The Charlie Kirk Show - Exploring the Death of Comedy with Babylon Bee CEO Seth Dillon
Aired: 2020-11-19
Duration: 39:49


=== Defending Real Satire (14:48) ===

[00:00:00]  Hey everybody, how do we make comedy great again?
[00:00:02]  The death of comedy and the attack on jokes and those who tell the jokes is a very serious warning sign.
[00:00:10]  In fact, it's a fire alarm for our civilization.
[00:00:12]  Seth Dylan from Babylon B joins us, one of the funniest satire sites out there, if not the funniest.
[00:00:18]  Please consider supporting us at charliekirk.com slash support.
[00:00:22]  We are able to bring you these interviews, these exclusive conversations in real time.
[00:00:26]  Thanks to those of you that contribute to us and support us at charliekirk.com slash support.
[00:00:32]  Email us your questions, freedom at charliekirk.com.
[00:00:34]  And join us in Palm Beach, everybody.
[00:00:36]  December 19, 20, 21, 22, thousands and thousands and thousands of people.
[00:00:42]  tpusa.com slash SAS.
[00:00:45]  You want to be there.
[00:00:46]  Tucker Carlson, I'll be there.
[00:00:48]  Dennis Prager, Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, tpusa.com slash SAS.
[00:00:53]  Seth Dylan is here, everybody.
[00:00:54]  Buckle up.
[00:00:55]  Here we go.
[00:00:57]  Charlie, what you've done is incredible here.
[00:00:59]  Maybe Charlie Kirk is on the college campus.
[00:01:01]  I want you to know we are lucky to have Charlie Kirk.
[00:01:04]  Charlie Kirk's running the White House, folks.
[00:01:08]  I want to thank Charlie.
[00:01:09]  He's an incredible guy.
[00:01:10]  His spirit is love of this country.
[00:01:11]  He's done an amazing job building one of the most powerful youth organizations ever created.
[00:01:17]  Turning point USA.
[00:01:18]  We will not embrace the ideas that have destroyed countries, destroyed lives, and we are going to fight for freedom on campuses across the country.
[00:01:27]  That's why we are here.
[00:01:29]  Hey, everybody.
[00:01:30]  Welcome to this episode of the Charlie Kirk Show.
[00:01:33]  With us today is Seth Dylan, who is the CEO of Babylon B.
[00:01:39]  I love your website, by the way, Seth.
[00:01:41]  I have to say, it is funny.
[00:01:43]  It is timely, and it is sometimes on the edge.
[00:01:46]  Welcome to the Charlie Kirk Show.
[00:01:48]  Thanks for having me on, Charlie.
[00:01:49]  Glad to have you as a fan.
[00:01:51]  So tell us, how did you get into the satire publishing business?
[00:01:55]  What I love most about the Babylon Be is that it goes after Democrats and it goes after kind of leftist third rail political issues.
[00:02:04]  How did you get into this?
[00:02:07]  Well, I actually acquired it.
[00:02:09]  I didn't found it.
[00:02:09]  Adam Ford is the founder and he started it back in 2016 and I just saw it as like the best thing on the internet.
[00:02:15]  I mean, it was just blowing up really quickly.
[00:02:17]  It's getting a lot of attention and it was really quality, conservative comedy that wasn't cheesy, which was a breath of fresh air.
[00:02:26]  And so, you know, I approached Adam just looking to invest in it initially, but he was looking to get out largely because of tech censorship, which I'm sure we're going to talk a little bit about in this discussion.
[00:02:35]  But he was trying to find an exit.
[00:02:37]  And so we were able to work out a deal.
[00:02:40]  I saw it as just a great opportunity with this property that was just growing and blowing up and having a big impact.
[00:02:44]  And satire has always been something that I thought was just the most effective tool for speaking truth to culture anyway.
[00:02:50]  So tremendous opportunity I couldn't pass up.
[00:02:53]  So we worked out a deal back in 2018 and I've been running it ever since.
[00:02:56]  So how big have you guys grown?
[00:02:58]  I get the articles sent every day from Babylon B. Can you give us an idea of how big your presence is?
[00:03:06]  We've got, well, we're bumping up on a million followers on Facebook.
[00:03:10]  I think we have 800 something thousand close around there on Twitter as well.
[00:03:15]  We're doing like 20 million page views a month in traffic.
[00:03:18]  So we're getting a lot of eyeballs on the site, a lot of reach.
[00:03:22]  It was just, you know, a fraction of that a couple of years ago.
[00:03:25]  So we've grown astronomically.
[00:03:28]  So satire is something that I agree with you is one of the most effective ways to engage politically and culturally.
[00:03:35]  It's always supposed to satire, the best form of satire is where you can't tell whether or not the line has been crossed.
[00:03:43]  You can't tell whether it's true or not.
[00:03:44]  It's just right within that kind of makes you say, wait, that could be true.
[00:03:48]  That's the best type of satire.
[00:03:50]  For my favorite, my other favorite satire site is CNN or MSNBC because I can't always tell whether or not what they're saying is true.
[00:03:58]  What I love about your site, and I could just flip through some of the articles here right now, is that it really pinpoints the absurdity of the left and kind of the double standard that all of us exist under.
[00:04:09]  Can you talk about just the utility that satire you think that actually fits into American discourse, especially with as much fake news we live under and just the total activist nature of the journalist class?
[00:04:26]  Well, I mean, the utility of it, I think the thing that satire does most effectively, more effectively than anything else, is it ridicules bad ideas.
[00:04:33]  And, you know, you've got so many bad ideas out there that are just on the face of them absurd.
[00:04:39]  And sometimes the best response is to laugh at them and to make a joke of them and to mock them mercilessly.
[00:04:44]  You know, and it's not about attacking people as individuals.
[00:04:47]  It's about attacking the bad ideas that they're advancing and how damaging they are.
[00:04:50]  And I think we need to, you know, safeguard ourselves, especially our youth, against being, you know, inoculate them against these bad ideas that they don't adopt them and try to bring them into, you know, our legislative bodies and our society and our culture.
[00:05:05]  So, you know, getting a handle on that and using satire effectively in that way, I think that's, you know, that's one of the things that we've done well over the course of the last several years.
[00:05:17]  It's one of the reasons that our site resonates with a lot of people.
[00:05:19]  You know, they see it as having an impact for precisely that reason.
[00:05:23]  What you mentioned a minute ago, though, about the best satire being really close to the truth.
[00:05:28]  That's absolutely true.
[00:05:29]  I mean, you know, jokes are funny because of their proximity to the truth.
[00:05:32]  They have to be like somewhat believable or they're not true.
[00:05:36]  If you're so detached from reality that you can clearly tell that it's ridiculous satire, it's not going to be that funny.
[00:05:42]  And that's one of the attacks.
[00:05:44]  One of the ways that the left tries to come after us and censor us is by suggesting that we're riding too close to the truth on purpose so that we can mislead people and spread misinformation and get people angry and fuel the flames of discord or however Snopes puts it.
[00:06:00]  And that's, you know, it's really disingenuous on their part.
[00:06:03]  They're the ones actually putting out misinformation by saying that about us because all we're doing is trying to make jokes, trying to make light of things, trying to, you know, with mockery and irony and sarcasm, you know, do our satirical thing.
[00:06:14]  So it does have to be close to the truth.
[00:06:17]  And one of the challenges that we're finding today is that it's difficult to go beyond the truth a little bit and exaggerate it when reality is as crazy as it is.
[00:06:28]  It's absolutely insane.
[00:06:29]  Yeah, it's like the work is already done for you.
[00:06:31]  I love these.
[00:06:31]  I'm going to read four of these.
[00:06:32]  They're hilarious.
[00:06:34]  Senate Girls Big Tech on How to Get Their Printer Working.
[00:06:37]  Perfect.
[00:06:38]  Fauci, quote, we must obey the government without question as the founding fathers intended.
[00:06:43]  Yeah.
[00:06:44]  Gavin Newsom claims expensive dinner party was a setup.
[00:06:47]  This is perfect.
[00:06:49]  And modern day rebels just plan on celebrating holidays just like normal.
[00:06:53]  I mean, that could be an article on the Atlantic.
[00:06:56]  I mean, it is so incredibly within the kind of, it's like one interval or one or two degrees away of something that I was probably reading, you know, right near there.
[00:07:06]  I love this one.
[00:07:06]  Skynet introduces new line of voting machines.
[00:07:09]  Perfect.
[00:07:10]  Yeah.
[00:07:10]  Now, I don't know if you've seen it or not, but sometimes like Kyle, our editor-in-chief, who wrote probably half of those, he will highlight sometimes these fulfilled prophecies, he calls them, where, you know, we'll write one of these pieces and then like 10 minutes later or 10 hours later or 10 days later, it actually happens.
[00:07:26]  That happens with regularity.
[00:07:27]  Like once a week, one of our stories comes true.
[00:07:30]  And it's precisely because the world's so crazy.
[00:07:32]  What we do is we take a look at, okay, what's happening in the world today?
[00:07:36]  What are the major headlines?
[00:07:36]  What are the silly things and ridiculous things people are saying and doing?
[00:07:39]  And we exaggerate it a little bit.
[00:07:40]  That's what satire does.
[00:07:41]  We exaggerate it.
[00:07:42]  Well, it's just a matter of time before our exaggerations bump up against reality and somebody goes and does something as absurd as what we joked about them doing.
[00:07:50]  So that's happening constantly.
[00:07:52]  No, I see some of these that, I mean, I'm not even sure if, because they're published, they could already be true.
[00:07:58]  I mean, I love it.
[00:08:01]  So you have a greatest hits area.
[00:08:04]  And, you know, some of these say, Kai, these are the best stories you've ever had.
[00:08:10]  This one actually, I think, almost came true from March Biden.
[00:08:14]  I'm the only candidate who can beat Ronald Reagan.
[00:08:16]  It's pretty close.
[00:08:18]  It is.
[00:08:18]  It is close.
[00:08:19]  Who was it?
[00:08:20]  He said Bush, right?
[00:08:21]  Yeah, that's right.
[00:08:21]  I said it's close to what he said.
[00:08:23]  Yeah, it's very close to what he said.
[00:08:24]  Yeah.
[00:08:25]  Yeah.
[00:08:25]  We would consider that like partially fulfilled.
[00:08:28]  Yeah, there you go.
[00:08:29]  Based on the tech ability to censor.
[00:08:33]  So you get censored a lot.
[00:08:35]  You're in these constant fights against Twitter and Facebook and all of this because but you tell jokes.
[00:08:41]  You are a comedy website.
[00:08:43]  You are satire.
[00:08:44]  You don't have an investigative news division.
[00:08:47]  You have a bunch of witty, you know, probably late 20, early 30, you know, people that could have been screenwriters, but they aren't Bolshevik enough to get into that community that work for you that purely tell jokes in the news cycle.
[00:09:00]  Tell us your experiences with censorship.
[00:09:03]  So it manifests itself in a couple of different ways.
[00:09:06]  And with satire, you know, it's a unique thing.
[00:09:08]  It's not like they're not coming after us by saying, you know, that one of our stories, well, okay, I'll give you the first example.
[00:09:18]  This really started back with Facebook when they first started implementing fact-checking with third-party fact-checkers, right?
[00:09:22]  It's a couple years ago.
[00:09:23]  They're concerned about misinformation and how it's going to affect elections and stuff like that.
[00:09:28]  So they partner with Snopes.
[00:09:30]  And then Snopes starts fact-checking our stuff.
[00:09:32]  And the piece that they fact-checked that set this whole thing off initially was the most absurd thing ever.
[00:09:37]  You may have seen this.
[00:09:39]  The CNN purchases industrial washing machines to spin the news in before publishing it.
[00:09:44]  And it's like, it's on the face of it, it's a clear joke.
[00:09:47]  That's not one of those ones that's like you could mistake it for reality.
[00:09:51]  But Snopes fact-checked it, claiming that a lot of people were confused by it.
[00:09:55]  They needed to set the record straight.
[00:09:56]  So they rated it false.
[00:09:57]  And jokes are not true or false, by the way.
[00:09:59]  Jokes are funny or not, but they're not true or false.
[00:10:02]  So Snopes tries to apply this true or false binary to our stuff, rates it false.
[00:10:07]  Facebook looks at that and says, okay, you guys need to quit putting out false information or we're going to ban you.
[00:10:12]  We're going to demonetize you, whatever.
[00:10:14]  So they threatened us with that stuff.
[00:10:16]  So we had to push back against that.
[00:10:17]  And we've been dealing with that ever since.
[00:10:18]  I mean, they continue to use fact checkers and we continue to get our stuff flagged as a hoax or something like that.
[00:10:25]  So that happens all the time.
[00:10:27]  And Snopes, what was really difficult with Snopes and the reason that it was really concerning to us where it wasn't just like, okay, you know, sometimes people misunderstand jokes.
[00:10:35]  They take them seriously.
[00:10:36]  So whatever, a fact check is harmless.
[00:10:39]  Their fact checks weren't harmless because when you looked at how they fact-checked the onion, it was always, okay, this is a satire site, the funniest satire site in the world.
[00:10:46]  Just laugh it off and move on.
[00:10:48]  That's kind of how they would treat the onion stuff.
[00:10:50]  But our stuff, when they would fact check it, they'd be like, oh, this is skirting dangerously close to the truth.
[00:10:55]  It's maliciously misleading and it's dangerous, harmful misinformation.
[00:11:00]  You know, they were impugning our motives every time they fact-checked us.
[00:11:03]  And so we actually had to get legal involved and send them a cease and desist to stop slandering us, basically.
[00:11:11]  So that's one area is with the fact-checking.
[00:11:14]  The other thing that's been going on where there's been kind of like, I wouldn't say it's a concerted effort, but everyone seems to be in sync on the left with how they approach us.
[00:11:22]  And you've got these people like Brian Stelter, Donnie O'Sullivan, and Kevin Roos at New York Times.
[00:11:29]  You've got CNN personalities, New York Times people out there talking about us on Twitter all the time about how we're a fake satire site.
[00:11:36]  You know, we're pretending to be a satire site so we can get around Facebook's rules.
[00:11:41]  And what they're trying to do there is just set a predicate for censorship.
[00:11:44]  They're trying to suggest we're not really satire.
[00:11:46]  We're a fake news site.
[00:11:47]  So Facebook needs to shut us down.
[00:11:49]  Twitter needs to shut us down.
[00:11:50]  That's the implication.
[00:11:51]  They don't come out and say it, but they imply that that's what we're doing.
[00:11:54]  That's what needs to happen.
[00:11:55]  And oddly enough, we did have Facebook suspend us recently out of nowhere.
[00:12:00]  And they claimed it was a mistake.
[00:12:02]  We get hit with these mistakes all the time.
[00:12:03]  So the censorship is a weird thing.
[00:12:05]  It's like people are constantly working the angles to try to find a way to put us in violation of the community standards of these social networks so they can shut us down.
[00:12:16]  And it's, you know, they're reaching far to try to do it too.
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[00:13:39]  So I have an idea for you.
[00:13:41]  I think that you should start writing satire about the fact checkers.
[00:13:44]  I think you should go after Snopes and say Snopes now rates Winston Churchill's famous we shall never surrender speech as mostly false.
[00:13:54]  I think you should go after the people that try to attack you.
[00:13:56]  The more you do, the more you ridicule them, the harder it will be for them to actually censor you.
[00:14:01]  I'm a big believer in that.
[00:14:03]  Yeah, we do that.
[00:14:05]  We slap back at them all the time.
[00:14:06]  We've hit CNN a bunch of times every time they criticize us.
[00:14:09]  I'll read you this headline we did on Snopes because Snopes published a survey that said too many people believe satire is real.
[00:14:16]  So we did a piece that said concerning survey finds too many people believe Snopes is a legitimate fact-checking.
[00:14:21]  That's terrific.
[00:14:22]  I love that.
[00:14:22]  You know, so we just hit them right back.
[00:14:24]  So we do that a lot.
[00:14:26]  So you were mentioning being censored by these tech companies, and you said that Brian Stelter and many others say that you're not a real satire site.
[00:14:36]  What is a real satire site exactly?
[00:14:39]  Isn't that somewhat self-contradictory?
[00:14:42]  A real satire?
[00:14:43]  Okay, yeah.
[00:14:44]  A fake satire site.
[00:14:46]  It would be like it's real artificial turf.

=== Fighting Back Against Censorship (05:27) ===

[00:14:49]  I don't quite understand.
[00:14:50]  Right.
[00:14:50]  A double negative or something, right?
[00:14:53]  Well, you know, I think that they think satire, what they consider fair game is anything that doesn't poke at them and their sacred cows and their views and values.
[00:15:05]  You know, they love humor.
[00:15:06]  They love satire.
[00:15:06]  The left love satire and they're good at it.
[00:15:08]  They're great at mocking people.
[00:15:09]  They're great at making fun of people.
[00:15:11]  You know, all of their late night shows and SNL and The Onion and all of these things are quality.
[00:15:17]  They're all really funny.
[00:15:19]  Well, I mean, SNL has faded a lot, but you've got a lot of good humor on the left.
[00:15:24]  They're very good at it.
[00:15:25]  They're just not good at taking a joke.
[00:15:26]  All of a sudden, they get really serious and they bristle and they think of it more as an attack.
[00:15:31]  And it's like, okay, well, if you can dish it, you got to be willing to take it.
[00:15:35]  But as far as fake satire, I mean, I don't even, yeah, I don't even know what that means.
[00:15:39]  What does that even mean?
[00:15:40]  Satire is fake.
[00:15:42]  But they, well, right.
[00:15:44]  And their own site.
[00:15:45]  I mean, so you say that one out of 10 of your predictions come true.
[00:15:47]  Is that right?
[00:15:48]  And they're not even predictions.
[00:15:51]  I don't know about one in 10, but once a week or so, we have something.
[00:15:55]  Well, that's a much better, it's a much better track record than Nate Silver.
[00:15:58]  So I'll take that.
[00:15:59]  I'll take satire over a 538 or Cook political report every day.
[00:16:04]  Yeah.
[00:16:04]  So, what do you think that the fight that you're currently engaged in to be able to still mock, show irony, and use sarcasm and be able to tell jokes?
[00:16:15]  What do you think your fight tells us about the broader cultural struggle we're in in our country?
[00:16:19]  What do you think your placement in it tells us that could kind of fit into a broader narrative?
[00:16:24]  Well, I mean, it's just kind of an indication of where we're at right now.
[00:16:27]  I mean, we're in this, you know, with all this cancel culture stuff and this intolerance, extreme intolerance of views that the left doesn't like, opinions, beliefs, whether they're religious beliefs or political ideology or whatever it is.
[00:16:41]  The deep intolerance that's there is manifesting itself to the point where we can't even make jokes anymore.
[00:16:46]  I mean, comedy isn't even allowed.
[00:16:49]  And the fact that they're being disingenuous and dishonest in their efforts to try to like stamp it out and shut us down, it's just, you know, it's indicative of the dark place that we're in.
[00:16:59]  I think it's all the more reason.
[00:17:00]  You know, people will say, oh, you know, the world is so crazy, you know, you can't even do satire anymore.
[00:17:05]  It's that much more important, I think, for us to be doing satire right now.
[00:17:09]  It's more important than ever because we have to be able, there has to be somebody that's there that's really, you know, the arguments and refutation, the kind of stuff that you do is extremely important to engage people and shut down what they're saying and offer your case, your positive case for what you believe and why you believe it.
[00:17:26]  But, you know, there's a great quote by GK Chesterton.
[00:17:29]  He said something to the effect of, you know, humor can get under the door while seriousness is still fumbling at the handle.
[00:17:36]  And I think that that's, you know, one of the reasons that satire is so important to keep going, to keep having a voice, because the humor is just so effective in making its points.
[00:17:46]  It's incredibly effective.
[00:17:48]  And I mean, I've said for a long time, we did a whole segment on this on our program that America isn't laughing nearly enough because we take ourselves so seriously.
[00:17:56]  And that's part of the biggest problems with the left is they have no capacity for self-deprecation.
[00:18:02]  They have no tolerance whatsoever to actually allow any form of criticism or any form of cross-examination of their horrendous ideas.
[00:18:13]  Yeah, and even to the point where they're eating their own at this point.
[00:18:16]  You know, they're going after their own comedians, their own voices, people who ordinarily they considered heroes and idols.
[00:18:22]  You know, they're attacking them.
[00:18:24]  And you look at Joe Rogan, I mean, they try and cancel him all the time.
[00:18:27]  I would put him and Dave Portnoy in the uncancelable category.
[00:18:31]  And the funny thing is that I hardly agree with everything that Rogan and Portnoy say.
[00:18:37]  That's not the point.
[00:18:38]  It's not, I really don't find, I don't seek out comedians for agreement.
[00:18:42]  That's not my op, that's not my optimal box that needs to be checked.
[00:18:47]  It's do they make me laugh and do they make me look at things differently?
[00:18:51]  And Rogan does that.
[00:18:52]  Again, I philosophically agree with him on some things and I totally respect what he's built.
[00:18:56]  It's unbelievable.
[00:18:58]  But he's funny and he has a good way about him.
[00:19:00]  And I think it's interesting.
[00:19:02]  But people say, I don't like him because he says mean things about, you know, transgender people or whatever.
[00:19:07]  Like, okay, well, maybe he was joking and you can't take a joke.
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=== Confronting Leftist Fallacies (13:40) ===

[00:20:16]  So, Seth, we were talking about the death of comedy.
[00:20:19]  And as we've mentioned before, if you look at late night comedians, the audience that they have in front of them does not laugh.
[00:20:26]  They clap.
[00:20:27]  I was watching Bill Maher recently, and Bill Maher, he's a little bit of a jerk.
[00:20:31]  He could be a little prickly.
[00:20:33]  I think he can be funny.
[00:20:34]  I think he does have that in him.
[00:20:36]  He's, I think, overly political at times.
[00:20:38]  And I can't stand, I should say, can't stand.
[00:20:41]  I completely disagree with his opinions on religion.
[00:20:44]  But it was super interesting.
[00:20:45]  He had about an eight and a half minute monologue where he went off on the Democrat Party, where he said, we are now, the Democrat Party is the party of every woke, fragile, you know, social justice warrior Karen out there.
[00:20:58]  It's like, that's no way to be able to win elections.
[00:21:01]  And what was so stunning is that he had a studio audience in front of him and it was dead silent.
[00:21:07]  No claps, no laughs.
[00:21:09]  You could hear people say, that's not funny.
[00:21:11]  That's not funny, Bill.
[00:21:12]  Stop it.
[00:21:12]  I thought I liked you.
[00:21:14]  And what's very interesting is that the Democrats and the left, they're okay with using humor and mockery against the other side, but the definition of comedy is being able to also look introspectively and also be able to make fun of yourself.
[00:21:27]  Jerry Seinfeld always used to say is that you are not a comedian if you cannot lead with a joke about yourself.
[00:21:32]  And Seinfeld, the greatest television show ever created, bar none, because it was the most brilliantly written comedy ever, because it really is about nothing and it was allowed to be done with no swearing and no inappropriate material.
[00:21:44]  Sometimes there were some veiled references, but they did a great job, is because the whole idea of Seinfeld is we're going to make fun of ourselves first.
[00:21:53]  We're going to make fun of people living on the Upper West Side who are Jewish mostly that kind of have a certain like pattern of living and we're going to make fun of that and then we'll make fun of everyone else with it.
[00:22:04]  And they were enormously successful.
[00:22:07]  Yep.
[00:22:08]  Yep.
[00:22:08]  And I think that's one of the things when I was first looking at the Babylon Bee is that it was so refreshing, the self-deprecating humor that was there.
[00:22:15]  I mean, it was cost, you know, it's a Christian site.
[00:22:18]  It's a conservative site.
[00:22:19]  Christians and conservatives aren't spared on this site.
[00:22:21]  We make fun of worship leaders and pastors and, you know, little theological stuff and inside church jokes, you know, all kinds of stuff.
[00:22:30]  We're poking at ourselves all the time.
[00:22:31]  And that's one of the values, like you said, of the purposes of comedy is to sometimes, obviously, just to entertain you, make you laugh, but also to make you think, to make you like look at kind of your own issues, your own beliefs, some of your own hypocrisy and challenge yourself, convict yourself a little bit.
[00:22:46]  And I think the Babylon B has done a pretty good job of that.
[00:22:49]  We continually try to do that.
[00:22:50]  And our audience holds us to that all the time.
[00:22:51]  They're like, look, you're making fun of the left too much.
[00:22:53]  Make fun of yourselves more.
[00:22:54]  And, you know, fair enough.
[00:22:56]  We do need to make fun of ourselves and balance that out a little bit because I think that's healthy.
[00:23:00]  It's very healthy to do that.
[00:23:01]  Just like it's not healthy to be in an echo chamber all the time hearing people who agree with you.
[00:23:05]  It's good to confront other ideas.
[00:23:06]  It's also good to confront yourself with your own jokes.
[00:23:08]  Yeah, there was one you guys wrote a year, a year and a half ago, which said like mega church pastor checks Instagram follower count, you know, in between worship, like in between standing ovations or like people like just kind of looking.
[00:23:20]  It's something like that.
[00:23:21]  That just kind of goes at the heart of kind of big Christian ink and kind of, it was something of that variation.
[00:23:28]  So you run Babylon B. You also have thinker.org, which we talk a lot about on this program that allows people to consume big ideas very quickly and succinctly.
[00:23:37]  Tell us about why you either bought or you started that project.
[00:23:42]  Yeah, we started Thinker because there's a market for this stuff.
[00:23:47]  You know, people are, first of all, they're short on time, you know, and they're not finding the time.
[00:23:52]  They're not fitting reading into their lives the way that they want to.
[00:23:56]  But a lot of the apps that are catering to that market that's looking for something like it aren't providing them with books that really give you a well-rounded view of things.
[00:24:08]  You'll get a lot of like self-help stuff or just like top-selling bestsellers or business and marketing.
[00:24:15]  There's lots of little focuses and niches and stuff like that.
[00:24:18]  But what we're trying to do with Thinker is expose people to ideas that they otherwise wouldn't encounter in these other apps or even in their schools.
[00:24:25]  You know, a lot of like what Turning Point is doing or what Prager U is doing, you know, addressing a lot of these issues from another perspective that people who have been so indoctrinated with leftist stuff, it's like it's refreshing to see that there are other viewpoints that are articulated well.
[00:24:41]  There are intellectuals on the other side.
[00:24:43]  And so we try to really offer a balanced library there.
[00:24:46]  I mean, you'll read things like C.S. Lewis books on Thinker that you're not going to find on these other apps.
[00:24:52]  And it exposes you to ideas, religion, theology, philosophy, political ideology that you otherwise wouldn't encounter.
[00:24:59]  And we have our promo code thinker.org/slash Charlie, and people should sign up right now to do that on our program.
[00:25:06]  So, Seth, I think what this all really comes down to, especially when it comes to comedy and it comes to the expression of ideas, it comes down to are you going to tolerate speech that you do not like?
[00:25:17]  And the left and the entire kind of power structure that runs our country, instead of trying to win the argument, they try to destroy the arguer.
[00:25:27]  This is a pattern that they use time and time again.
[00:25:30]  Instead of actually trying to do the difficult thing of winning an argument, which actually usually no one actually wins an argument.
[00:25:36]  This is one of the biggest kind of fallacies out there when it comes to free speech.
[00:25:41]  It's very rarely when you have a debate, is there a clear winner?
[00:25:45]  Typically, there is a slight favored person, but there's some nuance.
[00:25:50]  And usually, the audience will say, I think both sides made good points, but I tend to be more on this side, but I can see where they're coming from.
[00:25:57]  All of a sudden, then it kind of deflates a lot of the rigid dogma that guides a lot of the political conversations in our country, almost all from the left.
[00:26:06]  And that's one of the reasons they don't like speech, is it's really, really hard to make a country in your image when you allow speech to occur, because from a utilitarian standpoint, it actually, by definition, makes people less outraged and far more understanding of where the other side might come from.
[00:26:22]  But the speech that they really don't like is critical speech, and jokes and comedy are that kind of speech.
[00:26:29]  And so now you guys have been victimized by big tech, specifically because you're a successful form of ridiculing speech against the ruling class.
[00:26:38]  And look, Stalin and Mao and Pol Pot, Mussolini, they all went after the comedians, right?
[00:26:43]  They all had public executions of court gestures and kind of people that had fun with things.
[00:26:48]  And they would make, they'd always be mocked.
[00:26:51]  Those are the first people that were always attacked in these countries.
[00:26:54]  Can you talk about the role that you think you're playing right now in the battle for freedom of speech?
[00:27:00]  Because I don't think we do a good enough job of explaining exactly why we need freedom of speech.
[00:27:04]  We sometimes just say, well, it's important that everyone gets their voice heard.
[00:27:06]  Like, that's not actually the reason.
[00:27:08]  The reason is actually a lot more moral and fundamental than that.
[00:27:13]  Yeah.
[00:27:14]  Geez.
[00:27:15]  Well, I mean, we are certainly on the front lines of it.
[00:27:18]  And I don't know if in this case, they're coming after us first necessarily.
[00:27:23]  We may not be big enough for us to have been the first target, but we're certainly one of the main targets right now.
[00:27:29]  And as far as the importance of it, I mean, you know, when it comes to exactly what you're saying, it's this ad hominem approach on the left, right?
[00:27:39]  Personal attacks rather than engaging the arguments.
[00:27:42]  And even that is something that we have to make sure that we're targeting with our satire to point out how ridiculous and fallacious that is.
[00:27:48]  You know, rather than actually engaging on the points, you know, they want to tear down and attack the person who's making them.
[00:27:54]  And we've been, I've personally been a victim of cancel culture myself, where I was disinvited from an event, you know, because of things that I had said on Twitter.
[00:28:02]  University or something, right?
[00:28:04]  Yeah, yeah, my own alma mater had been a little bit different.
[00:28:06]  Which one was that?
[00:28:07]  Palm Beach Atlantic University.
[00:28:08]  Yeah.
[00:28:09]  Palm Beach.
[00:28:10]  I thought they were civilized over there.
[00:28:13]  Well, they weren't until the Twitter mob decided they didn't want to.
[00:28:16]  Oh, I had no idea that it was.
[00:28:17]  I thought it was some other Bolshevik institution.
[00:28:20]  PBA did that to you.
[00:28:23]  Well, what they did, I was supposed to talk in the chapel, and some, you know, some students were objecting to that.
[00:28:28]  And so they tried to move me out of the chapel, citing the same reason the students were giving that it's a sacred space and someone as controversial as me shouldn't be there.
[00:28:36]  And I'm like, well, if I'm not welcome in the chapel, I don't feel welcome there at all.
[00:28:39]  So they were catering to the mob and trying to do what the mob wanted.
[00:28:43]  They're going to hear from me.
[00:28:44]  I will go to every one of their major donors.
[00:28:46]  I know all of them in Palm Beach and I will tell them to divest all of their gifts from PBA.
[00:28:50]  I will make a personal mission of that.
[00:28:53]  Well, you know, it's an unfortunate thing.
[00:28:55]  You know, we need to have more backbone when it comes to dealing with these things.
[00:28:58]  But yeah, the importance of free speech, like you said, is absolutely a moral thing.
[00:29:01]  I mean, it's the healthiest thing for our society is, you know, people being able to engage in the ideas, talk about what they believe and why they believe it, have the freedom to do that, and let things win on their merits.
[00:29:14]  And so, you know, to live in a culture where, and this is the thing, the authoritarianism isn't really coming from the government right now.
[00:29:23]  It's all the tools, it's the media, it's the big tech companies working together in concert.
[00:29:29]  The concerted effort they're putting on shaping what you're allowed to say and when you're allowed to say it.
[00:29:34]  All of that is coming.
[00:29:36]  It's all our society itself.
[00:29:38]  People, little Karens are everywhere enforcing this stuff.
[00:29:42]  It's an army of them that are out there.
[00:29:44]  So it's at every level.
[00:29:45]  It's not just in the government, which is actually, it makes it very insidious and scary that it's that pervasive.
[00:29:52]  And so it has to be, you know, it has to be fought on different fronts, I think, than it's been fought before when it comes directly.
[00:29:57]  When the boot that's on your neck is the governments, it's a different battle than what we're dealing with right now.
[00:30:02]  Well, and when you hear something you don't like, if you want to respond and say, and clear the record, then you're a believer in free speech.
[00:30:12]  If you want to repress and shut that person up, then you're not.
[00:30:15]  It's that simple.
[00:30:16]  Because you're always going to encounter things you don't like.
[00:30:18]  So when I watch one of the comedians come after me or whatever, I'm not like, oh, I'm going to go try to get them.
[00:30:24]  I'm like, oh, well, maybe I should, or I'm just going to ignore it.
[00:30:27]  Like, I don't really care that much.
[00:30:28]  It's, I mean, and this is something that's so interesting.
[00:30:30]  It's completely opposite than how people view conservatives in the mainstream press.
[00:30:35]  And it's completely opposite that what people think that Christians and conservatives have, which is you and I are not plotting here, being like, you know what?
[00:30:42]  How are we going to go shut down the atheist Facebook pages?
[00:30:45]  That's what we wanted to spend our time today.
[00:30:47]  How are we going to organize boycotts and try to say we need to shut down the instead?
[00:30:52]  We're kind of like, how do we make better arguments so less people are atheist?
[00:30:55]  It's a completely different way to approach kind of our desired objective.
[00:31:00]  And what's so creepy is that the left views this so much, so theologically.
[00:31:05]  I mean, they believe that if you dare disagree with them on a singular policy point, you're a heretic and that you must pay a very serious price for that.
[00:31:13]  And so I want you to comment, though, on kind of the silent censorship that exists.
[00:31:18]  I call this the invisible handcuff.
[00:31:20]  You know, Adam Smith had the invisible hand, but there's an invisible handcuff that exists in our country now where people feel as if they can't speak out because of the potential fear of retribution.
[00:31:31]  You dealt with it at Palm Beach Atlantic.
[00:31:33]  How are young people supposed to deal with this?
[00:31:36]  Well, okay, so this is one of these things where it's either we either all get bold and courageous or we all suffer the same fate.
[00:31:44]  And I've told people this before when they, when I've had students come up to me or people, young people in their careers who are like, I can't talk about what I believe or why I believe at work because I think I'll get fired or something like that.
[00:31:54]  And that fear, they end up self-censoring because they have that fear.
[00:31:58]  But as long as they continue self-censoring, what they're doing is they're fueling this whole system.
[00:32:04]  They're fueling their own repression by doing that.
[00:32:09]  And I understand that, you know, for someone like me, running my own business and not working for somebody else, I can say what I think and not have to worry about that.
[00:32:17]  And I understand that it's a different situation for somebody else in another circumstance.
[00:32:22]  But if people don't get bold and actually stand up for what they believe and why they believe it and be willing to say, you know what?
[00:32:29]  I'm allowed to have different viewpoints than you.
[00:32:32]  I'm allowed to think and feel what I think and feel.
[00:32:34]  If people don't do that, then we will all suffer this fate.
[00:32:37]  I mean, we're all that the pressure that's there, it is only allowed to succeed because of the passivity of the people that it's being applied to.
[00:32:46]  That's right.
[00:32:46]  Yeah, the culture of the left will push you.
[00:32:50]  The cultural left will push you as far as you allow them to.
[00:32:52]  And these people are actually brittle cowards.
[00:32:54]  The moment you speak out against them, they run to the hills.
[00:32:57]  They hate controversy.
[00:32:58]  They hate confrontation.
[00:33:00]  They have no reason whatsoever to be able to do what they're doing.
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=== Building a Monetized Business (05:53) ===

[00:33:56]  Seth, I want you to talk about the aspiring business owners that are listening to us.
[00:34:01]  You've built a very impressive kind of business track record.
[00:34:05]  One thing that drives me the most, let's just say, mad is when young people say, I'm going to college to study entrepreneurship.
[00:34:15]  I say, why would you go to study entrepreneurship?
[00:34:17]  You're not going to learn anything to study entrepreneurship.
[00:34:20]  You do entrepreneurship.
[00:34:22]  You don't study it.
[00:34:23]  And you're probably learning from people that have never created anything.
[00:34:26]  How did you build your business?
[00:34:27]  How did you do this?
[00:34:30]  What is your advice?
[00:34:31]  And what would you tell someone that says, well, I want to go be an entrepreneur, which by the way, half infuriates me because this really cool buzzword where they think you get to have all the nicest cars and all the freedom.
[00:34:40]  And it's actually pretty awful at times.
[00:34:43]  I think that a lot of people, when they describe themselves as entrepreneurs, they're basically unemployed and they're using a different word for it, right?
[00:34:49]  That's right.
[00:34:51]  But a more glorified term, I guess, but it's been sullied by that overusage.
[00:34:56]  I think, you know, well, okay, my history, my experience started out in the internet marketing world.
[00:35:01]  I got into a booming industry early on in like 2004, 2005.
[00:35:05]  I started working in like the search marketing and search engine optimization world, you know, with Google AdWords and these different marketing platforms that companies were starting to dump billions of dollars into.
[00:35:16]  And so I was managing ad campaigns for a lot of different companies.
[00:35:18]  And so I'm like, I'm running ads for like insurance companies or lawyers or people that do like garage storage build outs or steel-toe shoes or waterproof boots, stuff like anything, anything you can imagine.
[00:35:31]  And so I kind of learned the ins and outs of how to like drive traffic to websites and monetize it on the back end and make it all work, get a return on your ad spend.
[00:35:40]  And I learned that for a number of different businesses, whether you're selling in retail or generating leads or whatever you're doing.
[00:35:46]  So I got a really good feel for how all of that worked.
[00:35:49]  And I decided I would strike out on my own and just run my own internet marketing agency.
[00:35:55]  So I started doing ad campaigns for my own clients.
[00:35:58]  And I very quickly realized.
[00:35:59]  having clients is like having bosses.
[00:36:01]  You know, I have like 30 clients and it means I have like 30 bosses.
[00:36:04]  I'm answering to all of them.
[00:36:06]  So I quickly wanted to transition out of that and I basically decided, look, I know how to make money online because I've run all these campaigns.
[00:36:15]  I just need to work with someone who knows how to build applications, web applications, apps, things like that.
[00:36:20]  And so I partnered with my brother back in 2012.
[00:36:23]  We struck out kind of on the side.
[00:36:25]  He was working as an engineer and I was working as an internet marketing manager.
[00:36:29]  And I said, hey, look, I've got all kinds of ideas for sites I want to build.
[00:36:33]  If you can do the back end of it and build this stuff, I'll do the marketing and the business development and manage all of it.
[00:36:39]  And so we started dabbling on the side a little bit.
[00:36:42]  And within like six months, we were bringing enough revenue on our side business we could quit our jobs.
[00:36:47]  So we just very quickly got our feet wet just trying stuff.
[00:36:51]  And not everything succeeds.
[00:36:52]  You know, we've had acquisitions that failed.
[00:36:53]  We've had startups that failed.
[00:36:55]  But the idea has always been to throw some stuff out there and see what sticks and just keep at it.
[00:37:01]  And it doesn't have to be a situation where you quit your job to do it.
[00:37:04]  You can always get started on the side and play around with it.
[00:37:06]  But it's a trial and error thing.
[00:37:08]  I don't think I ever could have studied anything that would have prepared me for it or taught me how to do it.
[00:37:12]  You just got to dive in.
[00:37:14]  So it's very good advice.
[00:37:17]  What do you say to young people that are under the belief that you can't succeed in this country, that there's too many barriers, kind of that victimology viewpoint that has really kind of infected a lot of young people?
[00:37:32]  Oh my goodness, man.
[00:37:34]  Look, based on my experience, it doesn't matter who you are, where you are, especially in the internet age, with the tools that are available at our disposal, anybody can succeed.
[00:37:45]  Literally anybody.
[00:37:46]  All you need is a computer and an internet connection.
[00:37:48]  I mean, it might help to have a credit card that has at least a few hundred dollars of available balance on it.
[00:37:54]  But, you know, you can, anybody can get started with something, have an idea and push it out there and make it work.
[00:38:02]  I mean, the methods of advertising, just like in my background in search marketing, search marketing allows you to connect with buyers, searchers who are looking specifically for what you're selling.
[00:38:12]  It's not like putting a billboard out there where like maybe someone who wants your service will see it.
[00:38:16]  It's like you only show your ads to people who are actively searching for whatever you're selling.
[00:38:21]  That's so efficient and effective.
[00:38:22]  You're going to do sales in that environment.
[00:38:24]  So it's so easy to just with the internet in these days to start something up and just make your own, you know, make chart your own path.
[00:38:33]  I completely agree.
[00:38:34]  How do people follow you and find out more about your websites and the projects that you're doing?
[00:38:39]  Babylon Bee and thinker.org?
[00:38:43]  Yep.
[00:38:43]  Yeah.
[00:38:43]  Babylon Bee.
[00:38:44]  We now have NotTheB.
[00:38:45]  I don't know if you've heard of NotTheB, but that's our.
[00:38:47]  Tell us about it.
[00:38:48]  Not the Be is the news so crazy it should be satire, but somehow isn't.
[00:38:55]  So it's every bit as entertaining and funny as Babylon Bee, but it's actually all true news stories.
[00:39:01]  So that one's a lot of fun.
[00:39:02]  There's a social network on the back end of that if you're a subscriber.
[00:39:06]  But yeah, we have like, we have, we now have a bundle you can subscribe to where you get Babylon Be, NotTheB, and Discern, which is like a more serious news site run by Adam Ford.
[00:39:15]  So yeah, I mean, those are, those are the main things.
[00:39:18]  Thinker as well, if you want to check that out, that's a great educational tool if you're looking to expose yourself to new ideas.
[00:39:25]  I'm just looking at NotTheB.
[00:39:26]  It's hilarious.
[00:39:27]  I thought this would be satire.
[00:39:29]  This one right here that says, Watch this guy eat an onion like an apple because he has COVID and can't taste anything.
[00:39:33]  It's hilarious.
[00:39:35]  Seth, you're great.
[00:39:36]  Thanks for joining us.
[00:39:38]  Everyone, thanks for tuning in.
[00:39:39]  CharlieKirk.com.
[00:39:40]  Check out the Charlie Kirk Show podcast.
[00:39:42]  Type in Charlie Kirk Show to your podcast provider.
[00:39:44]  Hit subscribe.
[00:39:45]  As always, email us your questions, freedom at charliekirk.com.
[00:39:48]  Thanks so much, Seth.
[00:39:49]  Thank you, Charlie.