear your greatest fear for the country and your greatest hope for the country, but for our listeners, if you actually want to hear Stephen's answer, you have to be a Daily Wire subscriber.
To subscribe, go to dailywire.com, click subscribe, and you can hear the end of our conversation.
The Ben Shapiro Show's Sunday special is produced by Jonathan Hay, executive producer Jeremy Boring, associate producers Mathis Glover and Austin Stevens, edited by Alex Zingaro.
Audio is mixed by Mike Caromina.
Hair and makeup is by Jesua Alvera.
And title graphics by Cynthia Angulo.
The Ben Shapiro Show Sunday Special is a Daily Wire Forward Publishing production.