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Sept. 16, 2018 - The Ben Shapiro Show

01:04:11

Steven Crowder | The Ben Shapiro Show Sunday Special Ep. 19

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	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.
	Well, we do sell them.
	Since you haven't plugged my stuff, you've been plugging psychologists at the lottofacrowdermerchstore.com.
	Oh, God.
	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.
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	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.
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	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.
	It's totally worth it.
	Go check it out right now.
	Talkspace.com slash Shapiro.
	All right, Steven Crowder.
	This is going to be hard for me.
	How many of those are we going to have to do?
	There are four of those.
	Because I'm so tempted to screw all of them up for you.
	I know, and you already did one, so congratulations.
	Close!
	You did stumble a little bit.
	I know, well, you actually ducking into my camera line and then pouring water into your own mug is always definitely a wonderful thing.
	You know, I just don't trust you.
	Back at you, dude.
	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.
	Well, I think you're deeply uncomfortable with the men and women of our armed services because this is what they wear.
	They wear ranger panties, or as they're known, softies.
	the Navy.
	So I don't know why you would disrespect them that way.
	But we do sell them since you haven't plugged my stuff.
	You've been plugging psychologists at the lot of credit merch store dot com.
	And of course, everyone knows where the mug club available.
	Yeah, if I were more of a patriot, I'd be staring at your junk with more enthusiasm.
	But apparently, I am not.
	So let's jump into what you do for a living, which is supposedly comedy, Yes.
	So, Stephen Crowder, for those who don't know... For a guy who's so smart, that was redundant right off the... Supposedly, allegedly.
	Let's try and curb back the flattery.
	Supposedly is not a legal term.
	Allegedly is.
	But, let's talk a little bit about how you got to where you are.
	So, he runs a show... Do I need a lawyer present?
	Do I need a half-Asian Bill Richman?
	Always, I'm Jewish.
	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.
	I think it was Andrew Breitbart.
	It was probably Andrew.
	It's always Andrew, right?
	Which made no sense because it wasn't the kind of law that you did.
	Right.
	But I could read a contract.
	And you were Jewish.
	This is correct.
	And he trusted you.
	And I remember that.
	You went in and we kind of... Very bad qualities right off the bat.
	Lawyer who's Jewish.
	No, no.
	I said, listen, I don't know someone who could do this.
	And I remember he said, this guy, you know, I trust this guy.
	He's younger, but he'll know how to take care of you.
	Remember, we went in kind of like the Donald Trump.
	We tried to negotiate going in high and we'd expect them to come back, but they didn't.
	Right, they were just like, no.
	And I remember I thought you were probably, you probably held some animosity toward me because you were like, Crap!
	I should have come in lower because, you know, I was making so much more than you.
	It's true.
	You were really earning at that point.
	At that age!
	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.
	That's true.
	I was like, why didn't you tell me before this?
	And then I felt bad, but only a little bit.
	Right, but I didn't launch a lawsuit against you, and that was the beginning of our friendship.
	This was the beginning of our friendship.
	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.
	And I want to be protected.
	I want to make sure that I maintain my autonomy.
	And you did.
	You helped me with that at that point.
	I didn't have a lot of negotiating power.
	Yeah.
	But it was very helpful.
	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.
	It employs a lot of Chinese children.
	This is short and fat like me, and this one's tall and skinny like you.
	But in any case, the show takes a lot of work.
	It's really worth watching.
	So I wanted to ask, let's get deep into the weeds with Stephen Crowder from the very beginning.
	How did you go from a misanthropic Canadian child to a giant Texan comedian?
	In one short life.
	You know, it's the only thing I ever wanted to do.
	Did you ever want to do anything else as a kid?
	Did you ever want to be a fireman or a policeman?
	I mean, I know you were playing Carnegie Hall at nine months.
	At one point I was interested in genetic science.
	I was also a violinist, so I thought about doing that.
	But I was always very into politics.
	And then you saw all the Asians doing the violin.
	You were like...
	I was a pretty good violinist.
	I know you were a very good violinist, but, you know, the difference is... To be honest with you, it wasn't really about the race.
	I don't think your parents were jamming piano keys into your neck if you missed a note.
	My half-Asian lawyer, actually, his mom used to slam the piano on his fingers.
	He talks about it.
	Tiger mom.
	And he's brilliant.
	So he's an SMU law grad.
	That's actually, you know, that's a funny story.
	Speaking of Texas, so my half-Asian lawyer, Bill Richmond, SMU law grad, when we did the show at SMU, He was in there, he was a part of the show.
	He was in the crowd and we did a parody of Say Anything where he was holding up the boombox and In Your Eyes with Peter Gabriel was playing.
	But he's walking in and there are these protesters on the other side of the street.
	There was a paltry like 40 people.
	But one of them was his law professor.
	He goes, Bill, what are you doing?
	He's like, I'm in the show.
	He's like, I'm protesting the show!
	So I kind of assumed that in law you would have more conservative professors.
	Turns out I guess that's not the case, certainly not anymore.
	Yeah, major law firms are very, very much to the left.
	And at one point I'll have to do a show where I talk about all my experiences in my interviews for being a lawyer.
	Like, I was at Harvard Law School and I was interviewed by 32 firms.
	The way it works at Harvard is that everybody shows up to recruit you because you're at Harvard Law School, which means you're smart.
	And so they then come to the Charles Hotel.
	That was a self-pat.
	For sponsors who don't see how creative he is with the compliments, that was a self-pat.
	Harvard means you're smart.
	It's smooth, smooth.
	I tell you what's not smart is these generic chairs.
	My back's going to be sore.
	I'm going to have to get up and stretch right in front of you.
	Well, please do not.
	And in any case, 32 different firms came and recruited me.
	And I went one for 32 on my interviews, specifically because I was right wing and they saw on my resume the names of my books.
	But in any case, let's get back to you.
	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.
	Well, I mean, they pretty much said it right off the bat.
	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.
	And that was pretty much how the interview went.
	Wouldn't that also be improper verbiage?
	Because wasn't Freud the guy who wanted to sleep with his mom?
	He didn't have a fear of sex.
	He thought that other people, so I guess you're saying a Freudian complex?
	Yes.
	Because Freud himself wasn't afraid of sex.
	That's what he was going for.
	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?
	No, I always just wanted to, if you'd have asked me when I was 12 or 13, I would have said, I want to be an Academy Award winning actor.
	Really, that truly would have been my dream.
	I just wanted to act, but I also always loved comedy.
	I started writing stand-up when I was 14.
	To do, actually, the school talent show, which ended up being cancelled, so I just continued writing.
	So the first time I did stand-up, I think I was 17, but I had to cut down from about an hour of material to five minutes.
	Most people bomb their first time.
	The only reason I didn't bomb was because I had so much material to edit back.
	But then when I found out how corrupt, obviously, the Academy is, and that the awards didn't mean a whole lot, I said, OK, what do I want to do?
	I was just talking about this with Dennis Prager not long ago.
	I said, OK, if I can't be an Academy Award winning actor, late night host.
	So it's like, you know, my safety's Harvard.
	And at that point, you know, I don't know, who's your favorite late night host of all time?
	Aside from yours truly, obviously.
	All time?
	I was a Leno fan.
	Really?
	Yes.
	I know.
	Breaking my heart.
	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.
	Yes.
	That's the sophisticated New York taste right there.
	In comedy, yes, absolutely.
	I know.
	Okay, that's fair.
	The comedians wanted to do Leno because of the numbers and it was an easy interview, but the comedians all respected Dave.
	That was kind of the rule.
	Until, again, later on he's totally changed.
	So early Letterman.
	And I used to watch it every day.
	My dad would tape it and put it on VHS and of course fast forward the parts that we couldn't watch.
	And I always just thought, wow, this is something really cool that I'd love to be a part of.
	And I did stand-up for a long time.
	I always knew I wanted to entertain people.
	And when I saw people like Nick DiPaolo do stand-up, I'd feel bad about myself because I would say, I'm never going to be as good as Nick DiPaolo.
	I'm a good stand-up comedian, but a lot of the things I wanted to do, like impressions, sketches, didn't work on stage.
	And of course, acting, I couldn't incorporate a lot of comedy.
	Writers don't typically like you.
	Add living.
	if people don't know out there.
	So this really what I'm doing now is what I've always wanted to do.
	We can incorporate all of it.
	This is what I've always wanted to do.
	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.
	Do you feel a lot of pressure having to be funny?
	Yeah, I do.
	And I feel a lot of pressure not because it's like oh, I better be funny or it'll hurt my ego.
	You know this, when you do these live shows I'm gonna have a guy come up and give me his Navy Cross.
	Yep.
	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?
	Is that the word?
	Yeah, I think that'd be fair, yeah.
	Commentary.
	Brilliant commentary.
	It really does make people feel less alone, and it means a lot to them.
	So that's where the pressure comes from.
	Well, let's talk a little bit about what your routine is.
	I'm going to move these books because my mug is too girthy and so it's running into them.
	But yeah, let's continue.
	Let's talk a little bit about your sort of routine getting ready for the show because I have my routine.
	I get ready for it for, you know, because I'm in the news cycle all day long.
	It doesn't take me that long to actually prep for the show because I'm in the news cycle.
	I know what all the news stories are.
	I know what all the clips are going to be.
	But for you, you do the once a week three hour show, which is the big extravaganza.
	It's one hour and 15 minutes.
	Yeah.
	Three hours when it used to be on radio, but it's a little longer than the daily show.
	Okay, so how often is it?
	The Daily Show is behind the paywall over at CRTV.
	It's about a 44-minute clock, like traditional shows, and then on Thursday we do one extra guest.
	Right, but the amount of time that you put into these shows is just extraordinary.
	So what is the organization like for these shows?
	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.
	Because I think the Jon Stewart comedian hat on, journalist hat off, you know, actually kind of gave us Leslie way on the right.
	Even though they give it to everyone on the left.
	So Michelle Wolf's show got cancelled.
	Right.
	Did you hear about that?
	I did.
	Oh my gosh.
	Who decided that was a good idea?
	I have no idea.
	Michelle Wolf's immediate relatives apparently because that thing was just an abomination.
	So I want to ask you in a second about the relationship between comedy and madness.
	But first, let's talk about your impending death.
	So September is National Life Insurance Awareness Month.
	If you listen to this show a lot, you've heard me talk about how important life insurance is.
	Here's the thing, 40% of Americans still do not have life insurance.
	So, if anything were to happen to you, your family would be left bereft.
	They'd have to pay for your coffin, but they're poor because you were too stupid to get life insurance.
	These days, there's not an excuse for not having life insurance.
	Life insurance rates are at a 20-year low, and it is easier than ever to get life insurance, especially if you use Policy Genius.
	Policy Genius is the easy way to get life insurance online in just two minutes.
	You can compare quotes from the top insurers to find the best policy for you.
	And when you compare those quotes, you save money.
	It is indeed that simple.
	Policy Genius has helped over 4 million people shop for insurance, placed over $20 billion in coverage.
	They don't just make life insurance easy.
	They also compare disability insurance and renter's insurance and health insurance as well.
	If you care about it, they can cover it.
	So, if you're looking for a good reason to buy life insurance, there are three.
	It's Life Insurance Awareness Month.
	It rates her at a 20-year low, and PolicyGenius makes it really easy for you to get that right policy for you.
	Go to PolicyGenius.com, get those quotes, apply in minutes.
	I know that Steven's wife has already taken out a life insurance policy on his life worth at least $25.
	So that makes his life really, I mean, every minute is just a fragile balance.
	But you can do the whole thing for yourself right now over at PolicyGenius.
	It's the easy way to compare and buy life insurance.
	I've been meaning to do this the whole time you're doing that ad, and I didn't want to screw it up for you, so.
	Okay.
	Are these space heaters made to look like lights?
	I have no idea.
	It's very bizarre.
	You think I design my own sets, dude?
	The decorative choices that we make sometimes.
	I have tons of people who work for me, dude.
	Like, you think I do this?
	But it is, think about this, about the choices, like you've seen like the wooden pallets a lot of the time.
	They're like, oh it seems really, it just seems very organic.
	I'm like, who has a space with these?
	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.
	Are those incandescents or are they LEDs to look like incandescents?
	I don't know.
	I actually like those bulbs.
	But I do have an insurance question for you after the show, no joke.
	My wife actually sent me because as celebrities, it's a whole different ballgame.
	Especially because you get death threats and all the rest of it.
	Yes, exactly.
	It's been very difficult.
	So, let's talk about the death threats and all that.
	Actually, this is a good transition.
	So, let's talk about the fact that you do a lot of really controversial comedy.
	So, where do you draw lines?
	So, you know, there's a lot of talk these days about where comedians ought to draw lines.
	You mentioned Owen Benjamin.
	Owen Benjamin has been taken to task for using the N-word in one of his comedy routines.
	Where do you think it's appropriate to draw lines as a comedian?
	Do you think there should be any lines as a comedian?
	Obviously, there are certain things that you won't do, even though you're the guy who paints Muhammad with menstrual blood as Bob Ross on camera.
	Where do you decide where those lines are, and when is it appropriate to cross them?
	Okay, that's a good example.
	Because context is more important than content.
	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?
	Well, we can bleep it.
	Okay.
	Is the word they bleep out.
	It's the explicit version.
	That's the one word they eliminate now.
	I'm going, really?
	These are the words that we're picking now?
	And of course N-word would be included if you weren't black.
	So it really is a political tool and I never want to play a role in that game.
	That being said, you know, I think that's a good example.
	So you talk about painting Muhammad in menstrual blood.
	Let's take the context of that.
	That on its surface sounds bad, granted, right?
	It sounds pretty bad.
	But BuzzFeed's Boldly, the land whale women there, you know, the fat pride feminists, they were painting in menstrual blood.
	And they had done a lot of, you know, of course always anti-Christian, anti-sort-of-Judeo-Christian videos for a long time.
	So we did a parody, Bob Ross painting Muhammad in menstrual blood.
	And it got worse when the Bob Ross estate threatened to sue us, and then we drew them eating from a pile of fecal matter next to Muhammad.
	We never heard from them again.
	We never heard from them again.
	What I've always said is, We're not necessarily a shark in the comedy world, but we can be a puffer fish.
	We'll make them wish they picked somebody else.
	Even if we get torn off of every platform, we'll make them wish that they picked somebody else.
	That's kind of our motto.
	So, contextually, when you look at that, you go, oh, this is satire.
	This is parody.
	We didn't just do it out of the blue.
	It was featured on YouTube.
	Women painting with menstrual blood.
	We didn't start it.
	We didn't start a trend anew.
	It was them!
	They painted first blood, not me.
	What do you make of the merger of sort of comedy and politics?
	So you're a comedian.
	You label yourself a comedian.
	Everybody knows you as a comedian.
	But you do see political actors.
	President Trump's basically a stand-up comic.
	Most of what he does is Political comedy disguised as politics.
	And what this means is that he crosses lines that you will cross, but people are not sure what to make of it.
	Are we supposed to take it like comedy or are we supposed to take it like politics?
	Is he being politically incorrect as a comedian or is he just being a jackass?
	I think he's thoughtless.
	I think it's a big difference.
	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.
	No.
	I think he was whatever he needed to get his latest structure with his name emblazoned across it erected.
	And I think what you're seeing now, though, is he's come in.
	He thought the left would play ball a little bit.
	And they've been so vicious, which we've known them to be.
	They've attacked his family personally.
	We're now just, OK, screw you.
	And he's becoming more conservative.
	I think we're seeing a genuine transition of him becoming more right wing.
	Kind of like, I hate to say, but Ebeneezer Scrooge later in life.
	Everyone can kind of be redeemed.
	I got it wrong all these years.
	I think we're seeing that with President Trump.
	I do think there's some of that.
	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?
	What do you think we ought to do there?
	Well, here's one thing I'll say.
	He's unpopular in the sense that a lot of your fans and my fans probably aren't huge Trump supporters.
	That being said, they do like that someone has sort of thrown the gloves off a little bit.
	So I think it's important to look at how the question is being framed.
	You know, kind of like when they say, oh, 90% of Americans are pro-abortion.
	But then when you give them a cutoff or you show them a fetal chart, they got a fetal development chart, that changes, right?
	So I think with Donald Trump, if you were to ask me, are you a Donald Trump fan?
	I'd probably answer no.
	But if you were to ask me, do you think that Donald Trump has done a relatively good job as president?
	I'd probably say yes.
	If you would ask me, I think we would both agree on this.
	Culturally, definitely he's opened the door for conservatives to not be so ashamed of what they are, even though he's not one of them.
	But I don't think Marco Rubio would have done this.
	I don't think even Senator Ted Cruz, I don't think Chris Christie, obviously, would have gone after the media in the same way that Donald Trump has.
	So I think, even though, this thing is squeaking.
	Is this being caught up on?
	Is it okay?
	It's totally fine.
	All right, all right, fine.
	I'm just making sure.
	It's the replication.
	It's not me.
	I just want to make sure.
	You're okay, dude.
	It's fine.
	No, no, no.
	I'm making sure that people know it's not me, is my point, Ben.
	This is important for me.
	It's not everything is about you.
	There you go.
	You can hear the squeak.
	It's the chair.
	Okay.
	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.
	So you live a very high-stress lifestyle, obviously.
	You do your show.
	You're out in public a lot.
	A lot of people don't like you.
	You said that somebody spit in your drink on a plane.
	It's true.
	So it's been a party for you.
	How do you deal with the stress of that?
	I mean, I have my own ways of dealing with stress.
	I go out and I kill a puppy.
	But what do you do?
	What do you do when you're really stressed?
	I'm going to call your sponsor really quickly.
	What was that?
	The life insurance?
	No, no, no, the health, the psychiatric.
	Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
	No, I do go see a psychologist.
	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 I'm incredibly grateful.
	I'm not complaining at all.
	But with what we do, you're never finished.
	You just choose to stop.
	Right.
	And there's always one more thing.
	That's right.
	And that is what's kind of difficult about it.
	Like last night, I was getting back to the hotel.
	I was taping a PragerU video.
	I don't think I'm letting the cat out of the bag.
	It'll be out on Columbus Day.
	And some things went late.
	And I was just going, there's 50 things I have to do, but I'm just going to choose to stop.
	That has been a big revelation for me.
	It's okay to choose to stop at this point.
	How does your wife deal with all that?
	So you're married.
	How long have you been married now?
	Six years.
	Okay, so are kids in the foreseeable future here?
	You know, it's funny that you say that.
	I would love to be at a point in my life where I could have kids.
	And the thing is, I've always had to work so much recently.
	So that's one thing we're definitely working on, is finding more balance.
	So we don't have the daily wire budget.
	We're not exactly running the Jim Henson budget that you have here in your heat lamps.
	You know, getting 16, I would take a 12-hour day most days, you know, and maybe a 10-hour day here or there outside of Sunday.
	And I think I'd have a more balanced life.
	So they are in the future, just not right now.
	How does your wife deal with all this?
	I mean, it's hard.
	It's hard.
	Yeah, it is hard on my wife.
	She's very supportive.
	You know, she did, she worked, she was a vice president of a contract furniture company.
	She probably gave you some chairs that don't squeak.
	And she left the job and she just kind of, she doesn't work for me or the company full time, but she's really good interpersonally.
	People love her.
	So for showing a guest around or if we need to help kind of book some travel, she's been very helpful.
	And for her, that's been really relieving.
	I think this is with a lot of women.
	You know, they think they have to work their way up.
	And she did.
	She worked her way up in a company, but realized that's not really what she wanted to do.
	It is hard on her.
	It's just like, probably, well, your wife is a doctor, obviously.
	Indeed.
	Yeah, so that's the rumor.
	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.
	Yeah, comedy shows have to be written.
	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?
	Sure, yeah.
	Oh yeah, that's right, you've met my wife.
	She's a very strong personality.
	So for us, there was a lot of clashing early on, as opposed to some friends who were both type B personalities, where they never argued.
	But some of these people just got divorced.
	I'm like, well, what happened?
	They'd never gone to marital counseling.
	They'd never had a fight.
	And the first fight was the blowout.
	Whereas my wife and I, the arc is, it was a lot tougher early on, and it got easier.
	Do you think you've both gotten better at marriage?
	Yes.
	Rounded off each other's edges a little bit.
	I think we both, we've both, both.
	I've been listening to too much DMX.
	Both!
	We've both gotten better at marriage and communication for sure.
	And I think a big part of it is really learning that people inherently are selfish.
	You know, men struggle with pornography.
	Men always have.
	For women, the pornography is a romantic comedy in The Bachelor, right?
	He loves, he'll love me just the way I am.
	No man loves you just the way you are.
	He loves you, just, he loves you as you are, but there are things he doesn't like about you.
	Just like, you know, a woman won't try to change me.
	A woman's always gonna try to change you.
	I don't have a problem with it.
	It means they're trying to better you.
	Now, if you become the only one that you're working on, if I'm working on me, and she's working on me, then that's a problem.
	When we started our marriage, there was a lot of that.
	I was the project.
	You know, I needed a lot of work.
	And now we've both worked on ourselves and learned how to communicate more effectively.
	And I do think that is something that's really important, you know, in high-pressure positions or high-profile positions.
	People mocked Mike Pence.
	You know, that's a good example.
	A lot of people don't understand.
	For example, if you're alone in a car with a woman who's not your wife, someone can snap a picture And it's a big deal.
	Even if nothing happened.
	This is correct.
	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.
	I have no doubt about that.
	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.
	But first, a sponsor.
	Correct, dude.
	I mean, you're really catching on.
	He's a quick learner over here.
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	The hell are you doing on your iPad, man?
	Well, I mean, I'm decrypting all sorts of national security secrets.
	I don't know.
	I'm watching quarantine.
	I think now you're really worried that you're like... You caught me.
	You got me.
	I was not watching Transporn.
	I was certainly not watching Transporn like Alex Jones.
	I was certainly not doing that.
	No, you were watching Interdimensional Vampire Point.
	That's correct.
	In any case, let's talk about the fact that you're a crazy person.
	So, as everyone can see, you're a wild man.
	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?
	Gosh, I don't want this to become a Barbara Walters where it becomes this introspective self-importance.
	I'll ask your favorite tweet later.
	Yeah, with a lisp and a speech impediment.
	Favorite tweet.
	Favorite tweet.
	How does she get that work?
	Does anyone else?
	I mean, who does she sleep with?
	Barbara Walters.
	I mean, apparently when she was young, she was quite the dish, so it's not that gross.
	You're thinking of old Barbara Walters.
	Young Barbara Walters.
	She had an affair with a sitting U.S.
	Senator from Massachusetts.
	That's right, yeah.
	But that's not how she got the job.
	So I do wonder how she got the job.
	You know, I can't speak for all communities, but I can speak for myself.
	I was probably the kind of kid you hated in school.
	You were probably very serious.
	You were throwing people in lockers.
	No, no, I actually had no athletic ability whatsoever.
	I was a very late bloomer.
	Yeah, well that, I didn't actually, on my driver's license, I listed myself at six foot and you know what?
	No, my senior year of high school, I was six foot one and I remember competing in judo at 144 pounds.
	Whoa.
	And I didn't shave until I was like 20, 21.
	I just had peach fuzz and I didn't get chest hair until I was 24.
	The Crowders are very late bloomers and the potential for being an angry late bloomer is scary because I'm a relative, there's a lot of velocity now.
	But I didn't pay attention at all.
	I hated school.
	You were just like, there's nothing there.
	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.
	But where were you when this didn't happen?
	Right.
	You were embarrassed to talk about it.
	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.
	As you know, I'm not big on men and speedos, so.
	Yes, these are ranger panties.
	Get it right.
	Our men in the armed services, they deserve our respect.
	They deserve our respect, Ben.
	That's the difference between you and I. You don't have any respect for anybody.
	The other difference is that I would know that it was me at the end of that sentence, not you and I. What did I say?
	I said you and I. You can say it's you and me.
	Go ahead.
	You and I, I have respect for our men and women in armed services.
	No, you can go back and replay.
	Don't tell him.
	Grammar is my space.
	Brains, your panties are yours.
	Irregardless and allegedly.
	There's no such word as irregardless.
	Go ahead.
	No, you said supposedly and allegedly.
	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.
	I didn't want to kill myself.
	I was hoping I would get hit by a car.
	But I was actually hit by a car once, and I was like, No, I gotta go back to school the next day.
	I didn't get a week off.
	It wasn't as good as you thought it would be.
	It wasn't as good as I thought it would be.
	It was a real letdown.
	It was a letdown by a rude French-Canadian.
	They're mean drivers.
	Have you ever been to Montreal?
	Yes, actually.
	They will speed up to hit you.
	They're very rude.
	They're very skilled drivers, like in Europe, but they're very mean drivers.
	So, yeah, I was born in Detroit, which, like I've always said, you can just annex and give to Canada, really.
	And then raised in Montreal, my mom was a French-Canadian, was born and raised in Quebec.
	I lived there from 3 to 18, and as soon as I was able to get to the States, I was doing some films and stand-up and touring.
	I did it immediately.
	So how was stand-up for you?
	Because you still do some stand-up, but not nearly as much as you used to.
	I just don't have the time as much.
	If we do a live show, it's a full show.
	You have to bring in the whole team.
	I just did it recently at a YAF.
	Actually, we both did that weekend.
	You kind of spoke, and then I kind of do like 25 minutes of stand-up, and then do... It's like a hybrid between that and Keynote.
	I'm still feeling my way around with it.
	But stand-up starting off was...
	You know, I was just talking about this yesterday with Dennis Prager.
	You know, Stephen Harper was Canada's Ronald Reagan.
	Yep.
	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.
	But that's—in any case, go ahead.
	It wouldn't be a very long invasion.
	Right.
	He said—he asked me if—he said, he said, doesn't that make you a traitor?
	I said, not if you win.
	Yeah.
	Well, so that makes you a traitor.
	Correct.
	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?
	No, not yet, no.
	Do you know what his joke was?
	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.
	Yes.
	Handsome Bernie Sanders.
	Handsome?
	I mean, you know, pretty would be the word I would use.
	I mean, I bet you if you looked at Batman's free testosterone count, it would be non-existent.
	And have you ever seen his wife singing at the podium?
	No.
	I'll need to show it to you afterwards.
	It's a national embarrassment.
	Like, it's so viral in Canada.
	My French-Canadian family, who don't speak English, played this for me when they were visiting.
	But I do think that if he legalizes weed, unfortunately, he'll win again.
	Because they'll be like, yeah, he got his weed!
	While people are getting jailed for saying, you know, offensive jokes.
	And that scares me.
	So you went to college in the United States or in Canada?
	Canada.
	Okay, and then you started doing stand-up.
	How'd you end up in the United States?
	Why'd we let you in?
	Well, I was born in Detroit.
	Right, okay.
	So you're an American citizen.
	So dual citizen, yeah.
	And I've talked about this too, a big part of- So you're eligible for the presidency, unlike Ted Cruz.
	Right, yes, exactly, exactly, exactly.
	People always get that wrong, where they're like, ah, he's ineligible.
	But you're not, right?
	Is that something you plan on doing ever, running for president?
	Running for president?
	It sounds like a terrible job.
	Really?
	Watching these people.
	First of all, the quarters in the West Wing are... When Trump whined about the state of the West Wing, have you ever been in there?
	No.
	It's really... They offered us a tour when we did the Change My Mind and we didn't have time.
	Yeah, it's shockingly small.
	Really?
	The first time I heard Trump complain about the West Wing, I was like, what a jackass.
	Complaining about the West Wing, it's the people's house.
	Then I went there and I'm like, wow, this was originally inhabited by munchkins.
	By actual tiny people.
	I'm not a big human being and I was ducking to get through doorways and stuff.
	It's like going through one of the rooms that's not been remodeled at the Waldorf.
	You're like, oh, this is just terrible.
	That's exactly right.
	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.
	At that point, the Crisco is incidental.
	It's not to wedge himself through the doorway.
	There's a multitude of uses.
	So, sorry, to get back to your story, you come to the United States, you're from Detroit.
	How did you get back in?
	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.
	Yeah, it was always just stand-up and acting.
	And then how'd you get on, like, Fox News?
	I mean, how do you go from stand-up and acting to being on Fox News?
	Well, you know that story, because you negotiate— I do, but my audience doesn't.
	Yeah.
	How did that start?
	You know, I started doing YouTube videos.
	You know what?
	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.
	Yeah.
	Those of us who work in the industry at this time remember... It was the world's biggest high school.
	It was so terrible.
	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.
	It's kind of just like fighting someone who's unorthodox.
	And then they brought me back and brought me back.
	And then when I started appearing on other news networks, They didn't really know what they wanted to do with me.
	They just knew they didn't want anyone else to have me.
	So that's what they were paying for back then was exclusivity.
	And it was four and a half years of my life.
	I'm very grateful for the experience, but I'm very grateful now to be doing what I want to be doing and to not have the muzzle on.
	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.
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	I wear jeans every day.
	Mott & Bow is fantastic.
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	Save 20% during their September savings event.
	That actually sounds like a good deal, actually.
	It's very hard for me to get jeans because I have a pretty small waist, but a huge ass.
	I was going to mention it, but now that you've been there.
	My waist is 33, but I have to buy 36 or 38 pants because they're made for men without legs.
	Which as you can clearly see is not a problem.
	Wow.
	If I like it, I should have put a ring on it.
	I suppose, yeah.
	Who says I'm not wearing a second ring?
	Continue with your question about my worldview.
	Good family values show.
	Wow.
	Wow.
	So let's talk about where your values came from.
	Those solid family values that we've been discussing right here.
	So you grew up in Canada, which is socialist America.
	Quebec, specifically.
	Quebec.
	So where did your conservative values come from?
	So I was always...
	You know, as a Christian family.
	But you're never just born a Christian.
	You have to decide at some point.
	I would assume it's probably the same.
	I mean, you're culturally Jewish, or you're ethnically Jewish.
	But you gotta buy in at a certain point, or you gotta buy out.
	Yeah, exactly.
	At some point, you either say, this is what I believe or not.
	And the same thing with being a Christian.
	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.
	How did you decide to, your show is really split in an interesting way.
	So mine is based on serious material, and then I'll stray every so often and make a joke or do a weird impression that's usually pretty bad.
	But for you, because- I appreciate that.
	First part of getting help is admitting you have a problem.
	Well, they're not all that bad, Steve.
	They're not all that bad.
	They're not all that bad.
	My Trump sucks, my Obama is okay.
	They're not all that bad, Steve.
	Okay.
	Okay.
	Being imitated to your face is so, so terrible.
	The thing is, it's actually, the imitations of you are really actually not very insulting.
	No, they're not.
	It's not like Cenk Uygur, which you saw when I actually invaded Cenk's panel as Cenk.
	I did.
	It's like, you're like, I don't, I don't know which one to shoot.
	It's like Spider-Man meme.
	Yes, we're both the same.
	There was a point in there where I actually sat down and he was going, okay, and I'll go, okay.
	And his own audience started laughing at him.
	But the stuff with you is you look young, you have a bit of a Midwestern sound, and you speak quickly.
	Yeah.
	So, sorry, your question.
	So the question was, when do you decide to stray into serious territory?
	So the change your mind stuff has become extraordinarily meme-able.
	So we've all seen the memes.
	Our own company has taken me, put me behind that desk.
	That picture of you behind the desk with your feet up with the change my mind about some weird thing.
	PewDiePie has made fun of it.
	Legitimately everybody has made fun of it.
	Where did you come up with that idea, number one?
	And number two, that's a pretty serious segment.
	There's not a ton of humor in that.
	When did you decide that you were going to do more serious material along those lines?
	Well, you know, the show is always... Imitated by others, imitated by others, but never duplicated.
	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.
	That's my hypothesis.
	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.
	I listen to classical music.
	I go to synagogue on a regular basis.
	I go home to my wife and my two kids.
	Wait, is that stodgy synagogue?
	Apparently.
	I mean, when we're not planning world domination, it's pretty stodgy.
	If your last name weren't Shapiro, that would sound incredibly anti-Semitic.
	I would just say, synagogue is so stodgy.
	I hate those synagogue attendees.
	Well, I mean, I don't think you go there for parties.
	I mean, it's not like there are raves going on at the synagogue.
	It's just a bunch of glow sticks on a rabbi.
	But by the same token, obviously, the conservative movement has, it feels either stodgy or Provocateurish.
	Those are the only two medium in which people tend to work.
	You've got the Milo Yiannopoulos, I'm just gonna say stuff to say stuff and piss people off.
	And then you've got the Paul Ryan, let me wonk you to death.
	How does conservatism find a middle ground that actually appeals to a broader swath of people?
	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.
	How old are you now?
	31, but I can't do this for that long.
	Oh really?
	Okay, so how long do you think your timeline is?
	I would love to be able to train someone up within 10 years and have someone else be doing the work.
	Retire at 41?
	Not retire, but be able to help the next young student.
	What's your dream then?
	So you just decide not to do this as often, or you do it occasionally, or what?
	Again, because I was pitching this show to...
	I'm sure you probably pitched books that got turned down.
	Many times.
	You were getting published at what, 7 years old?
	19, but yeah.
	Okay, yeah.
	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.
	They've got to earn it.
	They've got to earn it though.
	I think this is right.
	I mean, there's a cultivated skill set.
	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.
	You've gotten so many reps in.
	Yeah, exactly, exactly.
	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.
	That's where I'm inspired to see you do so well.
	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 both, I remember talking on the phone.
	We had many of these conversations.
	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.
	I think he has cancer, pancreatic cancer.
	It's a young Ron Howard and is it Gregory Peck?
	Or is it Jimmy Stewart?
	No, it's Jimmy Stewart.
	And who's the woman?
	Is it Annette?
	I can't remember.
	I don't know.
	Anyway, but the point is he goes to this town.
	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.
	And I think also it's a big space, and I hope that there are a lot of voices in it.
	So I hope that you're wrong and that you're continuing to do this after, you know, after the age of 41, because come on.
	I just don't want to have to, but go back to your sponsors.
	Okay, so I do have one more question for you.
	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.
	Thank you, sir.
	Hand on the leg.
	Hand on the leg.
	No, I'm kidding.
	of Ladder Earth Crowder.
	Steven, thanks so much for stopping by, dude.
	It's great to see you.
	Thank you, sir.
	Hand on the leg.
	Hand on the leg.
	No, I'm kidding.
	I won't put that.
	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.

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