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Sept. 5, 2017 - Rubin Report - Dave Rubin

01:09:26

Dave Rubin is Back: 30 Days with No News, Internet or Phone (LIVE) | DIRECT MESSAGE | Rubin Report

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01:08:23

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Speaker	Time	Text
unidentified		[outro music]
unidentified		[click]
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Oh!
		Hello there!
		I think we're live!
		I'm back!
		Holy shit!
		How's it going?
		Where have you been?
		Where have I been?
		Holy moly!
		We have a lot to catch up on, people.
		Alright.
		This actually feels quite surreal to me.
		I normally do this almost every day or I Do interviews or talk to people or go on other people's shows or I'm reading the news, part of this whole thing, fighting with people on Twitter, the whole shebang.
		I did not do any of it for a month.
		A real month.
		Nothing.
		Nothing.
		I did not know anything about the news.
		I did not look at my phone.
		I did not tweet any of that stuff.
		We had one of my guys doing my, one of my gals actually, doing Twitter stuff for us and taking care of the Facebook post just to get all the The show stuff out there, but I personally did not do anything.
		I left the grid on August 4th, so that was one month and one day ago.
		I was in New York City.
		I had just done a little something.
		My original intention was, I did an event on August 8th with Richard Dawkins, which
		I'm going to talk a little bit about and hopefully some of you guys saw that video.
		My intention was to go off the grid after that.
		But the morning of the 4th, I had done something on Sirius XM in the morning with my buddy
		David Webb and I was walking in the city and I realized I had about four days still in
		the city before the Dawkins event.
		I have some family in the city and friends and all that.
		And I was walking in the city and it was a beautiful day.
		And just that knee-jerk need and response and activity of constantly going to your phone, looking at it, all of this nonsense.
		And I was like, you know what?
		If I publicly just announce I'm doing it right this second, then I know that I'll be able to hold myself to it.
		So I sent off a little string of tweets saying that I was disappearing and going off the grid, and I did it.
		So as of August 4th, no nothing, really.
		So I'll skip ahead for just a second here.
		My original intention today was that I was gonna come here, sit down just like we're doing this right now.
		I was gonna come back and do this and have no idea of what's been going on and do that straight with you.
		Just actually do like a Q&A thing where you guys could tell me what's been going on or I would have had Amir and David just reading me some news things to catch up.
		At one point I thought maybe I'd have, I was going to ask my buddy Colin Moriarty to come in and catch me up because I think he's pretty astute on the news and a good guy.
		But then, two days ago, on today's Tuesday, so Sunday night, I was invited to a dinner with some former guests of the show, it was kind of a big thing, and Eric Weinstein, who as you guys know is Multiple Rubin Report guests, multiple time appearances, and become a good buddy of mine and a friend, and I was almost gonna say mentor, but he's one of the people that I go to when I'm confused about things or I need some counsel on something.
		Anyway, I met him about an hour before the dinner, and he said, look, at this dinner, people are gonna be talking about everything that's going on there.
		Why don't I just get you up to speed?
		So we spent about an hour just getting me up to speed on the major things.
		So I had not heard about what happened in Charlottesville.
		I had not heard about the hurricane.
		I had not heard about some of this Google stuff.
		I just scribbled a few things down here.
		I hadn't heard about this DACA thing, which I guess is unfolding right now.
		I hadn't heard about anything.
		The only one thing that I did hear about in the month was that for a couple days
		towards the beginning of the month, I was in Mexico just trying to,
		I was working on the book, but really just for at least a few days of it,
		just trying to like lay on a beach and just clear my mind.
		I mean, just clear the mental clutter that all of us have, right?
		We all have this endless onslaught of news, all the social media stuff.
		Obviously someone like me, I'm in it in a extremely intimate way.
		So the only thing that I heard was that while I was in Mexico, I was doing cardio every day.
		I tried to, I think I, can you tell I lost a little weight?
		Oh, I also have a beard.
		How about that?
		And anyway, so I was doing cardio every day and the TV that was in front of me every day was ESPN Espanol.
	So I did see something about hashtag Barcelona from a lot of athletes.
	So I did ascertain that there was a terror attack in Barcelona.
	I know nothing of it.
	Beyond that but what was interesting is that when I was in Mexico and I was at one of these like all-inclusive resorts where you just plop down and you know you pay for everything up front so you there everything's free while you're there so you don't leave the resort basically and people were coming and going and you meet people and I was really trying not to be I can breathe be decently social but I was trying not to actually because I really just want I didn't want to talk news with people first off and everyone wants to I always talk news and a couple of times
	people would come up to us, we'd be in the pool.
	They'd want to start talking news.
	I'd say I'm completely off the grid.
	When I would say that I'm off the grid and I literally, my phone was literally locked in a safe
	that I did not have a code to, I would tell people this.
	And I'd say, well, I'm off.
	I started a week ago, 10 days ago, I'm off till, you know, for another couple of weeks.
	People, it like blew people's mind.
	Everybody was like, how can you possibly, you're doing it?
	I can't believe you're doing it.
	I wish I could do it.
	And what about work emails and blah, blah, blah.
	And all these people that are on vacation.
	That was my one major takeaway, just on the total, just digital front and using these devices and all that stuff on the iPhone.
	is that the amount of people, the inability to shut down, even when you're on vacation.
	So we were in Cabo, which is kind of close to LA.
	It's like a two-hour flight.
	And it's just beach resorts, that's it.
	So I'm basically just sitting at a pool that's just facing the beach, and that's it.
	And I really was just focusing on clouds and the waves, and I could feel my mind just decluttering, just all that shit that's up there.
	I could feel it kind of just opening up some new doors, closing some other doors.
	It was nice.
	But then I'd look around the pool and all of these people who are staring at beauty, I mean just an ocean and some clouds and some gorgeous waves, and they're all people taking selfies, everyone's taking pictures of their frozen drinks, people are type battling, banging on the iPad and all that stuff.
	And just the inability to escape some of the digital madness, and I say this with all due irony as someone that creates content in the digital space, and that you guys are watching this digitally right now, and I'm doing it right now, and all that stuff.
	But it did give me some perspective, and you know that I've talked about this stuff, and I've had Tristan Harrison, who's a former Google guy who was talking about the ways that they kinda trick you into always needing more and more of that.
	But I gotta tell you, getting away from it, Well I'll talk about the news part separately but getting away from just looking at the phone constantly like my hand going to my pocket if I was just standing on a corner this happened a couple times because I wasn't doing anything with my phone and didn't have it with me if I was meeting somebody I didn't have a phone I'd have to just stand you know you in the old days you were meeting someone oh I'll meet you on the corner of 43rd and Lex well you'd have to at noon well you'd have to wait there and hope that they'd show up
	And you couldn't just stare at a phone the whole time.
	You couldn't track them or track yourself or drop a pin or any of that stuff.
	And just doing simple things like that was, it felt good.
	It felt good.
	It was like a throwback.
	I felt like a throwback to some other time.
	Also, just getting away from the news in general.
	You know, it's funny, even though I'm just catching up on all this stuff, and I don't want to go too deep into what I missed, because obviously I'm going to have some catching up to do.
	By the way, we're taping later this afternoon.
	We're taping an interview with Phil DeFranco, who, as you guys know, I consider to be one of the guys who really is doing something really good and honest and decent in the news space.
	So we're taping that today.
	It'll be up tomorrow.
	So maybe we'll talk more about the specifics of what I missed.
	Maybe he can enlighten me on some stuff and all that.
	But I gotta tell you, whatever happened, even if there's 10 other things that I didn't get to hear or whatever, I don't feel less informed.
	If anything, I actually, as I sit here on September 5th right now, after being off the grid since the 4th of August, I feel more informed, actually.
	I feel more clear-minded on everything, because the world continues.
	The world continues.
	So when I saw this hashtag Barcelona thing, then I'm in the pool, and a bunch of people, when something about the news would come up, Or somebody was like, you know, did you see what's going on?
	I was like, I'm off the grid.
	And they said, well, one big thing happened.
	One big, big thing happened.
	And I assume they were talking about Barcelona.
	Apparently it sounds to me now, in retrospect, that people are actually talking about what happened in Charlottesville.
	And again, we'll get to all that over the next couple of weeks and I'll have some people on to talk about all that stuff.
	And I gotta read enough to have a comprehensive thought that I can give you on all that.
	But anyway, so there's a bunch of stuff that I want to do in this live stream right now.
	And by the way, we're going casual today.
	I don't know if you note my very nice classical liberal t-shirt.
	So contrary to the people online who say that Dave Rubin's an alt-right member, he is not.
	Classical liberal, which by the way is for, we're selling these.
	It's rubinreport.com slash store, am I correct?
	Someone will confirm that for me.
	And I'm really going casual today, just wearing socks in the studio.
	That is R2, that is C3PO right there.
unidentified		And that is, that is, can you see R2?
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		There's R2-D2 over there.
		All right, so there's a whole bunch of stuff that I wanna catch up on with you guys.
		So first off, so yeah, I went off the grid, had a couple days in New York City, catching up with family and stuff like that.
		Then I did this event with Richard Dawkins, which we've posted the video right here.
		It was great.
		I mean, this is a guy that I've wanted to meet for so long, just to sit down with, even if it wasn't going to be on camera, just, you know, one of the great minds I think that we have in the world today.
		And I've interviewed so many of his contemporaries and the people, you know, sort of around him From Sam Harris to Lawrence Krauss to Michael Shermer and Peter Boghossian and all of these people.
		We've all sort of been around in this same world that keeps coalescing in a way.
		And so we did it at the 92nd Street Y.
		I actually thought, and I think I said this before, I thought we were doing it in the massive theater
		that they have there, but they actually closed that for the summer for renovations.
		And because this thing happened so quickly, we did it in a smaller room.
		It was very intimate, it was great.
		It was immediately sold out.
		And it was just great to talk to the guy and connect with him.
		I felt that he genuinely, I don't know that he knew much about me before him, but I felt that there was
		like a true sort of mutual respect thereafter and hopefully we'll be able to do some stuff in the future.
		But it was sort of, even though I had gone off the grid a couple days before, it kind of felt like
		when I was done with that, I really knew I could just like kind of flip the switch and shut my mind down.
		And it just felt great.
		I can't begin to tell you how nice it was to have that be the thing that let me go.
		So now I wanna say what I think is the most important thing that I'm probably gonna say in this hour.
		And by the way, we're going to take questions on Patreon.
		I know people are submitting questions right now.
		We're also going to do a super chat thing so you guys can ask me some questions.
		But the most important thing that happened to me over the last month is that I constantly found,
		in the moments of silence or quiet, if I was just laying on the beach,
		and I wanna talk to you about the book also, but wherever I was, if I was at dinner
		or even just having a cup of coffee, or in this last week and a half that I've been back home
		and I've been working on the book, I've been doing more gardening, some other stuff,
		that I constantly found a real sense of gratitude that you guys, that especially those of you,
		I constantly found a real sense of gratitude that you guys, that especially those of you,
		the 4,000 or so of you that support me on Patreon, and now we're doing monthly things on PayPal as well,
		the 4,000 or so of you that support me on Patreon, and now we're doing monthly things on PayPal as well,
		the people that support wherever you do it, wherever you do it or have done it or whatever,
unidentified		the people that support wherever you do it, I've been doing more gardening, some other stuff,
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		that you guys gave me the ability to do what I just did.
		I mean, I truly had one of the, I think one of the best months of my life
		because it gave me perspective, it gave me a sense to breathe and calm down.
		I feel incredibly invigorated right now to be back doing what I'm doing.
		I think I wanna continue, of course, the conversations we're having, but there are new ways that I think I wanna start doing some things.
		I wanna strengthen everything we've been doing and maybe push the show in some other directions too, challenge my own beliefs and all that stuff.
		But I felt a constant, this was a constant throughout the month, just an incredible gratitude to those of you that support me because you allowed me to do this.
		You allowed me to work on the book.
		You allowed me to shut down.
		The average person, "does not get to do that.
		"And you guys enabled me to do that, "and I am forever grateful for that.
		"And I think that the payback that I can now give you "is by doing better work than ever before,
		"and that's what I intend on doing."
		So, all right.
		So there's a few other things that I wanna talk about here,
		but let's talk a little bit about YouTube itself for a second, because that is the main platform
		So I did do one work thing.
		I had to take one work call in the month, and about a week ago, I think it was, a week or so, maybe 10 days ago, I took one call.
		It was a call with YouTube, because as some of you know, Oh, by the way, we passed 500,000 subscribers when I was gone, so that was great.
		But, as you know, I've been saying that I get messages every day from people who tell me they're unsubscribed from the channel, every day.
		They say, Dave, I know I'm subscribed, but now I see that I'm unsubscribed, your videos don't show up in my feed, I click the little bell, blah, blah, blah.
		We know that video, you guys all know this part already, that the videos are being demonetized, that absurd, We had something like, we got informed that something like 600 of our videos got demonetized.
		We also, you'll find this particularly crazy.
		So when I left, so you guys know I left end of July is when we wrapped up and we had taped a whole bunch of shows.
		So the shows that you got when I was gone, we did Beyond Dawkins, we had Gadsad, and we had Your Own Brooke, and we had Guy Benson and Pia Milani.
		And all of these episodes were in the can ready to go.
		And what we do is, when Amira edits them, she uploads them to YouTube, and usually until we title them, meaning, you know, Gadsad on religion or whatever it is, part one, it usually just has some numbers.
		It's just like numbers and letters.
		It's just nonsense, and then our guys get in there and tag a title and all that.
		Suddenly, for the first time ever over the past month, videos of ours that had no tags, meaning it didn't say anything about religion, it said no words, there was nothing that might be scary to advertisers on there, videos that had no titles and no tags, meaning all it was was the raw footage uploaded now to the back of YouTube, those were being demonetized.
		This has never happened before and this is actually crazy.
		I mean, think about it.
		It's basically, they're proving us guilty Rather than allowing us to be innocent.
		We're guilty before innocent, which is insane.
		So anyway, so I took a call with YouTube because we've been going back and forth with YouTube.
		David has an endless email chain.
		They're impossible to get through.
		Every response that they give you when I tweet at Team YouTube on Twitter and all that, it's endless.
		We're gonna escalate this.
		We'll move this up the chain.
		We're looking into this.
		The team's working on that.
		There's literally never, And I know I use literally a lot, but there is never an answer.
		They never give you an answer.
		No one, the buck stops with no one.
		Oh, we'll look into that.
		So anyway, so we have this call with them for about an hour.
		I was, I've been in a good place in the last month, so I was being pretty pleasant, and I want the platform, as I said to Jack Conte from Patreon, you know, I want the platform to succeed.
		This is the platform I'm on.
		The discovery here is unmatched, unrivaled.
		Anyway, the conversation was actually quite ridiculous.
		We just got no answers on anything.
		They couldn't tell us if people were being unsubscribed or not.
		They couldn't tell us why the demonetization is happening before we even tag entitled the videos.
		They assured us that we're not being targeted.
		But I also think it's possible that whoever you're talking to there, we had two YouTube people there, that they don't even know what's actually going on really with the algorithm or it's at the highest levels of what's actually happening.
		So anyway, I mention all this because we're putting this thing on YouTube.
		Next week we have Douglas Murray who's coming in from the UK and we're putting him up and all that kind of stuff.
		And we're investing more and more into the show.
		I mentioned that right before we went off the grid, we installed some new lights around here because when we do the panel shows like I did with Shermer and Prager, we needed a third chair to be lit.
		That was about 5,000 bucks.
		We're investing in travel and all kinds of other things.
		And I just, at this point right now, and then I'll get off this topic and we can talk about some other stuff.
		But at this point, our YouTube rev has cut about 75%.
	It's actually insanely ridiculous.
	They're demonetizing us on things that have nothing to, two of our videos with Pia Malani, who is a left-wing economist.
	We didn't talk about anything controversial.
	We didn't talk about, I don't think we really talked about anything other than that.
	The economy.
	That these things are being demonetized at a crazy level and it's making our business of being here a problem.
	So I want the discovery here.
	But again, this is exactly why you guys, if you support us on Patreon or PayPal or whatever it is, we put ads now on our podcast.
	And we'll figure out all the other different ways.
	But I think it's important for me to be transparent with you about this.
	And also, as I got back on the grid today, I did see a lot of emails from people and people that were messaging me about just everyone's having a problem with YouTube right now.
	And I actually wonder, you know, Google's a public company.
	I wonder if the board fully understands what is happening on the demonetization side because they have a fiduciary responsibility to do what's most profitable for the shareholders.
	And I suspect a lot of this is politically motivated.
	Look, I don't know.
	But anyway, I want to be transparent about how we're trying to do business here.
	And you know, Patreon obviously took a hit because of the Lawrence Southern thing.
	And then Sam Harris announced he was leaving.
	Ultimately, he decided to stay.
	But I think Patreon lost a whole bunch of people.
	So we did take a dip there, too.
	So anyway, we're trying to figure out all this stuff, but if you missed me, and you think what we're doing is good, and for the month that I took off that you still got brand new content every week, and you wanna continue that and help us grow and all that stuff, it's reubenreport.com slash donate.
	So I'm just throwing that out there, and then we'll jump into some other things.
	So a couple things before I get to the Q&A here, and I see that there's a zillion things going on here.
	Oh, so the book.
	Okay, so, I mean, that was the main reason I took off.
	So, had the first few days in New York, and that I was just kind of seeing family and stuff.
	Then I had the Dawkins thing, and then the next day I went to Mexico, and I wanted like two or three days just to do nothing, and I just needed it.
	You ever just have, I mean, I did like a good like 72 hour just on the beach, nothing.
	Just in the pool, laying out, Going to the gym, nothing.
	Really worked on eating right, and I didn't drink much over the last month, and I've been working out like crazy.
	What do you guys think of the beard, by the way?
	We're deciding.
	It's going to be a team decision on where this thing goes.
	I'm kind of digging it.
	What are you guys feeling?
	Anyway, so after two or three days, basically I realized that my brain
	actually needed a little more time to decompress.
	So what I was doing was, I had a notebook out there and I was writing a whole bunch of stuff.
	And then over the last couple weeks now that I've been home, I've been working on it again.
	I can tell now, I now know what my good buddy Peter Boghossian has said, that writing a book is going to be the hardest thing in your life.
	I now know that is true.
	And there were like 18 different pivots that I was doing where, you know, a lot of what I was trying to write was the why I left the left thing, but then I was trying to blend it into sort of the online world and just sort of political stuff that's happening now.
	And I wanted to tell a little bit more of my own personal story and all of these things.
	So it's coming together.
	It's coming together.
	I think it's going to take a little more time than I thought, but I'm going to show what I have to my editor and then I think she'll probably get it in some sort of sensible way that we can kind of move forward on that.
	But even that, even my ability to just sit, it was also nice.
	I literally didn't look at screens.
	So except when I was at the gym and the TV was right in front of me, and as I said, it was ESPN Espanol, it was nice not to look at screens ever.
	Even just coming back today, like looking at bright screens.
	It's like, they're very bright, these screens.
unidentified		So...
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		So anyway, so that's where we're at with the book, and I'm gonna keep pushing through, and I'll keep you guys posted as we're doing it.
		But again, I could not have afforded to do this if it wasn't for those of you that help us do this.
		So I'm incredibly appreciative to all of this stuff.
		One of the other things I just wanted to say about Twitter specifically, because just this morning I'm back on, and I haven't even really looked at my mentions, but I just tweeted out that I'm doing this right now, and I have Phil on, and whatever else.
		It became so obvious to me as I quickly glanced through my feed that so much of what whatever is happening in the world, so much of this is being dictated by like just this endless noise and craving for more retweets and likes and all this stuff.
		Now I know I'm not saying anything that's like magically You know, magically revelatory right there.
		But I think so many of the things, and maybe I've been a victim of this myself at some level, is that everyone wants retweets and likes and all this stuff, and we're fighting with people that we don't know.
		We're outraged about people that we've never heard of until they suddenly, someone you Never heard of, said something about something you don't care about, now you can virtue signal your way into getting them.
		And just the amount of anonymous accounts that are just, what I realized was, there's just so many people out there right now, and they're mostly anonymous accounts, but not all.
		And by the way, there's some reasons that anonymity online is valid.
		In certain cases, but these people that just want to watch the world burn, these people that just want to upset everybody and make everybody think that all hell is breaking loose and everyone hates everybody and everyone's racist and all of this stuff.
		And by the way, these a lot of people that are just endlessly pushing out truly evil, hateful, racist memes and all that stuff.
		Like there's a certain amount of people that just want to fuck with everybody and watch the whole thing burn.
		And I don't wanna strengthen those people in any way, and I'm not gonna strengthen them in any way.
		I don't think that's really what I've done, but I wanna be even more aware of that.
		Because it just so hits me that we're watching right now, and again, I'm saying this as someone that's been out of the loop for the last month, but from what I've seen in the little bit, couple hours of being back, that the extremes, that if you think that there now is this sort of, that this alt-right or white supremacist or whatever you think that thing is, Well, it's been, for the last two years, what have we been talking about on this show pretty consistently?
		Consistently, it's been the left has to start becoming liberal again, looking at individuals, not looking at groups.
		That is actually prejudice.
		If you look at someone by their skin color or sexuality, and then you think you can understand them because of that, or you think they should think certain things, that's prejudging.
		That's prejudice.
		And I think that's why I've tried so hard for the last two years to try to get the left to not do that, because ultimately, of course it was going to lead to sort of either a white identitarian movement using the same tactics of collectivism that the left is using, or whatever is happening.
		But again, I don't wanna go too far into that right now because I have to see exactly what's happening here.
		But my overriding point being that I just, I wanna keep having conversations with people who are truly saying something, even if they're saying things that I disagree with, but that are truly trying to find some answers and change the world in the right way.
		Again, I may not agree with the specifics of what they want or what they're doing or their outcome, but that are truly trying to do something versus just we all get caught in this noise of just these crazy people just screaming shit all day long.
		And by the way, when I was off and I saw some friends and family and things like that, you know, telling people at a dinner table, you know, we're not gonna do politics tonight, because I'm off the grid and I don't want to hear any of that.
		You know, most people at first, they kind of like, well, but Trump this and you know, but this happened.
		But putting that aside, people also, there's a lot of other things you can talk about.
		You can talk about art and philosophy and AI and sports and a gajillion other things.
		And I think that the, Constant!
		Attack an onslaught that the media is putting into us, that every little political decision, all hell is gonna break loose.
		I mean, even if you think, so I've been off for about a month.
		Remember those Comey hearings all about Russia?
		And everyone said, well, this is the smoking gun, this is the smoking gun.
		Trump Jr.' 's meeting about this is the smoking gun.
		It's like, well, what happened to any of that?
		But we all spending all this time focusing on all this political nonsense.
		And again, it's why I always say the best government is one small enough that they can't affect you in every way.
		And I'm gonna keep pushing that idea too.
		All right, so there's a lot of people here.
		All right, so it looks like a lot of people are digging the beard, so I'm happy to hear that.
		Oh, somebody's saying, hey Dave, glad you enjoyed your vacation.
		Any thoughts on the North Korea situation?
		Plans on getting DeFranco on the show?
		And what about lesser known Razorfist?
		So I'm not sure who Razorfist is.
		DeFranco's on today, it'll be up tomorrow.
		And as for the North Korea thing, so Eric caught me up.
		For about 10 minutes.
		I obviously need to read more before I comment about it.
		As a general rule, I'm not for preeminent strikes.
		I'm not for attacking first.
		You can see I've been out of it for a little bit.
		And we'd have to see what's really going on there.
		On Super Chat, somebody said, thanks for having Douglas Marty.
		My pleasure.
		You know, I had him on once on Skype about two years ago.
		I'm very excited to sit down with him.
		Someone on Super Chat said, lucky you have us.
		Who needs ad revenue anyway?
		Yeah, you know what?
		The funny thing is on the Super Chat, you know, YouTube takes a percentage of that number, whatever you put in to do that.
		I don't know what the percentage is offhand.
		But the simple thing is that the ad rev on YouTube has just become, I'd be an idiot if I was running a business that I was relying on that ad revenue.
		It's down immeasurably, and the fact that they're, I mean, this concept, really think about this.
	They are demonetizing some of our videos before we've attached any metadata.
	Now, that can't be happening on every channel.
	I would venture to say, and I asked the guy outright, and he said no, but I don't know that he knows or would tell me.
	I said, are you telling me that on left-leaning, or whatever the SJW, or whatever you want to call that, You're telling me on those political channels that their videos are being demonetized before they have any metadata, and he said no, but how can I believe that?
	And why would you be doing that anyway?
	How does that make sense?
	I said to the guy, look, I give you a television quality show.
	This show could be on television tomorrow.
	We get offers to do bigger things, bigger, it's all relative, but we get offers to do all kinds of other things with this show.
	I love what we're doing now.
	When I talked to you about gratitude before, I realized that I, in a certain way, There's always things that I want to change, there's always things that I want to grow, there's always things that I want to expand on, all that.
	But in a certain way, I kind of have exactly the operation that I want right now.
	We control this thing, we've got a great little business running, we're figuring out all those other ways to do it.
	If one of the networks came to me and offered me seven figures, honestly, I don't know that I would do it.
	I really don't.
	at this point, why would I want to even?
	But that being said, I have to be smart about how we can continue to make a functional business.
	And unfortunately, YouTube's just making it impossible for us.
	Somebody's asking about a panel discussion with your own Brooke and Jordan Peterson.
	They have some interesting disagreements.
	They absolutely do.
	You know, it's so interesting because, so if you saw my interview with your own,
	which we put up two weeks ago.
	I Really like him.
	I think he makes great arguments for rational self-interest and And Jordan Peterson does now they have differences on where what religion does within that I'd love to sit down with both of them I'm actually doing some events with the Ayn Rand Institute over the next couple months.
	I'm gonna be at Harvard on David, correct me if I'm wrong, on January 19th with Bret Weinstein and Steve Simpson.
	And then I'm gonna be at, I think, Clemson with Jordan Peterson a little bit after that.
	But anyway, yes, I'd be happy to get your own and Jordan to sit down.
	I think that would be, I think that would really be great.
	Okay, here we go.
	From Patreon, I guess my question as a guy who's jealous of any unplugging success, how long did it take before you regretted plugging back in?
	What was the most shocking bit of news you cashed up on?
	That's good.
	You know, this morning, okay, so Eric, yeah, I'm right on the, it's the 20th at Harvard with Brett Weinstein, so you can look into that.
	So as I said, two days ago, Eric gave me just the breakdown, but I wasn't watching TV or even looking at my phone or any of that stuff.
	He gave me the breakdown of what was going on, and I felt it was, as I said, I wanted to do it straight up with you.
	I wanted to just sit here today and do this with you guys.
	But because of the dinner that I was going to, it seemed like the right way to do it, and as I said, Eric's the right guy to fill me in on this stuff.
	So to your question, I gotta say, when I woke up this morning, so last night, so used to be before this little break, you know, I'd have my phone on my nightstand and sometimes I'd be looking at it before I went to bed and then sometimes I'm looking at it right when I wake up.
	And that's not really a normal way to start the day.
	I can scroll Twitter and see how many people told me to go fuck myself before I've had coffee.
	Like, that's not normal.
	By the way, 90% of the interaction I get everywhere is positive.
	It's this, you know, there's always gonna be the loud haters and the trolls and all that.
	Okay, fine.
	But anyway, last night, right before bed, I walked into the bedroom and I had my phone and I was about to put it on the nightstand.
	I was like, you know what?
	No, I'm not gonna do this.
	So no more phone in the bedroom.
	So I am actually setting up some new rules for myself in general.
	No more phone in the bedroom.
	I will not look at my phone or even my iPad unless it's for reading, you know, reading a book.
	An e-book.
	I'm not gonna be doing that in the bedroom.
	I don't want my day, your day should not start with the immediacy.
	Even if you're not on social media, your day doesn't need to start with the immediacy of what happened today and who can I be outraged about and how did this happen, blah, blah, blah.
	That doesn't mean you don't have to be informed.
	I tell you this as someone, I love logic and reason and education and all of these things.
	You gotta be informed.
	But you also gotta live a decent life.
	So I learned a little something on that.
	So I would say the most jarring part of coming back, truly, is looking at the screens.
	Like just looking at screens.
	There's something different.
	I've been looking at people for the last month.
	I've been sitting down across the table with people.
	I do this normally too, but when you really take a month off screens,
	you think a little bit about how weird it is that we're all walking around with our heads down,
	looking into this.
	Yo, you'll love this.
	So I'm about to get off the grid.
	I'm in New York City.
	So this is what actually pushed me, finally, when I told you I got off a few days earlier than I wanted to.
	So I walk out of SiriusXM, and that's on about 50th and 6th or so, and I walk over to the Time Warner Center, that's the building that CNN is in, and I go downstairs to Whole Foods.
	I was gonna get an iced tea, and I'm on my phone.
	I get the iced tea, I'm on my phone.
	And I'm looking at something and I started walking up the down escalator.
	I kid you not.
	I kid you not.
	These three girls, I don't know, probably a little younger than me, all kind of laughing at me.
	And then I was like, man, I just looked at them.
	I was like, yeah, I need a break.
	And then they laughed.
	It was a funny little exchange.
	But I almost walked up a down escalator in New York City.
	You know what I mean?
	So that's when I was finally like, all right, and then I walked up to the Upper West and I sent that little chain out and whatever.
	So I would say the most jarring part, it's not the news yet, so I don't wanna address the specific news stuff, because I still gotta take that in more.
	Obviously what happened to Charlottesville, I need to track and figure out what's going on there and how real is this rise of whatever this is on the right right now.
	I want to find out more about the hurricane, which obviously sounds horrific.
	Okay, let's see.
	Can you try to interview Norwegian Integration Minister Sylvie Listag?
	You've gotten Larry King on the show, so this shouldn't be hard.
	I'm trying to connect with Larry this week, actually.
	I don't know who that person is, but I will look into it.
	One of the things that I really want to do I consider this, as of today, and the show that we're gonna do with Phil that'll be up tomorrow, I consider this season three of The Rubin Report in my mind.
	I wanna start doing things a little more in seasons.
	I think part of the problem people are having of unplugging and disconnecting from the news is that we don't have seasons anymore because everything's digital, so all these people are always putting out content all the time.
	There are great creators that are putting out stuff seven days a week.
	To me, my feeling is if we put out one or two shows plus a live stream, if you give me an, Believe me, if you give me an hour of your week, if you spend an hour of your week to listen to an important conversation or listen to me talk or do a Q&A or whatever it is, there's so much stuff out there.
	That, I think, is a lot of time.
	So I think that on a lot of these people, they're putting out more stuff and there's actually diminishing returns on it.
	You know what I mean?
	You gotta live your life too.
	I think we're gonna, my goal is to, we'll do one or two a week, plus a live stream, something like that, but I don't think we need to expand specifically beyond that.
	I wanna start taking the show on the road more.
	Actually, I think, by the way, that we're gonna be live streaming that event at Harvard and some of the other things that we're doing.
	Let's see.
	From Patron, under what conditions would you consent to war with North Korea and would you consent to American soldiers on the ground?
	Man, getting right back into it, huh?
	Well, look, I need to figure out more what's happened.
	I guess this was a test of a hydrogen bomb and there was something about an ICBM that was shot up, but now they can figure out how far it can actually go.
	There's almost, I don't want to get too ahead of myself on this one, but I would say there's almost no situation at this point Anywhere on earth that I would be for American troops on the ground in some sort of real capacity.
	Some sort of peacekeeping thing or defending people, something like that, but occupying a country or some of that stuff, no.
	But I would need to, I need to figure out what happened there more.
	Why do you think that so many left-wingers are desperate to prove that you're a right-winger?
	Well, that's kind of funny.
	So I did, over the course of the last month, happened twice in Mexico and a few times just wandering around the area that I live in here, people would come up to me and talk about stuff.
	And a few people did know I was off the grid, so tried not to burden me with stuff.
	But people ask me about that all the time.
	Like, what do you think about your being called alt-right or a far-right winger or blah blah?
	As someone that's been away for this a little bit, it's beyond meaningless.
	And it's why all the labels and all of this stuff, as I've tried to talk about for the last year especially, it's why these things are becoming increasingly meaningless.
	And I see it.
	You know, apparently, so the guy at Google who wrote the memo, James Damore, who I think we're gonna have on the show, I just got in contact with him this morning, actually.
	You know, if it, That putting all of these these ideas together, whatever we're talking about here, where if you think that someone who could be gay married and who is pro-choice and is for funding an education system and is
	For assisted suicide, and for reforming the prison system, and for legalizing marijuana, and all these things.
	If that person to you is far-right or alt-right, then that's a pretty freaking big tent that those right-wingers have, those evil right-wingers.
	I think part of the problem, and again, this is why I talk about the left so much, is I want the left to return to reason and all of that, and to logic.
	And because they've abandoned that, all they've got are these labels.
	So when James Damore, I just Googled some stuff this morning as I was catching up on all this.
	I guess James Damore said in a Reddit that he's a fan of what I do, and then I saw some articles, I think one was in ThinkProgress, about him being fans of right-wing things, and then they quoted me on a direct message that I did that didn't sound right-wing at all.
	But this is all these people have, and it needs to be dismissed and treated as drivel.
	And one of the things that I'm also gonna try to do now is give less credence to this nonsense.
	So over the last couple of months, I've had a lot of really, Fucking terrible, libelous articles written about me from all kinds of places.
	And in some cases I went on full attack, and in some places I just ignored it because I didn't want to add fuel to the fire.
	But I'm now realizing almost everything that you read out of mainstream media is pretty much garbage.
	It's all slanted nonsense.
	And it makes it harder for you to figure out what's right, but I'm gonna spend less time defending myself, and I'm just gonna go on what, all I can do is tell you what I think, and those thoughts could be right or wrong or in the middle, but, I can't worry about what people are going to say about me.
	I just genuinely can't.
	Let's see.
	I think we have Michelle Malice coming on soon to talk about North Korea, by the way.
	I'm sorry, Michael Malice.
	Michelle Malice.
	Michael Malice.
	Man, I have been out of it for a while.
	Okay, let's see.
	Oh, I see that my buddy Faisal and Patrick Winson are in the Facebook chat.
	How are you doing, guys?
	Where can I buy the t-shirt?
	So we've got a whole bunch of new merch because as I said we are trying to be a business and because we cannot trust the YouTube rev anymore.
	We've got some great new shirts that my sister is an artist that she designed including this one and it's RubinReport.com slash store.
	We're doing a whole bunch of stuff through Teespring.
	We've got a new center shirt.
	I was gonna wear that one.
	Today, maybe I'll do another stream later in the week and wear that one.
	We got a couple other cool classical liberal ones and some other Rubin Report stuff and there's mugs and sweatshirts and hoodies and t-shirts and long sleeves and girls shirts and blah blah blah, all that stuff.
	Dave, this SJW nonsense writes itself, why are no comedians capitalizing on it?
	This is one of the things I was talking about a lot before I went off.
	Comedians, unfortunately, many, many, I don't include Joe Rogan and a couple others in this, have become hysterical crying babies.
	So like when Milo's book was coming out and I saw plenty of famous comedians that I know demanding that Simon and Schuster not release the book.
	It's like, since when are comedians for censorship?
	Since when are comedians?
	for silencing opposition.
	Comedians are supposed to fight bullshit with comedy.
	And these people, unfortunately, have all become sort of leftist groupthink robots.
	So many of the comics these days.
	So when I go to schools now and I'm talking to these kids, and I sort of incorporate a little standup into it,
	and I play with the crowd a little bit, It's like, there are things that are cool right now, I think.
	I think that logic and reason and liberty, I think these things are cool.
	And there's a lot of funny to be made about the SJWs and all the nonsense.
	And I'm trying to run with that a little bit, because it depresses me as somebody that loves comedy.
	Okay, welcome back, Dave.
	We've missed you.
	Please never stop making your fantastic content.
	It's needed more than ever.
	Love the new look.
	Please follow your new Twitter fan page, at Dave Rubin's beard.
	Oh my God, the beard has a Twitter fan page.
	Welcome back, Dave.
	I hear Crowder's hiring a new producer, someone who's not gay.
	Is Nakia Jarrett out of there or what happened?
unidentified		That's a great idea.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Sometimes I feel people are so focused on the federal level of government.
		Could you please interview people making a difference in state and county level government?
		That's a great idea.
		It's one of the reasons, as I've said, that I believe in this, in classical liberalism,
		because that gets the power back to the local governments.
		We shouldn't be giving all of this power to the federal government.
		If the federal government can control everything, well then if you don't like it, you can't just move to another state.
		You gotta leave the country.
		I would always rather.
		The little part of Los Angeles that I live in, right now, the exit that I live off of is a dump.
		I live off a couple highways.
		It's LA, there's highways everywhere.
		One of the exits by my house is just a dump.
		There's garbage everywhere.
		There's flipped cones.
		There's crap everywhere.
		The sidewalk is busted up, blah, blah, blah.
		David has been calling our local representative to get them to take care of it.
		Why would I wanna have to call the federal government to have to come in and fix that?
		Now, the local government hasn't done it yet.
		We're working on it.
		But I would always want to be governed more by the people around me in my community, Who care and know about the things that I care and know about and are that we're all affected by rather than some supreme power So stop making it seem like the president is king.
		He isn't king at least not yet Okay Dave, can you give a quick shout-out and support to Majid Nawaz at Quilliam for his lawsuit against the Southern Poverty Law Center for labeling him an anti-Muslim extremist?
		Of course.
		I think Majid's a great guy.
		I think the SPLC is off the deep end.
		If you have to pick who's an extremist, Majid Nawaz or the SPLC, it is the SPLC.
		Ignore them.
		Ignore them.
		They're garbage.
		Don't give them your money.
		Dave, let's create a new content platform to circumvent YouTube censorship.
		Look, it's interesting, the word censorship there is sort of interesting, because I don't know that they're directly censoring.
		Now, by demonetizing things at the level that they're doing it, and again, especially where they're demonetizing things before they've even been tagged, by doing that, That's not censorship directly, because they're not saying that I can't put the stuff out there.
		But we don't truly know what's going on with this unsubscriber thing that I'm talking about, with what's happening with the algorithm.
		Are they just suppressing things?
		I mean, we know.
		People tell me that my videos don't get put into their feeds.
		So we see certain videos that I know should be getting 150,000 views that get 20,000 views, you know?
		So is there some level of censorship?
		Is there some level of political coercion going on there?
		Read, I'm gonna read, I haven't read James Damore's whole 10-page document yet, but I am gonna read that.
		I have no doubt that they're fiddling around with something.
		By the way, I did ask in that phone call with YouTube, I did ask them if they would send a representative here.
		They said, well, they'll connect us to the PR team.
		Then there was no follow-up.
		We'll work on them.
		Oh, and, I asked Jack from Twitter to do the show, and he DM'd me and said he would do it.
		I followed up a couple times, haven't heard back yet, but hopefully we can make that happen, so that would be great.
		Okay, did you see the eclipse?
		So I did, so I'm in Los Angeles here, and I did go outside during the eclipse.
		My mom had sent me many messages not to stare at the eclipse.
		And I saw basically, it just got a little darker here.
		This wasn't the ideal state to be seeing it.
		It just got like a little eerily dark here.
		It was kind of cool.
		By the way, when I wasn't online and wasn't tweeting and doing all this nonsense,
		I did a lot of gardening.
		As you guys know, this is a home studio that I have here.
		I haven't even lived here for a year.
		We moved in last November, so it's 10 months or so.
		But I had never owned a home before this.
		I'm 41.
		I made it.
	41 years old.
	I'm a homeowner in America.
	It's the immigrant's dream.
	And I did it.
	But just spending some time at home.
	And feeling like I owned something and I wanted to do yard work and gardening and painting and some other stuff.
	It felt, it was very validating.
	And again, that goes to why I'm feeling so much gratitude for those of you that support me.
	Do you bring your dog with you and did she help you with cardio?
	So most of the cardio in Mexico, I was just at the little gym there.
	I did get an elliptical machine in the house here because, Even though I do go to a gym, it's a couple miles away, and just because my schedule's been so nuts, I haven't been able to get there as much.
	So I just do it in the other bedroom over there.
	And Emma is 13 years old.
	She's slightly past the point of doing cardio, but she's doing great and looks great for a 13-year-old.
	for a 13 year old.
	Do you generate any relevant revenue from YouTube Red subscribers?
	So there is a breakdown in our back end where we can see, you know, we made it.
	this amount from Super Chat, let's say, and this amount from AdRev, and this amount from Red.
	So we do make some from Red.
	It's not much, but I don't know how many people actually do Red.
	But if you're on Red and you're watching us, we are making something off you, and I do appreciate that.
	Have you explored the non-religious aspects of Buddhism and meditation?
	I have found that I'm able to handle the noise in society and politics today.
	So I haven't gotten into meditation specifically or explored Buddhism too much.
	But it's funny you say that, 'cause the other day, I watched "What's Love Got to Do With It,"
	which is the Tina Turner movie, and I love Tina Turner.
	I put her at the top, by the way, above Beyonce.
	Love the Tina.
	I was watching the movie and in the movie, and it's her life story, it's her true life story, her and Ike Turner had a horrific relationship and he was incredibly abusive and drugs and all that stuff.
	And when she finally tries to get her life, to turn her life around, she gets into Buddhism and chanting and meditation and all that.
	And it was making me think the other day that I'd like to get into it.
	I think basically, I've pretty much done a good job of being able to get out of the noise, but again, I did learn this month that I've got to do a better job of it, because there is a lot of noise.
	Okay.
	When you talk to Damore, could you also talk to someone who took offense at what he wrote?
	I'm interested in hearing more what was so offensive about what he wrote.
	Best I can get so far is that talking to groups somehow puts each individual in that group.
	Most women don't do as well in engineering, for example.
	Therefore, this person as a woman must not be good at engineering.
	I'll be happy to do that, so let me explore the thing a little bit more.
	Let me read what he said.
	We'll get him on the show, and then I'd be happy to have someone that has feelings on that.
	A couple people are asking about DACA.
	I'm just catching up on the whole thing, so give me a couple days on that one.
	Let's see.
	I'd love to have Austin Peterson on back now that he's running for U.S.
	Senate in Missouri.
	I really like Austin.
	We had a great conversation here.
	I told him I'd be happy to go to Missouri and campaign for him.
	Look, we disagree on some stuff.
	He's definitely, I think, a little more in the libertarian circle where I think I'm a little more centrist in some ways.
	He's pro-life, I'm pro-choice, but I think that the basic views
	of how he wants government to work and his defense of liberty and the individual,
	they supersede whatever little differences we might have.
	And I don't know if he's gonna win or if he even has a chance,
	but if I can help him in any way, I'm happy to do that.
	A couple more people are into the beard, okay.
	When are you gonna have Sam Harris and Ben Shapiro on your show at the same time?
	They have much to discuss that is not religion.
	Please avoid religion, it would be a massive opportunity cost.
	So I've thought about it, I've bounced that idea around with the two of them.
	I think it is gonna happen probably relatively soon, but I don't wanna speak for either one of them.
	But yeah, I wouldn't wanna get too lost in the specifics of religion.
	I think actually, That it's not really where either one of them want to spend most of their time.
	You know, Ben, at least from what I can tell, although he is religious privately, I don't think he wants to spend a ton of time defending religion.
	I think he wants to talk about government.
	And Sam, you know, look, obviously he's written many of the end of faith and letter to a Christian nation and he's, you know, a well known New atheist, whatever that is.
	But I don't know that he would wanna even sit here and spend so much time doing the religion thing.
	I think there's so many other interesting philosophical things that we can talk about, and I'll see if I can make that happen, okay.
	Let's see, does proximity play a role in how seriously people react to tragedy?
	One was killed in Charlottesville, and it's all over social media for months, yet 13 are killed in Barcelona, and it stayed in most minds for a few days.
	It's interesting.
	So look, I'm just catching up on the Charlottesville thing, and I know that that one woman was killed.
	The Barcelona thing, which I said was the one thing that I knew happened, but I just knew something happened because I saw a hashtag.
	I didn't know 13 people were killed.
	But you know, when I went off the grid, one of the things that I was thinking Before I went off, I knew I was gonna miss stuff.
	I thought August is basically a good time because more people are on vacation.
	The news cycle slows down a little bit, although I guess not in this particular month.
	But I knew, there was no doubt, I was going to miss a terrorist attack.
	I was gonna miss Trump saying something crazy.
	I was gonna miss a series of things.
	I just had to let it be.
	I just had to let it be that I wasn't going to jump back on and get back into the fray to do it.
	But it's interesting your question about proximity because that is one of the things that I was thinking about a little bit from being off the grid.
	That things happen all over the world right now.
	We are all on social media and then we all think it's happening as if it's happening in our backyard.
	And I think there's a little bit of a danger there because it makes your gauge of how important an issue is or how relevant to your life it is or any of that stuff, it's sometimes hard to gauge where that really fits.
	So proximity, look, it's a beautiful thing.
	The internet's a beautiful thing.
	It's brought so many of us together.
	My whole life has changed because of it, as I'm sure yours has as well.
	It's brought down governments, it's created revolutions, it's changed things in science and math and virtually in the way we communicate with each other and all that.
	But the proximity thing I do think is an interesting thing that I'd like to explore a little bit more.
	All right, by the way, guys, because I see a lot of comments, Classical Liberal, this is just one of the many new shirts in the merch store that I think basically went live today, the new updated merch store.
	We've got a new center shirt.
	We've got some liberal defense force shirts that I really like, some cool Rubin Report stuff.
	It's rubinreport.com slash store.
	And by the way, that's a way that if you're not joining us on Patreon or you're not a supporter on PayPal, But you want to just do a one-time thing and get something for yourself and help us continually grow, then please do that.
	And as long as I'm saying that, again, I do want to remind you that here we are doing this on YouTube, but it's simply YouTube, because of the demonization, the algorithms, all this nonsense, it just simply is not a place where I feel that our business can grow anymore.
	We will play by the rules.
	We don't do clickbait.
	We do the right titles and tags.
	We don't do misleading thumbnails.
	We will always continue to play the game properly here, and we'll do it at the expense, by the way, of getting more views, because I know there's all kinds of tricks that we could play, and we were trained in a lot of them, and we don't do them.
	But if you want to help us grow and expand this show and everything that we do here, and I promise you this is gonna be the biggest year that we've ever had, it's rubinreport.com slash donate, and you can join us monthly or one time.
	And we'll go from there.
	Okay, let's see.
	Welcome back, Dave.
	Glad you've taken off the grid time and had some physical work around your house.
	This is our Real Regeneration.
	Have you become a believer already by being offline?
	I'm so glad you asked that question.
	And I wasn't gonna get into it right now, but I'm glad you asked it.
	And I'm reading all these things live, so you might ask me something that I'm not prepared to answer.
	So I do wanna say something about the believer thing.
	Until I started this show on Aura two years ago, so earlier before I said the thing about that I consider this the third season of this show, so originally when we launched The Rubin Report and we were part of The Young Turks, it was a different show altogether.
	A lot of things that I was talking about was different, just the whole thing.
	So I kind of put that version of the show aside.
	Then I would view season one of The Rubin Report as being, when we launched on Aura TV, the first episode that I think most of you have seen, It was the first time that I had ever met Sam Harris.
	And we had a great run at Aura, and then we decided to leave.
	It had a lot to do with my original discussion with Jeroen Broek about rational self-interest and working for yourself and all that kind of stuff.
	So I would consider season one of the Rubin Report was that whole run at Aura.
	I would say season two of the Rubin Report started last June when we decided to go independent.
	We went on Patreon, so this is about, you know, 14 months ago or so, maybe 15 months now.
	I would consider that to be Season 2.
	Everything we did from there, from going independent to then buying this house and having a home studio, all of that Season 2.
	I would say as of today, we are now in Season 3.
	The reason I mention all this in terms of Believer is because when we did the thing on Aura, and I had Sam on first, I suddenly had a burst of atheists on.
	I had Michael Shermeron and Peter Boghossian, and obviously Sam, and a bunch of others.
	And my feeling about belief always, I think always in my entire life, was that I just can't believe in something that isn't provable.
	But I never really said that I was an atheist or thought, I didn't think about it, because I'd spent a lot of time in my life thinking about it.
	I've mentioned a story a couple times about how when I was about 20 years old, I went to Egypt and I hiked Mount Sinai, which is supposedly where Moses got the Ten Commandments, and I was ready to have a religious experience.
	It just didn't happen, it didn't happen.
	But in any event, I sort of got pinned into saying I was an atheist because I had all these people on.
	And by default, if you don't believe in something, you know, Peter Boghossian and I talked a bit about the difference between atheism and agnosticism.
	I don't want to get too lost in that right now.
	But I kind of got pinned into it.
	And one of the things that I was thinking in this last month, which is why I'm glad you asked this question, and I'll have some people on to discuss it a little bit further.
	There are probably things that I believe that I can't prove.
	I'll just give you an easy one that people use as an example.
	If you say, well, do you love your mother?
	Well, everyone says yes to that.
	But how do you prove that?
	How do you actually prove that?
	Is that actually provable?
	I don't know.
	But what I would say is I did think there were a few times, again, because I was in this place of real gratitude to you guys and allowing my brain to just kind of Breathe a little bit more and all that stuff.
	I was thinking that there are things probably that I believe that I can't necessarily quite explain or that I wonder about or whatever.
	And maybe that's more just the spiritual side of things.
	I don't think that there is a man in the sky who's watching and judging who I have sex with or what I'm doing privately or any of that stuff.
	Maybe the phrase atheist isn't so important relative to the things that I really care about isn't that important, and that I possibly believe in some things that I can't quite explain yet.
	So I'm glad you... I don't even know that I fully formed that through yet, but I'm glad you asked about that, so thank you.
	I think it would be a great idea for you to read 1984, a chapter at a time, periodically.
	Maybe get an Orwell expert on.
	That's a great idea.
	You know, I've been thinking about doing some kind of book club type of thing with you guys.
	And actually, as of, I think it'll kick in in about a week or so, or maybe it just kicked in, Audible.com is gonna be one of the sponsors on our podcast.
	So maybe we could all do audiobooks together and then I could have either the authors on or people that are experts in it or things like that.
	All right, jumping back over to Patreon.
	What's your opinion on price gouging during natural disasters?
	Should the government intervene in situations like Hurricane Harvey where some people are charging $100 for water or $10 for gas, or should the free market be left to correct the price increase on its own?
	So it's a great question because it's that constant blend between government and free markets, yet you have a situation like this where there's truly a matter of life or death.
	I don't wanna get too much into the specifics of this hurricane because I don't know that much yet.
	Should the government step in?
	I think in a case of a natural disaster that if there are places selling bottles of water for $100 that I think you can make a very strong, sensible argument that there has to be some regulation of that.
	It's an extreme case where things are so out of the ordinary that I don't know that the free market can solve that properly.
	Yes, we would love and it would be more ideal if A hurricane hits, if every store that is in the town says, we're gonna sell water for a dollar, or we're gonna give it away, we're gonna give it away, and then maybe the government will come in and give us some extra funding after or something.
	Unfortunately, I don't think you can stop people.
	I mean, should we be fining people or arresting people for price gouging?
	It's a slippery slope.
	It's a good argument and a good discussion to have, and I'm happy to have it more.
	If you are starting a new season, it's getting pretty close time for a Sam Harris episode 3, Revenge of the Mindful.
	I will absolutely talk to Sam about that.
	This is a request for a panel featuring Jordan Peterson and Jonathan Haidt.
	I think we're going to try to make something along those lines work.
	Just jump up to Super Chat a couple times.
	Okay, well you know what, let me address something else.
	So I guess a few of you are saying that I've said I'm an atheist in conversations with guests.
	So that's what I'm saying, is that I had never said it before, I'm 99% sure, and anyone is welcome to correct me on this, that I had never said it publicly until my interview with Peter Boghossian, the first one, which I think was in, If I'm not mistaken, it was in October or November, 99% sure it was November of 2015.
	I think that was the first time I had ever said it.
	I was always happy to have the conversations with atheists and all that stuff.
	What I'm saying now is I'm not making any major change other than I'm just saying, do I think that there's possibly some things that I believe in that I can't quite explain, that I just can't quite explain?
	I'm not even sure what they are.
	I think that's possible.
	And I don't think that's a mark on my intellect Or anything like that.
	I think a lot of us have these sort of idiosyncratic little things popping around in our head that don't all fully line up all the time.
	And I'll come back and talk about this more and get the right people on to talk about it more.
	It's just something that's been bouncing around.
	Okay.
	We're just going to do a couple more here because I've got Phil DeFranco coming in.
	I've got to catch up on a zillion things.
	I'm glad so many people like the beard.
	I'm glad to see it.
	Okay.
	Which idea do you think is more powerful?
	History repeats itself or learn from history to not make the same mistakes?
	I think this is the unstoppable force versus the immovable object idea.
	It absolutely is that idea.
	I don't know that there's even much of a difference between those two things.
	I think the history repeats itself thing, I love that phrase, it's simple, everyone can understand what it means, and it shows you that, you know, everyone see, now we live in the worst time ever, or now we live in the most enlightened time ever, whatever, and it's like, we still have to be wary of the things that consistently repeat in civilizations, people that get too much power, the desire for authoritarians to control how you act and how you think, all of those things.
	So history does repeat itself and hopefully that's why education is so important because you want people to understand this is what happened in the past and it could happen again.
	Don't think that it can't.
	Do you suppose you could do another YouTuber week?
	Maybe get Ethan from H3H3.
	I can see you two gelling rather well together.
	Huge inspiration by the way.
	We have reached out to him a couple times before and it hasn't happened but we're absolutely gonna do another YouTube week soon.
	We're gonna do another fan show soon which I can't wait to do.
	Have you considered having Peter Schiff or Tom Woods?
	Both have connections to Ron Paul.
	Those names are definitely on our master list.
	We're trying to get Ron Paul.
	I think our Learn Liberty folks have been trying to get him, so we'll see about that.
	During the time off the grid, did you mentally revisit any old interviews?
	Do you have any new thoughts on old conversations?
	I don't know that I revisited any so specifically, like, oh, I should have said this or that.
	What I really did think about, though, was the sort of trajectory of what we're doing with the show and how I can tighten it, how I can get better, how I can learn more, how we can expand it more.
	So, for example, what I referred to as Season 1 before, that first season, That's really when the phrase regressive left was starting to gain traction.
	It had a lot to do with what we were doing on the show.
	And a lot of my guests were, I would say, were former leftists or they were people of the left who were being abandoned by the left.
	People like Faisal Syed Al Mutar and Sarah Hader.
	and Sam and Ayaan and all these people, liberals, who were being abandoned.
	We spent a lot of time really talking about the regressive left and that whole thing.
	I think we named a problem.
	You know, it's the irony of the label thing.
	Everyone doesn't wanna use labels, but sometimes there's this amorphous idea
	that we were all having about how hysterical the left became.
	The phrase regressive left, I think, helped us coalesce around that
	and understand what we were dealing with.
	I don't use the phrase really anymore, very rarely, because I'm trying to get away from labels as much as I can.
	But sometimes you do need them, and nobody's perfect, by the way.
	But anyway, this last year of the show, I think we had a really great mix of--
	Of people all over the map, although my critics will say, ah, he puts these alt-right people on.
	I don't, I mean, who did I have that was alt-right?
	The people that I've had, I say that we're the furthest right.
	I had Mike Cernovich on before he was anybody.
	We were trying to find anyone that would publicly support Trump, and he was the one guy we could find.
	Obviously, I've had Milo on a couple times.
	Beyond that, anyone that's alt-right, I've had Milo on twice.
	All right, I mean, I guess maybe if you consider Lawrence Southern, all right.
	But short of that, someone did a breakdown on Facebook right before I left.
	Most of the guests that we've had have been liberals.
	They're liberals.
	Now, they're not regressives, or they may not be leftists.
	But they're liberals.
	Then we've obviously had a lot of conservatives on.
	We've obviously had a lot of libertarians on.
	My point being that over the next year, I want to not only keep branching out in all of those directions, but I maybe want to do a little more on science.
	I mean, I think there's all kinds on AI, a lot of other interesting things that we can do.
	And also, I think what my real goal for this year will be is that for the first year we were identifying a problem.
	For the second year, I think we sort of talked about that problem with a whole host of different people.
	And I think what I'm going to try to do this year is find some real solutions to this stuff.
	I think one of the biggest problems right now is that everybody, whether you're a Trump person or you're a resistance person, whatever the hell you are, I think everyone feels like the whole thing is spinning out of control and no one is trying to stop "this monster."
	No one's trying to stop the craziness.
	Everyone's just kind of joining the craziness.
	And what I'm really gonna try to do with this show going forward
	is get some concrete answers.
	I'm gonna continue to tell you what I think.
	And hopefully, hopefully when you get in a conversation
	and people are adding to their throats, you'll be like, "You know what?
	"You should watch this video right here "because that will encapsulate what I think about this
	"or it's the best explanation of how do we get out of this malaise or any of that stuff.
	Okay, just a couple more minutes here.
	Welcome back, Dave.
	The internet feels lonely without you.
	It's good to be back so far, although we're doing this very one way, but it's nice to be back.
	Couple more things on the beard.
	Let's see.
	Is ball life?
	I think you're referring to basketball.
	I'm going to finally start playing in a weekly game again, probably in about two weeks.
	Now my knee is in better shape and I'm looking forward to that.
	Let's see.
	Alright, last couple stuff here.
	I guess you need to have many more conversations about religions, philosophies, and ideologies then.
	Are you making any distinction between the three?
	I'll be happy to dive into that in another time.
	YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook are becoming censorious and less profitable.
	Because of this, would you consider moving to another site or starting your own site with other voices?
	There's a lot of discussion happening right now about this.
	Trust me, there's a ton, and I'm sure I'm not privy to all of them.
	I have no doubt that I'm not.
	But there's a lot of discussion.
	Look, at the end of the day, right now, I am sitting in my transformed garage,
	a great studio that we've built.
	And this is, by the way, there's another thing that I said to the YouTube people.
	I said, "Look, guys,"
	I mentioned a little bit of this earlier, but that I give you a television quality show.
	This thing could be on HBO tomorrow.
	Now, we do this show for a budget.
	I think probably what we do, the budget that we do this show for, for a year, is probably, probably less than the budget that it takes to do one night of Anderson Cooper or whatever's on CNN on any given night.
	the amount of staff and all the stuff that they have.
	We have built something, everything that we have here.
	If you're a member on Patreon and you get some of the behind the scenes videos,
	if you see what our lighting grid looks like, if you see the cameras that we have,
	everything that we've built here, our control room, all of that stuff,
	we've built industry standard stuff here.
	As I said, we just invested in new lights, all of this stuff.
	And at some point, if YouTube doesn't allow us to make money off of it,
	off of a product that obviously thousands and thousands, if not millions of people really appreciate and enjoy,
	then at the end of the day, I'll put this out wherever.
	If this camera works, and that wire works, and the Wi-Fi works, and this can get out to wherever it can get, well, if you're watching on YouTube, or you're listening to the podcast, or you're on VidMe, or Minds, or Gab, or wherever the hell you are, Great, I think it's great.
	So we just have to figure out how to do some of that stuff.
	If you're interested in joining us, it's RubinReport.com.
	Donate!
	And let me just knock out one more.
	Love your work.
	Thanks for bringing real-ass news to YouTube, the true mainstream media.
	Are you planning on interviewing Ethan Klein from H3H3?
	All right, we'll try to make it happen.
	All right, so I think we should probably wrap it up there, because I have so much to catch up on.
	I mean, I literally didn't check emails.
	I had an out of office on my work, but not on my personal.
	Even turning back on my phone, I had a gajillion texts.
	By the way, I could figure out which friends of mine watch my show or not, because I had people texting me, not realizing that I wasn't off the grid.
	But anyway, just to wrap all this stuff up, We're gonna do James Damore.
	We're trying to settle on when we're gonna do that.
	I think it'll be a live stream.
	We've got Blaire White.
	We're gonna do a live stream on that.
	It might be this Friday, but we're trying to maybe move her to Tuesday just because a couple logistical things.
	As I said, Phil DeFranco taping it later today.
	That'll be up tomorrow.
	But more than anything else, I hope you can See it and hear it in me.
	I just genuinely, I thank you guys.
	I wish I could figure out the right way to thank all of you who support us to do this.
	You gave me an incredible opportunity this month that if you care about the ideas that we're doing here, trust me, I am rejuvenated and reinvigorated to strengthen these ideas and to keep figuring out new ways to get this stuff out there and continue to do good work.
	So I hope that I was missed a little bit, but I hope also That you'll take a little time and occasionally get off this stuff.
	And I'll accept it if you can't retweet everything that I do or post every video that I do on Facebook.
	But I'm gonna try in general to do, maybe do mini ones every weekend now, just getting off the grid.
	Because I do think everyone's just slammed with this nonsense.
	Let's figure out together how to fight this monster of of fake news, of anger, of hostility,
	of all of those things.
	If anything hit me over the last month, just talking to people all the time,
	you know what I mean?
	Just talking and listening to people and all that stuff.
	That's what's important.
	And that's what I'm gonna keep doing.
	So I am back in business, baby.
	I think the beard's gonna stay.
	Did anyone not like it?
	Were there any comments that they did not like the beard?
	We'll review, but either way, I kinda dig it.
	This is no shaving for, I guess it's exactly one month today, probably.
	Anyway, so thank you guys.
	Again, it's rubenreport.com slash store.
	If you wanna check out some of the new merch we've got over there, if you wanna support, it's rubenreport.com slash donate.
	I thank you.
	I got a big day ahead of me, because I got roughly four bajillion things to do, and I'm gonna try not to be on my computer all day long.

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