Robert and Cody dissect Jordan B. Peterson's new series, Dragons, Monsters, and Men, mocking its recycled rants that frame mundane tasks as epic battles against dragons. They refute his claims about the Catholic Church as an "evil uncle," his scientifically inaccurate epigenetic theories regarding voluntary stress unlocking superpowers, and his outdated evolutionary explanations for dragon lore. While criticizing the show's toxic delivery and poor production values, including a Game of Thrones-style credit sequence, they conclude that despite Peterson's valid advice on facing challenges, his framing remains disconnected from reality and rooted in silly abstractions. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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The Clayton Eckard Hoax00:01:31
This is an iHeart podcast.
Guaranteed human.
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.
10-10 shots five, city hall building.
How could this ever happen 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.
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.
Forgotten City Hall Tragedy00:14:56
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'm Laurie Siegel, and this is Mostly Human, a tech podcast through a human lens.
This week, an interview with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.
I think society is going to decide that creators of AI products bear a tremendous amount of responsibility to the products we put out in the world.
An in-depth conversation with the man who's shaping our future.
My highest order bit is to not destroy the world with AI.
Listen to Mostly Human on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Oh, D my Cody.
It's behind the bastards, Cody Johnston Edition.
Cody, how are you doing?
Have you successfully, what's the last dragon that you've confronted to get at its hoard of gold?
Getting to bed and sleeping soundly and waking up restful was my gold.
Wow.
My gold is the gold that I stole from the underground lair of the dragon Smaug, who I successfully fought using a variety of ballistai.
I'm sorry.
I thought you meant metaphorical.
No, no, no.
I literally, literally, yeah.
Yeah, Sean Connery.
Yes.
Sean Connery.
Famously, Sean Connery the Dragon.
Yes.
Because all dragons, like all evil uncles, are actually the same dragon.
You never question when a dragon comes in because Sean Connery playing a dragon in the movie.
I know the movie you're talking about, but I've actually forgotten that.
Dragonheart, right?
Dragonheart.
Fucking great movie.
Incredible film.
God, I think.
I'll take your word for it.
I don't know if I've ever seen that.
Cody, I used to love that movie.
Honestly, I haven't thought about that movie in 25 fucking years.
I think I'm going to have to rewatch Dragonheart and actually see if it holds up because I have no idea if it has.
Almost like it's been a while.
I don't know.
Feel like a dragon fantasy movie probably doesn't have a lot of the things that make something show up as aged, like rampant homophobia.
Probably not.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That probably isn't a factor in Dragon Hearts.
You say that, but yeah.
I'm going to watch it and be like, wow, I forgot that there's a 35-minute Sean Connery rant about immigration in the middle.
I was going to say Sean Connery doing the voice, so maybe he like talks about how it's okay to slap women dragons and stuff.
You know, I don't know.
I don't know.
Is that okay?
But if they're dragons, is it wrong?
If it's well, I'm saying, Cody, the dragon is a powerful archetype because we all have dragons that have to be conquered.
And the only way to conquer a dragon is with the sword of truth.
And if you're using the sword of truth, could you not slap a dragon with the sword of truth?
If perhaps you were unable to penetrate its scales with the sword because you don't have a pin because the pin is mightier.
Yeah.
I don't know.
Can't say it's wrong, Cody.
I could say it's wrong.
I won't.
Because it's not.
Who's to know what wrong and right is?
Dr. Jordan Peterson.
That's right.
We are not yet through the first episode of his incredible TV series, Dragons, Monsters, and Miss.
We sure aren't, Robert.
We sure aren't.
I like your little, your little almost slip, just calling it a shit.
It is shit.
It is complete.
You know what's fun, Cody, is that before this happened, I was out in the woods where a friend and I spent a significant part of a Saturday field dressing a deer with non-ideal equivalent equipment in the middle of the deep woods, far away from other people.
And that whole experience was both powerfully primal.
I think it's the kind of thing that Jordan Peterson would say that men are supposed to be doing and that is that is healthy for them.
And it was a task that my friend and I accomplished by being agreeable with each other.
And because my friend is more competent at this than me, it's a task that I was able to accomplish by listening to them rather than attempting to direct and manage the process because I didn't know how to do it as well as they did.
Did he communicate this respectfully to you?
Sure did, Cody.
And as a result, it was a wonderful experience all around and a great deal.
And you probably know a little more about how to do it now.
I do.
I do.
So, I mean, but did you cry while thinking about Dumbo during it?
I didn't cry while thinking about Dumbo.
I did have the revelation that Antifa hates God because incel?
No, it's for the curse of being, right?
Yeah, the curse of being, right?
The curse of being.
That quote from Tombstone.
Yeah.
I thought a lot about the curse of being as I was looking at the Subaru Impressa that got totaled by that deer.
Oh, good times.
So let's get back to Dr. Jordan.
Episode one of the honestly, this is just like Peterson's greatest hits, the show.
It's just him ranting in a way where it's like, you know, that thing you talk about all the time?
Just like do another version of that.
Yeah.
Go at it, Jordan B. Peterson.
Dragon tales, dragon tails.
That's a different show.
So although all dragons are the same, just like all uncles are evil.
Sadly, this is a different show.
And the Catholic Church is an uncle, which is why you should go to it because it's your not disagree with it because you don't believe anything, but also change it because it molests you.
Wow.
Let's listen to some other wisdom that Dr. Peterson has.
So when we left off, he's just announced that writing isn't a tool for finding truth or learning to think.
It's a tool of domination because domination is the only task Jordan sees as worth accomplishing.
Well, I can scrap the rough.
I don't want, you know, at the end of my life, that was rough.
I want I floated through life on a cloud of pillows and nothing ever challenged or threatened me.
It's like, no one wants that as their memory.
What they want is like dragons, victories, dragons, victories, dragons, victories, something like that.
Or beasts, you know, tamed, beasts tamed, something like that.
And so, you know, there's a deep, it feels like it's dragons, dragons, dragons.
We all understand the value of like the ups and downs of life.
And if everything is perfect, then nothing is perfect.
And you need struggles to have successes.
And you need bad vibes to have good vibes to compare to.
And it's good to like accomplish your goals and get out there and, you know, make some successes and life is a struggle.
But he uses this kind of stuff that like, everybody like generally agrees about that, like that's just how life is.
To say, like you shouldn't, like not go into medical debt and like all these like things that like we can make things like a little easier and you can still have challenges and successes and victories in life if you can go to the doctor easy.
Yeah, and it's also just like nothing he's saying is an absolute truth.
These are all conditional truths, of course not.
Yeah, challenges and struggles, like meeting and and exceeding challenges and struggles, can make you a better, stronger person.
Um also, surviving difficult things sometimes ruins you as a human being.
A lot of people are fundamentally broken.
For example, one of my grandpa's brothers fought at best oh no, and got shot through the head and survived and was never the same, and everyone agrees he was kind of fundamentally broken by the experience.
Uh, he went and he slayed a dragon and it it like ruined the rest of his life, which is the thing that happens to a lot of people who encounter things that are difficult and traumatizing, because it doesn't always make you better.
Sometimes it makes you less capable of dealing with the world.
Well that's, you got to choose the right dragons right yes, the wrong dragon in that case was the Nazis.
He should have picked an easier dragon.
Easier yeah, you got to pick.
Like a Non-nazi dragon yeah yeah, like sitting at home and advocating for an end to the new deal.
Or like yeah, like a video game yeah, like a video game.
Um anyway, whatever it's.
Oh perfect, it's not right on the screen which dragons to go after, which dragons to go after?
And let's, let's see how he, how he explains this treasures are worth attaining.
That's a good question, you know, because you know you could, you could be like Don Quixote and and go after windmills.
And there's something noble about queoting because at least he goes after something.
I I what wait wait, can we keep going?
Yeah let's, let's go a little more.
I need to, I need a little more.
There are at least dragons in his imagination.
You know it's dangerous to go play in traffic, but and so you might say, well, i've run out in traffic, i'm dodging cars, i'm playing chicken, aren't I slaying the dragon?
It's like too hardy exposure to danger.
It might be better than no exposure at all.
You know, there is something somewhat admirable about that kind of careless bravado that you sometimes see among Sophie.
Pause this because I want to emphasize, Jordan Peterson has just kind of kind of talked himself into running into traffic.
Yeah, like he kind of convinces himself it's a good idea sometimes.
Maybe it is good to run into traffic.
Let's let him That thought.
Hold on.
Let's give him 10 more seconds.
Okay.
All right.
Good luck, Jordan.
That's sort of the Bart Simpson approach to life, you know?
Better than the Mill House approach.
Neither are optimal.
I feel like one of the points of The Simpsons is that neither Bart nor Millhouse are anything but like object failures as people.
Like every time they're optimal, right?
To their future, Bart is like living a marginal existence, like an inch away from being out on the street.
No, he becomes a fucking Supreme Court justice, right?
Oh, wait, isn't that, that's one of the new ones.
Cody, we don't need to go out there.
No, that's like back in the day.
That's like classic Simpsons.
Yeah.
I'm talking about the one where Lisa marries the British man.
Oh, that's just like, well, even in that episode, he's like, there's like a reference.
He's like, he's like, looks like shit.
He's like, yeah, I'm a fucking piece of shit.
It's like, don't worry, I'm getting out all my aggression before I go to law school.
And then he becomes a Supreme Court justice.
No, that's the one where they see the Itchy and Scratchy movie, right?
And his dad.
It's two.
So the Itchy and Scratchy one is first.
We see him as a Supreme Court justice.
And then the flash forward, at least as the president.
Jordan Peterson.
He's like in construction.
He's like, yeah, I'm going to go to law school eventually.
You're right.
Jordan Peterson is correct.
It's better to be a Bart Simpson than a Mill House.
It's true.
Not at all.
Unless there's a moderate amount of flooding, in which case, you probably want to be Millhouse because he's got those, he's got those pants that are cuffed up a little bit high.
That's right.
Keeps his cuffs bone dry.
That's right.
Everything's come up.
Anyway, anyway.
I just find it.
So like, all right, real quick.
There's a few things here.
It's just like he, he's given a few examples and none of them are good yet.
Like, what dragons do you fight?
Well, Don Quixote fought dragons that didn't.
I want to talk about that.
I want to talk about Don Quixote because he brings up Don Quixote to say that, like, well, he's tilting at Windows, windmills, and the windmills, you know, aren't what he thinks they are.
But like, there's something noble in just the act of the fight itself and that that's something beautiful.
It's really funny to me because Cervantes, I'm not, yeah, I'm not an expert on Don Quixote, but if you look up like what the author, why he wrote Don Quixote, it was because he was really pissed at the popular fiction that existed at the day, which was mostly these like really shitty and derivative stories of like medieval knights and, you know, doing night shit.
He specifically framed Don Quixote as an attack on, quote, vain and empty books of chivalry.
He was trying to destroy a genre of fiction that he found tepid and not engaging and not particularly like intellectually valuable.
And it's exactly the kind of fiction that Jordan B. Peterson has based his entire life view on.
Right.
Oh, yeah.
Like that Don Quixote is about like, God, all this stuff is lame as hell.
It's like boring.
It's like, yeah.
That's, of course.
Yeah.
It's very funny.
But also, like, he brings it up and then doesn't really even make a point.
It's just like he's trying to, he's trying to answer the question.
He's kind of saying tilting at windmills is good.
Yeah.
Well, no, because he, like, the, the only examples he's given so far are like, yeah, okay, this, this story where it's not really a dragon or running into traffic.
Yeah.
Those are the two.
And he talks, again, I have to cannot emphasize enough.
He talks himself into believing that running into traffic might be a good idea.
Which is more noble than not doing it.
All right.
But no, actually, one of the completely like ignoring that, like, by the way, when you run into traffic, it's not just like doing a dangerous thing.
It's doing a dangerous thing for potentially hundreds of people who are also who are like on the road in their cars.
It's not just like this like weird like frogger video game or like extreme sports, right?
It's not, you're not jumping out of an airplane, like getting the rush of that extreme experience.
You're in traffic.
People will die.
It's silly, man.
Yeah.
Anyway, whatever.
It's amazing how really consistently in this episode, Cody, the only parts of Peterson's rants that actually translate into useful information is stuff that like your 11th grade guidance counselor could have told you in between smoking weed out behind the building.
Stuff like job interviews can be scary, but you have to do them sometimes.
Work on them.
Like, it's not even like you have to do them sometimes.
Like, yeah, get better at public speaking.
Yeah.
Traffic vs Extreme Sports00:07:45
The challenge that I have in life, I should try to like get better at it.
Like, it's the most basic.
It's like you don't need to.
Life.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You don't need to couch it in this like dragons and monsters and men to be like, oh, you're struggling with that?
You should work on it.
Yeah.
You can.
You can succeed.
I'll help.
Like, it's.
Well, and also, I don't know, maybe if you think about it that way, that's less useful because I don't know.
I just, I lift weights.
I'm not a powerlifter or anything like that, but I've made consistent progress.
And I just recently hit the point where I was able to do two full sets at a new max.
And it was something I'd been working towards for about a year.
And I didn't think about, I want to be able to bench press 220 pounds as if it was a dragon.
I thought about it the way that most people think about most actual challenges, where this is a series of incremental improvements that I need to make until eventually I can do the thing.
And look, now I've done the thing.
That's nice.
And when I've, when I repeatedly was unable to do it earlier, I didn't think the dragon has bested me.
I thought this is part of incremental improvement is failing.
And this very simple act to be described.
Yeah.
If this helps people, great.
But it seems like an unnecessary abstraction to actual progress and success.
Yeah, that's exactly what it is.
It's not like you can think about challenges this way.
You can think about wanting to do, you know, raise your squats or whatever, or run a mile faster as a dragon.
And maybe that works for you.
But it's, I don't know, I think a silly and unnecessary way to think about going after challenges.
Well, yeah, because this is like the way, and this is the way he talks about a lot of stuff, but this in particular, this show for some reason.
Yeah.
This is the kind of thing that would be in like a children's book.
Yeah.
He's taking Billy and the dragon.
And the dragon is a metaphor for all the challenges in life.
And okay, that helps children understand what challenges are.
But as anyone over the age of like eight or 10 or 12, pick a child's age, understands what challenges are.
I think what Peterson has maybe recognized here that is actually intelligent is that masculinity in our society is so like broken because people think that it does rely like that that being masculine involves fighting things in the future.
I was going to say, it is this sort of thing because we've built like a world that's in many ways slightly better than it used to be.
There's not a lot of chances for men to go fight things because it's actually not very necessary or healthy if people are fighting all the time.
But all of our media is themed towards venerating physical courage as the primary expression of masculinity.
And so Jordan Peterson recognized that you can make a lot of money if you dress up stuff like, hey, maybe practice doing job interviews as like, and you must slay the dragon and defeat your evil uncle.
And His audience skews like young white male kind of thing.
And so, like, okay, you like fantasy bullshit and your fucking video games?
I'll talk about it like that.
Yeah.
And it's like, yeah, doing the dishes is like a dragon.
It's like, no, it's the thing you got to do.
It's like those like dude wipes or like tactical diaper changing bags.
Okay, okay.
Now, Cody, a tactical.
I do love, I love all of the tactical diaper changing bags because they're made to look like or tactical like baby carriers.
Anything like that.
Anything that's like marketed like, it's this everyday thing you do, but like, oh, it's war.
Like those armies.
Well, the baby ones are specifically funny because they're like, they're made to look like plate carriers, which is like a plate carrier is a thing you wear over your body that carries armor inside of it and ammunition and stuff on the outside of it.
And like the baby goes in the place that the body armor that's meant to absorb bullets is set.
Unbelievable.
It's just really funny.
It's also silly.
And it's like these things that like, well, I know I have to do this in order to get people to act like this.
And that's just what he's doing.
I think honestly, and I think one of the fundamental things I disagree with Jordan on is he's like, if you think about things in this way, then it will inspire people to achieve more because people are fundamentally motivated by these grand like archetypes in our heads and symbols from our stories.
And I actually think that's pretty unhealthy.
And I think maybe in a lot of cases, the best thing to do is to frame stuff like taking care of your own child and cleaning the dishes as like scrubbing yourself with soap from time to time.
Which is like, yeah, it's just a thing you do.
It's not a big deal.
It's just a thing you do.
Yeah.
Well, right.
It's the opposite of what he said earlier in this video in the previous episode about like lying and like manipulating language and stuff and saying untruths.
And like, well, if reality is not, is unreality, then how do you fight?
Like, it's like, you don't need to talk like this.
You're creating this weird like realm of thought that is unnecessary in order to do the real things in real life.
Also, this is dragons, monsters, and men, and he's talking about what it's like to be a man.
I'd be very curious how he would respond to someone saying, if you're a woman, do you also have dragons?
Or like, is it a different metaphor that you're doing?
He occasionally will drop and in here.
He does a couple of times, although it's very clear whose he's angling.
Cody, let's move past that.
I want to show you the funniest part of this fucking episode.
The treasures that you can get.
Well, the first thing Dragons Guard is virgins, so there's that.
It's a very bizarre story, right?
The story of the dragon, because dragons guard gold and virgins.
It's like, what interest do dragons have in gold and virgins?
But, well, the girl wants the guy who can overcome the dragon.
So that's, that's that.
That's dead simple and obvious to anyone with even a smidgen of biological knowledge.
That's so bad.
Any biologist will tell you, Cody, that dragons love virgins.
And women want the guy who slayed the dragon.
But also, like, these dragon stories aren't from the point of view of the woman.
No, they're, they're usually like the prize in these stories.
Yeah, she's not a character.
So it's not about like what she wants.
It's about what he thinks she wants.
So he gets the thing to present as this knight to say whatever.
It's funny because Jordan has recently come out and said that like he's emotionally moved by being basically the incel philosopher.
Oh, yeah.
And the reason why a lot of men are in cells is because they internalize these ideas about what women want that are created by men, like men like Walt Disney in the 1950s, who didn't maybe had never talked to a woman in an open and honest conversation.
Talked a woman.
Talked at a woman.
But even then with Walt Disney, probably not all that often because I don't think women were allowed to speak at the Disney offices.
I don't even know if that's a joke.
Yeah, I don't think that was a joke.
Cody, you know what is a joke?
The low prices on gold that our sponsors are selling.
Cody, are you ever scared of the world?
All the time.
Well, I'm going to need you to do something for me.
Gold Prices and Bank Secrets00:04:50
Do it.
Get out a piece of paper and a pen.
Write your bank account number and your routing number and your Swift code and your pin on it, okay?
And then you just send that over to me.
And at some point, I'm going to buy gold.
I'm not going to give it to you because you might lose it, Cody.
Sometimes you get holes in your pockets and stuff.
I'm going to put that gold in a very real bank.
And then when you need it, you just come and call me.
I'll give you my number later.
And you can get your gold.
And everyone can do this.
Just send me your bank account routing numbers and I will use it to buy gold at a great price.
Okay.
And you'll just like, you'll, you'll mail me your number or.
Yeah, yeah, you'll get it at some point.
Anyway, let's roll these ads for gold.
Yay.
In 2023, former bachelor star Clayton Eckard found himself at the center of a paternity scandal.
The family court hearings that followed revealed glaring inconsistencies in her story.
This began a years-long court battle to prove the truth.
You doctored this particular test twice, Miss Owens, correct?
I doctored the test once.
It took an army of internet detectives to crack the case.
I wanted people to be able to see what their tax dollars were being used for.
Sunlight's the greatest disinfectant.
They would uncover a disturbing pattern.
Two more men who'd been through the same thing.
Greg Gillespie and Michael Marancini.
My mind was blown.
I'm Stephanie Young.
This is Love Trap.
Laura, Scottsdale Police.
As the season continues, Laura Owens finally faces consequences.
Ladies and gentlemen, breaking news out of Maricopa County as Laura Owens has been indicted on fraud charges.
This isn't over until justice is served in Arizona.
Listen to Love Trapped podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
10-10 shots fired, City Hall building.
A silver .40 caliber handgun was recovered at the scene.
From iHeart Podcasts and Best Case Studios, this is Rorschach.
Murder at City Hall.
How could this have happened in City Hall?
Somebody tell me that.
Jeffrey Hood did.
July 2003.
Councilman James E. Davis arrives at New York City Hall with a guest.
Both men are carrying concealed weapons.
And in less than 30 minutes, both of them will be dead.
Everybody in the chamber's ducks.
A shocking public murder.
I screamed, get down, get down.
Those are shots.
Those are shots.
Get down.
A charismatic politician.
You know, he just bent the rules all the time, man.
I still have a weapon.
And I could shoot you.
And an outsider with a secret.
He alleged he was a victim of flat down.
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.
There's two golden rules that any man should live by.
Rule one, never mess with a country girl.
If 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.
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.
Sam Altman on AI Responsibility00:09:23
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.
We're back!
Cody!
Robert.
Cody.
So I think one of the things that's funny about that virgin dragon rant is that you kind of see Jordan start to ask himself why dragons want virgins and then realize there's no reason, right?
Like it's just kind of a weird thing that like I thought he had.
He's like, I guess I need to think about that now.
And maybe even like the most famous dragon in all of fiction didn't do that because J.R. Tolkien was just a little bit better of a storyteller than some of the folks at Disney, maybe.
Anyway, Jordan is, I don't know, there's so much that's wrong about that.
In stories, like, you know, the stories that Cervantes hated, dragons are sometimes, yeah, want to, I don't know, have a virgin for some reason so that a knight can rescue her or whatever.
But Jordan is, he's not talking about like stories.
Again, he's dropping these things that are like old storytelling shortcuts and not even particularly good ones, right?
Like we can debate as to whether or not, you know, the evil uncle or the virgin held by a dragon is like a good thing to have in a story.
But there are many stories that include like evil and that include dragons that do not include those tropes.
And in fact, most really good stories don't include those tropes because they're not particularly necessary.
So they're kind of boring.
Also, I find it so that whole brief little clip was so fascinating because also he's because he's bringing up like, oh, also golden virgins, you see.
And his explanation for why dragons will capture virgins was that, well, because women, you know, they want the man who defeats the dragon and any biologist.
And he gets so angry about that.
Like, oh, we didn't have.
Well, that doesn't explain the virgin part, Mr. Peterson.
No.
You ignored that.
You specifically said virgins.
And then your explanation is like, well, women want the guy who can get things done.
What about the virgin part that you brought up?
You brought this up.
Yeah.
So like his explanation is still removed from the thing he's trying to pretend to know what to talk about.
So much of like what he has to say is based on like he frames it as it's based on these like immutable evolutionary truths.
Like hierarchy is a thing that we know is important because human, like creatures have been doing it before there were human beings.
Lobsters, you know, are hardwired.
Before trees.
Yeah, it's older than trees and anything like that.
There's a reason that it has been around for so long.
And that's why it's the only way that things can ever be.
And it's like, well, actually, if just kind of like raw evolutionary benefit was the only thing that mattered, then there's actually not any reason to seek out a virgin.
And in fact, if all that matters is like spreading your DNA, finding people who have proven that like their body type is able to easily and successfully undergo childbirth would be better than just randomly picking out virgins because a lot of people who can give birth die doing it because it's it's hard.
And maybe if you're if all that organisms do is optimize for survival, that's actually not the best tactic.
Yeah.
So maybe it's something else.
Yeah.
So maybe it's something or maybe like his women create values with everyone they're not always logical and we can change our value systems because often they're silly and self-defeating.
Yeah.
Maybe everything in the world and how it should be can't be explained by just like how evolution worked out.
Yeah.
Or by fucking Disney story tales from the 1960s.
Anyway, obviously the most harmful thing about this whole dragon and virgin shit is that like actual women in real life, virgin or not, are not being guarded by dragons.
They're human beings who get to make their own decisions.
And the task of like falling in love is not conquering a dragon.
It's like meeting somebody and building a relationship, which is very different from fighting an animal.
Yeah.
And then and like winning the game.
Because he even he hits on this earlier of like, well, yeah, it's not like you want to work on yourself and demonstrate like why you're a good, valuable person and like all these things and like get skills and do that.
Be a dragon slayer in his, in his language, and prove that you can be.
But it's not the act of doing it that wins you the virgin prize.
Yeah, it's all of the things that make you good at fighting are not things that make you good in a relationship, you know?
Like it's, it's, it's, it's, everything about this is fundamentally toxic.
I'm sure he would disagree with you.
But Dr. Peterson barrels.
Actually, it's good to fight because, you know, you have if you know, if you know your dragons and she knows her dragons and your dragons can fight each other, I don't know.
I don't know what he would say.
I've had to fight a couple of wild animals and the tactic that was successful for me was picking up a big stick and hitting it in the nose.
I have not tried that in a romantic relationship, but I don't think it would help me.
Probably not.
Sean Connery would say different.
Sean Connery would say different, you know.
Anyway, let's women are going to be entranced by the man who can keep the predator away from the infants.
I mean, clearly, that's a primary significance.
So if you can confront the dragon, you get the girl.
And that's how God only knows how old that story is.
Like millions of years old.
It's not.
Dr. Peterson, there's no story that's millions of years old.
People haven't been telling them for millions of years.
It's just so silly.
He's just trying to say that like the act of like a male organism protecting a female organism from like a predator is like a tale as old as time.
It's like, okay.
I don't know.
It's theoretically, we don't actually know when people started talking, obviously, like when human beings started using words because we were not writing at that point.
I think like 50,000 years is often bandied, but it's possible that it goes back like 2 million years.
But I would be willing to bet that that is not the way stories were necessarily framed for 2 million years, because I think evidence suggests that things were a little bit like.
Storytelling was much less literal for some of those peoples because a lot of things about their belief system and the way they dealt with the world would have been not like, not been literal in ways that the way we talk is because so much of human thought and speech has been informed by the stuff that happened in the past.
So the first people probably would not have talked about anything the way that is recognizable.
I don't know.
We have not been telling that story for millions of years.
That's where I come to ground on.
I mean, I tend to agree with you that we haven't been telling that story for millions of years.
Yeah, we absolutely have not.
Anyway, the episode is when he's talking about this, he's just such a little sneaky little word man.
He is because he's not saying, I don't think he's saying like, literally, we've been telling the story for millions of years.
He's saying the existence of this event in like this, the manifestation of this dynamic has existed for millions of years, right?
Like he would describe like, oh, the tale of the little guy making his way up the hierarchy has been a story told for millions of years.
And what he means is like, yeah, lobsters do this.
And so like the act of it existing in the world is, in his mind, the story being told, because that's how he views all this stuff.
He's just a weird guy.
He is just a, he is just a weird guy, Cody.
You know what isn't weird?
A third split screen.
Capitalism.
Yeah, the third split screen is pretty great.
And so is the ads that sponsor this podcast.
In a way, they're your dragons, these ads.
So they conquered this dragon by throwing some cash on the fucking ground.
Capitalism as a Split Screen00:04:33
In 2023, former bachelor star Clayton Eckard found himself at the center of a paternity scandal.
The family court hearings that followed revealed glaring inconsistencies in her story.
This began a years-long court battle to prove the truth.
You doctored this particular test twice, Miss Sellings, correct?
I doctored the test once.
It took an army of internet detectives to crack the case.
I wanted people to be able to see what their tax dollars were being used for.
Sunlight's the greatest disinfected.
They would uncover a disturbing pattern.
Two more men who'd been through the same thing.
Greg Olespi and Michael Marancini.
My mind was blown.
I'm Stephanie Young.
This is Love Trap.
Laura, Scottsdale Police.
As the season continues, Laura Owens finally faces consequences.
Ladies and gentlemen, breaking news at Americopa County as Laura Owens has been indicted on fraud charges.
This isn't over until justice is served in Arizona.
Listen to Love Trapped podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
10-10 shots fired.
City hall building.
A silver .40 caliber handgun was recovered at the scene.
From iHeart Podcasts and Best Case Studios, this is Rorschach, murder at City Hall.
How could this have happened in City Hall?
Somebody tell me that!
Jeffrey Hood did.
July 2003, Councilman James E. Davis arrives at New York City Hall with a guest.
Both men are carrying concealed weapons.
And in less than 30 minutes, both of them will be dead.
Everybody in the chamber's ducks.
A shocking public murder.
I screamed, get down, get down.
Those are shots.
Those are shots.
Get down.
A charismatic politician.
You know, he just bent the rules all the time.
I still have a weapon.
And I could shoot you.
And an outsider with a secret.
He alleged you a victim of flat down.
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 are wherever you get your podcasts.
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.
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.
Shariach stay 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.
Ah, we're back.
So the episode kind of starts to end with more of what I would call meaningless tripe.
Epigenetics Misunderstood00:04:09
First he says that like travel is good because it helps you figure out who you want to be, which is fine.
But then he says that like doing this is quote unquote activating the ancestral father.
And he compares it to epigenetics, saying that stressing yourself, stressing yourself, Cody, leads your genes to activate new modules that give you new abilities.
Is he talking about leveling up?
Kind of, yes.
And like getting skill points.
Yeah.
Like putting, I unlocked brawler.
All right.
Turn things on inside of you that you don't even know are there.
And that's the same as reactivating the ancestral father.
It's the same thing.
Because all that biological capacity is in some sense nested inside you, maybe coded at the genetic level.
We know that if you stress yourself in particular ways, especially voluntarily, new genes turn on and code for new proteins.
Like you literally build new modules.
They're there in latent form.
It's not much different than, you know, when you go to the gym and you start lifting weights, well, your body's going to transform, but it's not going to do that if you just sit around.
He said lifting weights.
He did the little arm waves.
He's never lifted weights in the middle.
That's not fine.
He was cheering.
He was doing a cheer.
He's doing a little cheer.
Look, he gets epigenetics completely wrong.
It does not work that way.
It is not like lifting weights and it is not unlocking modules that provide you with new powers.
Epigenetics is a real phenomenon.
And it certainly seems accurate to say that there are things that can be passed on in your DNA to your descendants and that are passed on into you from your ancestors in ways that are not super well understood, but certain things can get switched on by environmental factors.
It is not like unlocking ancient powers.
You are not like becoming your ancestors by unlocking powers that they encoded in your DNA.
And in fact, a lot of like when this kind of epigenetic phenomenon is observed, it's often stuff that you wouldn't want to have happen.
It's bad stuff, right?
It's bad stuff.
I'm going to quote from a little write-up in Medline Plus on how genes work.
That is a pretty basic write-up.
I can understand it.
I'm stupid.
Quote, a common type of epigenetic modification is called DNA methylation.
DNA methylation involves the attachment of a small chemical groups called methyl groups, each consisting of one carbon atom and three hydrogen atoms to DNA building blocks.
When methyl groups are present on a gene, that gene is turned off or silenced and no protein is produced from that gene.
Another common epigenetic change is histone modification.
Histones are structural proteins in the cell nucleus.
DNA wraps around histones, giving chromosomes their shape.
Histones can be modified by the addition or removal of chemical groups, such as methyl groups or acetyl groups, each consisting of two carbon, three hydrogen, and one oxygen atoms.
The chemical groups influence how tightly the DNA is wrapped around histones, which affects whether a gene can be turned on or not.
Errors in the epigenetic process, such as modification of the wrong gene or failure to add a chemical group to a particular gene or histone, can lead to abnormal gene activity or inactivity.
Altered gene activity, including that caused by epigenetic errors, is a common cause of genetic disorders.
Conditions such as cancers, metabolic disorders, and degenerative disorders have been found to be related to epigenetic errors.
It's like, again, I don't understand epigenetics.
No one really does.
There's actually one of the major debates is like, are there ways in which like trauma is passed on epigenetically?
And it's actually like a lot of people will say, well, yeah, and you can see it.
There's studies on Holocaust survivors.
We actually don't really have a great handle on it.
And like the degree to which that's true, if it is, like all of this is, I'm not an expert on epigenetics.
Yeah, there's a lot we don't know about this stuff.
There's a lot we don't sort of tie it to the spiritualism.
A thing it definitely isn't is like you stress yourself and then gain powers from your ancestors.
That's not epigenetics.
And often epigenetics is like, yeah, like a weird environmental factor caused this like thing in your DNA to activate and now you have cancer.
So it's not like I went through, I like went through like a big ordeal.
Gina Carano and Hunter Biden00:09:54
I fought a dragon and I unlocked sharpshooter.
No, it's more like there's errors made when you're like photocopying stuff and sometimes those errors can cause serious problems.
I mean, that's not the only thing that it, again, epigenetics is much more complicated than that little quote that I've read.
I would try to pause it.
I just want to make the point that he is wrong.
He is completely wrong about epigenetics.
But he's a biologist.
It is not like lifting weights.
But he's a biologist.
So I feel like maybe he's right about everything.
You're right.
You're right, Cody.
And you know what else you're right about?
That this fucking episode is almost over.
I was right.
God bless you for everything, Mr. Cody.
God bless us, everyone.
God bless us, everyone.
Sophie, can we play the last minute or so before the before the credits run?
I just want Cody to see how this all we can.
Just give me a sec.
I exit out of it because you didn't mark anything.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
But we weren't planning to have this awful font.
Maybe the worst font I've actually ever seen.
Like, I would prefer Papyrus or Comic Sans.
Okay.
You want the last minute?
Fuck me.
I don't want to see it.
All right.
And we are unfortunately back.
We are unfortunately back.
It's not much different than, you know, when you go to the gym and you start lifting weights, well, your body's going to transform, but it's not going to do that if you just sit around.
You have to, you have to face your being with the necessity of transformation.
And then all sorts of new things that you had no idea you were capable of will make themselves manifest.
And that's all part of that pattern of voluntary confrontation.
That's the core of genuine adventure.
Did that make that make any sense to you, Cody?
Oh my, I need to absorb what's going on in these cameras real quick.
We've got kind of, again, like a Game of Thrones style ending scene.
This is so finally off.
What is this?
Yeah, it's like we just watched Jordan Peterson like fist fight a fucking cave bear.
This is so intense.
Also, whoever sound designed this, why did you make this credit so much louder than so many fucking people are involved in the production?
Shall we continue?
Like too many people.
Now, Cody.
Oh my God, it's so embarrassing.
You've made a lot of videos in your life.
Some of them have been videos of a person sitting and talking to camera.
That's true.
How big of a crew would you say you need?
Is it that many fucking people?
No.
Well, so with our, I mean, with our show, I'm the only guy in the room.
We do it over Zoom.
We have director and teleprompter virtually.
And there are people on Zoom helping out and like adjusting lights.
But it's just me in the room.
When we had a studio, it was three people, maybe, including me, usually.
This is a little fancier, you know?
There are two cameras at least.
The camera's in motion.
So you need to probably have a boom mic operator following him alongs.
You don't get the mic in the shot and then another one for the second camera and maybe the third camera.
So more, I think it requires more than we would use for sure, but not as many as I saw on screen.
No.
But, you know, they need to make it look again, it's like anything to make it look more intense than it is because it's just Peterson rambling about stuff.
I liked how at times there was this text on screen just because you got to have something going on.
So just like have the words that he's saying on screen as he says it.
His little last speech was odd because, I mean, we already talked about the genetic aspect of it, but like what he's just said, he's trying to say, go out and like challenge yourself and like learn new skills.
And, you know, sometimes, you know, bad situations can turn out well.
Okay.
Also, I can't emphasize this.
Does I need this fucking fanfare?
This was the first thing he said, decided needs to be talked about.
Can't imagine what he's going to say now.
Oh, Cody.
I think epigenetically, you actually do understand because your ancestors had knowledge of this, just like they knew about your evil uncle, who was the Catholic church and also talking to girls.
If I'm understanding Dr. Peterson properly.
Yes.
Yes, yes.
I think you are.
I've gone through the stress of listening to him talk, and now I've unlocked sneak.
I have unlocked the skill of my ancestors, which as Italians is cooking spicy meat to balls.
Probably like chef is the name of the module that you unlocked.
Chef or criminal.
Those are the two options open.
Yeah, chef or criminal.
Two Italians.
I guess fascists.
So three.
We have three options.
Trifecta.
Yeah, big three.
Yes.
Cody.
Yes.
How are you feeling?
Yes.
Was episode one of this what you would expected from Dr. Jordan Balthazar Peterson?
It is dragons, monsters, and men.
Exactly what I thought it was going to be.
I think I saw a trailer at one point.
I was like, oh, so he's just like talking in a chair.
Yeah.
He is just in fact talking in a chair.
I will say that the credit sequence did kind of surprise me a little bit because it's like you expect like a little some overwrought dorky like intense kind of dragony kind of stuff, but it was more than I expected.
It was very loud and wow and like unnecessary and the shift from like it's like so funny and jarring.
I love it.
Yeah.
No, I don't.
I'm sorry, Cody.
It's fine.
It's just like, I also, I guess, I'm not surprised, but I think it's amusing that it is like so many of these clips are like, heard him say that before.
Talked about that a lot.
Well, there's a, there's a soundbite I've heard 90 times on various YouTube videos.
Well, you know, maybe they're getting their subscribers up and they're going to get that Gina Carano sci-fi movie penned by V. Ben Shapiro out on Daily Wire Plus.
Oh, are they making an actual sci-fi movie?
I saw Gina Carano in the movie about Joe Biden.
Oh, yeah, and the Hunter Biden movies.
Includes a lot of editing that I could do, and I don't know how to edit because it looks like they're literally just taking like an MS Paint style app and like drawing over frames to animate them.
It's gonna be funny how like poor the trailer looks.
It is dog shit.
It is, it's actually like the trailer makes it look like funny bad, but it really is not.
It's just a terrible movie.
Oh, I bet I could sit through it, but it's like it's it looks.
It looks made up and not in the way that all movies are made up, but like it looks like a fake movie that someone is 80% of the runtime.
Is Joe Biden either sitting in a car talking to his son or his son sitting in a car talking to a sex worker?
And like explaining laboriously crimes that often don't sound like crimes because they're just like complicated real estate deals or whatever.
I don't know.
It's very boring.
The only part of it that was funny is that so they do you know who Viktor Yunukovich was?
Is he was the former president of Ukraine who got overthrown in 2014 when he tried to do dictator shit.
Anyway, he's like, he looks like a middle manager.
He's got like kind of strong Paul Manafort vibes, just kind of not a very interesting looking guy, but like a full head of hair and stuff.
The dude they got to cast him was like bald and jacked.
Like they, they just got like a huge bald man who was fucking shredded to play the former dictator of Ukraine for no reason.
Like there, I don't know why you're just like, oh, we got to make sure this guy's played by a hot dude who's fucking shredded.
Like it's nonsense.
No, because he's framed as a bad guy because it's talking about like his, he's clearly a bad guy and he has some shady dealings with Hunter.
It's like, because he is a bad guy.
I have no idea why they did it the way they did it.
It's completely incomprehensible.
Oh, don't.
That was your first mistake.
Don't try to comprehend the Hunter Biden movie with Gina Carano.
Yeah.
I will never do that again.
Cody, do you have any pluggables to plug?
All the same.
The Evil Uncle Mystery00:03:30
Check out some more news on YouTube and even more news on podcast apps.
And keep your eye out for an album by a band called The Hot Shapes.
That is my band.
I don't know when this episode's coming out.
So look it up.
Yeah, it'll come out one of these days, perhaps during the holidays.
So, you know, hit your evil uncle in the face in order to defeat the dragon of spending Thanksgiving with the people who love you.
Yes, if your evil uncle is a woman.
If your evil uncle is a woman, then fuck her.
Kill a dragon in front of her.
Okay, okay, okay.
You can figure it out from here.
You're now armed with the knowledge that is mightier than a sword.
Anyway.
Unlocked penmanship.
Behind the Bastards is a production of CoolZone Media.
For more from CoolZone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com or check us out 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 Manchini.
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.
10-10 shots fired in the City Hall building.
How did this ever happen 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.
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, trust your girlfriends.
Listen to the girlfriends.
Trust me, babe.
On the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
I'm Laurie Siegel, and this is Mostly Human, a tech podcast through a human lens.
This week, an interview with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.
I think society is going to decide that creators of AI products bear a tremendous amount of responsibility to the products we put out in the world.
An in-depth conversation with the man who's shaping our future.
My highest order bit is to not destroy the world with AI.
Listen to Mostly Human on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.