Behind the Bastards - Part One: Robert and Cody Watch Jordan B. Peterson's New TV Show
Aired: 2022-11-01
Duration: 01:22:47


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[00:02:17]  Ah, what's abusive?
[00:02:21]  My friendship with Cody.
[00:02:25]  I'm Robert Evans, host of Behind the Bastards, a podcast about terrible people with my good friend Cody Johnston.
[00:02:32]  Cody, how are you doing?
[00:02:34]  Hello there.
[00:02:34]  I'm spectacular.
[00:02:36]  I couldn't be better.
[00:02:37]  You look fantastic.
[00:02:38]  It won't be judging from the little I know about what we're going to talk about.
[00:02:42]  You're going to have a terrible day today, Cody.
[00:02:44]  Cody, you are the host of Some More News and the co-host of the podcast with a similar, but not exactly the same name.
[00:02:55]  YouTube Sensation, it would be fair to say.
[00:02:58]  And my friend of many years.
[00:03:02]  And Cody, you're familiar with the concept of love languages.
[00:03:06]  I am.
[00:03:07]  Yeah.
[00:03:08]  You know, it's this idea that people, there's different people express love in different ways.
[00:03:13]  And a major part of having a healthy relationship is understanding the way that the people in your life express love and communicating to them the way that you do so that you don't misunderstand each other and you appreciate, you know, when the other person tries to share with you the way they feel.
[00:03:30]  And I've come to recognize over the years, Cody, that you and I have a particular love language.
[00:03:35]  It started a couple of years ago when you began telling me about Dr. Jordan B. Peterson.
[00:03:41]  That all culminated in me putting together like a three-hour podcast series about the life of Dr. Jordan B. Peterson.
[00:03:48]  And then a couple of years later, you put together a three-hour video about everything Jordan Peterson has ever said and done.
[00:03:55]  Yes.
[00:03:55]  And I just watched that, Cody.
[00:03:57]  And now I am about to sit down with you and I am about to share as part of my love language some more about Jordan B. Peterson.
[00:04:07]  This is what we call romance.
[00:04:10]  Yeah, this is.
[00:04:10]  And romance.
[00:04:11]  There's nothing pure.
[00:04:14]  So thank you.
[00:04:16]  I receive.
[00:04:17]  I received.
[00:04:19]  I believe I started this by saying, Cody, I love you.
[00:04:22]  I'm sorry.
[00:04:24]  Instantly apologetic as soon as I popped off.
[00:04:27]  Cody, you know, Mr. Peterson, Dr. Mr. Peterson.
[00:04:32]  And you know, I'm sure that he has recently started a new television show, a hit new TV show.
[00:04:38]  Everybody's talking about it on the Daily Wire.
[00:04:40]  Can we call it a TV show?
[00:04:43]  Yeah, it's like a show.
[00:04:45]  It's like a show.
[00:04:47]  It is.
[00:04:48]  It has the show is a great description.
[00:04:52]  Well, like it's a show for sure.
[00:04:55]  It contains the totemic sigils that associated as being like a television show.
[00:05:03]  So like if you were like the things that like the representative artifacts that signify that something is a TV show are present in this thing, which is not a TV show.
[00:05:14]  It's on the Daily Wire's website.
[00:05:17]  Not even Daily Wire Plus on their website?
[00:05:19]  No.
[00:05:20]  Well, yeah, you have to have whatever their streaming account is.
[00:05:22]  I don't know.
[00:05:23]  Cody, I'm not going to tell you how I got this show.
[00:05:26]  You don't need to.
[00:05:27]  But I understand.
[00:05:30]  It's called Dragons, Monsters, and Men.
[00:05:34]  Boring.
[00:05:35]  God, that's classic.
[00:05:36]  I know.
[00:05:36]  I know.
[00:05:38]  Do you think there's any chance at all that the name was picked in part because they're like, well, the new Game of Thrones and the new Lord of the Rings shows are kind of 100%.
[00:05:46]  110%.
[00:05:48]  I think so because the intro.
[00:05:50]  I was going to say that like.
[00:05:52]  So you watch the new Lord of the Ring show, Cody?
[00:05:54]  I haven't seen it yet.
[00:05:56]  It's pretty good.
[00:05:57]  I like it.
[00:05:58]  But the intro of it is very clearly doing a Game of Thrones.
[00:06:01]  Sure.
[00:06:01]  Like that kind of like where it's sort of a kind of abstract representation using like symbols and stuff and whatever.
[00:06:10]  Sure.
[00:06:10]  It's fine.
[00:06:12]  But they're doing the same thing in Dragons, Monsters, and Men to open the series.
[00:06:17]  Yeah.
[00:06:17]  Well, so for listeners, a screen is being shared with me and the first frame of this show is on screen.
[00:06:27]  And I instantly believe you and agree with you.
[00:06:30]  And like, it's not even, it's not even a letter I'm looking at.
[00:06:33]  I'm looking at the shape of a part of a letter from the intro.
[00:06:38]  I'm like, yeah, they're doing Game of Thrones.
[00:06:40]  Yeah, it's all smoky and dusty.
[00:06:41]  And like, yeah.
[00:06:43]  Let's just, let's play the start of this.
[00:06:45]  And you at home will hear it.
[00:06:47]  And then we'll kind of describe what we're seeing after you've heard it.
[00:06:49]  But I think both are valuable.
[00:06:51]  Cody, I'm sorry.
[00:06:52]  I love you.
[00:06:54]  Oh, it's not even starting yet, Sophie.
[00:06:59]  Oh.
[00:07:08]  Cody.
[00:07:10]  What?
[00:07:10]  Hey, no, they can't do this.
[00:07:15]  Come on.
[00:07:16]  All right.
[00:07:19]  Let's pause it and talk.
[00:07:20]  And then is it just him at a chair?
[00:07:22]  It's just him in a chair.
[00:07:26]  So what we see in that intro is like a bunch of, they kind of look like Stone Age glyphs.
[00:07:30]  A mix of like stuff that might be runic shapes.
[00:07:33]  I'm not a runes expert.
[00:07:34]  Maybe they're actual runes.
[00:07:36]  They're like fake runes in like a video game.
[00:07:38]  I'm going to guess.
[00:07:39]  You got to collect the runes.
[00:07:40]  There's like animal glyphs.
[00:07:42]  There's like an arrow that's going up like progress and then turns down, probably because the liberals started doing a gender.
[00:07:48]  Yeah.
[00:07:49]  Yeah.
[00:07:51]  The rune for wokeness.
[00:07:52]  Yeah, the woke rune.
[00:07:56]  And then when you heard that and then that a bunch of fire blew on the screen, followed by the logo dragons, monsters, and men.
[00:08:05]  Dragons are your challenges, monsters and the demons you have to slay.
[00:08:09]  And then wow.
[00:08:11]  It's like you've spent dozens of hours watching Dr. Jordan Peterson talk about his ideas.
[00:08:16]  It's just like most basic symbolism and shit.
[00:08:20]  All right.
[00:08:21]  Yeah, it is.
[00:08:22]  It is, Cody.
[00:08:23]  It is kind of.
[00:08:25]  I think Jordan Peterson would have been a really inspirational, like sixth grade creative writing teacher.
[00:08:32]  100%.
[00:08:33]  I've always thought like, hey, man, go out, write a book.
[00:08:36]  Not your weird books.
[00:08:38]  Write a novel.
[00:08:39]  Write a fiction book.
[00:08:41]  And like use all your ideas and your archetypes and your symbolism and say a story that you think should be told with all those ideas.
[00:08:49]  And then maybe people will finally see what you believe.
[00:08:55]  I think something different's going to happen, Cody.
[00:08:58]  I agree.
[00:08:59]  So the episode one is titled, What Makes a Man.
[00:09:03]  And once the title crawl finishes, we're presented with Jordan Peterson wearing a nice fitted blue suit and sitting in a leather armchair in a library.
[00:09:11]  There's a large like hourglass style clock that's about four feet behind him.
[00:09:15]  And what's interesting to me is how all the production value and intensity they've tried to build up at the start of the episode dissipates the instant Jordan starts talking.
[00:09:23]  And I'm going to have Sophie click play to display that.
[00:09:27]  I can't.
[00:09:27]  I'm sorry, Cody.
[00:09:28]  I love you.
[00:09:34]  There are multiple dimensions of, let's say, competence and authority, multiple, especially in a sophisticated society.
[00:09:41]  And so you're fortunate if you're good at one or two things.
[00:09:45]  Most of the ways you could be competent and generous, you're just not that good at.
[00:09:50]  So first of all, I would say don't be too disheartened, especially if you're young.
[00:09:54]  Okay, pause it, pause it.
[00:09:57]  So listeners, what's just happened on screen is that obviously you can hear him talking.
[00:10:03]  It's just him sitting in the chair.
[00:10:05]  And after like 20 seconds, the screen splits and we watch a close-up of his face next to a slightly further out shot of his face, both at the same time.
[00:10:17]  Really off-putting and disconcerting.
[00:10:19]  It's because they know what they've done.
[00:10:22]  They know it's really, they threw God knows how much money at this guy.
[00:10:26]  Like millions of dollars, I assume.
[00:10:27]  Probably millions of dollars.
[00:10:28]  A lot of, like, they're just, that's why he literally said this out loud in one of his videos.
[00:10:32]  Like, yeah, they gave me a lot of money.
[00:10:34]  And more power to him.
[00:10:36]  Go for it.
[00:10:36]  But so they know what they've done, but ultimately, and the Daily Wire Plus wants to be the programming.
[00:10:42]  Like they want to anti-woke, like the TV that you don't get on HBO, which we secretly love, that kind of thing.
[00:10:50]  And so they've thrown all this money at it.
[00:10:52]  But ultimately, what they bought was Jordan Peterson doing his lectures, which is just a guy on stage.
[00:10:59]  That's it.
[00:11:00]  So they have to make it seem somewhat like cinematic or exciting or visually interesting at all.
[00:11:06]  And so they have two cameras follow him and do a split screen.
[00:11:10]  Cody, I'm going to give you a spoiler.
[00:11:12]  At a certain point, there's going to be three.
[00:11:15]  Yeah.
[00:11:16]  Wait, I was like, I was like waiting like, well, at a certain point, they do like reenactments or like they film.
[00:11:21]  Like, no, a third.
[00:11:22]  No, it is never anything but Jordan Peterson on screen.
[00:11:26]  Okay, here's, here's, here's, okay, here's my slight feedback here.
[00:11:30]  So he's worked very hard.
[00:11:31]  Like the hair is perfectly slicked back.
[00:11:34]  He's chosen, you know, the coat.
[00:11:37]  Why is his tie crooked and why is his shirt wrinkled?
[00:11:40]  Two notes.
[00:11:41]  Those were my clearly tried super hard to have this like put together image, but yet your shirt is wrinkled and your tie is crooked.
[00:11:50]  What is happening?
[00:11:50]  Also, what is that tie?
[00:11:52]  They didn't.
[00:11:53]  I'm like, I don't want to.
[00:11:54]  The Benzo shakes.
[00:11:56]  And possibly the Benzo shakes.
[00:11:58]  I'm just going to say it's the Benzo shakes.
[00:12:03]  I wear a very crumpled suit and tie on my show.
[00:12:08]  I do not own a suit or tie.
[00:12:10]  On purpose.
[00:12:11]  But you look fabulous, Cody.
[00:12:13]  Thank you so much.
[00:12:15]  Well, like, he seems like the kind of guy who'd be like, well, no, iron my shirt before my big show.
[00:12:23]  My nicest outfit is an open hoodie with a Bart Simpson Gulf War commemorative t-shirt.
[00:12:30]  It spells Saddam Hussein Huskins.
[00:12:32]  He's like put a lot of effort into it.
[00:12:34]  Like he's gone through the trouble of calling up Gavin Nusip and being like, what hair gel do you use?
[00:12:40]  And using all the hair gel.
[00:12:43]  But yet crooked tie, wrinkled shirt.
[00:12:46]  Just very interesting to note.
[00:12:48]  Shall we continue, Robert?
[00:12:49]  Also, Sophie, real quick, get used to the hands.
[00:12:52]  He will not stop doing the little magic fingers.
[00:12:54]  He loves the little magic fingers.
[00:12:56]  Spirit fingers.
[00:12:57]  As much money as I'm sure they're spending on this.
[00:13:00]  And for all the production value that existed in the first 28 seconds, which is going to be the most exciting thing we see today.
[00:13:08]  I think the episodes, I don't even think there's scripts to these.
[00:13:11]  Like you said, it's just like they filmed a lecture.
[00:13:14]  This isn't, I've seen his lectures and they are normally like he's wrong about things, but he knows how to give a competent lecture, right?
[00:13:22]  Where he like builds to a point and has an impact on the audience.
[00:13:26]  That's why he's been successful.
[00:13:28]  That's not what we're having here.
[00:13:30]  There's no, nothing he's building to.
[00:13:32]  He is just sitting in a chair and kind of talking almost aimlessly.
[00:13:38]  Yeah, I want, just listen, listen to this next.
[00:13:42]  So my prediction, so this seems like what you're describing is like, you know, you've, you've written a lot about him.
[00:13:49]  I recently released a three-hour video about him.
[00:13:52]  In doing so, you have to watch a lot of YouTube videos of him.
[00:13:55]  And in doing that, your algorithm gets completely fucked.
[00:13:59]  And so if you're like scrolling like YouTube shorts or something, here's like, oh, here's this 50-second clip of Jordan Peterson on a podcast, rambling about whatever.
[00:14:07]  And it seems like that's what this experience will be.
[00:14:10]  Just like scrolling through these like 50-second clips of him, like random thought about this.
[00:14:14]  I can say this about monsters and then just sort of like go.
[00:14:18]  Yeah, they just kind of sat down and let him go.
[00:14:21]  And you can kind of see in the editing and then gradually how the off-screen questions are kind of directing him that I think they recognize they made a mistake about 10 minutes into this.
[00:14:31]  But I want to play you the next set of clips here.

=== Machines Can't Do Everything (13:54) ===

[00:14:34]  Excellent.
[00:14:35]  Sorry, Cody, I love you.
[00:14:36]  What should I do?
[00:14:38]  And part of the problem is the question, what should I do with my life, is not a very good question because it's sort of like, tell me about everything.
[00:14:47]  It's just too much.
[00:14:49]  What do you do with your life?
[00:14:51]  Well, you say you do many things.
[00:14:53]  Okay, what are those things?
[00:14:54]  Because I don't know what to do.
[00:14:56]  Incredible advice.
[00:14:57]  What other people do that appear to give their lives significance and meaning?
[00:15:02]  And this bears on the issue of responsibility.
[00:15:05]  Well, most people want to have or do have an intimate partner.
[00:15:10]  So if you don't have one, screen is split where you can see his hand.
[00:15:13]  How do you decide?
[00:15:14]  You don't work on that by going to find the person that's right for you.
[00:15:18]  It's like, who the hell are you?
[00:15:19]  And what makes you think that even if you found the person that was right for you, they wouldn't take one look at you and run away screaming.
[00:15:27]  How do you talk like this?
[00:15:30]  I don't know.
[00:15:30]  Can't he just because he's like circling really banal advice.
[00:15:35]  Like he said in the roughly a minute that we played, 50-ish seconds.
[00:15:41]  The actual point he has made is that like life includes a lot of things and it's you shouldn't try to find someone to fall in love with.
[00:15:50]  Right.
[00:15:50]  Like life is complicated.
[00:15:52]  You got to narrow it down your goals.
[00:15:54]  And like, but like the point he's, the broader point he's making is that, like, young men shouldn't seek to find someone to complete them.
[00:16:04]  They should become the person that, like, is, you know, which is fine advice.
[00:16:07]  That's good advice.
[00:16:08]  Focus on yourself, right?
[00:16:09]  But of course.
[00:16:09]  At the same time, because also he talks like really contradictory, too, because he's saying it as if, like, well, why do you want to like, oh, get find an intimate partner who's like right for you?
[00:16:22]  Well, what makes you think that they're going to like you?
[00:16:24]  So like he's talking about it in this dismissive way where it's like, don't even try.
[00:16:28]  Yeah.
[00:16:28]  And then he's coming back to you need to work on yourself before you do that.
[00:16:33]  In order to what?
[00:16:34]  Because ultimately what he's saying is work on yourself in order to be of value to a partner.
[00:16:40]  So he's still encouraging this end goal.
[00:16:45]  He's just saying like, yeah, take some time.
[00:16:46]  You need to work on yourself.
[00:16:48]  Yeah.
[00:16:48]  Just such a weird way to say these things.
[00:16:51]  It's pointlessly long.
[00:16:53]  And after meandering for a little while longer, Peterson announces that the primary thing that young men have going for them is youth and possibility, which is what sets them apart from the olds who have money and the ability to wear nice suits while seated in a library funded by oil and gas billionaire investments, but don't have as much energy or as much time.
[00:17:14]  Peterson makes the claim that if you're young and poor, you still have an unbelievable source of wealth because you're young.
[00:17:20]  And obviously, no one would change being young for being decrepit and rich.
[00:17:25]  Now, this seems to ignore that an awful lot of rich people are in excellent shape and stay that way for a long time because it's very easy to eat well and seek medical care if you have money.
[00:17:36]  I see.
[00:17:36]  Good, good stuff, Jordan.
[00:17:38]  He's done this before about like wealth and stuff where it's like, oh, you know, everybody has problems.
[00:17:44]  You know, it's not rich.
[00:17:45]  You're rich or you're poor.
[00:17:46]  You know, richer or poor, you know, everybody gets sick.
[00:17:49]  It's like, yeah, but how do you, what do you do if you get sick and you're poor?
[00:17:53]  What do you do if you get sick and you're rich?
[00:17:55]  Like, it's so...
[00:17:56]  It's like people looking at Keanu, who is like pushing 60 and being like, wow, he looks incredible.
[00:18:01]  I'm sure Keanu Reeves, the first thing he would say is, yeah, because I have tens of millions of dollars.
[00:18:06]  Yeah, exactly.
[00:18:07]  It's like that video of Rob Mac on Sunny describing how he got in shape.
[00:18:14]  It's like, yeah, it's impossible.
[00:18:17]  If you have unlimited money, then it's very you have to do.
[00:18:22]  Yeah.
[00:18:22]  Silly.
[00:18:24]  Very silly.
[00:18:25]  Now, most of what Peterson is trying to get out here is like his normal 12 rules for life shit, just not at all very well organized.
[00:18:32]  And it's certainly not yet offensive advice, although he's ignoring things in a way that is kind of offensive.
[00:18:38]  But it's true that if you're young and healthy, that is worth a lot, right?
[00:18:42]  Youth and health are very valuable things.
[00:18:44]  Time is valuable.
[00:18:45]  Of course.
[00:18:46]  Like again, yeah, it's like this thing he does where it's like, what you're saying, like if you shave everything away.
[00:18:54]  Yeah, it's a fine point that a lot of people make on Airbnb art.
[00:18:59]  Yeah, exactly.
[00:19:00]  And but he couches it and it's like monsters and dragons and men.
[00:19:04]  It's like, well, you're just sitting in it.
[00:19:06]  He said nothing, nothing that he said that's right is something you couldn't find on the wall of an Airbnb in Glendale, California.
[00:19:12]  Exactly.
[00:19:14]  Yeah, exactly.
[00:19:15]  And it's funny because he starts at this like very basic point that like, yes, youth and health are valuable.
[00:19:22]  But like a lot of his platitudes in this episode, it starts to spin out like tires losing traction in mud.
[00:19:28]  And it's very funny to listen to.
[00:19:29]  Sophie, I'm going to have you play this next clip.
[00:19:32]  Are you good at anything?
[00:19:34]  And if the answer to that is no, well, how about you start practicing being good at something?
[00:19:40]  Pick one thing.
[00:19:42]  Well, what?
[00:19:43]  Well, nothing.
[00:19:45]  Pick something.
[00:19:46]  Maybe it's a video game.
[00:19:49]  Truly sage advice, Dr. Peterson.
[00:19:53]  Talk like a guy who's ever talked to a person before.
[00:19:56]  Yeah.
[00:19:56]  This is, and also, and I have to say, this is, and I'll probably have to point this out every 30 seconds.
[00:20:05]  This is something he says all the time in every interview he's ever been in, being asked about advice for people.
[00:20:12]  This like, pick something and do it.
[00:20:14]  I've heard it 90 different times in 90 different interviews in 90 different like Alpha Brain Academy clip on YouTube.
[00:20:23]  Why did they give this guy so much money for this show?
[00:20:26]  Yes, acquiring skills is useful in life.
[00:20:30]  It's just like bizarre.
[00:20:31]  Of course.
[00:20:34]  Yeah.
[00:20:34]  So he goes on to say that getting good at anything helps you learn how to get good at other things, which is true, but not in a way that really means anything.
[00:20:41]  Like if you get good at a video game, which he actually suggests here, that probably won't actually help you get good at endurance running, even though you could like boil it down and be like, well, both require you to do something over and over again until you get better at it.
[00:20:54]  But like playing video games is pleasurable and physically not difficult on your body, whereas distance running is really difficult on your body and makes you uncomfortable for extended periods of time.
[00:21:04]  And so the fact that you got good at a video game probably won't help you with your endurance running.
[00:21:09]  Not that there aren't people who are good at both, but the fact that like skills are not universally applicable.
[00:21:14]  Right.
[00:21:15]  One doesn't necessarily lead to the other.
[00:21:17]  And like running, you know, running might make you better at a video game because like exercise like is good for your brain and like your focus and attention and things.
[00:21:26]  And that's what you need when you play a video game.
[00:21:28]  If you play a video game, it might help you with like pattern recognition and certain things like that.
[00:21:34]  But like you can't just like pick two things and say, do this and you'll get better at the other.
[00:21:41]  Yeah, it's also like, I think there's actually a fundamental flaw in the logic that like learning how to get good at one thing means you'll get good at other things.
[00:21:48]  Because as a general rule, the things that people get best at first are the things that they're like inclined towards because of basic interest.
[00:21:55]  And an awful lot of actual success is getting good at things that you're not inclined to, but you need to build up some level of confidence in because like a lot of life is just kind of unpleasant.
[00:22:05]  And you got to do things you don't like and get good at them so you can do them well and get them over with.
[00:22:11]  Exactly.
[00:22:11]  Like if you love basketball and you hate numbers, the fact that the skills that made you good at basketball might not make you good at paying your taxes, which is why people who become professional sports players generally hire professional accountants, right?
[00:22:28]  But whatever.
[00:22:29]  Anyway, continue, Jordan Peterson.
[00:22:31]  So the next thing he goes into is he talks about how he, when he was a young man, the thing that he became good at first was washing dishes, which I don't know that he actually did this, but he's claiming this because it makes him seem like a man of the people.
[00:22:45]  He has claimed this before as well.
[00:22:47]  I am not certain he ever did this job, but a lot of people do.
[00:22:50]  So let's just hear him out.
[00:22:51]  And so what else do you have to do to be a good dishwasher?
[00:22:54]  Learn the techniques.
[00:22:56]  Stay on your toes.
[00:22:58]  Volunteer to work when other people don't show up.
[00:23:02]  Show an interest in learning to cook.
[00:23:05]  Get along with the waitresses.
[00:23:07]  Maybe get along with the customers.
[00:23:09]  Act like an adult.
[00:23:10]  And all of that's excellent practice for all sorts of things you're going to do later.
[00:23:15]  Now, Cody, you know, what, Robert?
[00:23:20]  What?
[00:23:21]  Have you known a lot of people who did dishwashing?
[00:23:23]  Specifically, not just like their job included dishwashing, but like people who's.
[00:23:27]  Yeah, like I've worked in restaurants and like I've done dishwashing and I've known many dishwashers at the jobs that I've had.
[00:23:36]  Is it not, would you say, generally accepted as good advice that you keep the dishwashers the fuck away from the customers?
[00:23:43]  Oh, yeah.
[00:23:44]  I mean, we don't need that.
[00:23:46]  But also you keep the dishwashers happy and like you like it's like chefs.
[00:23:51]  You don't want the chef to talk to the customer.
[00:23:53]  Yeah, you go in the room, you get sweaty, you turn on your music, whatever it is.
[00:23:56]  There's a lot of cocaine in the bathroom.
[00:23:58]  Like it's fine.
[00:24:00]  I don't know.
[00:24:01]  It's also, it's like not like, it depends on the restaurant too, you know?
[00:24:05]  Yeah, there are everywhere different.
[00:24:06]  If there's like very friendly like customer relations between like workers and customers, that's fine.
[00:24:14]  It's a weird thing to plop in there.
[00:24:16]  I think he's just trying to, he's trying to give, he's trying to give general life advice, which he always does that everybody could give and make it specific to this one example, which is what he does all the time, right?
[00:24:28]  He's like, yeah, it's good to like get to know this person and this type of person and go out in the world and do this.
[00:24:34]  And he's just using dishwashing as an example.
[00:24:38]  Yeah, he's generally using it as an example.
[00:24:41]  And I, I mean, as a jit, like, yeah, whatever.
[00:24:45]  I don't think that dishwashers want to talk to the customers at all.
[00:24:48]  No, like part, a big part of managing any successful enterprise where there are customers is limiting who has to deal with customers because that's the thing that sucks the most, right?
[00:24:56]  Because they're the worst people in the world.
[00:24:59]  Like the last person, like you, you, you want as many people as possible to not have to talk to the customers directly because fuck those people.
[00:25:06]  Yeah, exactly.
[00:25:07]  And I just, well, so quick note, if we're, if listeners, if, if we're listening to a clip and suddenly you hear like a snicker or a laugh, a guffaw, a little chortle, it might be because of what he's saying.
[00:25:21]  If you think what he's saying is funny, it's probably because they just did the split screen thing again.
[00:25:26]  And it's so jarring and off-putting and it surprises me every time because why are they doing it?
[00:25:30]  It's so weird.
[00:25:31]  It seems like they're doing it at random.
[00:25:34]  There's no rhyme or reason to it.
[00:25:35]  It's just like, well, we need to do the split screen thing again.
[00:25:38]  And I can't wait for it to be three Petersons on screen at once.
[00:25:42]  Now, Cody, a lot of evidence shows that of all of the jobs in the United States, the highest level of substance abuse is pretty much working in a restaurant, particularly like working in the back of a restaurant.
[00:25:55]  Like those are, as Anthony Bourdain very, very eloquently wrote about, like that's just a pretty durable fact.
[00:26:06]  Yeah, I think front of the restaurant is cocaine.
[00:26:08]  Back of the restaurant is all drugs.
[00:26:10]  Yeah.
[00:26:11]  And I'm going to be honest with you.
[00:26:13]  The only reason I might believe that Jordan Peterson did what he said, and he claims he went from being a dishwasher to a short order cook, is that I can imagine him sitting in the back of a restaurant doing lines of a variety of benzos and stimulants and, you know, whatever, whatever he could get his hands on.
[00:26:29]  Look at the man.
[00:26:31]  Look at that shirt.
[00:26:33]  Tell me that man hasn't tried to straighten the lines in a Rain Nagel painting.
[00:26:38]  I can't tell you that.
[00:26:40]  Oh, good guy.
[00:26:41]  Oh, Dr. Jordan Peterson.
[00:26:45]  Anyway, he's on the verge of sounding like a normal person here until we get to this line.
[00:26:49]  You know, it's not intellectual work in that you're not dealing with abstractions, although it can still be complex.
[00:26:55]  That's why we don't have dishwashing robots, by the way.
[00:26:59]  No!
[00:27:00]  Cody!
[00:27:03]  Quick quiz.
[00:27:04]  Good sir.
[00:27:05]  Do we in fact have dishwashing robots?
[00:27:08]  Yeah, I feel like maybe if you just cut off the word robot.
[00:27:12]  Yeah, we stopped the, we didn't use the word robot for it, but we have washing machines.
[00:27:17]  I feel like almost everyone listening has a machine that washes dishes.
[00:27:22]  You know, not all places have dishwashers, but everybody knows they exist.
[00:27:27]  Yeah.
[00:27:28]  Again, obviously the point he's making is that like, yeah, if you're even with all that machines can do, if you're like running a professional restaurant, you're going to have someone whose job is keeping the dishes clean because machines can't do everything.
[00:27:38]  Right.
[00:27:38]  And like sometimes you run the dishwasher and you're like, oh, the dishwasher didn't work.
[00:27:43]  Got to use my human hands that have certain ways they can move and they can get in there and clean bad skirts.
[00:27:49]  It's so funny because like the most famous labor-saving device on the planet is dishwashers.
[00:27:55]  Like it's, it's.
[00:27:56]  It says if he, if you know, if we didn't know that clearly Game of Thrones fan, if it was like the only TV show this man has seen is the Jetsons and like he's basing everything off of Rosie the robot.
[00:28:10]  I mean, yeah, it's like there's Flintstones and then there's Jetsons and there's like nothing in between.
[00:28:14]  Yeah, there's nothing in between.
[00:28:16]  But even the Flintstones had like dishwashing like what birds and stuff, right?
[00:28:21]  They should have called this show Flintstones, Jetsons, and Scooby-Doo.
[00:28:27]  And Scooby-Doos.

=== Why Nobody Loves Papyrus (02:49) ===

[00:28:28]  Or I guess what would Dragon Tails?
[00:28:35]  If we ever get that big Exxon sponsorship to fund this podcast and I become a millionaire, I'm going to pay Jordan Peterson a fortune to watch old episodes of the of Scooby-Doo where they have the Harlem Globetrotters on and like weep over the Jungian profundity of sweet Kyle, sweet Lyle, whatever his fucking name was.
[00:28:57]  Oh, that's a waste of money.
[00:28:58]  He'll do that for free.
[00:28:59]  He'll do that for free.
[00:29:00]  He loves doing that.
[00:29:00]  Dr. Peterson, what do you think about the time the Harlem Globetrotters solve the mystery of Old Man McGregor's haunted Air BNB?
[00:29:10]  I don't know, whatever.
[00:29:11]  Well, old man is nothing, right?
[00:29:12]  He's this sort of this dragon inside you, and you have to, you unmask it, and it turns out it's yourself because we are all our own dragons.
[00:29:20]  This font is better on that than I do.
[00:29:22]  This terrorist upsets me.
[00:29:24]  What an awful font they chose.
[00:29:27]  It's a step above, it's a step above Paprius, but not much.
[00:29:32]  Not really.
[00:29:33]  I'm sorry.
[00:29:34]  What did you just call that?
[00:29:36]  Thank you.
[00:29:36]  Thank you, Sophie.
[00:29:37]  I'm sorry.
[00:29:40]  It's like, what?
[00:29:42]  What did you do?
[00:29:43]  I was referring to the papyrus font.
[00:29:48]  I don't even think this is a step above that, though.
[00:29:50]  I don't either.
[00:29:52]  It's got these weird cuts in it.
[00:29:54]  It's like it's trying to seem like very royal, but also has a weird slime thing going to it.
[00:30:01]  Right.
[00:30:02]  And the slime is for the curves of only O's and the O season G's.
[00:30:10]  And it's like a little slug.
[00:30:11]  Yeah.
[00:30:12]  I don't, there's some slime to it, but it's not like that exciting to listen to people describe fonts, but this is the one.
[00:30:20]  The E is too easy to mistake for an F at discounts.
[00:30:24]  I agree.
[00:30:25]  It's the bottom.
[00:30:25]  Too thin, then.
[00:30:26]  Too thin.
[00:30:27]  Anyway, whatever.
[00:30:28]  Fuck this font.
[00:30:29]  Fuck this font.
[00:30:30]  Robert, it is time for you to do an ad break.
[00:30:32]  You know who will fuck a font?
[00:30:34]  Oh, for sure.
[00:30:35]  They'll get their dick right in there.
[00:30:37]  In fact, every time you buy one of the products sponsored on this show, our sponsors purchase irreplaceable ancient Egyptian papyrus and then have sex with it.
[00:30:48]  That's a guarantee.
[00:30:50]  So glad you learned how to pronounce that word.
[00:30:52]  With every purchase you make, irreplaceable human knowledge is lost forever.
[00:30:56]  We promise that and nothing else.
[00:30:59]  I hope it's another gold ad.
[00:31:01]  Me too.
[00:31:07]  10-10 shots fired.
[00:31:09]  City hall building.
[00:31:10]  A silver .40 caliber handgun was recovered at the scene from iHeart Podcasts and Best Case Studios.

=== Murder at City Hall (03:28) ===

[00:31:18]  This is Rorschach.
[00:31:20]  Murder at City Hall.
[00:31:21]  How could this have happened in City Hall?
[00:31:22]  Somebody tell me that, Jeffrey, what did it?
[00:31:25]  July 2003.
[00:31:27]  Councilman James E. Davis arrives at New York City Hall with a guest.
[00:31:31]  Both men are carrying concealed weapons.
[00:31:34]  And in less than 30 minutes, both of them will be dead.
[00:31:43]  Everybody in the chamber is ducks.
[00:31:46]  A shocking public murder.
[00:31:47]  I scream, get down, get down.
[00:31:49]  Those are shots.
[00:31:50]  Those are shots, get down.
[00:31:51]  A charismatic politician.
[00:31:53]  You know, he just bent the rules all the time, man.
[00:31:55]  I still have a weapon.
[00:31:57]  And I could shoot you.
[00:32:00]  And an outsider with a secret.
[00:32:02]  He alleged he was a victim of flat down.
[00:32:05]  That may or may not have been political.
[00:32:07]  That may have been about sex.
[00:32:09]  Listen to Rorschach, Murder at City Hall on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:32:22]  There's two golden rules that any man should live by.
[00:32:26]  Rule one, never mess with a country girl.
[00:32:29]  You play stupid games, you get stupid prizes.
[00:32:32]  And rule two, never mess with her friends either.
[00:32:36]  We always say that, trust your girlfriends.
[00:32:39]  I'm Anna Sinfield, and in this new season of The Girlfriends.
[00:32:43]  Oh my God, this is the same man.
[00:32:45]  A group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist.
[00:32:50]  I felt like I got hit by a truck.
[00:32:52]  I thought, how could this happen to me?
[00:32:54]  The cops didn't seem to care.
[00:32:56]  So they take matters into their own hands.
[00:32:59]  I said, oh, hell no.
[00:33:00]  I vowed I will be his last target.
[00:33:03]  He's going to get what he deserves.
[00:33:07]  Listen to the girlfriends.
[00:33:09]  Trust me, babe.
[00:33:10]  On the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:33:19]  Hey, I'm Nora Jones, and I love playing music with people so much that my podcast called Playing Along is back.
[00:33:25]  I sit down with musicians from all musical styles to play songs together in an intimate setting.
[00:33:30]  Every episode's a little different, but it all involves music and conversation with some of my favorite musicians.
[00:33:36]  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.
[00:33:45]  And this season, I've sat down with Alessia Cara, Sarah McLaughlin, John Legend, and more.
[00:33:50]  Check out my new episode with Josh Grobin.
[00:33:53]  You related to the Phantom at that point.
[00:33:56]  Yeah, I was definitely the Phantom in that.
[00:33:58]  That's so funny.
[00:34:00]  Share each day with me each night, each morning.
[00:34:08]  Say you love me.
[00:34:11]  You know I.
[00:34:12]  So come hang out with us in the studio and listen to Playing Along on the iHeartRadio app.
[00:34:17]  Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:34:20]  I'm Laurie Siegel, and on Mostly Human, I go beyond the headlines with the people building our future.
[00:34:26]  This week, an interview with one of the most influential figures in Silicon Valley, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.
[00:34:32]  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.
[00:34:39]  From power to parenthood.
[00:34:41]  Kids, teenagers, I think they will need a lot of guardrails around AI.
[00:34:44]  This is such a powerful and such a new thing.

=== Guardrails for AI Creators (15:25) ===

[00:34:47]  From addiction to acceleration.
[00:34:49]  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.
[00:34:53]  You know, we have a deep desire to excel and be competitive and gain status and be useful to others.
[00:35:00]  And it's a multiplayer game.
[00:35:03]  What does the man who has extraordinary influence over our lives have to say about the weight of that responsibility?
[00:35:09]  Find out on Mostly Human.
[00:35:11]  My highest order bit is to not destroy the world with AI.
[00:35:14]  Listen to Mostly Human on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
[00:35:25]  Ah, we're back.
[00:35:27]  Boy, I sure feel like the library of Alexandria was just burned for my own sexual gratification.
[00:35:34]  How about you, Cody?
[00:35:35]  I was going to describe it exactly like that.
[00:35:38]  Wow.
[00:35:38]  Wow.
[00:35:39]  We're, it's like we're united by epigenetic collective unconsciousness.
[00:35:45]  That's where this all ends.
[00:35:46]  Anyway, whatever.
[00:35:48]  Oh, yeah.
[00:35:48]  By the way, we believe everything Jordan Peterson believes.
[00:35:52]  After Peterson goes on another vamps for a little while, he says very little of substance and mostly just asks rhetorical questions about self-improvement, stuff like, Can you improve your relationship with your father?
[00:36:03]  Can you educate yourself?
[00:36:04]  And then we get this very odd moment.
[00:36:07]  All right.
[00:36:08]  Yeah.
[00:36:09]  The draw of temptation, drug and alcohol use in particular, sexual temptation as well.
[00:36:14]  Oh, do you do anything that's remote?
[00:36:18]  Oh, Cody, how would you describe that little play that again, Sophie?
[00:36:22]  Play it again.
[00:36:23]  How would you describe that?
[00:36:23]  That little motion when he says, oh, he does this, like, it's almost like a computer buffering.
[00:36:29]  Like his, his, the thing that he said just sort of like caused a fucking hard drive skip in his little brain.
[00:36:36]  Yeah.
[00:36:37]  All right.
[00:36:37]  One more time.
[00:36:39]  The draw of temptation, drug and alcohol use in particular, sexual temptation as well.
[00:36:44]  Oh, do you do anything that's remote?
[00:36:47]  He like he says he says sexual temptation and then casts his eyes down.
[00:36:52]  There's almost a little shiver across his body as he goes, oh, it's very weird.
[00:36:57]  He's such an odd speaker.
[00:37:02]  I mean, I'm sure it's made him millions of dollars because there is something that like you just, I spent too long watching this and just going, the fuck is what are you doing?
[00:37:10]  What are you trying to get across here?
[00:37:12]  It's cryptic.
[00:37:15]  Anyway, that's how he does it.
[00:37:16]  So what does he land on?
[00:37:17]  Can you resist temptation or not?
[00:37:20]  He never really finishes.
[00:37:21]  He just glitches.
[00:37:22]  And then from this point, he starts to get angrier and almost abusive.
[00:37:26]  Yes.
[00:37:26]  Oh, he's doing it.
[00:37:27]  Are you member of the political party?
[00:37:28]  Do you go to church?
[00:37:29]  You know, I don't go to church because, you know, their beliefs don't match mine.
[00:37:34]  It's like, who the hell cares about your beliefs?
[00:37:36]  You're like 60.
[00:37:38]  You don't even have beliefs.
[00:37:40]  And if you think it's like you're right and the Catholic Church is wrong, well, good luck with that attitude.
[00:37:49]  And that is me.
[00:37:51]  Church, for example, or a political party doesn't need repair because all institutions are always falling apart and corrupt.
[00:37:57]  That's that's a story as old as time.
[00:38:00]  That's the evil uncle.
[00:38:01]  But good.
[00:38:02]  You have something to do to fix it up.
[00:38:07]  Wait a second.
[00:38:08]  Wait.
[00:38:09]  Did he say fix it up?
[00:38:10]  Go fix it up.
[00:38:12]  I thought you were not allowed to do that.
[00:38:13]  Yeah, well, that's exactly none of this makes any sense.
[00:38:16]  Because number one, are you saying that like people should just like you have to join a church, which he's clearly saying, but also you shouldn't criticize it.
[00:38:27]  But also, instead of leaving it, if it doesn't match with your beliefs, you should change it.
[00:38:31]  But also, you don't have beliefs.
[00:38:33]  So, and it's like, okay, even if you disagree, don't what are you going to change it to?
[00:38:37]  Because you don't believe anything.
[00:38:38]  And what are you saying people should do?
[00:38:40]  Are you saying that like they should all become Catholics or that you should just join whatever church is closest and not question it?
[00:38:46]  But fix it if it doesn't align with your beliefs.
[00:38:48]  But you can't have beliefs yet because you're just a kid.
[00:38:51]  It's nonsense.
[00:38:54]  It's nonsense.
[00:38:55]  It's just like there's nothing useful in that mess of what a contradiction.
[00:39:00]  It's also of all of all of the things to pick as an organization that you shouldn't criticize.
[00:39:05]  Unreal.
[00:39:06]  The Catholic Church.
[00:39:08]  Yeah, sure.
[00:39:08]  It's not great.
[00:39:09]  They're incredible.
[00:39:10]  Yeah.
[00:39:10]  Thanks, Jordan.
[00:39:14]  I also love his, it's one of his ticks where he like says a thing, and sometimes it's like some ridiculous statement.
[00:39:21]  Sometimes it's a completely reasonable thing.
[00:39:23]  And he's like, well, you know, good luck with that.
[00:39:27]  He just sort of like dismisses it as though like that's the argument.
[00:39:30]  For example, it seems like after the Catholic Church systemically sexually trafficked and abused children and pushed for theocratic laws in Ireland that got huge numbers of women killed and maimed as a result of things like ectopic pregnancies, Irish people in very large numbers left the church and things are better.
[00:39:52]  Well, you know, that's the evil uncle, right?
[00:39:54]  Right.
[00:39:54]  The evil uncle is the like your evil uncle, the Catholic priest.
[00:39:58]  Yeah, I mean, yeah, not far off.
[00:40:00]  But like, so when do you, because his whole thing is like, don't are you, so you're like, you're 16, you have no beliefs.
[00:40:09]  So go to any church.
[00:40:11]  And if it disagrees with you, then you should change it.
[00:40:14]  But also, you're not allowed to want to change anything unless your like life is perfect and like in perfect order.
[00:40:21]  So you're, it's not yet because you're 16.
[00:40:24]  So like, don't do anything.
[00:40:28]  Don't leave your house, I guess.
[00:40:30]  But do to go to church that you don't believe in.
[00:40:34]  Most consistently frustrating to me about Peterson is he does shit like drop like the evil uncle.
[00:40:38]  And he does it in such a way as he's like, he's trying to impress you with by naming these archetypes and like referencing them.
[00:40:45]  Yeah, memorized categories.
[00:40:46]  Exactly.
[00:40:47]  And it's, there's, for an example of kind of like how to do this and not be a complete, I know some people will disagree with this, but like what he's doing is not fundamentally all that different.
[00:40:57]  If you sit down and listen to Dan Harmon talk about like the story circle, which is basically him taking the fucking hero's journey and putting it into a way that you can pretty easily turn into scripts, right?
[00:41:06]  That's all it is.
[00:41:07]  It's not like...
[00:41:08]  distills it down to six steps or eight, eight steps instead of 22 or whatever.
[00:41:12]  Dan harmon, plenty of things to criticize about the man, but all he's actually he's not trying to say there's any sort of like psychic resonance with that.
[00:41:20]  He's being like.
[00:41:20]  This is a very simple, replicable way to tell a story in a way that that people can can grasp onto.
[00:41:25]  Right, there's a reason it's, and people like stories that have this.
[00:41:28]  Yeah, you go, you do the thing you change.
[00:41:30]  And then yeah Peterson, is that, rather than the evil uncle, just like being a thing that's in some movies and tv shows, because it's easy, I don't know, it's something that people tend to like grasp on to.
[00:41:41]  Um, it's just kind of an easy way to to to tell a story right, like it's well right, he's talking scar in in the Lion King.
[00:41:48]  It's not a complex story, there's not a ton going on there, but it works.
[00:41:52]  And like.
[00:41:54]  But Peterson is taking it as if, and because this is like a trope that is broadly functional in storytelling that is meant for a popular audience.
[00:42:03]  It is indicative of something fundamental to human nature right, as opposed to like.
[00:42:09]  Uh, you know, first of all, if you see a pattern.
[00:42:13]  We humans love to see patterns and we put uh, undue emphasis and importance on patterns, even if they're, it's not like a significant pattern, but like what he's talking about most of the time in this respect is like just stereotypes.
[00:42:29]  Yeah like, if you take, like you said, like the lion, king or Hamlet or whatever, so Scar the evil uncle, if Scar had a kid ah, Mufasa the kind uncle archetype, like it's literally, like it's just these Interchangeable things, the qualities described in like, he's like, oh, the crone, make it a man, and you change the name, and it's like, I don't know.
[00:42:53]  Yeah, all of this could work.
[00:42:55]  And it's like helpful for people in situations like certain sites.
[00:43:00]  Like, all of these archetypes that he treats as if they're like something sacred written into the back of the human soul are just shortcuts to like very easily putting together a fucking script for like a popular, like specifically for a popular fucking movie.
[00:43:14]  That's like most of the modern adaptations of this shit.
[00:43:17]  Like it's not, none of this is like none of this is particularly resonant.
[00:43:23]  And you can tell that for a fact that the stories that are like most popular are often the ones that break some of these rules.
[00:43:29]  Like they're not actually fundamental to good storytelling.
[00:43:32]  They're just simple.
[00:43:34]  Yeah.
[00:43:34]  Yeah.
[00:43:35]  It's not, it's not necessarily going to be the most compelling or interesting story if you use all these archetypes or this like pattern because it's most stories.
[00:43:45]  They're training wheels.
[00:43:46]  They're training wheels.
[00:43:47]  If you're starting out writing stories or if you're getting lost in the weeds, it can be an easy way to like get something put together and then you can do a better thing next time.
[00:43:57]  But I don't know, whatever.
[00:43:59]  I get frustrated when people talk about fucking archetypes like this.
[00:44:02]  Well, also, when he's talking about it like this and like applying it to like element, like fundamental like institutions and elements of society, where it's like, these are different conversations that you need to live.
[00:44:13]  Fucking the evil uncle is a bad guy in a script because a script needs a bad guy because conflict is fun.
[00:44:20]  The Catholic Church is bad because they raped a bunch of kids and covered it up.
[00:44:23]  And that's a reason why maybe you would not believe anything else they have to say.
[00:44:27]  Right.
[00:44:28]  Like maybe it stems from certain aspects of their core beliefs.
[00:44:32]  I don't know.
[00:44:32]  Exactly.
[00:44:33]  Yeah.
[00:44:33]  Maybe there's fundamental things about the structure of an organization like the Catholic Church that are abusive, but Jordan Peterson fucking loves hierarchy.
[00:44:40]  Right.
[00:44:41]  And just like the inevitability of everything, right?
[00:44:44]  Yeah.
[00:44:44]  Like anyway.
[00:44:45]  If an institution is corrupt, it's because all institutions become corrupt.
[00:44:49]  Like ultimately, it's not a problem with anything about the institution.
[00:44:55]  Yeah, it's corruption that that happens.
[00:44:57]  Yeah.
[00:44:58]  Except for in my institutions that I like.
[00:45:01]  So the next section of the video asked Peterson to define what makes a man.
[00:45:06]  And this is the first point at which I think someone like put together, like maybe after the first 10 minutes of this were recorded, which probably took three days, somebody like jotted down some fucking notes into something resembling a script to try to put a scaffolding on this motherfucker.
[00:45:22]  Here we go.
[00:45:24]  Definition, man.
[00:45:26]  What am I?
[00:45:26]  A biologist?
[00:45:27]  But as it happens, I am a biologist.
[00:45:29]  So no, you're not.
[00:45:31]  Nope, not yet.
[00:45:32]  No, you're not.
[00:45:33]  I felt like you were going to have a reaction to that.
[00:45:35]  He is absolutely not a fucking biologist.
[00:45:39]  Oh my God.
[00:45:40]  You can say that you like, I like, oh my God.
[00:45:46]  Scientists frustrated.
[00:45:48]  A physicist wouldn't say I'm a biologist because you like know a lot about biology.
[00:45:53]  Yeah, it's it's very frustrating because like, yes, theoretically, like he has a PhD in clinical psychology.
[00:45:59]  There are clinical psychologists who do biology, right?
[00:46:02]  Because some of them are do neuroscience, right?
[00:46:05]  There are elements of it, exactly.
[00:46:06]  Exactly.
[00:46:06]  Biology, but that's not what he does.
[00:46:09]  That's not what he does.
[00:46:10]  And that's not, that's just not how people in the scientific community talk.
[00:46:15]  Yeah.
[00:46:16]  Like he says this about everything.
[00:46:18]  Like it's it if you uh it's funny he would say like he would say if he's describing like um what the Pareto principle as it like it relates to black holes or whatever he would literally say I'm an astrophysicist.
[00:46:31]  No, Maybe you know about astrophysics and you have like knowledge in that field, but no like actual like reasonable, like respectable scientist would just make a claim like that.
[00:46:46]  There's so much you go in in your three-hour video about Dr. Jordan Peterson about how he's fundamentally wrong about lobsters and the shit he says about like neurotransmitters and lobsters.
[00:47:00]  He's wrong about a lot of important things, including that time he went cold turkey off of Benzos by going to some weird clinic in Russia and nearly got himself killed.
[00:47:09]  But I want to stick to stuff that he claims that he makes in the video to prove that he's, if he is a biologist, totally, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:47:16]  He's a real biologist.
[00:47:18]  Let's see if you are.
[00:47:19]  Let's see if you are.
[00:47:20]  So I want to, sorry, I just have to like give him a little like in good faith, you know, reasonable doubt.
[00:47:27]  Some people talk in this way, like what you're saying, you're not saying I'm a biologist.
[00:47:32]  You're saying, I believe in biology and I have knowledge of it and I approach things from a biologist perspective is what he's trying to say.
[00:47:40]  But that, but he wasn't precise in his speech.
[00:47:44]  He's not at all precise in his speech.
[00:47:47]  And he's also about to be really wrong because after this, he goes on a little rant about how some people are charitable, but they're not hardworking or practical.
[00:47:55]  So they just wind up giving away other people's money.
[00:47:57]  And that's bad.
[00:47:59]  What he's, he says that the ideal thing to be, the essence of masculinity, in fact, this is what he, because he's, again, this section is where he's trying to define a man.
[00:48:07]  He says that the essence of masculinity is productive generosity, which seems to, he seems to define as actually being a dick.
[00:48:16]  Cause he doesn't think that like generosity means being good to people.
[00:48:21]  He thinks it's like, it's this weirder concept about how, well, sometimes generosity is like being mean and withholding resources from people who are going to squander them.
[00:48:30]  Right.
[00:48:31]  And as he's doing this, he attacks the concept of agreeableness.
[00:48:34]  And I want to play you this, this part of the episode, Cody, because this is, we can nail into some science here.
[00:48:40]  Yeah, we'll get into it.
[00:48:42]  Basically, an empathy dimension has no correlation whatsoever with success in enterprise, business, creative domains.
[00:48:50]  In fact, among managers, agreeableness looks like it's slightly negatively correlated with success because hyper-agreeable managers can't say no.
[00:48:58]  They can't discipline their employees.
[00:49:00]  They can't set limits.
[00:49:01]  And they're susceptible to manipulation.
[00:49:04]  So.
[00:49:05]  Well, Cody, that sounds like something that's falsifiable, right?
[00:49:10]  That is a true or a false statement that he just made.
[00:49:13]  We can actually dig into research.
[00:49:14]  Yeah, it seems like you could look that up.
[00:49:16]  Yeah.
[00:49:16]  And it turns out we're really lucky here.
[00:49:19]  There was a massive meta-analysis of studies published on, quote, agreeableness and its consequences just this year.
[00:49:26]  Researchers Michael Wilmot and Dennis Wunds analyzed 3,900 studies involving 1.9 million participants.
[00:49:34]  So pretty big meta-analysis, right?
[00:49:37]  They concluded, quote, overall, the trait has effects in a desirable direction for 93% of variables.
[00:49:45]  Wow.
[00:49:45]  Professor Wilmot seemed adamant that not only is Peterson wrong about the value of agreeableness, he's specifically wrong about its impact on leaders.
[00:49:53]  Quote, Michael Wilmot, assistant professor of management at the University of Arkansas in a university release said, quote, agreeableness is the personality trait primarily concerned with helping people and building positive relationships, which is not lost on organizational leaders.
[00:50:07]  Taken altogether, the interaction among things became clear, Professor Wilmot concludes.

=== Agreeableness in Leadership Teams (02:48) ===

[00:50:12]  Agreeableness was marked by work investment, but this energy was best directed at helping or cooperating with others.
[00:50:17]  In other words, teamwork.
[00:50:19]  So just he's exactly wrong.
[00:50:23]  And it took 30 seconds to find.
[00:50:26]  Yeah, they looked at these like thousands of studies involving nearly 2 million people.
[00:50:30]  And it turns out being agreeable really works well in teams.
[00:50:34]  And I don't know, Cody, you and I have both worked on teams.
[00:50:37]  You know what's great is not working with assholes.
[00:50:40]  Oh, yeah.
[00:50:41]  We don't like that.
[00:50:41]  It's not fun.
[00:50:43]  It makes it unpleasant and you don't want to do it.
[00:50:46]  One of the most important things in particularly like comedy, like sketch comedy, whatever, is like yes and, which is fundamentally being agreeable.
[00:50:57]  It's not like trying to shut down a joke.
[00:50:59]  It's trying to expand it, you know?
[00:51:01]  Yeah.
[00:51:01]  Agree plus.
[00:51:02]  Yeah, agree plus, right?
[00:51:04]  Yeah.
[00:51:05]  Because that works pretty well.
[00:51:08]  People, people, it tends to make for things that are funny.
[00:51:11]  Wow, that's fascinating that people like working like people who are easy to work with.
[00:51:16]  Yeah.
[00:51:17]  I love this, and I really appreciate that you instantly look this up because he does this all the time.
[00:51:24]  He'll say, I've read the literature and it's this way.
[00:51:26]  And then you look it up and it's not that way.
[00:51:28]  Or he'll make these broad claims about these sort of things.
[00:51:31]  And it's also stuff where it's like, you are a psychologist.
[00:51:35]  That is your field.
[00:51:36]  And you're making these claims.
[00:51:37]  And I just looked it up and you're wrong.
[00:51:40]  It's alarming that this man is in this fine leather chair.
[00:51:45]  It is.
[00:51:45]  It is.
[00:51:46]  And it is a nice looking leather chair.
[00:51:47]  I have to say library.
[00:51:49]  Whoever they have directing, putting the set decorations together, they've made a very welcoming looking library behind it.
[00:51:55]  Oh, yeah.
[00:51:55]  $1 million for the library, $4 million.
[00:51:57]  I don't believe he's read any of those books, but it's a nice-looking library.
[00:52:01]  He skimmed them for a few words that he could say to reinforce his point.
[00:52:05]  Yeah.
[00:52:06]  So Jordan's view of masculinity doesn't leave much room for teamwork.
[00:52:11]  It becomes quickly clear that he doesn't see management as a things people do in specific instances to help groups accomplish tasks.
[00:52:18]  And instead, he sees management as how a healthy man looks at every relationship in his life.
[00:52:23]  And I mean, management the way that like a leader in an organization manages.
[00:52:27]  And Sophie, let's play that next clip.
[00:52:31]  Time.
[00:52:32]  And then you should be responsible for and productive for as many people as you can manage.
[00:52:38]  And so that might be first your intimate partner, your wife.
[00:52:43]  Second, your parents, your siblings, your children, maybe your children primarily, although, you know, there's a trade-off there with your wife.
[00:52:53]  So again, the split screen is just jokes.
[00:52:57]  It's very funny every time.

=== Management as Self-Hatred (05:40) ===

[00:53:00]  Why?
[00:53:01]  Next, he says that you should seek to manage your community and local government if it's possible at all.
[00:53:06]  And it's become pretty clear, I think, at this point, that his version of masculinity is nothing but control.
[00:53:12]  And it's a specific sort of control that's motivated by self-hatred.
[00:53:16]  And you get glimpses.
[00:53:17]  I don't think Peterson's even really super aware of it, but you get glimpses of the centrality of self-hatred to his concept of masculinity and these little gaps and cracks, like this one here.
[00:53:27]  On all that responsibility, if you can, in a sense that's both productive and generous.
[00:53:32]  That gives you something to do, justify your miserable life to yourself and everyone else.
[00:53:36]  And you need to do that.
[00:53:38]  It orients you solidly in the world if you do that.
[00:53:41]  And it gives you a dragon to fight, a real move, and that's where the gold is.
[00:53:47]  So, as everyone has known forever.
[00:53:51]  Oh, my God.
[00:53:54]  Robert, Robert, can we do an ad break right now just so that there's a gold ad, please?
[00:53:58]  I really hope we have a gold.
[00:53:59]  And if you want to know where else the gold is, check out the sponsors to this podcast, which apparently include this random gold scam company.
[00:54:08]  Oh, fucking buy the gold and give it to a dragon so you can fight it.
[00:54:12]  Yeah, and then take the gold back and then it's yours again.
[00:54:15]  Yeah.
[00:54:22]  10-10 shots five, city hall building.
[00:54:25]  A silver .40 caliber handgun was recovered at the scene.
[00:54:29]  From iHeart Podcasts and Best Case Studios, this is Rorschach, murder at City Hall.
[00:54:35]  How could this have happened in City Hall?
[00:54:37]  Somebody tell me that!
[00:54:38]  Jeffrey Hood did.
[00:54:40]  July 2003, Councilman James E. Davis arrives at New York City Hall with a guest.
[00:54:46]  Both men are carrying concealed weapons.
[00:54:49]  And in less than 30 minutes, both of them will be dead.
[00:54:58]  Everybody in the chamber's ducks.
[00:55:00]  A shocking public murder.
[00:55:02]  I screamed, get down, get down.
[00:55:04]  Those are shots.
[00:55:05]  Those are shots.
[00:55:05]  Get down.
[00:55:06]  A charismatic politician.
[00:55:07]  You know, he just bent the rules all the time, man.
[00:55:10]  I still have a weapon.
[00:55:12]  And I could shoot you.
[00:55:15]  And an outsider with a secret.
[00:55:17]  He allegedly a victim of flat down.
[00:55:20]  That may or may not have been political.
[00:55:21]  That may have been about sex.
[00:55:23]  Listen to Rorschach, murder at City Hall on the iHeartRadio app.
[00:55:27]  Apple Podcasts are wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:55:36]  There's two golden rules that any man should live by.
[00:55:40]  Rule one, never mess with a country girl.
[00:55:44]  You play stupid games, you get stupid prizes.
[00:55:47]  And rule two, never mess with her friends either.
[00:55:50]  We always say that, trust your girlfriends.
[00:55:54]  I'm Anna Sinfield, and in this new season of The Girlfriends.
[00:55:58]  Oh my God, this is the same man.
[00:56:00]  A group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist.
[00:56:05]  I felt like I got hit by a truck.
[00:56:06]  I thought, how could this happen to me?
[00:56:08]  The cops didn't seem to care.
[00:56:10]  So they take matters into their own hands.
[00:56:13]  I said, oh, hell no.
[00:56:15]  I vowed I will be his last target.
[00:56:17]  He's going to get what he deserves.
[00:56:22]  Listen to the girlfriends.
[00:56:23]  Trust me, babe.
[00:56:24]  On the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:56:35]  I'm Laurie Siegel, and on Mostly Human, I go beyond the headlines with the people building our future.
[00:56:40]  This week, an interview with one of the most influential figures in Silicon Valley, Open AI CEO Sam Altman.
[00:56:47]  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.
[00:56:54]  From power to parenthood.
[00:56:56]  Kids, teenagers, I think they will need a lot of guardrails around AI.
[00:56:59]  This is such a powerful and such a new thing.
[00:57:01]  From addiction to acceleration.
[00:57:03]  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.
[00:57:08]  You know, we have a deep desire to excel and be competitive and gain status and be useful to others.
[00:57:14]  And it's a multiplayer game.
[00:57:17]  What does the man who has extraordinary influence over our lives have to say about the weight of that responsibility?
[00:57:23]  Find out on Mostly Human.
[00:57:25]  My highest order bit is to not destroy the world with AI.
[00:57:28]  Listen to Mostly Human on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
[00:57:36]  Hey, I'm Nora Jones, and I love playing music with people so much that my podcast called Playing Along is back.
[00:57:42]  I sit down with musicians from all musical styles to play songs together in an intimate setting.
[00:57:47]  Every episode's a little different, but it all involves music and conversation with some of my favorite musicians.
[00:57:52]  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.
[00:58:02]  And this season, I've sat down with Alessia Cara, Sarah McLaughlin, John Legend, and more.
[00:58:07]  Check out my new episode with Josh Grobin.
[00:58:10]  You related to the Phantom at that point.
[00:58:13]  Yeah, I was definitely the Phantom in that.
[00:58:15]  That's so funny.
[00:58:17]  Mary, stay with me each night, each morning.
[00:58:25]  Say you love me, you know.
[00:58:29]  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.
[00:58:39]  Ah, we're back.

=== The Cost of Autonomy (12:50) ===

[00:58:41]  So I think all of that's really fucking silly.
[00:58:45]  Yeah, it is.
[00:58:47]  It's just advice about being a person.
[00:58:51]  Yeah, he always sort of comes back to like, and like, you know, there are ways to say this and discuss this, like, life is suffering and life is miserable and you suck and everything's bad.
[00:59:02]  But you're, you need to find, you need to create a purpose is what he's talking about oftentimes.
[00:59:08]  We're talking about what masculinity is, right?
[00:59:10]  Right.
[00:59:11]  Man, like managing.
[00:59:11]  It's just productive generosity, which means managing every single being being a hierarchical centralized leader of every aspect of your life and every relationship that you're involved with.
[00:59:22]  And then once you're in control, you should go seek out dragons to fight using presumably other people to do a lot of the fighting.
[00:59:30]  Oh, yeah, you send them off to get the dragon so you can get the gold.
[00:59:34]  It's yeah, he's all it always circles.
[00:59:36]  It's weird because he also like he dismisses this idea that certain things in society are about like power.
[00:59:42]  Like, oh, they say it's about power.
[00:59:43]  It's like, no, it's not.
[00:59:44]  It's about this.
[00:59:45]  It's about biology or like how men have these fucking like, you know, genes or whatever.
[00:59:51]  But ultimately, he's just, but then he comes back to this.
[00:59:54]  Like, yeah, you need like this control to do this.
[00:59:58]  How do you do that?
[00:59:59]  Well, you need to have the power to do that.
[01:00:03]  He just always comes back to just like, ultimately, be a strong man.
[01:00:08]  We need being a man is being like a dictator in your life.
[01:00:13]  Yeah.
[01:00:14]  And it's interesting because like, obviously, Jordan's the kind of guy who like worships these quote unquote traditional like kind of militarist values and hierarchy in that sense.
[01:00:25]  But if you actually look at like what makes the best, the most functional military hierarchies on the planet, they all are based around the idea that you should have a really strong non-commissioned officer corps.
[01:00:38]  And this is certainly a kind of strict hierarchy, but it's a hierarchy that is in a lot of ways less centralized than the kind of pyramidal hierarchy that Jordan B. Peters.
[01:00:47]  It's based around the idea that you should actually have a lot of little leaders that are invested in a great degree of autonomy and whose expertise is respected.
[01:00:55]  And oftentimes, like if you have a unit like a platoon, you have an officer who's technically in charge and then you have an NCO who is technically under him, but who is generally recognized as actually being more expert in a lot of ways.
[01:01:08]  And both of them like take on different tasks.
[01:01:12]  And that's necessary for actually effectively leading a unit through combat.
[01:01:17]  Because are you talking about working together?
[01:01:19]  Yeah, I'm talking about like working together.
[01:01:22]  That's weird.
[01:01:23]  Yeah, it's all these ideas.
[01:01:27]  And it requires a great deal.
[01:01:29]  An effective functioning effectively as a unit in any kind of like strenuous or dangerous situation does at times require there being a person who is saying like, do this and do that, because sometimes that's necessary when you're trying to accomplish goals under stress.
[01:01:44]  But the thing that requires most of all is like mutual respect and an understanding of people's talents and an ability to give subordinates autonomy.
[01:01:54]  Because organizations that don't do those things can survive if there's not a danger being put on them, if there's not like a threat.
[01:02:02]  But if you're actually being threatened, you want as much intelligence to be available from the organization as possible.
[01:02:08]  And you only get that by giving people the ability to act with a degree of autonomy.
[01:02:13]  That doesn't sound very productively generous of you, though.
[01:02:16]  Yeah, we could talk a lot about like the Ukrainian military versus the Russian one, but let's move on.
[01:02:24]  So his next question is, oh, actually, this kind of ties into that.
[01:02:27]  How should you arm yourself?
[01:02:29]  And the answer that Peterson gives is a humanities education, which is interesting to me.
[01:02:35]  That is interesting.
[01:02:36]  Yeah.
[01:02:37]  And he thinks that he kind of defines a good education in the humanities is reading great men.
[01:02:42]  And to his credit, he says great women too.
[01:02:44]  He's actually pretty careful about that in that.
[01:02:46]  So I'll give you a thumbs up, Dr. Peterson.
[01:02:48]  Yeah, only took eight fucking years.
[01:02:50]  Yeah.
[01:02:51]  So after this, we get an extended rant about how if you either lie or you just say things you don't fully believe in, like if you alter your own beliefs to like write an essay to get a good grade for a teacher to impress someone, then you're letting someone else control and speak for you, which is kind of like basically letting a demonic spirit run your body.
[01:03:11]  This is interesting for two reasons, actually.
[01:03:14]  One is that he says this all the time.
[01:03:17]  This is another one of it.
[01:03:18]  Another one, like thing where it's like, why does this show exist?
[01:03:21]  This is just everything you've ever said in your like your books and stuff.
[01:03:27]  But also Ben Shapiro has literally said the opposite.
[01:03:31]  Like he, his advice to his advice to people at school is to do what he did, which is just regurgitate everything his law professor said, pretend that he believes it so that he can like pass the grade.
[01:03:44]  And that's, I'm never going to say this about Ben Shapiro, but like that's a valuable life skill.
[01:03:51]  Like sometimes you're going to get pulled over by a cop and you're going to need to lie to that police officer so that you don't suffer consequences that'll fuck your life up, right?
[01:04:00]  Sometimes perhaps you're trying to get on an airplane and you have a bag that's over the limit and being able to like lie about it and convince someone not to weigh it is a useful life skill because then you don't, you're not out $50.
[01:04:12]  Sometimes you sit down with someone who's maybe kind of a crazy asshole and it's just the easiest thing and the safest thing to not engage with them over some of the things that they're saying.
[01:04:23]  If it's not, you know, I'm not saying don't engage with racists, but a lot of people are just assholes in ways that it's like, I don't need to, you don't need to argue with them.
[01:04:30]  Yeah, why would we?
[01:04:31]  You don't need to, you never sometimes you just be like, okay, okay, let's end the interaction and smile at them.
[01:04:36]  That's a useful life skill.
[01:04:37]  People who are able to do those things, who are able to understand how to, I don't need to be totally honest right now.
[01:04:43]  I don't need to, I can just end the interaction and I want to do that in a pleasant way.
[01:04:47]  So I'm just going to pretend like I don't think this person is dumb as shit, right?
[01:04:50]  Like that's fine.
[01:04:51]  Yeah.
[01:04:52]  But his, his sort of assumption, I think, and maybe he's changed his mind since, is that like, if you keep, if you do that and you do it like more than a few times, you'll start believing the things that you're, that you're allowing to be said.
[01:05:04]  I don't know, Cody.
[01:05:05]  I've lied to a lot of cops about having weed in the car.
[01:05:08]  And I've never thought that my car back in the day didn't have weed in it.
[01:05:13]  And didn't deserve to have weed in it.
[01:05:14]  And didn't deserve to have weed in it.
[01:05:16]  Exactly.
[01:05:18]  Anyway, whatever.
[01:05:19]  The good thing about this rant is that it gives us another little moment of accidental honesty from Dr. Peterson.
[01:05:24]  I love it.
[01:05:26]  I think, well, God, that was a miserable life.
[01:05:28]  I manipulated everybody.
[01:05:30]  They were so damn stupid.
[01:05:31]  They were sucked in by it.
[01:05:32]  They're all contemptible.
[01:05:33]  Everyone does it, you know, which they don't, by the way.
[01:05:37]  And so that's a pathway to bitterness.
[01:05:39]  Pathway to bitterness, huh?
[01:05:40]  Uh-huh.
[01:05:41]  Pathway to bitterness.
[01:05:43]  He kind of, I feel like he's talking about himself there.
[01:05:46]  I'm just going to say it.
[01:05:47]  I feel like he's.
[01:05:48]  Are you saying that Peterson often comes off as a bitter old man?
[01:05:52]  Yeah, I think he's a bitter old man.
[01:05:53]  And I think he's bitter because the only thing he's done with his life is manipulate people.
[01:05:59]  And he says, again, he talks a lot about how there's no difference between the spirit of manipulation taking you over and demonic possession.
[01:06:07]  And he says the only thing that stopped him from being canceled is that he's a fundamentally honest person, which is fun because Jordan got famous for claiming that Canadian Bill C-16 was going to force people to use gender-neutral pronouns for non-binary and transgender identities and legally punish them if they didn't.
[01:06:21]  The people were going to be literally thrown into prison.
[01:06:24]  He gave a lot of interviews saying, I think some of the things that I say in my lectures now might be illegal.
[01:06:29]  I think they might even be sufficient for me to be brought before the Ontario Human Rights Commission under their amended hate speech laws.
[01:06:34]  This has never happened.
[01:06:35]  Nothing like this has ever happened in Canada to Dr. Peterson or to anyone else.
[01:06:39]  He was completely full of shit.
[01:06:42]  He knew what he was doing.
[01:06:44]  Yeah.
[01:06:44]  The first video, I mean, the first video he shared about that topic was like Professor Against Political Correctness.
[01:06:51]  He knew exactly what he was doing.
[01:06:53]  And it's like, if you actually look at the law, and if you actually talk to any of the Canadian legal experts about what this law meant and what the actual because there is a threshold at which hate speech is criminal in Canada, and the threshold is pretty high.
[01:07:06]  You would have to be literally advocating for genocide.
[01:07:09]  You would be having to try to incite a genocide, which, number one, none of whatever you want to say, his comments back then did not cross that line.
[01:07:18]  And apparently, no one's has because no one's been prosecuted for this.
[01:07:21]  There's been no criminal cases as a result of this.
[01:07:25]  I might argue that perhaps there should have been, but whatever.
[01:07:29]  So Peterson veers from this into an unhinged dissection of Sleeping Beauty.
[01:07:35]  He really, he's got an old school Disney fixation.
[01:07:38]  I'm just going to have certain things.
[01:07:39]  He really does.
[01:07:40]  Well, because they're the old stories, right?
[01:07:42]  They're fairy tales.
[01:07:43]  The evil uncle, you know, the ones that are exactly.
[01:07:47]  Anyway, here's Jordan Peterson.
[01:07:51]  So, what can you arm yourself with?
[01:07:53]  You know, in Sleeping Beauty, when the prince is entrapped in that castle by Maleficent, who's the ultimate Oedipal mother, she transforms herself into a dragon, which everyone seems to just take as a matter of course, because of course the evil witch transforms herself into a dragon.
[01:08:13]  Like why we think that's logical is a deep question, an archetypal question.
[01:08:19]  But, anyways, he's armed with the sword of truth, and I believe it's the shield of virtue, but the sword of truth.
[01:08:27]  And that's it's a corny trope in some sense, but it's not corny at all because how could falsehood prevail against truth?
[01:08:36]  How could that possibly be the case?
[01:08:39]  If what is true reflects what is real, how can what is unreal prevail against what is real?
[01:08:46]  And so, you know, I love when he does stuff like that, and then he's like, and so, and he's like, wait, what was I talking about?
[01:08:55]  Yeah, none of that makes sense.
[01:08:56]  What is my blood?
[01:08:57]  It makes sense at all.
[01:08:58]  First off, Jordan, we accept it when the witch turns into a dragon because it is a fantasy cartoon and she's a witch.
[01:09:06]  So even though witches don't always turn into dragons in movies, in fact, usually don't in movies with witches, we're all like, yeah, whatever.
[01:09:13]  Like, she just did a bunch of fucking gobbledygoot magic.
[01:09:17]  It's fine.
[01:09:17]  Like, there's, there's fucking like, even just like, okay, yeah, she's doing magic and stuff.
[01:09:22]  Oh, she turns to a dragon.
[01:09:23]  She's deceiving whether it's like her true form or she's turning to a dragon, deceiving him.
[01:09:28]  I've got the sword of truth.
[01:09:31]  Like, he was right the first time.
[01:09:32]  Yeah, it's a little corny trope.
[01:09:33]  It's a little on the nose.
[01:09:35]  It's like, he's just, he's taking this like visual metaphor or like this imagery and being like, wow.
[01:09:41]  Yeah, truth is important.
[01:09:44]  Like, it's just like, what is it?
[01:09:48]  Yeah.
[01:09:49]  It's like if it's like if Jordan Peterson watched Happy Gilmore and was talking about the scene where he does a Subway ad, and he's like, we accept the Subway ad because somehow, fundamentally, there's something about human beings that make them want to sell $5 sandwiches.
[01:10:04]  No, we accept the Subway ad because there was a lot of advertising in movies at the time and it was clearly a joke about that as well.
[01:10:11]  Like, it's anyway, whatever.
[01:10:12]  It's Dr. Peterson.
[01:10:13]  I watched Happy Gilmore recently.
[01:10:15]  Holds up.
[01:10:16]  Fine film.
[01:10:18]  Quite good film.
[01:10:19]  You know, weirdly enough, Shooter McGavin is the same as the Fed from the Iron Giant.
[01:10:26]  Oh, oh, I did know that.
[01:10:27]  Yeah.
[01:10:28]  Yeah.
[01:10:29]  Anyway.
[01:10:30]  So it's all, it's all good.
[01:10:34]  It's all his entire argument here just rests on like this very ridiculous tautology.
[01:10:40]  If what is true reflects what is real, how can what is unreal prevail over what is real?
[01:10:44]  Well, I don't know.
[01:10:45]  If you lie and you get a crowd of people to believe a man committed a crime that he didn't commit, and then you get them to lynch that man so you can take his stuff.
[01:10:52]  It seems like what is unreal can prevail over what is real and does so regularly.
[01:10:57]  Well, right.
[01:10:58]  Like look at like his any like historical record.
[01:11:01]  Like, yeah, it happens all the time.
[01:11:03]  Constantly works.
[01:11:03]  What he constantly works.
[01:11:05]  One of the most successful strategies in all of history.
[01:11:09]  Because also, because he'll, and he'll, because he talks about these things too.
[01:11:12]  He talks about like different regimes and their propaganda and how effective it is.
[01:11:19]  And like, it's talked about Nazi, well, he talks about Nazi Germans being this weird.
[01:11:23]  For a positive example in this case, you know, there's whole families of people who exist because at some point someone was asked, are you hiding a Jewish family in your house?

=== Pen Mightier Than Sword (08:11) ===

[01:11:31]  And they said no.
[01:11:33]  Like, turns out.
[01:11:36]  But how?
[01:11:36]  But did they not have the sword of truth?
[01:11:39]  Like, no, they were good at lying, and that's an important life skill.
[01:11:47]  Anyway, one particular, like, not.
[01:11:50]  Yeah, it's, it's, it's very fun because a lot of like, not only is this stupid, this is advice that is almost tailor-made to create failures of people.
[01:12:01]  Listen to this portion where he complains that people who do the writing they're assigned by their teachers just to get a grade are like inherently breaking some sort of moral law.
[01:12:10]  Wait, okay.
[01:12:11]  Yeah, check this out.
[01:12:13]  Why write?
[01:12:15]  Well, maybe you're writing about something important.
[01:12:17]  And if you're not, then it's just a lie, the whole enterprise.
[01:12:20]  So write about something important.
[01:12:21]  Why do you want to write?
[01:12:24]  Well, so that you can think.
[01:12:26]  That's what you're doing when you're writing.
[01:12:28]  Revelation.
[01:12:28]  Here's some ideas I have.
[01:12:29]  You do your research.
[01:12:30]  Here's some ideas I have.
[01:12:31]  I'll get them down.
[01:12:32]  Then I'll edit the idea.
[01:12:34]  So only keep the best ideas.
[01:12:37]  Well, now I know how to think about that.
[01:12:38]  Now I know how to perceive that.
[01:12:40]  Now I know how to act on that.
[01:12:42]  Well, now you know how to perceive and act in relationship to something difficult.
[01:12:47]  Well, that's why you learn to write.
[01:12:48]  It's so you can think.
[01:12:50]  And, you know, everyone says to their children, think before you act.
[01:12:54]  Well, why?
[01:12:56]  So you can not do stupid things.
[01:12:59]  So why think?
[01:13:00]  So you don't do stupid things.
[01:13:02]  Why not do stupid things?
[01:13:03]  Stupid things, perhaps, like getting addicted to benzos while eating nothing but red meat for months and then letting your daughter take you to a weird Russian clinic where you do a cold turkey detox so dangerous it nearly kills you, leaves you in a coma and results in you becoming a broken shell of a man who cries at random during podcast interviews and can't sleep for 30 days after drinking a sip of cider.
[01:13:26]  Like it's another like a lot of people just do essays because they need to get the grade because they're paying like $1,100 to take this fucking class.
[01:13:35]  Also, like there are a lot of ways to like to learn how to think and like different processes and again, like pattern recognition and all these sort of like logic and reasoning and whatnot.
[01:13:48]  Oftentimes learning to write is to, it's not to think, it's to communicate your thoughts.
[01:13:54]  Yeah.
[01:13:55]  It is what he's really trying to say.
[01:13:58]  Also, this is like a thing he said, again, it's another one of those like, heard this 90 times from this guy.
[01:14:03]  Yeah.
[01:14:04]  But it's just like, Jordan, if being a good writer meant you were a good thinker, then writers would be famous for being well-adjusted people with healthy habits rather than like the most comprehensively broken career field in the entirety of the arts and sciences.
[01:14:24]  Like name a famous writer and then name what they're famous for outside of their books.
[01:14:31]  And it's probably the fact that their life is a disaster.
[01:14:34]  Right.
[01:14:34]  And like, it's not that, which is not to say that you need to have a disaster of a life to be a writer.
[01:14:40]  It's just to say that writing well does not mean you know how to think well.
[01:14:44]  Right.
[01:14:45]  You can communicate again, you can communicate your thoughts that you're having.
[01:14:48]  You have these.
[01:14:50]  Orson Scott Card, beautiful writer.
[01:14:53]  Dog shit opinions about the world.
[01:14:56]  Also, I love this idea that like if you watch the video, he's using his hands a lot and talking about you write it and then it's this big long thing and then you edit it down to just the best ideas.
[01:15:06]  I don't know if anyone listening has seen maps of meaning.
[01:15:10]  I don't think it had an editor code.
[01:15:12]  It's like thousand page diagram of a dragon.
[01:15:19]  So I don't know.
[01:15:19]  Maybe you should write more to learn how to think better.
[01:15:24]  But it's like you're learning how to put forth an argument, not necessarily how to no, and that's the thing that he says, right?
[01:15:34]  Like that he's actually saying here, which is that like the goal of writing is to like make an argument to convince somebody about the way you think rather than just trying to like explain a thing or describe a thing.
[01:15:46]  It's about like everything else for Jordan, it's about domination.
[01:15:50]  So if he play that, play this next clip.
[01:15:52]  Write.
[01:15:54]  So why write?
[01:15:55]  How about so you can take your place in the world?
[01:15:58]  Not so you can please the teacher and be some obedient like lap dog.
[01:16:03]  You need to know how to think and speak so you can lead and think and conceptualize and entrance.
[01:16:13]  He does the thing again where you can see his like, he just kind of goes away for a second there when he says and entrance.
[01:16:21]  And it's, I would say, pretty unsettling.
[01:16:25]  Yeah.
[01:16:25]  Well, like that, because again, it's like entrance, entrancing implies deception.
[01:16:31]  Yeah.
[01:16:34]  Which seems contradictory to what he's trying to say, but.
[01:16:38]  Yeah.
[01:16:40]  It's, it's the, he, what he, what he makes clear in this next clip is that, yeah, writing is just a tool for domination because that's the actual only task worth achieving to Jordan.
[01:16:51]  Pen is mightier than the sword.
[01:16:52]  It's, there's no comparison.
[01:16:54]  The sword, you know, yeah, fair enough.
[01:16:56]  And you want to be careful of someone who wields the sword, but you wield the pen in a mighty manner.
[01:17:03]  Nothing stops you ever.
[01:17:06]  That's assuming, too, that you're oriented, you know, in some noble manner.
[01:17:11]  He does use the word oriented like a lot.
[01:17:15]  Yeah.
[01:17:17]  It's, it, it sounds smarter to him than like facing or directed or whatever.
[01:17:24]  Like however, I don't know.
[01:17:27]  It's just like, why do we need so many words to say the phrase that he already said?
[01:17:31]  He said, he said the common phrase, the pen is mightier than the sword.
[01:17:35]  And then he like started to talk about it for a long time.
[01:17:37]  It's like, I don't need that.
[01:17:38]  I have the phrase.
[01:17:40]  Yeah.
[01:17:41]  And it's also, again, it's, it's one of, I love the pen is mightier than the sword as like a fucking, because it's useless, right?
[01:17:49]  It's a completely useless statement because, no, the pen is not mightier than the sword.
[01:17:54]  The argument is like the actual thing that is true is that, like, well, ideas can cause like titanic shifts and can get lots of people killed and can be sort of the beginning point, the wellspring of a tremendous amount of power, right?
[01:18:10]  And ideas can be written down and often are, and that's true.
[01:18:13]  But, like, the fact that like the Nazis wrote a lot of books and propaganda that was instrumental in them gaining power didn't mean that like their ability to beat the shit out of and shoot people wasn't also instrumental in gaining part of it.
[01:18:26]  And a lot of people who did that weren't convinced because of like writing or propaganda, but because they wanted power and wealth and saw this is the best way to get it.
[01:18:33]  And like we're acting out of craven self-interest and kind of an in-tandem thing.
[01:18:37]  Again, saying that just saying the pen is mightier than the sword is a meaningless statement.
[01:18:42]  Well, so he's not because he's not talking about that, right?
[01:18:44]  Because he had to qualify with like, well, as long as it's oriented towards like moral good or wherever he phrased it.
[01:18:50]  Yeah.
[01:18:51]  So he's not even talking about like, in his view, like bad guys with a pen.
[01:18:57]  No.
[01:18:58]  So what's it's all this qualification seems unnecessary.
[01:19:02]  It's fucking trash, Cody.
[01:19:04]  And it's trash that we're going to let sit for today and finish this episode up when we come back in part two of this.
[01:19:13]  He talks so much about too many things.
[01:19:15]  He talks too much and nothing at all.
[01:19:18]  And he looks, I don't know.
[01:19:21]  Kermit the frog.
[01:19:23]  I do like that where we've got it, where we've got it paused right now.
[01:19:27]  There's like a little, you can see a little waddle starting to form on the side of his neck.
[01:19:31]  Like I'm seeing double four Petersons.
[01:19:33]  Just like a frog's pouch.
[01:19:36]  So I don't know.
[01:19:37]  Maybe Dr. Jordan Peterson is a lizard man.
[01:19:40]  Let's see if David Ike has an opinion on that.

=== Three Hours of Noise (03:03) ===

[01:19:43]  Cody, anything to plug?
[01:19:46]  All the time, every day.
[01:19:49]  You know, my name is Cody Johnston.
[01:19:53]  Like you said at the top, some more news, even more news.
[01:19:56]  Go Google it.
[01:19:57]  We got three hours on this guy we're talking about.
[01:20:00]  No, he is a character.
[01:20:02]  Your name is Cody Johnson.
[01:20:03]  Has anyone ever called it?
[01:20:05]  Johnston.
[01:20:06]  Sorry.
[01:20:06]  Has anyone ever called you Sea Jizzle?
[01:20:09]  No.
[01:20:09]  Well, technically, yes, because you just did.
[01:20:12]  There we go.
[01:20:13]  Episodes over.
[01:20:15]  Oh, good.
[01:20:18]  Behind the Bastards is a production of CoolZone Media.
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[01:21:42]  You related to the Phantom at that point.
[01:21:45]  Yeah, I was definitely the Phantom in that.
[01:21:47]  That's so funny.
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[01:22:10]  My dad gave me the best advice ever.
[01:22:13]  He goes, just give it a shot.
[01:22:15]  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.
[01:22:21]  If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration.
[01:22:24]  It would not be on a calendar of, you know, the cat just hanging in there.
[01:22:31]  Yeah, it would not be.
[01:22:33]  Right, it wouldn't be that.
[01:22:34]  There's a lot of luck.
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