Behind the Bastards hosts dismantle the "free speech grift," exposing how conservative groups weaponized the concept since 2016 to attack abortion and racial justice policies. They debunk claims by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haight, citing Niskanen Center data showing Gen Z supports free speech more than any demographic while conservatives self-censor most. The episode scrutinizes Jordan Peterson's false credentials, his controversial meeting with Viktor Orbán regarding "cultural Marxism," and the Koch brothers' funding of the Intellectual Dark Web. Ultimately, the hosts argue this movement stems from a fear of losing wealth to progressive policies rather than genuine free speech advocacy, revealing a coordinated political strategy disguised as intellectual discourse. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Trust Your Girlfriends00:02:34
This is an iHeart podcast.
Guaranteed human.
When a group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist, they take matters into their own hands.
I vowed I will be his last target.
He is not going to get away with this.
He's going to get what he deserves.
We always say that.
Trust your girlfriends.
Listen to the girlfriends.
Trust me, babe.
On the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
I got you.
I got you.
What's up, everyone?
I'm Ago Modern.
My next guest, it's Will Farrell.
My dad gave me the best advice ever.
He goes, just give it a shot.
But if you ever reach a point where you're banging your head against the wall and it doesn't feel fun anymore, it's okay to quit.
If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration.
It would not be on a calendar of, you know, the cat just hang in there.
Yeah, it would not be.
Right, it wouldn't be that.
There's a lot of life.
Listen to Thanksgiving on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
In 2023, bachelor star Clayton Eckard was accused of fathering twins, but the pregnancy appeared to be a hoax.
You doctored this particular test twice, Miss Owens, correct?
I doctored the test once.
It took an army of internet detectives to uncover a disturbing pattern.
Two more men who'd been through the same thing.
Greg Gillespie and Michael Mancini.
My mind was blown.
I'm Stephanie Young.
This is Love Trapped.
Laura, Scottsdale Police.
As the season continues, Laura Owens finally faces consequences.
Listen to the Love Trapped podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
10-10 shots five, City Hall building.
How did this ever happen in City Hall?
Somebody tell me that.
Jeffrey Woods.
A shocking public murder.
This is one of the most dramatic events that really ever happened in New York City politics.
They screamed, get down, get down.
Those are shots.
A tragedy that's now forgotten.
And a mystery that may or may not have been political.
That may have been about sex.
Listen to Rorschach, murder at City Hall on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
What's exposing my genital?
Mystery at City Hall00:15:03
Oh, no, no, no.
I got to stop myself on that one.
Sophie's not here.
Cody and Katie are, and I am ashamed that I even tried that one.
In my defense, we were talking about Chat Roulette.
We were.
The whole context of that joke makes it better.
It does.
But we were just talking about because then you just let it fly real quick.
But we will not be informing the listeners of the context.
But I will inform them that my co-hosts today are Katie Stoll, Cody Johnson.
Hello.
Some news and even more news.
That's correct.
Some more of it.
Even more of it.
Network.com integer.
Yeah, we were really creative when we thought of these names.
Yes, we are all creative geniuses.
Well, if you have a show and you're like, I'm going to do that, but more of it.
Humble, also humble creative geniuses, humble, sexy, creative geniuses.
Sexy, creative.
Oh, well, sexy, unstoppable creative genius.
Unstoppable.
Yeah.
Powerful.
We should probably add a second humble in there, too.
I mean, what we really are is news grifters.
But today we're talking about a less ethical kind of grifter.
Great.
Free speech grifters.
Yes.
But free speech is important.
It is.
And also, this is Behind the Bastards, the podcast.
Worst people in all of history.
And forget to announce things because I'm hanging out with my buds and not doing my job as well.
No, we're not doing work.
Again, Sophie is not here, which is why I have a podcasting machete.
She really does.
She does not let me bring my 18-inch long machete, but I have it.
They let you fly with it.
It is in your hand.
Oh, yeah, you can fly with machetes.
You can fly with God.
I fly with guns before.
I want you all to know he's gesturing with it.
And when he said, oh, yeah, you can fly with machetes, he pointed it right at me.
Well, you're a good two, three feet away.
It's true.
Yeah, like if I need this paper.
Yeah, it's just gesturing.
It's a tool.
I wouldn't describe it as wildly brandishing your machete.
No, no, no, because I have not started drinking.
When I will be drinking is when we do our election year podcast.
And then I will be drunkenly gesturing with machete, perhaps at CPAC.
Maybe definitely at CPAC.
Maybe definitely at CPAC.
That's going to be an exciting thing.
You get your machete.
I got my lanyard.
We're going to...
We're going to have a.
And I've got my phone to record it all.
Yep.
Yeah.
We can name the video Michanyard.
Well, we should probably get into content that will be enjoyable for people who aren't the three of us.
If you're not interested in the Michanyard podcast, then okay, okay.
How are you guys doing?
I didn't ask you that on this.
We've been talking for hours already.
That's true, yeah.
Okay.
Good, good.
Good. We're good. We're well.
Cool.
All right.
Well, I'm going to get into this.
Now, this is not focused around a person, which is my norm, but it's focused around some people, and I think folks will find it in the same way.
Plural bastards.
Bastards.
Over the last few years, particularly since 2016, the cause of free speech has become one of the most vicious and blood-soaked battlegrounds in our national culture war.
It's a unique one, too, because while most of America's political kerfuffles revolve around issues like abortion or gun rights, where there really is little common ground, free speech is a thing that everyone, at least in theory, supports.
Yeah, it's weird.
I would say big fan.
Big fran.
Loves speaking freely.
Big fran, yeah.
Big fran?
Love shouting freely.
Big fran over here with her shouting.
Yeah, big fran loves to shout.
Big fran, BF.
Now, in August 3rd, 2018, famous tabloid, the New York Post, published an article titled, How Liberals Turned Against Free Speech.
It opens with this line.
Why is it considered liberal to compel others to say or fund things they don't believe?
That's a question raised by three Supreme Court decisions this year.
And it's a puzzling development for those of us old enough to remember when liberals championed free speech, even advocacy of sedition, and conservatives wanted government to restrain or limit it.
So, that's the opening of the article.
And the three cases were two of them were one California case overturning a statute that required anti-abortion pregnancy centers to inform clients of where they could obtain abortions.
And the reversal of a 41-year-old precedent which stated that public employees didn't have to pay union fees to cover the cost of collective bargaining.
And the third was one of those stupid fucking cases about a Christian bakery not wanting to make sure gay people.
Classic.
At least one a year.
All of these stories confuse me as to how, like, that abortion thing.
What about that's free speech?
Like, not informing.
Anyway, get away from that.
That's a great question, Katie.
That's a great question.
I'm going to dig into that one a little bit specific.
But I do want to note that the Post article quotes Neil Ferguson, who argues that liberals are increasingly authoritarian.
And it ends on this line.
Like the liberal Supreme Court justices who see no constitutional problem with compelling crisis pregnancy centers to send messages they find repugnant or requiring union members to subsidize political speech they disagree with or forcing people to participate in ceremonies prohibited by their religion, they seem not to have noticed Yale law professor Stephen Carter's observation that every law is violent because behind every exercise of law stands the sheriff.
Carter calls for a degree of humility in passing and enforcing laws that compel speech against conscience, something today's liberals seem to have forgotten.
Liberals is in quotation marks.
Oh, yeah, you got to get those scare quotes in.
Yeah, you got to get those fucking square quotes in.
Yeah, so it's easy to see.
I can see how someone might be convinced by that line of reasoning.
Like if someone believes abortion is wrong and they open a clinic to help pregnant women in crisis, it's good to help pregnant women in crisis.
And people who think abortion is wrong shouldn't be required to push people towards abortion doctors.
That's an argument you could make.
And it's an argument that if you have exactly that much evidence available to you, there's logic to it.
Yeah, yeah, on the surface.
On the surface.
That makes sense.
Yeah.
Now, when you read a little bit more into these centers, it becomes easier to see the authoritarian liberal argument as to why that maybe doesn't include all of the relevant facts.
I'm going to quote from a report by the AMA, famed liberal lobbying group, All of the Doctors.
Drive down any highway in America and you might see a sign.
Pregnant, scared, called 1-800-500 phone number.
Most often, these signs are advertisements for crisis pregnancy centers, CPCs.
CPCs, sometimes known as pregnancy resource centers, pregnancy care centers, pregnancy support centers, or simply pregnancy centers, are organizations that seek to intercept women with unintended or crisis pregnancies who might be considering abortion.
And then, a little further down, it notes, CPCs, as a rule, not only discourage abortion, but also refuse to provide referrals to abortion clinics, although they often provide counseling about dangers associated with premarital sexual activity.
Women who visit CPCs typically do not realize that they are not in an abortion clinic and are surprised to find that abortion is not considered an option at these centers.
As obstetrician gynecologists, we have had several disgruntled patients come to us who are disappointed and felt deceived by the care that they had received at CPCs.
So you see, it's not quite as simple as these do-gooders being forced to speak against their will.
It's somebody dressing up a religious mission as a medical.
So if you're pregnant and you go there and you feel like you're in crisis and you're pregnant, one of their solutions is to teach about the dangers of premarital sex.
Yeah.
Is that affected by the surface?
That shit's forealed.
It's kind of like if you go into the doctor with lung cancer after a life of smoking, the doctors will say, will you try not fucking smoking?
You know, smoking's bad for you.
Yeah.
Well, you know, those cigarettes aren't good for you.
Let me put on this film strip real quick about how smoking is bad.
Not doing you no favors.
I love doctors that are helpful.
There's a lollipop on your way.
Yeah.
I know that specific story bugs me.
Yeah, it's frustrating.
That's why that's the one I chose to focus on because it frustrated me too.
So yeah, see, if you read into it a little bit, it becomes clear that despite how it was framed by the New York Post, this is not a pro- or anti-free speech argument.
Instead, it's an argument over whether or not religious organizations should be allowed to masquerade fraudulently as medical practitioners and lie about health care options, which is maybe a little different than some speeches.
It's a little different.
It's not quite a free speech issue.
Just as many, maybe.
Mumble, mumble.
Mumble, mumble.
Now, the fight over crisis pregnancy counseling centers is emblematic of the broader debate over free speech currently consuming our national discourse.
Take a serious political issue that has nothing to do with the First Amendment, wrap it in that cloak, and tar the other side from being anti-free speech so they have to defend themselves on that front rather than actually debate you over the harms of what you're doing.
It's a cool strategy.
Smart.
It works.
It's like if you're hunting a deer, instead of camouflaging yourself, you dress yourself up as another deer, but with a gun for a mouth.
Oh, yeah.
This may not, in fact, be an analogy.
It's perfect.
Then you've got to argue with that gun-mouthed deer, right?
Instead of, well, clearly you're a hunter and you're not a gun-mouthed deer, but now I'm... I want to debate that gun-mouthed deer.
Well, and you know that old chestnut of country wisdom.
Nobody ever wins a debate with a gun-mouthed deer.
Well, you can, because as soon as he tries to talk, a bullet shoots out of his head.
Exactly.
That's a good argument from the gun-mouthed deer.
Thank you for embracing my...
I still don't think it's an analogy.
Your perfect analogy?
My perfect analogy.
I definitely lost the thread, but I'm on the point.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Also, just full disclosure, I mix up analogies and similes constantly.
Me too.
Metaphors all of it.
Metaphors.
Oh, my God.
Participles.
Dangling.
Those aren't related at all.
No.
No, they're not.
But it makes me uncomfortable to think about things dangling.
No, particularly participles.
Yeah.
Anyway, the free speech grift, as it's been coined by some critics, has risen to become the centerpiece of right-wing politics because it is so much easier than actually arguing the merits of regressive policies on abortion, racial justice, or anything else.
It is a brilliant strategy because it allows them to co-opt the support of a sizable number of moderates and liberals who are either too dumb to see what's happening or who are eager to capitalize on the grift themselves.
In fact, the origins of our modern free speech grift trace back to a 2015 article in The Atlantic titled The Coddling of the American Mind.
Yeah, you like that?
Yes, yes, I love these.
Yeah, you're almost touching your nipples, Cody.
Yeah, I'm very excited.
Now, the article written by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haight, or the article is written by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haight, and the thrust of it is that political correctness has completely overtaken American campuses, ushering in a terrifying new era where art is censored and language is destroyed to please howling hordes of liberal zombies.
They're so obsessed with these college campuses.
They are.
Big fans of college campuses.
You know how college is where you learn and like you do some dumb stuff and like maybe you make things out to be more than they are and then you sort of grow out of it and then like you go into the world.
Yeah, maybe you try you put cocaine up your butt a couple of times, you realize that's not good, and then you go into the world and you snort cocaine like an adult.
My point is that's how it's done.
This is the one problem facing America today.
That's what I was getting at.
College campus.
College campus.
And PC culture.
And PC culture.
You know, let's not try to be courteous and empathetic to other people.
Let's not try to listen to other people and their perspectives.
Let's just fuck them.
Because it's violence to me if you say that kind of made me feel bad.
Yeah.
That's what I'm saying.
I'm deeply offended.
I'm deeply offended that I offended you.
I'm going to quote from the article.
For example, some students have called for warnings that Chinwa Achebe's Things Fall Apart describes racial violence and that F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby portrays misogyny and physical abuse so that students who have been previously victimized by racism or domestic violence can choose to avoid these works, which they believe might trigger a recurrence of past trauma.
Some recent campus actions border on the surreal.
In April at Brandeis University, the Asian American Student Association sought to raise awareness of microaggressions against Asians through an installation on the steps of an academic hall.
The installation gave examples of microaggressions, such as, aren't you supposed to be good at math?
And I'm colorblind.
I don't see race.
But a backlash arose among other Asian American students who felt that the display itself was a microaggression.
The association removed the installation and its president wrote an email to the entire student body apologizing to anyone who was triggered or hurt by the content of the microaggressions.
So that's what they're complaining about, the coddling of the American mind.
Yeah.
That sort of stuff.
Okay.
That one small story has changed my mind about this.
About this issue.
Well, yeah.
See, that's what they do in the article is they pick out a couple of stories where it's pretty easy to see.
Okay, yeah, that's a group of people maybe behaving in a way that I would consider a little bit unreasonable.
Or at least the way that it's characterized makes it seems like they might be a little unreasonable.
But it's not, interestingly enough, for logic-ration people like the folks who tend to be on this grift, it doesn't delve much into actual.
I just tap my papers on the table statistics to tell us maybe if this is a broad problem.
Information is available.
I wonder if that information is available.
And you have it right here?
I do have it right here.
Courtesy of I didn't do the research myself, being a hack and a fraud, but I did find the research done by the Niscanon Center, a nonpartisan think tank dedicated to fostering an open society.
They collected data from a number of studies on the beliefs of the I generation, aka Generation Z, aka the kids who are in high school and college currently.
And it turns out these kids are less likely to strongly favor free speech bans than any other age group.
So actually, kids in college right now are the least likely to support any restrictions on freedom of speech.
Interesting.
Interesting.
Quote.
A decade of data from the Knight Foundation on high school students tells a similar story.
Support for the First Amendment is currently at its strongest level yet recorded, with a majority of high schoolers, 56%, disagreeing with the statement the First Amendment goes too far in the rights it protects.
Note that there is no change during the years when IGEN would be entering high school.
And contrary to Haight's theory about the relationship between social media and free speech, the Knight Foundation survey also found that high schoolers who actively engage with news on social media, discussing stories, posting comments, and linking to articles, consistently demonstrate greater support for free speech, not less.
Interesting.
So maybe taking isolated incidents that are sort of like charged with emotion.
Yeah.
Of the thousands and thousands of campuses in the country and hundreds of thousands of students.
And then pinpointing and saying, like, this is a nation.
This is every college.
This is all of them.
Maybe that's not scientific.
Yeah.
Maybe it's complete nonsense.
Maybe it's intellectually dim.
Yeah.
Maybe it's just lying.
Can we say lying on a podcast?
I think we can.
Well, you can bleep it.
We can bleep it now.
You can bleep it.
You know, I'm going to make a bleeping noise by hitting this empty LaCroix can with a machete, and we can just put that in a post.
This is a good idea.
Don't worry.
It's fine.
Can we post that?
Everybody good?
It's the best bleep I've ever heard.
Thank you.
Okay.
And now you've got a place to put your knife.
Free Speech Warriors00:04:36
I know.
No, it's not.
It's a nice little machete holder.
Yeah.
I made a little pocket for it.
Everything works out.
Yeah.
I like that about the world.
Now, the Niscanon Center summary also notes that in a later article, Haight and another writer cite that 2017 Knight Foundation study that was just quoted above to make the same point, noting a rise in the number of college students who say the climate on my campus prevents some people from saying things they believe because others might find them offensive.
The rises from 54% in 2016 to 61% in 2017.
But Haight and his co-author neglect to mention that 2016 and 2017 are the only years for which data on that question is available, making it essentially meaningless as a way to identify a trend.
They also insinuate that this increase in censorship is driven by liberal and leftist students.
However, quote, this increase is being driven by perceptions of self-censorship among Democrats and independents.
The number of Republican students who reported a censorious climate on campus actually dropped from 62% to 53%.
That's wild.
Cool.
You love to laugh.
You love intellectual honesty.
Yeah.
This is wholly unsurprising.
I don't think I've seen this data you're referring to.
I saw a similar report about this.
There's actually quite a lot of data on this data.
And basically, yeah, saying the same thing that the perception is actually the opposite of reality.
Yeah.
And this is like, you can see this kind of generally throughout history of like, no, a lot of the left gets censored.
People who actually want society to change in massive fundamental ways often censor themselves.
Often.
Right.
And even just like professors.
Like, definitely professors get censored a lot more than any of these people.
We'll get into that.
Oh, good.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Now, that Niscanon study does also note that according to a 2017 YouGov study, conservative students were more likely to report censoring themselves in the classroom, 60% versus 53%, and outside of it, 47% versus 40%.
But even this data does not tell the entire story.
A survey conducted by Cato and YouGov notes that 58% of Americans nationwide report self-censoring their views among other people.
Conservative college students are actually less likely to report censoring themselves than conservative Americans outside of colleges.
And liberals on college campuses censor themselves more often than liberals in the general population.
So are you suggesting that it's the opposite again?
Yeah.
Okay.
Maybe a little bit the opposite.
Okay.
Okay.
I'm just clarifying.
I'm just clarifying.
Thank you for the clarity is important.
Again, wholly unsurprising.
Yeah.
So in other words, the entire story of free speech suppression on American college campuses is a lie.
The reality is literally the opposite.
Yet in spite of this, right-wing groups like Turning Point USA, Cody's favorite.
My favorite fellows. Yeah, have raised hundreds of thousands of dollars to influence political elections on college campuses and crusade against safe spaces at their campus clash events.
Their 2019 tour includes speakers like TPUSA founder Charlie Kirk, Donald Trump Jr., Candace Owens, and Kyle Kashov, who recently got his Harvard invitation rescinded for writing racial slurs and several text messages to classmates in an open Google Doc.
Cool.
Are you suggesting that the president's son is being censored?
Oh, yeah.
That poor guy never saying that the president's son has a free speech problem.
It must suck to be the president's son and to be so rich.
It's a shame when millionaires funded by billionaires just say lies.
Someone gets angry at them.
And that is the death of free speech.
Someone getting angry at a millionaire being paid by billionaires to lie.
Lying that's censorship.
Criticism is censorship.
It's oppression, guys.
Call it what it is.
I should also note that free speech bastion TPUSA donors include such luminaries as Greg Gianforte, who assaulted a Guardian journalist for asking him questions.
I didn't know Greg was involved with this.
Oh, he sure is.
He's giving them thousands and thousands of dollars.
Of course he is.
Free speech warrior for asking a question.
You guys want to hear an unrelated quote from Thomas Jefferson?
Yeah.
Absolutely.
Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.
Interesting.
Greg Gianforte's Millions00:04:58
You know what goes well with those gestures?
Products.
Services also.
But yes, products.
Yes.
You were right, Katie.
I was so excited to get one, right?
You did.
You got it.
You nailed it.
I've won.
Would you like to throw in a free ad for something?
This is your time.
I love your time in here.
Well, right now I'm craving gummy bears, so I'd like to throw in an ad for gummy bears.
The concept of gummy bears.
Yeah, bouncing, hippity-hopping and all around the forest.
Fantastic.
Filled with juicy flavors.
Oh, juicy flavors.
Gummy bears filled with juicy flavors.
I love eating candy I find in the forest.
Yeah, forest candy.
Force candy.
It's the best kind of candy.
Well, also, it's when you want it the most.
Like, I imagine you're hungry in the forest and you're not sure when you're going to have another sugar rush.
I was out camping with some friends years back in Texas in the summer, and we had a big bag of gummy candy and we left it outside and it all melted together into one giant four-pound ball of East So Good.
We just pour it.
Slice it up.
Yeah.
Beautiful.
Oh, fucking so tasty.
All the flavors in one.
Well, if you want all the flavors in one, buy the products advertise.
There's two golden rules that any man should live by.
Rule one, never mess with a country girl.
You play stupid games, you get stupid prizes.
And rule two, never mess with her friends either.
We always say that, trust your girlfriends.
I'm Anna Sinfield and in this new season of The Girlfriends.
Oh my god, this is the same man.
A group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist.
I felt like I got hit by a truck.
I thought, how could this happen to me?
The cops didn't seem to care.
So they take matters into their own hands.
They said, oh, hell no.
I vowed I will be his last target.
He's going to get what he deserves.
Listen to the girlfriends.
Trust me, babe.
On the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Hey, I'm Nora Jones, and I love playing music with people so much that my podcast called Playing Along is back.
I sit down with musicians from all musical styles to play songs together in an intimate setting.
Every episode's a little different, but it all involves music and conversation with some of my favorite musicians.
Over the past two seasons, I've had special guests like Dave Grohl, Leve, Mavis Staples, Remy Wolf, Jeff Tweedy, really too many to name.
And this season, I've sat down with Alessia Cara, Sarah McLaughlin, John Legend, and more.
Check out my new episode with Josh Grobin.
You related to the Phantom at that point.
Yeah, I was definitely the Phantom in that.
That's so funny.
Share each day with me each night, each morning.
Say you love me.
You know I.
So come hang out with us in the studio and listen to Playing Along on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
I'm Laurie Siegel, and on Mostly Human, I go beyond the headlines with the people building our future.
This week, an interview with one of the most influential figures in Silicon Valley, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.
I think society is going to decide that creators of AI products bear a tremendous amount of responsibility to products we put out in the world.
From power to parenthood.
Kids, teenagers, I think they will need a lot of guardrails around AI.
This is such a powerful and such a new thing.
From addiction to acceleration.
The world we live in is a competitive world, and I don't think that's going to stop, even if you did a lot of redistribution.
You know, we have a deep desire to excel and be competitive and gain status and be useful to others.
And it's a multiplayer game.
What does the man who has extraordinary influence over our lives have to say about the weight of that responsibility?
Find out on Mostly Human.
My highest order bit is to not destroy the world with AI.
Listen to Mostly Human on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
What's up, everyone?
I'm Ago Mode.
My next guest, you know, from Step Brothers, Anchorman, Saturday Night Live, and the Big Money Players Network, it's Will Farrell.
Woo, My dad gave me the best advice ever.
I went and had lunch with him one day, and I was like, and dad, I think I want to really give this a shot.
I don't know what that means, but I just know the groundlings.
I'm working my way up through and I know it's a place they come look for up and coming talent.
He said, if it was based solely on talent, I wouldn't worry about you, which is really sweet.
Yeah.
He goes, but there's so much luck involved.
And he's like, just give it a shot.
He goes, but if you ever reach a point where you're banging your head against the wall and it doesn't feel fun anymore, it's okay to quit.
Cultural Marxism Debate00:15:14
If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration.
It would not be on a calendar of, you know, the cat just hang in there.
Yeah, it would not be.
Right, it wouldn't be that.
There's a lot of luck.
Listen to Thanks, Dad, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
We're back!
After a flawless ad pivot.
Really, thank you, Katie.
Oh, you know what?
You're welcome.
You're so much better at that.
I'm so good at this.
You are.
You nailed it.
Humbly good.
Yeah, so Turning Point USA doesn't just sponsor speeches and debates on college campuses to foster free speech.
They also compile and maintain a professor watch list, which is definitely a thing that sounds good for free speech as a watch list of professors.
Yeah.
Typical of the list is the entry for Professor Betsy Stevenson.
Quote: Betsy Stevenson is an associate professor of economics at the University of Michigan.
Stevenson made the list after making the claim that the lack of women found in economics textbooks is the reason so few women pursue economics as a major.
In a study she conducted with Hannah Zlotnik, she found that 77% of people found in the leading economics textbooks were male.
That sounds like a reason to be on a watch list.
Fire that woman.
Fire that woman for her research and speech her.
Yeah, this now, maybe it's a watch list of good researchers doing cool stuff.
That's true.
Maybe I should read the next paragraph.
Maybe you should.
Maybe I should.
I can't agree with you more.
When the watch list was originally created in November of 2016, TP USA writer Matt Lamb described its purpose thusly.
We aim to post professors who have records of targeting students for their viewpoints, forcing students to adopt a certain perspective and or abuse or harm students in any way for standing up for their beliefs.
Okay then.
You want to read your example again from earlier?
My God.
Well, she sensitive little dweebs.
She claimed that women were unrepresented in economics textbooks and then proved it with rigorous data.
Well, that's threatening all the male future students there.
I feel attacked, and I think you should apologize to us both, Katie.
Because I'm a woman.
Exactly.
I refuse.
Wow.
I think I know a watch list you're going with.
You've always wanted to be on a watch list.
I feel the need now to join Turning Point USA, which incidentally has a history.
It's really easy to radicalize you.
And then having to fire them.
It sure does.
It does.
I feel the need to go up to Greg Gianforte, ask him a question, and get hit in the face.
Well, that's freedom of speech.
We can all do different parts of it.
We're all just different free speeches.
Cool.
That Niscanon study also looked into the frequency with which college faculty members are fired due to criticism from the left and the right.
The results are fascinating, and I'd like to quote from that study again.
To begin to answer this question, I gather together all cases from 2015 to 2017 involving, number one, a faculty member at an American degree-granting post-secondary nonprofit institution who was fired slash resigned as part of a settlement or demoted denied promotion due to speech that perceived by critics as political.
Okay, seems reasonable.
What remains are 45 cases from 2015 to 2017 where a faculty member was fired, resigned, or demoted, denied promotion due to speech deemed by critics as political.
Of these, more than half, 26, occurred in 2017, the clear majority, 19, being over liberal speech.
This disparity persists even after removing terminations occurring in private religious institutions.
For liberals, the most common types of speech to result in termination were those perceived by critics as anti-white or anti-Christian.
For conservatives, they were anti-minority or anti-diversity.
Now, because they're diligent, Niscanon notes that the higher frequency of professors being canned for left-wing speech may have more to do with the fact that there are more left-wing professors than right-wing professors.
That is absolutely a factor.
So, better educated.
Because they're let's not be mean with our facts.
Facts, our facts do care about their feelings.
I got a D on my history paper because I'm conservative.
That's why.
My history paper was just, why was Hitler the bad guy?
He shouted at the people I shout at.
I wrote a whole thing about how the Civil War was only about states' rights, and they gave me a D, and I was like, what?
Is it because I voted Republican?
It's censorship.
I agree.
It's censorship because, as far as I'm aware, there was never any slavery in the South.
I learned that from my sheltered upbringing, I guess.
Well, you know, my history textbook went from the founding of humanity to 1491 and then started right back up again in 1989.
Exactly.
You get all the key parts.
Yeah.
Skip the nonsense.
Skip all that bullshit.
Get right back into the good stuff, right into the roaring 80s.
So, yeah, while there's no evidence that conservative voices are being silenced in academia, this data does not necessarily suggest that the opposite is happening.
However, quote, the size of the disparity in 2017 bears watching as it may mark the beginning of a trend in precarious liberal speech.
A proper assessment would also need to take stock of the data categorization issues surrounding religious institutions where terminations for political speech are especially difficult to capture.
So, like actual researchers who care about facts, even when they have a lot of data, the Niscanon people hesitate to draw conclusions that are overly broad based on the information they have because they're trying to do actual research, as opposed to picking out a single issue on a single campus and saying, Look at what these liberals are doing to free speech.
Well, now I don't know what to think.
Now, you don't know.
These seem like two equally credible people.
Yeah, I mean, on the one hand, whatever dumb shit you said, on the other hand, this report.
So, what are you going to do?
What are you going to do?
We joined TPUSA.
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Now, while we're on the subject of professors, we should probably talk a little bit about Cody's favorite professor.
Oh, you know, he is Dr. Jordan Peterson.
I love your air horns.
I was waiting because as soon as he said Professor Watchlist, I'm like, yo, here is this.
Yeah, it was the only person to talk to about after this.
Yeah.
Now, Dr. Professor Peterson describes himself as a- Jordan Balthazar Peterson.
Fucking Balthasar?
Jordan is not.
He's not Balthasar.
Bad boy Peterson.
Bad boy Peterson.
He describes himself as, quote, a classic British liberal who defends individual freedom from collectivists.
Now, he has a particular hatred for the Ontario Institute for the Studies of Education.
The organization's mission statement seems mild enough, which is a little bit confusing.
It says that its goal is to prepare scholars, teachers, and other professional leaders to be equipped with the skills and global awareness required by an increasingly challenging and complex society, ready to influence policy and practice in their fields.
But Peterson takes issue with what I suspect is that last line, claiming the OISE is basically a training ground for dastardly social justice warriors.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Sorry.
In a 2017 interview with Epoch Times, he stated, The Ontario Institute for the Studies of Education, that bloody thing is a fifth column.
The people who are producing the educators that emerge from that institute, they should be put on trial for treason.
Like, it's serious stuff.
The idea is that the purpose of education is to get them while they're young in kindergartens, that this radical postmodern Marxist ideology can be so thoroughly inculcated when they're young, they have no chance of escaping from it.
And that's what's happening in the education system.
This paranoid maniac.
They need to be tried for treason.
I guess Robert was really.
Be precise in your speech.
Cody takes off his glasses and like puts his head in his hands just so everyone has the visual.
I have a, you know, how, you know, when you play like an Xbox and you're playing a video game and they've got all these different like little awards you can win for doing this shit.
Shooting 10 people in the head or whatever.
My one for this podcast is going to be giving Cody an embolism.
Get in there.
God.
That quote.
Yeah.
It's his entire self in one sentence.
Yeah.
Yeah, these people are teaching things I don't like.
They should be on trial for treason.
Tried for treason.
Unbelievable.
I love free speech.
This is like feelings.
Additionally, back in 2017, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation reported that Dr. Professor Jordan Peterson planned to build a website listing university courses in Canada that had what he claimed were postmodern neo-Marxist course content.
He told CTV, We're going to start with a website in the next month and a half that will be designed to help students and parents identify postmodern content and courses so that they can avoid them.
Yeah.
Now, this created a bit of an uproar, according to the website Inside Higher Education.
Quote, in a YouTube video posted to his personal account, he highlighted English literature, anthropology, sociology, women's studies, and ethnic studies as the types of courses that, quote, that have to go.
Professors at the University of Toronto expressed concern that they would be targeted by such a list, which also led to fears of harassment.
Instructors of the potentially targeted courses believe that their autonomy as educators may be under threat.
The proposed website has created a climate of fear and intimidation, the University of Toronto Faculty Association said in a statement to Canadian media.
Now, shortly thereafter, free speech warrior Dr. Professor Jordan Peterson, Professor Doctor, announced on Twitter that he had shelved for now his plans to build a website listing courses he thought should be banned, like women's studies.
Oh, good.
Yeah.
I was about to ask you, you did say women's studies.
Oh, yes, right.
Oh, yeah.
Who would need to study women?
You did say anthropology, right?
Yes.
Also, sociology.
Oh, my God.
Also, ethnic studies.
Also, English literature.
Be banned.
It doesn't.
The fact that should be banned.
Have to go.
Have to go.
Okay.
Let's not say banned.
That would be the wrong word.
Banned.
Have to go.
Sounds like he's being censored for his.
And we should be taking him seriously.
Famous censored millionaire, Dr. Professor Jordan Peterson.
Who only eats meat.
Who only eats meat.
Only eats beef and salt and water.
Poops, I'm sure, are fascinating.
Unbelievable poops.
They are unbelievable poops.
Yeah, they're unfathomable poops he's got.
This is the man who had literal apocalyptic dreams about the end of the world and wanted to start a church and believes that his wife has prophetic dreams, that he is the special boy who's going to save the world from destabilization and destruction.
I'm not making this up.
No.
In a different era, this man, while he is scary, would be a worldwide threat of some sort.
Yeah, it sounds a little, I don't want to say Hitlery.
You know, that's what I was going at.
Dreams of you saving the world from a destabilizing.
One could say cultural Marxism.
He might have a different word for it.
Savior syndrome type thing.
Because there's a natural order.
I think we need to spell out really directly why you and I see Nazi parallels and some of what's going on because it is a little bit obscured.
I had actually an argument with this about my dad recently because he doesn't understand like the when people talk about cultural Marxism, which is a big thing for Jordan Peterson.
Yeah, that's what he's saying.
That's what he's saying.
He said it before.
What's the exact wording he has?
He says postmodern neo-Marxism.
Like he talks about how they switched it and stuff like that.
But there are other clips of him talking about literally cultural Marxism and stuff.
Yeah, so he clearly used one term and then switched to another term.
The idea of cultural Marxism comes from fucking Nazi propaganda in the 20s and 30s when they called it Kulture Bolshevismos or something like that.
And the idea was both that Marxism was infiltrating society and specifically that it was infiltrating society through the Jews who were trying to like undermine.
This is why we see when we make snide comments about Dr. Jordan Peterson being kind of fascist.
We're not like reaching super far.
There was this ideology that was this attitude of cultural Marxism that it's a thing that exists that was created by the Nazis to justify what they did to the Jews.
And then a new generation of people has just sort of cut the Jews out of Judeo out of Judeo-Bolshevism, but they're like, no, there's still cultural Bolshevism.
Yes, it's now like it's like the liberal academia and the left, like radical leftists and their cultural, like it's an amalgam of these groups that are doing this instead of just the Jews.
Yeah.
And it's the worrisome.
Yeah, the line is very clear.
And like, it's one of those things you're like, no, Jordan Peterson isn't a Nazi.
He would have been.
He would have been.
Yeah, but it's not even.
So there's that.
But even beyond that, someone that says that, oh, my wife had a prophetic dream that I am this savior type person.
Or someone that says, you know what?
Yeah, only eating meat, that'll cure depression.
And I want to open a church.
And I want to open a church.
We need to ban women's studies, ethnic studies.
That is anthropology.
Which is just like, that's absolutely nuts.
So that's somebody that's a maniac.
I don't know how else you describe it.
And if you get into power, this person gets into a power.
It's terrifying.
Yeah, he's got, yeah.
I don't want to oversell the state of the threat.
But if Dr. Jordan Peterson gets his way, we will lose the best season of community.
Are we really willing to fucking know?
No.
It's a good show.
It's a great show.
Landed on a high note.
Yeah, that was actually really nice.
Except Von Hover's gone.
Yeah, that was sad.
That was sad, but they really did a good job.
Now you got high six.
Oh, yeah, no, both of all the actors they brought in for the six seasons really amazing.
Yeah, I enjoyed it a lot.
Writing is perfect.
That's good.
Really?
Yeah.
Nice note.
Tears me up a little bit every time.
Yeah.
Okay.
We've gotten well off of track here.
Now, let's talk about free speech warrior Dr. Jordan Peterson, who is a big fan of free speech.
Big fan of free speech.
Clearly.
Huge lover of free speech.
In June of 2019, the doctor professor was invited to speak at the Brain Bar in Budapest by Hungarian Prime Minister Victor Orban.
Mr. Orban wanted to speak with a doctor professor about current political issues.
According to New York magazine, quote, the Orban-friendly news outlet Hungary Today described their meeting as an amiable conversation about the dangers of illegal immigration, political correctness, and Jean-Claude Juncker's apologies for Karl Marx.
Peterson and Orban also touched on a current tendency to minimize the crimes committed under communist regimes.
They cited an infamous speech by European Commission President Jean-Claude Junker in which they said he defended Karl Marx.
Now, if you lean a little bit more towards the conservative end of the spectrum and you have not kept a pace with Hungarian politics, you may not immediately see what's so fucked up about this.
Victor Orban is an avowed advocate of what he calls illiberal democracy.
AKA, not really democracy at all.
Illiberal.
Illiberal.
In his 2018 acceptance speech, he declared an end to the era of liberal democracy.
We have replaced a shipwrecked liberal democracy with a 21st century Christian democracy, which guarantees people's freedom, security.
Illiberal Democracy Defined00:08:19
It supports the traditional family motto of model of one man and one woman, keeps anti-Semitism at bay, and gives a chance for growth.
Cute.
Free speech lover Victor Orban.
Yeah.
Now, after his election, he passed a series of punitive laws and launched a propaganda campaign that forced the Central European University to withdraw from his country.
New York Magazine describes them as a liberal institution whose avowed purpose was to protect the open society from authoritarianism of the right or left.
They also note that at the nation's remaining colleges, Orban has banned fields of study that conflict with the state's conception of truth.
And while Orban identifies as an illiberal Democrat, his party has insulated its power against the threat of popular rebuke to such a degree that many scholars describe his regime as a creeping dictatorship.
Cool.
Now, in a 2018 interview, Dr. Peterson himself agreed that Hungary's assaults on academic freedom were unacceptable.
Yet he agreed to sit down with Orban and have a convivial talk about the danger of cultural Marxism.
Meanwhile, Peterson decried the idea that people ought to accept different gender pronouns for trans and non-binary people as being dangerously in line with, quote, the Marxist doctrines that killed at least 100 million people in the 20th century.
What?
What?
Dr. Professor Jordan Peterson there.
expert on the world.
The world.
It's so interesting to hear him talk about this stuff.
And it's like one of those things like you don't hear him talk about the other side of this or the people that die from fascist extension of sort of what he espouses.
Of course you don't.
It's just interesting.
It's only communism has killed people.
He doesn't feel compelled to talk about that.
It's his right.
It's his right speech warrior.
As a free speech warrior.
Point of order.
Jordan B. Peterson, who's a clinical psychologist, Professor Jordan B. Peterson, a clinical psychologist, has on more than one occasion on camera claimed to be an evolutionary biologist and a neuroscientist.
Two things he is not.
Two things that a respectable professor or doctor wouldn't claim to be if they were not.
It seems like perhaps he's adult.
Dishonest.
Dishonest.
Okay.
That might be possible.
Also, he's once asked if he supported gay marriage that cultural Marxists are supporting.
And he was like, well, if culture Marxists support it, I wouldn't support it.
Oh, cool.
Very cool.
That's a solid intellectual line to take.
Now, earlier in this episode, when we started talking about the good doctor, I noted that he identifies personally as a classic British liberal.
You probably heard that, Cody.
Yeah.
And this is not an uncommon statement from intellectual figures on the right.
Many of them identify as classical liberals.
When they do so, they are putting themselves in line with an intellectual tradition that is descended in large part from a 19th century philosopher and British member of parliament named John Stuart Mill.
In his influential essay On Liberty, Mill wrote this: There ought to exist the fullest liberty of professing and discussing as a matter of ethical conviction any doctrine, however immoral it may be considered.
If all mankind minus one were of one opinion and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind.
Now, when classical liberals like Peterson talk about free speech, they are calling upon the ideas they inherited from Mill, or at least the ideas they believe they inherited from Mill.
I found a great article about this on the conversation titled The Strange Origins of Free Speech Warriors.
Quote, In truth, thinkers such as Mill were far from being libertarians, and what's more, would never have embraced the borderline absolutist position of today's free speech warriors.
Based in what is called the harm principle, Mill argued for a big government approach to situations in which the exercise of liberty might result in harm to others or even to the individual practicing it.
In On Liberty, he argues that parents of poor moral fiber may have their children removed from the home and causes and calls for similar state intervention to stop the harms caused by gamblers, prostitutes, and the drug addicts.
Even more broadly, he decides that the uncultivated cannot be competent judges of cultivation.
Those who most need to be made wiser and better usually desire it least, and if they desire it, would be incapable of finding the way to it by their own lights.
They've got to go.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Now, I'd be a little bit remiss in talking about the harm principle without getting into a little bit of the history of U.S. jurisprudence as it relates to free speech cases.
In March of 1919, which is about 100 years ago, Oliver Wendell Holmes.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Oh Homie, Win Holmesy, Oh Wendy, all good Nick.
Oh, Whimsy is that little?
Oh, Whimsey?
That's a good nickname for O Whimsy, Supreme Court Justice, wrote a series of unanimous opinions on three cases upholding the convictions and prison sentences of members of the Socialist Party.
These people's crime had been writing and distributing some 15,000 flyers to men who were in the process of being conscripted.
The flyers argued that conscription was involuntary servitude and prohibited by the 13th Amendment.
Also involved were the court cases of Eugene Debs, a socialist presidential candidate who protested against World War I in a speech.
Debs and his comrades were found to have violated the Espionage and Sedition Acts.
In justifying their incarceration, Holmes wrote, Words which ordinarily, and in many cases, would be within the freedom of speech protected by the First Amendment may become subject to prohibition when of such nature and used in such circumstances as to create a clear and present danger that they will bring about the substantive evils of which Congress has a right to prevent.
Free speech.
Free speech.
Sounds kind of Peterson-y.
Sounds a little bit Peterson-y.
Now, Holmes went on to write a line that has since become famous.
The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theater and causing a panic.
That's where that comes from.
I'm going to quote next from an article in the LA Review of Books by Stephen Rode about sort of where all this ends after we jail all these socialists for free speech that's too dangerous to be allowed.
Only eight months later, in November 1919, joined by his protégé Justice Brandeis in the case Abrams v. United States, Holmes would signal a dramatic and pivotal shift in his approach to the First Amendment.
As recounted in the illuminating essay, Right Skepticism and Majority Rule at the Birth of the Modern First Amendment by Vincent Blasey, Corliss Lamont Professor of Civil Liberties at Columbia Law School, which explains why the year 1919 deserves to inaugurate the free speech century, Holmes' dissent planted the fertile seeds of our modern-day First Amendment jurisprudence.
Holmes declared that the ultimate good desired is better reached by free trade and ideas, that the best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market, and that the truth is the only ground upon which their wishes safely can be carried out.
He saw the Constitution as an experiment, as all life is an experiment.
But he warned that we should be eternally vigilant against attempts to check the expression of opinions that we loathe and believe to be fraught with death unless they so immediately threaten interference with the lawful and pressing purposes of the law that an immediate check is required to save the country.
This is what he does.
Eight months after agreeing that those socialists ought to be jailed for saying the drafting people's panel like slavery.
Now, Holmes' views, these new views that he shifted to a quick shift.
They would be codified in American law 50 years later during the 1969 Brandenburg v. Ohio case.
In another unanimous decision, the Supreme Court overturned the conviction of a KKK leader who had led a rally of armed men.
These Klansmen had burned crosses and talked about taking revenge against the N-words and Jews that claimed that the U.S. government continues to suppress the white Caucasian race.
They announced plans for the 4th of July march on Washington, D.C. In his pure Curium opinion for the court, Justice William Brennan wrote, The constitutional guarantees of free speech and free press do not permit a state to forbid or prescribe advocacy of the use of force or of law violation except where an advocacy is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action.
It's interesting to me when we talk about the history of the evolution of free speech in this country that when socialists told draftees that being conscripted violated their human rights, that speech was too dangerous to be protected.
But when white supremacists carried guns and promised to take vengeance on black people and Jews, the Supreme Court decided that's explicitly protected as long as they don't say that vengeance should occur on this exact day.
I would say it's unbelievable, but it isn't.
This law's neat, right?
The Dick Pill Concern00:02:27
Yeah, man.
This is threatening lives are fine.
This adds up to me.
Don't ask if you don't say a date.
If I don't say a date.
If you don't say a date.
Just say we should take revenge against the Jews.
But don't say we should take revenge against the Jews on July 15th.
Then that's where I go to jail.
So as long as it's not like an organized flash mob type situation, then yeah.
Yeah.
Good to know.
Cool.
You know what else is cool?
It is probably.
Services?
Wait, seriously?
Oh, yeah, there's going to be a service or two.
I got both.
Oh, boy.
I hope it's a dick pill ad.
We really could use some dick pills.
Hymns, great dick pills.
Hymns?
Him?
Are you sure about that?
There's a new drug being developed for women to make women aroused.
Yeah.
And like, that seems like incredibly complicated morally.
It seems like a dangerous kind of drug to make available to just like...
To women?
I think it's a dangerous drug to make available to men.
That's what I'm saying.
I have no issue with women taking whatever drive.
All for women taking control of that.
Yeah.
I'm concerned about men getting a hold of that drug.
Yes, I hear you.
But you know what I'm not concerned with?
Services, products.
I was going to say just erection drugs in general.
Oh, yeah.
Sure.
Because I don't know if you guys know this, but the climate is collapsing and sex is zero emissions.
Sex is on the rise.
It's on the rise.
It's good.
It's good to have.
And with all these horrible facts we read, sometimes it's hard to get an erection.
So you guys should be worried about women slipping your dick pills into drinks.
Fear of that.
Yeah.
The one thing I don't, I don't know where to go.
I ruined it.
It's probably going to be a Microsoft ad after this anyway, which.
Ooh, perfect.
Oh, yeah.
Talk about a dick pill.
One way or the other, buy some dick pills.
That was a free addict.
Don't be Microsoft.
Don't be macro.
Sam!
That was so good.
I think we get like twice as much ad money from that one.
We get millions of dollars.
That was a high score.
Millions of dollars?
We'll be like Dr. Jordan Peterson.
I'm going to tell people to only eat meat.
Oh, I do not want to be like.
No, no.
All right.
Go here's some ads.
Will Farrell Returns00:03:33
There's two golden rules that any man should live by.
Rule one, never mess with a country girl.
You play stupid games, you get stupid prizes.
And rule two, never mess with her friends either.
We always say, trust your girlfriends.
I'm Anna Sinfield, and in this new season of The Girlfriends.
Oh my God, this is the same man.
A group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist.
I felt like I got hit by a truck.
I thought, how could this happen to me?
The cops didn't seem to care.
So they take matters into their own hands.
I said, oh, hell no.
I vowed I will be his last target.
He's going to get what he deserves.
Listen to the girlfriends.
Trust me, babe.
On the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
I'm Laurie Siegel, and on Mostly Human, I go beyond the headlines with the people building our future.
This week, an interview with one of the most influential figures in Silicon Valley, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.
I think society is going to decide that creators of AI products bear a tremendous amount of responsibility to products we put out in the world.
From power to parenthood.
Kids, teenagers, I think they will need a lot of guardrails around AI.
This is such a powerful and such a new thing.
From addiction to acceleration.
The world we live in is a competitive world, and I don't think that's going to stop, even if you did a lot of redistribution.
You know, we have a deep desire to excel and be competitive and gain status and be useful to others.
And it's a multiplayer game.
What does the man who has extraordinary influence over our lives have to say about the weight of that responsibility?
Find out on Mostly Human.
My highest order bit is to not destroy the world with AI.
Listen to Mostly Human on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Hey, I'm Nora Jones, and I love playing music with people so much that my podcast called Playing Along is back.
I sit down with musicians from all musical styles to play songs together in an intimate setting.
Every episode's a little different, but it all involves music and conversation with some of my favorite musicians.
Over the past two seasons, I've had special guests like Dave Grohl, Leve, Mavis Staples, Remy Wolf, Jeff Tweedy, really too many to name.
And this season, I've sat down with Alessia Cara, Sarah McLaughlin, John Legend, and more.
Check out my new episode with Josh Grobin.
You related to the Phantom at that point.
Yeah, I was definitely the Phantom in that.
That's so funny.
Share each day with me each night, each morning.
Say you love me.
You know I.
So come hang out with us in the studio and listen to Playing Along on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
What's up, everyone?
I'm Ego Modem.
My next guest, you know, from Step Brothers, Anchorman, Saturday Night Live, and the Big Money Players Network.
It's Will Farrell.
Woo, My dad gave me the best advice ever.
I went and had lunch with him one day, and I was like, and dad, I think I want to really give this a shot.
I don't know what that means, but I just know the groundlings.
I'm working my way up through it.
I know it's a place they come look for up and coming talent.
He said, if it was based solely on talent, I wouldn't worry about you, which is really sweet.
Koch Brothers Funding00:16:07
Yeah.
He goes, but there's so much luck involved.
And he's like, just give it a shot.
He goes, but if you ever reach a point where you're banging your head against the wall and it doesn't feel fun anymore, it's okay to quit.
If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration.
It would not be on a calendar of, you know, the cat just hang in there.
Yeah, it would not be.
Right, it wouldn't be that.
There's a lot of luck.
Listen to Thanks Dad on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
We're back from our carcassing digression.
My wife thinks I'm Jesus.
Cody's pretending to be Dr. True Peterson again.
Peter Perkins.
I've never done it.
I'm working on it.
He's working on it.
He's doing it getting his tight five for Peterson set down at the comedy seller.
Now, we just talked a little bit about the origins of free speech law and how it's evolved over the last century.
How maybe it's enforced on one side and not so much on the other side.
Maybe it's not sort of forgiven when it's really, really extreme.
Yeah.
Maybe that's a little bit.
When it's related to human rights, it's sort of like look the other way.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Now let's talk about the organized and well-funded campaign to make sure freedom of speech continues to evolve in a very specific direction.
Freedom of speech law, I should say.
Yeah.
It's the concept itself.
Although that too.
Have y'all ever heard of Brett Weinstein?
Sure have.
Oh, good.
I was going to bring him up earlier.
And here we are.
And here we are.
He was a biology professor at Evergreen State College and went viral online for opposing a protest that asked white students and faculty to stay home as part of a symbolic protest against white supremacy.
Now, he was not fired for this, but he was criticized for his actions.
So he resigned, sued the school, and got a bunch of money in a settlement.
And then did the rounds talking to Ben Shapiro, Joe Rogan, David Rubin, and the other icons of what is now called the Intellectual Dark Web.
Now, another member of the Intellectual Dark Web, and a guest on literally all of those same podcasts, is a guy named Jonathan Haight, co-author of the Atlantic article, The Coddling of the American Mind.
You know what I'm building to right now?
Thank you.
Do your thing.
I like using his voice with you.
It's exciting.
Yeah.
We can do a whole episode like this of our lives.
I like talk like illicit balance.
We'll get you some Thorazine.
We'll get Cody and I, what kind of drug makes your voice high?
Helium.
Helium and Thorazine Day.
That's how we do the Autism One Conference episode.
Okay.
Nailing it.
Yeah, Julian Thor.
We're making plans, Williams.
We're making plans, folks.
This is going to be a great podcast.
Let's continue the podcast that we're all.
The current one.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Now, the intellectual dark web itself was first coined and defined by Barry Weiss, staff editor of the New York Times Opinion section.
She has also been a guest on Joe Rogan's podcast.
Now, we noted earlier that the claims of that Coddling of the American Mind article don't hold up to evidence.
Four years ago. years of college, of course, makes people less supportive of banning any kind of free speech, and young people are more tolerant of offensive speech than older Americans.
No matter what academic free speech grifters like Weinstein may claim, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Education found that in 2018, there were a grand total of 18 disinvitation attempts across all colleges and universities in the United States.
Not all of those succeeded.
Given that young people are more likely to tolerate offensive speech and that college students are less likely to support free speech restrictions than the general population, one is left wondering what all this hubbub arose from.
It may have something to do with the fact that Generation Z, or the I generation, is further to the left than any other group in this country.
70% of them believe the government should be more involved in problem solving.
62% say racial and ethnic diversity is good for society, compared to 49 and 48% of baby boomers, respectively.
That's a bad jump.
Yeah.
Wow.
Now, Generation Z also prefers socialism to capitalism by a marked majority.
And this, you might expect, is terrifying to several small but influential groups in our country.
And when I say small, I mean like two guys.
The Koch brothers.
Yes.
Here we go, man.
That is where it was going.
I'd like to quote next from a fantastic article in The American Prospect by Aaron Friedman, which inspired this episode.
Quote, Dave Rubin's influential podcast, The Rubin Report, has a financial partnership with Learn Liberty, a think tank started by the Koch-funded Institute for Humane Studies, IHS, where Charles G. Koch himself sits on the board.
When the Canadian government denied Jordan Peterson funding for his work, Rebel Media, a group funded with Koch money and headed by Ezra Levant, a far-right Islamophobe with ties to the Koch network, raised cash for him.
Peterson has since returned the favor, fundraising for the IHS.
Ben Shapiro has collected speaker fees from the Koch-funded Young Americans Foundation and Turning Point USA.
And Brett Weinstein was hosted by the University of Wisconsin Stouts Free Speech Week, a project of their Center for the Study of Institutions and Innovation, funded by, you guessed it, the Charles G. Koch Foundation.
It's not just the IDW itself.
Some of its key popularizers also get Koch funding.
Barry Weiss and The Atlantic's Connor Frieserdorf, who has been one of the most visible defenders of Peterson in the mainstream media, have both received cash prizes from the Koch-funded Reason Foundation, where David Koch himself sits on the board of trustees.
And remember the Coddling of the American Mind?
Well, one of its co-authors, Greg Lukianoff, is the head of that campus free speech watchdog, Fire.
That organization is funded, of course, by the Koch brothers.
For good measure, the Charles Koch Institute also did a laudatory write-up of the piece.
Did you mention the Daily Caller?
Not yet.
Okay.
Oh, no.
The Daily.
Yeah.
They also...
Don't get to there.
Yeah.
The Atlantic is perhaps the worst defender.
Last year it launched The Speech Wars, a reporting project that seeks to understand where free speech is in danger and where it has been abused.
Even though the magazine had just been bought by billionaire Lorraine Powell Jobs and was seeing all-time high circulation and web traffic, The Atlantic solicited funding for the project from none other than the Charles Koch Foundation.
The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press and the Fetzer Institute were also underwriters.
When I asked The Atlantic for comment, a spokesperson replied that the editorial control for the series, as with every piece of journalism we create, rests solely with the Atlantic.
But the magazine refused to deny that reporters and editors with the speech wars are ever in contact with the Koch Foundation.
Editor-in-Chief Jeffrey Goldberg did not respond to my request for comment, and The Atlantic has not disclosed how much money it has received from the Koch Foundation.
That's actually pretty surprising for me.
Yeah.
The first half I was like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
I was like, wait, what?
I know.
Excuse me?
That just kept going.
Wowee.
Yeah.
Interesting.
All together.
Man, they're terrified.
Yeah.
They are scared of young folks.
They are, I mean, they're like really going forward with funding a lot of like centrists for the and like fucking terrified of losing of literally losing like two to four percent of their wealth.
Right.
Yeah.
Richard Fink, president of the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation, has explained this whole strategy in talking about his structure of social change philosophy.
The basic idea is to spend Koch money in strategic ways to influence broad social change.
Fink believes college campuses are one of the most important places to spend money in order to institute changes.
And that's why all this is happening.
The Kochs and their billionaire friends who help fund their foundation directly to fund the free speech grifters because they see what's coming.
A generation who wants to take their money and use it for such violins as clean water in American cities, roads, and basic health care.
They aren't scared on behalf of free speech.
They're scared on behalf of their bank accounts.
I mean, that's it.
I mean, that's it right there.
Yeah.
Reminded me of, you know, the Daily Beast is obviously very liberal.
Yeah, I know.
Half the time, not half the time, but every so often you go on there and they've got an article, an ad masquerading as an article by the Koch brothers.
They're like, the Koch brothers plan to make sure that they're going to save the world, to save the world.
I think that's actually the headline that one of them was.
The Koch brothers plan to save the world.
Brought to you by the Koch brothers.
Joseph Koch Foundation.
Very upset.
Who may be advertising on this episode?
There's a chance.
There's a non-zero chance.
It's always so obvious and interesting and keeps going and going.
Just the amount of projection from these people.
Obviously, the free speech thing and the censorship on campus is the opposite, as we've discussed.
But then you have all these people who really go hard in on like George Soros is using his billions of dollars to like destate, like all that kind of stuff.
But wait.
But everyone who's saying that is funded by these people.
You're showing your cards, man.
How did you get that idea in your head?
From your personal experience?
And also, just even if you take it on face value, like, well, who's like, what are the, what's the purpose?
One is like for humanitarian reasons and one is to protect their money.
Yeah.
It makes me crazy that this age we live in is like, not me, you, not all you.
Yeah.
It's very frustrating.
It's very frustrating.
I love that the media is constantly attacked for being liberal and left-leaning, but even very liberal sites will regularly host op-eds about how the Koch brothers are great and libertarianism is good.
No, it's not.
Limits on emissions are bad.
But what you're not going to fucking see on The Atlantic, you know what you're not going to fucking see in The Daily Beast is like an article on why workers should control the means of production.
No, you're not.
Yeah, I mean, the framing of like the far left media is just so frustrating.
I haven't seen an article about how profits are theft from workers.
Yeah.
Haven't seen that in a while.
Haven't seen any of the same thing.
Also, the media, I mean, obviously there's a bias against Trump and everything.
But even at that, even talking about stuff, they're so concerned with not appearing biased that they, you know, oftentimes it's like the fucking these people who call themselves fucking journalists, and I want to just punch in the face for even using that word, who like say, look, it may be accurate to call them concentration camps, but like it really offends people.
And in order to have a productive conversation, we should like, that's not journalism, Baronio.
That's not how it works.
Journalism is looking outside and being like, oh, hey, it's raining.
Oh, hey, there's a concentration camp.
Look at it.
Raining.
It's a concentration camp.
Let me describe what I see at this concentration camp.
That's going to hurt the feelings of all the dry people.
Yeah.
Make people jealous.
Hashtag drypro.
I didn't realize Barry Weiss was also funded by the Koch brothers.
Yeah, that was a surprise, too.
That's a real.
Real cool.
I didn't realize the Atlantic got Koch money either.
Didn't realize that either.
That's really disappointing.
Yeah.
Yep.
Very disappointing.
That's wild.
This is probably torpedoed in my chances to write an op-ed for The Atlantic.
I don't know.
It'll be okay.
It'll be all right.
Just give them some ad money.
Yeah, I'll give them some ad money for my dick pills.
Yeah, exactly.
Just like even separate from a company, just of the concept of pills that give people erection.
Yeah, just be like, hey, what?
What about that?
She's like, what about pills for your dick?
And then I'll sneak in a line about how if you pay attention to the way the economy works, whenever wages rise, the stock market falls because it's fundamentally outside of the interests of the capital holding classes for workers to make more money because that money that goes to them in wages does not go to the stockholding class in profits.
And as a result, the people who actually own stocks have diametrically opposed interests to everyone listening to this podcast.
Dick pills!
Yeah!
Penises!
They're fun!
That's, I love whenever that happens.
Like, oh, the stock market's on the rise.
So?
What?
How many stocks you got, bro?
Why should any of these people give a shit?
If I know you, like, you probably have enough money for rent and a couple of six-packs.
Probably not.
Probably not going to.
If you have a 401k, you got it the way I did, which is not knowing you had a 401k.
You had that job.
And you're like, oh, okay.
Thank you.
Thank you for this thing, Eddie.
You understand?
Yeah.
Anyway, that's the episode.
That was a great episode.
Frustrating all the things that are to be expected.
Glad I stopped myself from going on various tirades.
I'm going to do a dangerous thing, and then I'm going to have you guys plug your way out.
I've got the half-smashed LaCroix bottle, and I got my machete.
And I'm going to try to hit it into the sounding boards as if I am batting a tennis ball.
I don't know what kind of ball you bat this way, but that's what I'm going to do now for this audio-only podcast.
Yeah!
I made it a decent distance.
Didn't hit the sounding boards.
Got close.
It was fun.
Yeah.
Good time.
You could do it again if you practice.
You guys want to plug your pluggables?
Yeah, you know, check us out.
We have a podcast called Even More News and also a YouTube show.
Called Some More News.
That's correct.
My name's Katie Stoll.
You can find me on Twitter at Katie Stoll.
My name is Cody Johnston.
You can find me on Twitter at Dr. Mr. Cody.
My name is Katie Johnston and Robert Evans.
And actually, you can find me at the internet.
Sophie's not here.
I am not doing well.
You're doing great.
You're doing great.
Thank you.
Don't worry about it.
She's here in Spirit.
BehindtheBastards.com is our podcast where you can find all the sources for this episode.
You can also find us on TeePublic.com where you can buy shirts and cups.
And that will make someone's stock market price.
Someone's stock.
Oh, yeah.
Some stock will go, even if it's fucking cotton stocks anyway.
And then every winning will be better, as I understand the stock market.
You can find me on Twitter at iWriteOK.
You can find us on Twitter and Instagram at at BastardsPod.
That's the fucking episode.
Go home or riot in the streets.
One of the two.
Goodbye.
Patreon.com slash summer.
Oh, yeah.
For stock.
Oh, yeah, for stock.
That's the kind of stock I can get behind.
Exactly.
Stock.
When a group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist, they take matters into their own hands.
I vowed I will be his last target.
He is not going to get away with this.
He's going to get what he deserves.
We always say that, trust your girlfriends.
Listen to the girlfriends.
Trust me, babe.
On the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
What's up, everyone?
I'm Ago Modern.
My next guest, it's Will Farrell.
My dad gave me the best advice ever.
He goes, just give it a shot.
But if you ever reach a point where you're banging your head against the wall and it doesn't feel fun anymore, it's okay to quit.
If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration.
It would not be on a calendar of, you know, the cat just hanging in there.
Yeah, it would not be.
Right, it wouldn't be that.
There's a lot of life.
Listen to Thanksgiving on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
In 2023, bachelor star Clayton Eckard was accused of fathering twins, but the pregnancy appeared to be a hoax.
You doctored this particular test twice, Miss Owens, correct?
I doctored the test once.
It took an army of internet detectives to uncover a disturbing pattern.
Two more men who'd been through the same thing.
Greg Gillespie and Michael Mancini.
My mind was blown.
I'm Stephanie Young.
This is Love Trapped.
Laura, Scottsdale Police.
As the season continues, Laura Owens finally faces consequences.
Listen to Love Trapped podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Bachelor Hoax Uncovered00:00:37
10-10 shots fired in the City Hall building.
How could this have happened in City Hall?
Somebody tell me that.
A shocking public murder.
This is one of the most dramatic events that really ever happened in New York City politics.
They screamed, get down, get down.
Those are shots.
A tragedy that's now forgotten.
And a mystery that may or may not have been political.
That may have been about sex.
Listen to Rorschach, Murder at City Hall on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.