Andrew Klavan argues conservatives must build their own media—streaming, publishing, and platforms—to counter Hollywood’s leftist monopoly, dismissing writer’s block as a myth while advocating iterative drafting. He frames abortion as a "psychopathology" tied to eugenics, critiques identity politics as "amazing racism," and praises video games for storytelling potential despite esports’ commercialization. On masculinity, he redefines leadership as service, not dominance, and condemns teachers’ unions as corrupt, advocating school choice. Klavan credits faith over nostalgia for joy, warns demonizing whites fuels extremism, and ends by promoting his novel Another Kingdom while teasing subscriber-exclusive content in March. [Automatically generated summary]
Hello everyone, we're live with our newest episode of The Conversation.
I'm your host Alicia Kraus and with me is Andrew Clavin who will be taking your questions live for an entire hour.
All right, please remember that everyone can watch because our conversation is streaming for everyone to watch, but only subscribers get to ask the questions.
How do you subscribe?
Well, you can head over to dailywire.com right now.
If you're already a subscriber, you can click the link in our video description, sign in over there, and be sure to tune in for next month's episode featuring Michael Knowles.
Oh, well, that's exciting.
I don't know why they always do that to me during my birthday month.
They stick with me with Michael Knowles.
It's a gift.
Last year it was literally on Valentine's Day.
Was it really?
Yes.
It's a gift because then you don't have to do it for another two months, right?
It's true.
And then in March, we've got Ben's conversation.
It's just tons of fun.
I feel like you and I were just sitting here.
I think it's because the holidays, like Christmas, New Year's, everything, it feels like we were just here.
It's funny, that makes it feel to me like it was a long time ago.
Like somebody said the last conversation was really good, and I thought, was it?
I can't remember.
Our conversations are always really good, Drew.
This is going to be the best.
This is going to be the best conversation.
Hopefully every time we do them, we get a little bit concerned.
Just a little bit better.
Just a little bit better, a little more in the flow of things.
So we have our first question from our very first subscriber, and you're like, oh, how do you ask a question?
Subscribe.
There you go.
To the Daily Wire.
And I mean, come on, then you get a leftist tears tumbler.
You can put anything you want in it.
It's a lousy hundred bucks.
Hot or cold.
I got some cold, you know, energy drink in there right now.
It's real good.
All right, this is Spencer.
I don't know if this is the Spencer Claven.
No, no.
You don't think so?
Never asked Claven.
All right.
Except for money.
Spencer wants to know, have you ever struggled with writer's block?
Leadership and Abortion00:12:32
On account of how much I obsess over finding the best word or the most beautiful phrase, I often like to say that I love to write, but hate writing.
Yeah, I couldn't live like that.
I couldn't live hating my work.
I love my work.
I know a lot of writers struggle with it.
You know, and I don't even like to talk about writer's block.
I mean, there's something you don't even want to mention.
Because it's like jinxing it.
Yeah, you shouldn't have the words come out of your mouth.
But the thing is, I've always felt that the way to get the best out of your writing is to get it down on paper and then come back and rewrite it.
After all, the whole point of being a writer is you're not an actor.
You can make a mistake, go back, erase it, take it away, and get it better.
And if you have the thing there, it's easier to shape.
I mean, once the book or the story, whatever it is, is done, then you can shape it.
And it already has, it's like the stone is already there and you can see the shape in it and get closer and closer to what you want.
And I just think that, you know, I obsess about every word.
I want every word to be perfect, but it doesn't have to be perfect this time.
It's drafts.
It's drafts.
So that's what I tell my third grader.
Yeah, one draft at a time.
One draft at a time.
All right.
Johnny says, hi, Drew.
What do you see as the more realistic or effective way to bring about a conservative resurgence in the entertainment industry from the inside out or the ground up?
I think it's got to be, from the ground up, what you mean is do we build our own structures?
Yes, I think that that is what we need.
I really do believe that conservatives have a problem that there's a strain of Philistinism being Philistines that runs through conservatism that may be natural to conservatives.
And that's the thing that really bothers me.
It's the idea that if you're cursing, if you're seeing ugly stuff on TV, that that's not conservative.
But I always point out that the guys who built this country were reading Greek tragedies.
They were reading Shakespeare.
They were reading stuff that was full of sex, full of violence, full of drama.
And the people who built this country who went to war in World War II and built this country's greatest moment in the 50s, they grew up, they didn't grow up watching Doris Day films.
It was the 60s generation that grew up watching Doris Day films.
And then when they found out the world wasn't like that, they became snowflakes and it went nuts, you know?
Realism in art, true drama, true human relations, trains people to conservatism because what conservatism is, is it's having ideals without being idealistic.
It's knowing what you want, but realizing that people are screwed up.
People are greedy, they're power hungry, they lie, they cheat, they do all those things.
So you don't give them power.
You know, you spread the power around.
What the socialists do, of course, is they say, oh, if all the power is in the government, everything will be fair.
Of course.
Everything will be fair.
Art teaches you what human beings are like.
It teaches you what the human experience is.
And so what I would like to see is I would like to see us build studios.
I don't want to say movie studios because the movies are dead, but TV studios, whatever it is.
And then what we have to do is we also have to build an infrastructure to review films and award films, not just films, art, but to review art and award art and teach the public what art looks like, so that instead of having what we have now, which is political writers who go to the movies and think they know something about movies, they should have dedicated reviewers, instead of having think tanks that are about everything, they're about legislation, they're about the courts, they're about, you know congress, they're about theory and economic theory.
We have no think tanks about the arts.
That was what Breitbart almost the last conversation I had with Breitbart he wanted to start a think tank that was for the arts, and I think those are the things we need.
We need an infrastructure and we need systems for creating things, and we just don't have any of that now.
So i'm going to ask a follow-up question, if I may.
I know I am a subscriber, but i'm also the host, so please allow me to piggyback on Johnny's question.
Uh then, using that argument, which I fully agree with, should conservatives or libertarians or small government you know like-minded people also start our own social media empire?
Yeah absolutely, I mean.
This is the thing.
I mean, we're always saying well, they shouldn't be censoring us on twitter, but why don't we build Twitter?
You know they shouldn't be lying on CBS NEWS, they shouldn't but why don't we build sea business?
How is it that they built FOX NEWS and it's this huge success and no one's imitated it?
Why isn't there FOX NEWS for young people?
Why isn't there FOX Comedy Channel?
Why isn't there all this, the things that the left has basically monopolized?
How is it?
How is it we allow every late night comedy show to be an Anti-trump, anti-conservative show, every single one.
And you know when and when people uh, come on and say something else, they get ostracized and destroyed.
I I think that if we wait around for the left to do these things, we will continue the way we are, and I sometimes think the conservatives like complaining more than they like building stuff.
You know they like to be the underdog.
They like to be the underdog.
All right, Josh says.
A week or so ago in the mailbag, you said that families work best when the man is the head of the household.
What exactly do you mean?
Does the man have to have complete authority when there are disagreements?
I think it's a matter of leadership.
I think that this is just experience in theory.
In theory, I could see it working totally different, differently.
Life is various enough where I could see in an individual household it might be different and in each household it might be different.
My experience is the happiest managers I know.
The man has a leadership position.
What does leadership look like?
Leadership has a purpose.
The purpose of leadership is the good of the people you are leading, and this is one of the things that I think a lot of guys get wrong.
They want to be in, In control, they want to have all the power, but they're not thinking about the good of the family.
I mean, this is basic Christianity is leadership as service.
And so you're there thinking somebody has to make the call.
Somebody has to make the decision.
There are going to be times when people disagree, fighting and screaming at each other and endlessly processing are not good for the family.
Somebody has to have the authority to say, okay, I've heard everybody out.
I want everybody to be doing well.
This is how it's going to be.
And what I've noticed is men have a lot less, spend a lot less time processing things.
They spend a lot, they do, they spend a lot less time discussing it.
They spend a lot less time saying, well, what about this other option?
They make the decision and they move forward.
And maybe that's why, maybe it's just natural.
I mean, it just seems natural natural to me.
People think of this as being authoritarian and tyrannical, but I don't think that's what it is.
I simply think it's having a locus of decision.
It's having a place where the decisions get made.
I think it also depends.
This was a question that Michelle Bachman got hit for when she was running for president, how she said that her husband said that she should run, or that he was giving her permission to run or something like that.
And people were like, oh, so she answers for her husband.
How is she going to be commander-in-chief?
But I think your description of the biblical definition of leadership isn't dictatorship.
That's right.
No, of course not.
Of course not.
That would be an unhappy life for everybody.
Everyone.
Caleb says, how do you persuade mainstream Hollywood distributors to push out movies written by conservatives into theaters?
Don't theaters normally try to black out such films?
It's hard to know.
It really is hard to know.
When we did Gosnell, there seemed to be an awful lot of problems with projectors and times being wrong and all this stuff.
It really is hard to know if distributors and certainly theaters are as small-minded as the people in the studios are because they're spread out around the country.
So I don't know.
I mean, the thing is, we don't need these things anymore.
See, this is the thing.
We think that in order to have art, it has to be a big movie.
It has to open at the Graumans Theater and all this stuff.
It's just not true.
I mean, this new media is fantastic.
It really is democratizing.
And it's why we shouldn't allow things like YouTube and Google to dominate it because we should be building platforms of our own where people can't knock us off.
You know, it's just, it doesn't, our art doesn't have to look like their art.
It doesn't have to be their art.
It just simply has to do what art does, which is reflect the human experience.
And I think we can do that better than they do because we actually know what the human experience is, and they're trying to tell us that it's something that it's not.
All right.
Arun says, Hi, Andrew.
What do you make of the romance between President Trump and I'm going to totally botch this name?
Do you know how to do it?
I don't even know who Newndra Modi is.
Okay, how come you said it so eloquently?
And I'm over here, like, do I roll the R?
I don't know.
Any common values or just a healthy sense of nationalism in both?
I can't answer the question.
Is that the new political leader in Brazil?
Oh, in Brazil.
Oh, I don't know my phone.
You know, that's a good question.
That's who it is.
I know that there had been some.
Somebody look it up so we don't make a fool of ourselves.
Okay.
Totally bothering us.
Thanks, Rob.
That's not the guy in Brazil, is it?
I don't know.
What?
Oh, India?
India in India.
You know, well, so I don't want to answer the question at length because I don't know who it is.
I don't know that much about him.
But I do think he knows about everything else.
I know about everything else.
But I think it is interesting with Trump, the guys he likes and the guys he doesn't.
I do think the left has a certain amount of a legitimate gripe that he seems to have.
These strong men seem to have an appeal for him, guys like Putin.
Erdogan and Turkey.
Yeah, they do seem to have an appeal for him.
Interestingly, Trump obeys the law in ways that Obama didn't.
Like he actually, when the courts say he can't do something, even when he knows it's an Obama judge making a false call for political reasons, he obeys.
He says it's the court system.
I got to do it.
So it's really interesting.
Those guys appeal to him, and he's obviously a strong guy.
But he doesn't imitate them in the sense of breaking the law.
Actually, he has respect for the constraints of the system.
Like he allows the women's march to go on and doesn't arrest everyone there.
That was my suggestion, but now he wouldn't listen to me.
You're not a person.
Jonathan says, Hi, Drew.
I recently watched the documentary, Mafa 21, which asserts that the abortion industry targets minority communities, particularly blacks, to reduce their populations.
Do you believe that?
Well, I certainly believe it was there at the beginning.
I mean, this is Margaret Sanger.
You know, she said that this was part of it.
We have heard people in the modern world say, you know, abortion reduces crime, and the only thing they could possibly mean by that is that there's high crime in black communities, and by wiping out black children, they're somehow reducing crime.
We know in New York that more black children are aborted than born.
And so I think that whether they're targeting these people or not, that target is being hit.
And look, this is a, you know, countries can go crazy and cultures can go crazy just like people can go crazy.
This is a psychopathology that we have induced in ourselves.
The idea that an unborn child is not a child, is not a human being, is a psychopathology.
It's a disease.
And the thing is, the disease is so widespread that perfectly decent people believe it.
You can do that to people.
You can lie to them enough and you can present that narrative enough that they buy into it.
I was just reading that New York State wants to pass a law that allows abortion up till the moment of birth, as if there were some magic moment that brings you out into the air.
That means that those people who have made the dire prediction that one day we will be practicing legal infanticide, they have a point because that is legal infanticide.
So look, I don't know.
I'm not in the abortion industry.
I'm not sitting around making plans, but I know that something very sick and even evil has happened in this country.
That we've gone from the idea that maybe occasionally somebody might need an abortion to let's shout your abortion, let's be proud of your abortion, let's have abortion to the very last minute.
When you go down the wrong path, things just get worse and worse.
And you always hear the left saying, well, you can't go back.
But obviously, if you're going in the wrong direction, back is the right way to go.
Yeah, I think Ben's speech was so powerful at the march when he said that being righteous is not always the most popular thing.
If you look at the civil rights movement, it was never the most popular thing.
The Jews, the Jews in Egypt.
There's lots of examples of that in history.
And then, you know, whenever people bring up the up until birth, it's so ridiculous because I know babies that were born at 24 weeks.
So what if a doctor then determines, well, I don't really, you know, we can't spend the funds or that kid might not make it because they're not fully developed or viable.
You know, you know, Thomas Aquinas said that abortion should be legal until the quickening, which is when a baby moved.
And sometimes you hear Christians cite that.
But of course, if he'd had ultrasound, he wouldn't have said that.
You know, he was going off to 13th century science.
The more the science gets developed, the more we see, I mean, just DNA evidence alone is that the minute this child is conceived, it has a path, it has the blueprint of a personality, the blueprint of a life.
We live in time.
That child is who he's going to be already, and we just have no right to take his life away.
We just don't.
Abortion Debates00:14:52
Absolutely.
Wes says, Andrew, will you please tell my wife that Hallmark movies are trash and she should not make me watch them with her?
I will tell her half that.
She should not make you watch them with her.
They are basically women's.
I think that's the act of a good husband.
It's sacrificial.
And what if her love language is quality time?
No.
I tried.
I'm sorry.
It's emasculating.
He shouldn't watch.
He doesn't have to watch Hallmark movies.
Hallmark movies are ladies' daydreams.
That's not trash.
That is perfectly fine.
A lot of action movies are guys' daydreams, you know, and like, and you have every right to your daydream.
You have every right to see your daydreams professionally put on.
It's not harmful.
It's good for you.
But you, the guy, doesn't have to watch them.
See, my husband and I have an agreement where if I go to see, oh, I don't know, Mad Max Fury wrote in theaters, then he has to go see Marvel movies with me.
No, that's perfectly fair, but Marvel movies aren't, you know, that's.
Yeah, but he's not really into, he's into like more artistic type movies, and I'm like the action.
I actually, I occasionally will sit and watch Hallmark movies just because they tell me how women think.
I think, like, you know, I think like, wow, really?
Okay.
But don't watch lifetime movies because it makes all women look bad.
I'm just saying.
All right, Dana says, dearest bespectal chromedome.
That's amazing.
As a conservative Christian whose writings don't really fit under the genre of Christian books, should I try Amazon self-publishing or send to a traditional publisher?
Excellent question.
Send to a traditional publisher first.
I would go to Amazon self-publishing only as a last resort.
Most Amazon self-published books don't do very well.
If Amazon changes, you're at the mercy of their algorithms.
If they change their algorithms, you get nailed.
It gives you very small chance of selling overseas, which you do have with a traditional publisher.
So I would try them last.
There's no sense in defeating yourself.
The trick to doing this is to find books that remind you of your book, right?
So there are books being published.
Nobody is utterly unique.
If you find books that remind you of your book, go into the acknowledgements, find out who the guy's agent is, because usually in books.
You've got to thank God their mama and the agent.
And their agent, right.
And then, you know, query the agent.
Find out how to write a query letter.
Write to the agent and ask if they'll take a look at it.
With an agent, you can get in anywhere, and you might get further than you think.
And if not, you can always go back to Amazon.
There's also, because of capitalism and because of, I think, how publication and books have changed even over the last decade, there's these services where you can, it's almost like a book in a box service where you tell them, oh, I want to write this, and they help you with the whole process.
Yeah, no, there's all kinds of services.
I'm just saying that most of them don't help you the way that publishers do.
Look, publisher.
Publishing is a badly run business.
It really is.
No, it really is a badly run business.
But it's still better than doing it yourself unless you've got a massive platform to promote it.
You know, I mean, if you've got- Michael Knowles.
Well, if your book is blank, anybody can sell it.
No, I mean, I think if you have a massive platform to promote it and the time to go around promoting it, you have a shot.
But there's a lot of things.
I know a guy who makes a lot of money self-publishing on Amazon, but what he did was he started an entire industry.
So he writes like a book a month.
And he, yeah, I mean, he turns out immense material.
He has immense means of promoting it.
It doesn't just happen except on the rare occasion, like to the guy who wrote The Martian and the lady who wrote 50 Shades of Gray.
Those are phenomenons.
Yeah.
Or Twilight, too, right?
Was Twilight?
I don't know that she self-published.
No, because it was 50 Shades of Gray was a takeoff on Twilight.
You're right, and it started on the sand page or whatever.
Sorry, guys.
Side note there.
Back to subscriber questions.
John says, I'm a college student trying to find a woman to marry and build a family with.
However, most women I know are not interested in marriage.
Do you have any advice on where to find a traditional woman?
Yeah, church, traditional places.
Try your church.
I would even, nowadays, if I were still in the market, I would go online and to things like eHarmony and five couples who've gotten married to get you.
There you go.
You say old-fashioned guy looking for old-fashioned girls, see how you do.
They have all the questions to ask.
Yes.
I would also say, too, if he's a college student, maybe the women are interested in marriage.
They're just afraid of marriage like right now.
Right this minute, yeah.
They're probably, the women are probably wrong because it's probably better to marry early than late, but there you go.
Because, you know, we only got to 35 ladies just saying.
Veronica says, a lot of hysteria in our society is attributed to mental illness, but isn't it less biological than ideological?
If you twist yourself to believe leftist lies, it has to affect your mentality, right?
Well, of course, but I mean, I think the two things go together.
It's hard to know.
Look, certain leftist propositions at this point are indeed induced psychopathy.
They really are.
If you start to tell people there's no such thing as men and women, or you start to tell somebody that a man who thinks he's a woman is in fact a woman.
Nothing wrong with saying, you know, I'm a man, but I feel like a woman inside.
That may be your actual experience.
But to say that that actually makes you female is nuts.
And when you then say to people, you are not virtuous unless you believe this, you are inducing psychosis.
You are inducing madness in people.
What I think is happening a lot, and I see this when you watch sometimes leftists in college, I think this is happening a lot.
I think people, young people have problems.
They have troubles.
And if their parents are not around to take care of them and to watch out for them, if they don't get their troubles dealt with, frequently they wind up taking prescription drugs, which I just find to be, I find these drugs to be a tragedy in the sense that it may be that they help some people, and it may be that they help some people get therapy.
But if you don't get therapy for your underlying problems, people are not chemistry sets.
If they're depressed, if they have problems, it is probably because something is bothering them in their lives.
So they drug these kids.
The kids then go off to college and they say, well, I feel better and I don't, like, drugs make me muzzy.
And they stop taking the drugs and they go nuts.
And then they become targets of these people.
And I do think that a lot of people, look, nobody in his youth is stable.
You know, we're all in change.
You're in flux.
You have no experience.
Figure out who you are, figure out what the world is.
And you don't know what the world is.
You don't know how to build things.
And these people come along and tell you that your problems are there because other people are doing this, this, and this.
That is a recipe for unhappiness.
You know, you have to be able, you know, outside of physical violence and true oppression, you have to be able to establish a happy life no matter what other people think of you.
And so when people say to you, if you could just get everybody to accept your sexuality or your identity or you're this or you're that, then you'll be happy.
You'll be miserable the rest of your life.
And that is induced psychosis.
And I think we see a lot of it.
But I think it starts with people being unstable.
I mean, if you're stable, when these cult-like leftists come after you, you're kind of like, thanks very much, but no thanks, go away.
But if you're desperate, if your parents divorced, if you have a hole in your heart, they come and they fill it with their ideology.
And I think it's very destructive.
But a lot of what you just touched on, I think, harkens back to your faith, too, is that you're recognizing that people have like souls and an emotion.
Right.
An emotion, and sometimes those need to be healed.
Of course.
So what about somebody that's a secularist?
Like, could they also go to the same therapy and live that normal life?
Or do you think it has to be spiritually related as well?
No, listen, I think you can live a solid, stable life without believing in God.
I think you can.
I don't think you'll live a full life.
I don't think you'll get to the true meaning of who you are or why you were made.
That's my personal experience.
But I do think you can live, I know plenty of atheists who live stable, sane lives because they really, what they have is they have really good values and a really good, realistic view of life.
They just don't have the underlying, they don't, it's not built on anything.
So in other words, they know there's such a thing as morality, but if you questioned them for half an hour, they wouldn't be able to explain it.
They would just know it was there.
Okay, that's better than having no morality and having faith.
You know what I mean?
If you have faith but you don't do anything with it, that's kind of useless too.
All right.
Kate says, hi, Mr. Clavin.
Lately, people have been posting pics of themselves and how they've aged over the last 10 years.
What about your perspective on the world has changed the most in the last 10 years?
Oh, wow.
I thought she was going to ask for a side-by-side photo, and I got real excited.
Can we find one of those, please?
Well, you know, the last, I came to Faith, I think it's about 13, 14 years ago, and it has been like some kind of magical drug of growth and wisdom and serenity, and it has been a beautiful, beautiful experience.
When I look back on where I started, I've written about this in my memoir, The Great Good Thing.
I went through a real difficult time as a young person.
And when I look back on that person and I see the person I am now, that kid would weep to think that he would ever be this joyful, ever be this satisfied with life, ever feel that he has accomplished as much as I feel I have with the time that's been given me and hopefully even more to come.
So my perspective has gotten much more serene, hopefully a little more kind, I'd like to think, but certainly much more joyful.
There's just no question about that.
And you know, the world has a lot of problems.
And if you look forward and you say, oh, this might happen and that might happen, about 70% of what's in the newspaper is some guy telling you what he thinks is going to happen.
I mean, if you ever watch how many stories there are about what Trump is going to do next, and I always think, like, how do you know what he's going to do?
I don't even think Trump knows what he's going to do next.
I don't even think Trump knows what he's going to do next.
So, I mean, I think that the world is a better place than it was when I was growing up.
There's no question about it.
There are things that are worse.
There are things that have fallen apart.
There are things that have deteriorated.
But there are also things that are just incredible and incredibly great.
Health, technology, the freedom that people have.
Listen, when I sit around and I say that I'm an anti-feminist, that doesn't mean that I'm sorry women have choices.
I hope they have all the choices in the world.
I really do.
And I want each one of them to do exactly what she wants to do.
I just think that feminism is a bad philosophy and teaches people bad stuff.
So I think the choices are better.
I think the technology is wonderful.
I think the health and what we know about health and the medicine that we have for health, it's just so much better.
And I enjoy it.
And I have the perspective to look back and say, you know what, the good old days were not that good.
And so I feel a lot happier.
But Faith, I got to tell you, I just recommend Faith just like if you just want a happiness pill, I recommend the Christian faith.
It's just great stuff.
Alrighty.
We're like evangelizing.
Grief.
Oh, and if you put your hand to the screen, I will heal you.
And you can send your donations too.
And then you'll really get better.
All right.
Say is, I hope I'm saying your name right.
It says, hi, Drew.
What do you think the impact of demonizing white people for the last decade will be?
Do you see the potential of a negative reaction from white people?
Hell yeah.
I mean, you make it logical for white people to be white nationalists.
I love this thing where we demonstrate white, let me start out by saying, I think white nationalism is the stupidest idea ever.
It's an anti-Christian idea.
It's an anti-American idea.
It's an anti-everything that we believe in idea.
But it makes perfect sense if the opposition is black nationalism, if somehow you're the bad guy.
I mean, if you're going to set up racial divisions, then why shouldn't people stick to their race?
What I say is you should get rid of them all.
Just say, look, we're Americans.
If you believe that all men are created equal, if you believe you have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and that's why governments are made, join the party.
I don't care what you look like.
If you believe in that, to me, and you live here, to me, you're an American.
So when you have people, like Don Lemonhead over at CNN, use out and say, well, it's all white people's fault.
I don't see any reason why white people wouldn't react by saying, oh, yeah, well, I don't like black people.
I mean, what's the point?
If you create the logic of racism, then why shouldn't the majority race stick to the majority?
I mean, I don't understand that.
So this is why I so oppose the left.
I oppose racism in the left, anti-white racism in the left, for the same exact reason I oppose anti-black racism anywhere, also on the left, as far as I'm concerned.
But still, you know, I think that the, you know, we know people have races.
It may be that races have specific differences, but we also know everybody's made in the image of God and that we are responsible for loving them.
And so I don't see what other philosophy we need than that.
And I just think that demonizing white people keeps the logic of race alive.
All right.
Jeff says, I wish to make an impact using my programming career or the video editing, graphic design, writing, speaking, or narration skills.
Those are a lot of skills right there that I have taught myself.
How should I choose how to make an impact?
Well, it sounds like you're a great candidate for the game industry, the video game industry.
I mean, the video game industry, to me, has hit a kind of a low point.
For many, many years, it was developing so rapidly that it was just as exciting as any art form could possibly be.
I mean, every time I don't have a lot of time to play games, so every time I would turn around, I would think, wow, it's really advanced to a new level.
Now, even when I get a game that's supposed to be great, like for Christmas, I got that Red Dead Redemption 2, which has got a 10 out of 10 everywhere.
And it is amazing.
It is amazing, but it hasn't taken the art form anywhere new.
And some of the less technologically spectacular games are more interesting.
Games like Inside and Braid that are kind of platforming games.
So if you're interested in that, I mean, just looking at your skill set, if you're interested in that, I think that's a world in which you can entertain more people than the movies entertain.
And you can do new things that tell stories in ways that have never been told before, and also which has a big influence on people.
And I think that that's a great thing.
Are you so into games that you watch the professional gamers play in those stadiums now?
No.
It's crazy.
They have stadium events for video gaming now.
No, see, to me, that's actually antithetical to the gaming experience because the whole point of the game experience is that it's kind of like looking at a painting and then walking into it.
And that's such an amazing thing.
You can't do that.
I mean, you can do it imaginatively with that scene in Mary Poppins.
It is like that.
It is like that.
You're moving through this beautiful landscape.
And some of the artwork, I mean, I would much rather look at a beautifully rendered video game than look at a splotch on the wall in a New York gallery that I'm told is supposed to represent some theory that I don't care about.
Alrighty.
Jonathan says, Drew, it is often noted on the right that true racism lies in the progressive agenda through their manufacturing of a culture of dependency.
Do you think any modern Democrats are deliberately racist?
Racist Tendencies Discussed00:10:10
Yeah, of course they're deliberately racist.
Identity politics is deliberate racism.
And the thing about it is, is it's so awful because what it says to people is not only is your blackness or your gayness or your Latin-ness important, morally important, and not only does it put you on a different moral framework than, say, a white person, which is the definition of racism, that is racism right there, but it also says that your blackness, your Latinness, your gayness consists of your agreeing with my leftism.
So in other words, the minute a black guy says, you know, I'm a conservative, I voted for Donald Trump, he stops being a black guy in the definition of the left.
So that's incredible racism.
It's not only telling you that your race puts you in a different moral standing than another race, which is racism per se, it also tells you that your race consists of only being allowed to believe a certain kind of belief.
It is amazing racism.
Now, obviously they don't think of it as racism, but that's because they think racism bad, me good.
You know, that's the only reason.
If they thought about it logically, they would see they're racist as hell.
It's so funny because I think that they think that they're trying to equalize everyone.
Well, they're not.
It's this ridiculous idea that you can fix the past by doing the same bad things, but to the other side.
So in other words, if you were mean to black people in the past, and America was and all countries were to some degree, now you can be mean to white people and somehow it's all going to balance.
The thing is, all the racism goes on one side.
You know, all the righteousness and treating people equally and treating people with love and humanity, that all goes on the other side.
It's much harder to do.
All right.
Please remember that our conversation is live for everyone to watch, but only subscribers get to ask the questions.
So be sure to click on the link in our video description to ask questions or sign up to be a Daily Wire subscriber.
And be sure to tune in for next month's episode featuring our very own Michael Knowles.
You know, it's too bad I'll be washing my hair that day.
You know that they do have beard shampoo?
Can we talk about how much I love Drew's beard?
I know you love my behavior.
I'm a big fan of the beard.
I know, I know.
First of all, I really appreciate that.
And all the people who look at the beard like it.
But the problem is when you get a great beard, it gets a little scritchy.
You know, my wife is.
Oh.
Come on.
Come on, Mrs. Clayton.
Just keep the beard.
Keep the beard alive.
We're at the halfway point.
So we've got to try to keep rolling through these questions.
I know we're having fun.
We've got to get more questions.
Keith says, I see my mission in life is helping people change to live happier lives.
But too often they interpret my advice as judgmental or demeaning.
How can I help others see my genuine intentions in this?
Easy.
Stop doing that.
Stop giving them advice.
They're not asking for your advice.
Don't give it to them.
You know, people actually do not change because they get good advice.
I mean, they change because they're loved.
They change because they're well-treated, because they're understood, because they're heard and given a chance to do the things that they want to do.
That's what really changes people.
When you are, I've worked on hotlines and I've talked to people who are suicidal.
Saying to them, you know, don't be suicidal and do this instead of that doesn't help at all because they're in the situation that they're in because something is broken in them, something is lonely, something is, there's a hole there that you can fill only by loving them and being there for them.
So you really, nobody assigned you this job.
Nobody told you, touched you on the head and said, I put you on earth to give people advice.
If people find you judgmental and demeaning, shut the hell up.
Also, it is quite relieving when you feel like you can let go of that duty.
Really?
It really is.
I wonder if he's a middle child, because I feel like there's an element of like a middle child where you just want to help people and you want everyone to get along.
But you know, when they tell you to judge not lest you be judged, like nobody wants to take that advice.
I always say that if the gospels only had that line, you could deduce the crucifixion.
Because if you go about telling people not to judge people, they will kill you eventually.
But that makes you so much happier to let people go, to sit there and just say, hey, it's your life.
Do what you're going to do.
As long as you don't hurt anybody, do what you're going to do.
It makes you so much happier.
It is such a relief.
All righty.
Joel says, why are many conservatives weak on tech issues, like burrowing through the Fourth Amendment, the Patriot Act, backdoors and encryption, et cetera?
Also, what are your thoughts on cryptocurrency?
Well, let's answer the first thing first.
I don't know.
I think a lot of people are weak on technology.
And I'm not sure that that's worse on the right than it is on the left.
What makes me, it makes me suspicious that all these great technological companies like Twitter and Facebook and all that were all built by leftists and are populated by leftists.
So maybe that is true.
And, you know, look, conservatives and leftists both come to their positions through thinking, but there's also a natural tendency toward those sides.
You know, there's a line in Gilbert and Sullivan, every child is born alive is either a little liberal or a little conservative.
And I think there is a genetic component to your philosophy.
And it is truly possible that on the right, there is a tendency to not want things to change, to think that any change can lead to disaster.
I mean, I always joke about conservatives that they think like, oh, well, if I change this, then this will fall, and then that'll fall, and then that'll fall, and then the whole society will collapse.
And you think like, well, dude, you know, the change is going to come.
You've got to relax.
Let the changes come.
Change is good.
So maybe that's true.
I don't know any statistics proving that there are fewer right-wing technological people than left, but it does seem that way given the nature of the companies they create, in which case it's a shame.
That's too bad.
I mean, it's the way of the future.
Cryptocurrency is just, I'm really suspicious of it.
I don't know.
I don't understand what it's for except selling drugs.
And funding terrorism.
And funding terrorism.
We're going to get so many tweets and stuff about that.
Well, maybe I don't know enough about it.
I'm so confused by it.
I'm also Team Elon when it comes to robots are bad.
No, no, I like robots.
Really?
No.
No, I'm like conspiratorial about it.
Oh, they're going to take over the world?
They're not going to take it over.
Well, if a robot's driving your car, how do you know who's controlling the robot?
What if they're like, you know, Andrew Clavin didn't like what he said on the podcast today?
Yeah, that's a good point.
I like it.
Wait, there's a movie in this.
I think you're on your way.
Hey, I'll be like created by.
Is that what it is?
You can write it.
I'll create it.
We'll go to the Oscars together.
It'll be tons of fun.
They'd never nominate our movie because it'd do really well and be too conservative.
Sean says, oh, Clavin, my Clavin.
How do we combat peacefully the rise of anti-religious sentiment growing in the country?
I mean, we've seen a lot of that this far.
It has been awful.
It really is awful.
It's such bigotry.
It's such stupidity.
And it really is ignorance.
It's really based on ignorance.
These people have not been taught what the basis of Christianity is.
They don't know what they're talking about, and they just see it and it goes against the leftist doctrine, which is their religion, and they become hysterical.
Look, I think the thing is, is that the Christian religion is in a period, and this has been true all through its history.
Christianity has become corrupt and has had to reform.
Right now, I don't think necessarily that Christianity is corrupt, but I think it has lost its sense of what it is.
It needs to go back to its roots and say, what exactly do we believe?
Because not everything that accrues to Christianity over the years, not every tradition that accrues to Christianity, not every barnacle that sticks to the ship of Christianity, is part of Christianity.
You know, I go back and I read the Gospels every day, and I read the Gospels because this is the source material.
And if my church tells me one thing and Jesus tells me another, I follow Jesus because, you know, Christianity collects traditions that may not necessarily be true to its source.
We need people thinking about this because too many, especially young men, are convinced that intelligence and reason dictate that Christianity is untrue and that is untrue.
It is untrue that science, reason, and logic lead us to reject Christianity.
I actually believe it's the other way around.
I mean, that's what made me become a Christian, was logic and reason, nothing else, really.
And so I think that what we have to do is we have to start making arguments in the high places.
You can go out into the streets and you can convince people of anything.
But I think what we need to do is we need to speak up in universities, we need to speak up in think tanks, we need to speak up in newspapers and write books, just saying, you know what, this is not about going on TV and condemning something.
This is the only time you ever see Christians on TV is when they're going, this is wrong, you know?
It's like, I almost never think about stuff like that.
What I think about is the joy of guiding my life toward the North Star of God, which is just a beautiful experience.
I mean, it makes your life, it gives your life meaning, it gives it joy, it gives it purpose, it gives it richness.
You know, that's what we should be talking about, and we should be talking about it, I think, in the intellectual places, because those ideas will trickle down and they will restore Christianity.
There's no easy answer to this except to defend the faith, but defend it in the highest possible way without conceding anything to the culture.
I don't concede a damn thing to the culture.
I think the culture, our culture is psychotic and has gone astray in very serious ways.
But we don't have to defy the culture just for the purpose of defying it either.
All right.
Jimmy says, Mr. Clavin, why is academia almost entirely left-leaning?
They did it.
They actually took over the academies.
They meant to do it.
I mean, look, there's going to be, in a university where you are not responsible to reality, but you are responsible to the intellect, there's going to be a tendency toward leftism in the liberal arts.
There's going to be a tendency toward leftism in the study of literature and the study of sociology and the study of psychology, because those are studies that don't have to see if they work, right?
They don't have to test themselves against reality.
So that's a good place for leftism to go.
The problem is that conservatives, by and large, will hire leftists.
Leftists will not hire conservatives.
If you go into a university and say, yes, I'd like to teach the literature from the point of view of what a great thing Western civilization is, you won't get a job.
Movies In A Moribund State00:02:55
You will not get a job except at Hillsdale or some other small place.
Hillsdale being a great place, but I'm just saying you won't get a job at the Ivy Leagues and all these things.
They will keep you out.
It is a blacklist.
When people ask me about the movies, there is a blacklist.
When people ask me about the arts, there are blacklists.
They are purposely keeping conservatives out.
And so it's very difficult.
It's one thing to say we should build publishing companies and movie companies.
It's another thing to say we should build universities.
It's a much bigger task.
But I do think we have to fight them.
We have to fight them with lawsuits and by sending speakers in there and by making sure that our ideas are heard because there is a blacklist.
All right.
Kevin says, Senor Clavin, should Black Panther have been nominated for Best Pictioner?
I personally think not, and I can't see a reason why it should.
You know, it's pretty creative.
I think the movies are in a moribund state.
So, I mean, it's very hard.
It's very hard to find a movie that is both good, like really good, and important and popular.
That's what happens when art forms go into moribund states.
The important works tend to be small and intellectualized and elite, and the big popular works tend to be empty.
And that's what happened to the movies in the last 10, 20 years.
The movies that people go to see, the superhero movies, are mostly popcorn entertainment, where popcorn entertainment used to be Gone with the Wind.
It used to be Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.
It used to be some of the greatest films ever made, The Wizard of Oz.
Now, popular entertainment in the movies is crap.
Everything good is being made in television now.
I mean, television is still, I mean, maybe the best of the golden age of television has passed, which was the last 10, 20 years, but it's still producing some great stuff.
So, you know, when you say which film should be nominated for an Oscar, I thought Black Panther was as good as anything.
That one that pictured the death of Stalin, which was hilarious.
You know, that's never going to get made because only, you never get nominated because only people like me and Shapiro went and saw it.
And you both really liked it.
Oh, I just loved it.
It's terrific.
Well, another movie that you like, The Ballad of Buster Scrubs, actually was nominated for Best Theme Song, I think.
Was it really?
Yeah, no, I really liked that.
I really liked that.
That was episodic and some of the episodes were not as good as others.
Now, did that count as a movie?
Because that was released along the way.
Well, Roma.
Roma then.
The Roma as a movie because that was streaming before it was in theater.
It's all getting kind of confusing.
It is.
I mean, can you imagine like years ago, HBO, you know, HBO was probably pissing off all the cable or the basic cable networks when they were able to compete for Emmys and stuff.
And now you have Amazon and Netflix and Hulu that are able to compete.
But you know, it's very rare now when people gather, as they say, at the water cooler and discuss something, it's almost always something on TV.
Britain's EU Dilemma00:04:59
So, you know, like, who cares what they give the Oscars to?
And by the way, when they knocked Kevin Hart off that slate, I just vowed I would never watch that show again, ever.
Andrew Clavin for host.
Saren, I hope I'm saying that right, says, hey, Andrew, do you have an opinion on Brexit and PS?
I love your opening level.
That's nice, thank you.
You know, I have a reticent opinion on Brexit.
And the reason it is reticent is I really believe it's hard to know other countries.
I lived in England for seven years in the 90s.
And one of the things I learned was you really don't know another country until you've lived there a long time.
So I know a little bit about England, but I mean, it's been a while since I've been there.
Here's what I think.
I think that the British have traditionally been separated from the rest of Europe, and it has been largely a good thing.
They weren't conquered by the Nazis.
They weren't conquered by Napoleon.
They didn't have the Inquisition.
They didn't have the worst atrocities of the Reformation or of the Catholic Church.
They have really done wonderful things, and they produced one of the greatest products ever, which is the American mind, the American political mind.
And so I think that the British are right to feel antsy about joining an organization which has now become less of what it was supposed to be and more of this kind of outspread, supposed to be like six nations, and now it's in the 20s.
And I think that the Brexiteers are actually right.
What has happened is, for those in America, what has happened is the EU won't let them go.
It is basically saying, you know, the EU is a bunch of trade agreements.
That's basically what it is.
And it's basically saying, we won't let you leave and keep those trade agreements that would make sense.
So how do you land your plane in France?
How do you get your vegetables from France back to England?
How do you do all those things?
Champagne from France.
Champagne from France.
Vegetables are from Germany.
I don't know.
But you know, those are all fair questions, but they only exist because the EU doesn't want to let Britain go.
And the reason the EU doesn't want to let Britain go is because they're afraid if Britain goes, a lot of other angry people will go with them.
To me, that alone is a reason to leave.
To me, that alone is a reason to leave.
This organization is holding them hostage.
There are all kinds of problems that might come up, but with a civilized relationship, they could all be solved instantly.
It is only because the EU has become overweening, overbearing, and rather totalitarian that these problems come up.
I think that Britain has gotten a lot of good things out of the EU.
It has.
And I think that close bonds, friendly bonds, friendly bonds of trade, and all these are good things.
But I think the EU has always forced down the throats of the people.
I think if they have this referendum again, it will be basically telling the people, oh, you little people are going to vote until you get the answer we want.
And I think if they could find a way to break free and yet retain the natural bonds of friendship between Britain and the continent, I think it would be a good thing.
I think the EU is basically it's Germany's third and most successful attempt to take over Europe.
I think the EU has gotten out of control.
You know, it's a really interesting thing.
In this country, we had an attempt to break away from the Union, which was called the Civil War.
The logic of that breakaway is completely obscured by the evil of slavery.
The evil of slavery was so great that it's very hard to say we should have let the Confederacy go.
But by the rules of the game, we should have let the Confederacy go.
It's only the fact that slavery was such a great evil, such a grave evil, that there was no way to sort of take a neutral moral stand.
I think that federations should be voluntary, just like I think associations should be voluntary.
And when you want to go, you go.
You should be allowed to negotiate them.
And I just think the fact that the EU has been so tight-fisted in these negotiations, and Theresa May maybe has not been as agile and adept at negotiating her way out of it, that alone should be an indication that the Brexiteers are right.
All right.
Josh says, Andrew, I have an idea to create a great nonprofit that will allow all an equal platform to create, innovate, inspire, and learn.
How would I go about presenting this idea to others like you?
Well, I have heard this so many times, this question.
And the answer is, you know, I don't know.
I mean, I think you have to build the thing first.
If you build it, they will come.
And then you start to promote it saying, look, look what we've got here.
But to sort of depend on people like me to give you the promotion that you need to get started, there are just too many of you.
I mean, I wish I could promote every system like this.
I'm in favor of every system like this.
I support every system like this.
But I get these kind of angry letters from people saying, why won't you support me?
I have this great idea.
Everybody has a great idea.
And I mean, I think you have to go out and raise the money.
You do it the way you build businesses.
You go out, you raise the money, you draw an audience, you do the marketing that needs to be done.
Werewolf Cop Horror00:02:25
And then once you get started, and people will take notice.
I mean, that is the way it works.
It doesn't work by me giving you publicity, and that draws people to your site, which doesn't exist yet.
So that's the thing.
I'm certainly in favor of it, and I wish I could do more, but I mean, there's just too many people asking for our attention for us to be able to do that all the time.
All right.
Joel says, Captain Courageous, Claven the Conqueror.
Wow.
It's KKK.
Yeah, thank God it's four or nothing.
Which classic work of literature, if any, would you compare to Werewolf Cop?
Oh, man.
If it seems similar to RLS's Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
It has similarities.
I love that book.
Really?
Oh, my God.
That book is so good.
I mean, it's only, everybody should read it.
It's like 60 pages long.
You can read it in the afternoon.
It is a wonderful, wonderful book.
It is a great work of literature.
And it's not at all, you know, they've made good movies out of it, a couple of good movies out of it, but it is wonderful.
And there's no question that Werewolf Cop owes a debt to it.
It really does.
What I think is a little different about Werewolf Cop is that it actually works as a police procedural and so it has this kind of wonderful, I love the book so I don't want to overpraise myself but I'm very fond of it.
But it has a police procedural that works, that kind of leads into this world of the supernatural.
And it's kind of a, it's almost like a prequel to another kingdom where the supernatural and the regular world kind of interact in very realistic ways.
So I think Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is a really good example.
I think that I read a lot of werewolf material and that kind of informed it.
But when I read the werewolf material, I never really felt like, yes, this is what I'm writing for.
Yeah, I think that Dracula would be another precursor of it.
That Dracula is a brilliant novel, the only great thing the guy ever wrote.
And it almost invents the structure of the horror story.
And while Werewolf Cop is really not quite a horror story, it kind of has that structure too.
So I think those books from the 19th century that started to delve into horror as a way of exploring society, Frankenstein, Dracula, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, those definitely are books that have really affected me and definitely informed Werewolf Cop.
Decide Your Purpose00:06:04
Alrighty.
Rohan says, what would you advise to a young man who is devoid of all passion and does not seem to be able to, quote unquote, be the hero of their own story?
Well, you know, this is one of these questions where, you know, there's nothing that I can say to you that will get you off your backside to do the things that need to be done.
That really has to come from you.
So if you ask the question, basically, if you're asking the question, how can I become a man while sitting on my sofa?
The answer is you can't.
You can't.
You have to get off your ass and you have to go and do these things.
You know, a lot of times, and this is good Aristotelian thinking, but it is also my observation of life.
A lot of times doing things helps you to do things.
So if you're looking to become stronger, more passionate, join things, do things that will lead you to that end.
Join the military and at least have your life have meaning.
Go out and help people who go to other countries where people are really starving or this country where people are starving and do something to affect society.
Whatever it is, commit yourself to something.
The doing of something sometimes comes before the passion for something.
And I know a lot of young people especially are looking, think, are being told, do what you want, follow your dreams.
I don't believe that at all.
I believe that you were made with a purpose.
And your job is to find that purpose through prayer and reflection.
You know, your desires, your desires can be a guide to that.
Your desires are like the salience of your personality.
They're the things that stick out of your personality into the world.
But your desires can be broken, they can be twisted.
You have to really figure out which of them are the right desires and which of them are connected to the things that you can do, to your actual talents and skills.
So, you know, you're sitting around waiting for passion to hit you before you do anything.
What I would say is decide what you should be doing, what God wants you to do.
Do it, and the passion will come.
Alrighty.
Justin says, wise King Clavin, bearded knower of culture.
Do you read extra biblical theological works?
And what books or writings have helped shape your theology and relationship with Jesus?
Well, that's a great question.
And yes, of course.
I mean, C.S. Lewis, of course, was big.
I love C.S. Lewis, especially his shorter pieces that he has a book that I believe is called The Weight of Glory, which I read is a series of speeches that he gave that he then turned into essays or printed as essays.
And I read each one of them thinking, wow, this is the greatest essay I ever wrote.
And then I'd read the next one and think, this is even greater than the last essay.
There is a wonderful book called After Virtue.
And I'm not sure if I told this story on the show before.
I read this book before I converted, and I read it in a Dead Tree edition.
And it really had an effect on me.
And years later, I was talking to my son, and I said, you know, I read this book, and I can't remember a word of it.
And so my son read it, and he came back and he said, you can't remember a word of it because you took it all in, and it just became you.
And he said, you wrote on the side of books, which I almost never do.
That's one of the reasons I love Kindle, because you can make notes, but I have this kind of superstition about writing books.
But he said, you wrote in the side of the books, and what you wrote again and again was just JC, meaning Jesus Christ, meaning this really fits in.
So about six months ago, I went back and reread the book.
And it's not an easy book.
It's a book of philosophy.
And I went back and reread it.
And in the meantime, in the interim, since I read it first, both the author and I had become Christians.
Both of us had.
So he followed the logic of the book, and I followed the logic of the book.
I thought it was an enormously powerful essay that's not necessarily about religion, but obviously leads you to the logic of religion, which is very beautiful.
And I also like, you know, I mean, Thomas Aquinas is a hard read, but I like reading about him and reading some of his works.
I actually do read a little bit of him every day, but it's only a little bit because he's kind of, you've got to really pay attention.
But yeah, I can.
You can't get easily distracted.
Yeah, but I love extra-theological work.
I just always like to base everything that I read in the gospel.
So like in other words, I'll read the gospels every day and then I'll go to the theological work as extracurricular.
But I still read a lot of great theological stuff.
All right, Veronica said, what's your opinion on the LA teacher strike?
Oh, was she listening to our pre-conversation conversation?
It seems to be a smokescreen for eliminating competition in charter schools.
That's what it is.
I mean, it's like the charter schools work better.
The Los Angeles teachers district stinks.
They spend all kinds of money and they have one of the worst systems in the country.
They are lazy.
They're stupid.
They're irresponsible.
You can't fire them.
And, you know, this doesn't mean that there aren't great teachers.
I mean, this is the problem.
A lot of parents have experiences of wonderful teachers, and they say, oh, we must support the teachers' union.
Those teachers should be working for private schools.
All schools should be private.
You can have required education.
You can have everybody having the right to have an education and still have an entirely private competitive school system.
There's no reason to have these unions, which are not supposed to be allowed to strike in the first place.
There's no reason to have these unions basically supporting their teachers and not supporting the kids.
The entire thing, the entire thing about the teachers' union is one of the most corrupt organizations in the country, almost everywhere it exists.
I think that all these schools, there should be school choice for everybody.
There should be charter schools.
Obviously, people should be, it should be required that people get an education, but competition, free markets work and they make things better, and state-run things always become lousy.
And unions, to have public unions, public unions should not exist altogether.
And even after the Janus decision, teachers' unions are making it so difficult for the teachers that want to opt out.
We have things here in LA called rubber rooms, where guys, even if they're still children, they have to fire them.
It's absurd.
And I hope they'll never get defeated because our government is as left-wing as the teachers' union.
But I wish they would just be smushed.
It's a union that needs to be crushed.
Preach.
Joel says, What advice do you have for young men who are uncomfortable in their current state of manliness?
I often feel inadequate compared to my other friends who seem to be finding relationships easier than I. You know, it's a really good question, but I want to go back to the answer that I had before.
Becoming a Man Through Action00:04:08
I mean, you become a man by being a man.
You know, you don't become a man by imitating things that you think are traits of manhood.
I know guys, listen, I know guys who, if you looked at them, you'd think he's got a wimpy attitude or something like that, but he will stand against a tie to do the right thing.
You know, I know plenty of guys like that.
You don't have to look like Humphrey Bogart or Arnold Schwarzenegger to do the manly thing, which has to manhood has to do with two things: integrity and courage.
It has to do with being who you say you are and having the courage to stand even when people think you're wrong and even when it's difficult.
I mean, those are the things that make for manhood.
It's not about bossing your wife around.
It's not about striding down the street with a big walk.
It's not about none of those things, about integrity and courage.
You learn those things in action.
So like if, you know, the military, I think, makes men out of people.
I think it really does.
I know it's a cliche, but I think it does.
I think getting out and doing stuff that is active, doing stuff that you're afraid of, is really helpful.
It will make you realize that, oh, I can do this.
I do have courage.
Because courage is not fearlessness.
Some people are fearless, and that's a wonderful gift, but courage is doing the stuff that you're afraid of.
So do those things, and you will find your manhood comes and fits you like a suit.
It's like it's not going to look like movie manhood.
It doesn't have to look like movie manhood.
It'll be yours.
And that's all you need.
And if you can find the right woman, the right woman can make a man out of you too.
Last question.
I can't believe we're here.
Yes.
Final question comes from David, who wants to know: who is your favorite philosopher?
Well, you know, I have to say, the Greeks knew everything.
It is just amazing.
They knew everything.
And the best philosophical read you will ever find are the dialogues of Plato.
He was just a great writer.
And his philosophy is fun to read.
The philosophical dialogues that lead up to the death of Socrates are great drama, beautifully written, very emotional, but also very philosophical.
Aristotle is not as much fun to read, but he does enrich Plato's thoughts so that the two of them, you know, it's said that all philosophy is just Plato and Aristotle.
I personally am also a big fan of Kant, who is very difficult to read.
I mean, he's bone-crunchingly hard to read, but who kind of extended some of the ideas of Plato in a more scientific world, a kind of Newtonian world that made more sense.
He was trying to preserve really the Christian religion.
So those are the philosophers who really have affected me.
It's funny, like science fiction, I always think that I'm not a big reader of philosophy, but then I look back and I realize I've read almost all the philosophers.
And I say like science fiction because I always think I'm not a big reader of science fiction, but I've read a lot of the classic science fiction.
But I think that when you go back to the Greeks, they just said everything.
And if you wanted to find a place to start, I would definitely start with Plato because he's just the best read.
He's the best writer of all of them.
All right.
And in case you didn't already know, Ben Shapiro is going to break all that down in his new book.
He does, absolutely.
Yes, which I've read.
Have you read it?
I have, indeed.
Oh.
And my only objection to it.
How do you do?
I mean.
Yeah, no, no, it's wonderful.
But my only objection to it is he's bringing it out at the same time as my novel, Another Kingdom, which you should go and pre-order now.
I'm very excited about that.
Are we going to be seeing another podcast season of that?
I hope so.
Yes, I'm working on the third one, which is the last one.
And I just today got a wonderful blurb from Dean Kuntz.
So to have, who was one of the master thriller writers of all time, and to have a master like that just say that he loved the book was great.
That's awesome.
Everyone, thank you so much for watching and thanks for joining us.
Be sure to join us next month.
And don't forget, only subscribers get to ask the question.
I don't know why you'd want to ask Michael Moll's question, but Ben's conversation is coming up in March, so you should do it early.
It's just like practice.
It's like practice.
Practice on goals.
But we got some backstages coming up, and we get to take subscriber questions on those shows too.
Fantastic.
I field those from Subscriber Central, which is really just a broom closet, but they try to make it look pretty.