Sept. 8, 2017 - Rubin Report - Dave Rubin
01:03:08
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unidentified
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(upbeat music) | |
| Woo, where to begin this week? | ||
| Well, in case you missed it, I was off the grid for an entire month, from August 4th to September 5th, and I have the facial hair to prove it, as you can see. | ||
| My beard actually even has a Twitter account already, which somehow is a real thing on the internet. | ||
| Over the past 30 days, I've had no phone, no email, no Twitter, and no digital noise in my life whatsoever. | ||
| I also didn't watch any news or have one single conversation about politics the entire time I was gone, believe it or not. | ||
| What I did do during this time was a combination of writing my book, relaxing, doing some gardening, taking long walks with my dog, and spending time with friends and family. | ||
| As I said in our livestream yesterday, I am beyond incredibly grateful and humbled by those of you who support The Rubin Report on Patreon and on PayPal. | ||
| For letting me and my crew carve out this precious bit of time to rest, rejuvenate, and come back more focused than ever before. | ||
| I also learned a couple life lessons this past month, including that writing a book is far more intense and introspective than you can possibly imagine, so just give me a little more time on that one. | ||
| Unsurprisingly, the news cycle kept on spinning without me, and I'm just now catching up on everything I missed. | ||
| From the terror attack in Barcelona, to the events in Charlottesville, to the devastation of Hurricane Harvey, and now Trump's reversal of DACA, there's no shortage of news for me to get caught up with. | ||
| For this Direct Message though, I want to look forwards and not backwards, and instead share some thoughts on the future of what we're going to be doing around here. | ||
| I consider today to be the first episode of season 3 of the Rubin Report. | ||
| Our first season of the Rubin Report as an interview show began two years ago when we launched on OraTV with my interview with Sam Harris. | ||
| Over the next year the show began to blow up as we focused more and more on free speech and the battle for logic and reason to be put back into public discourse. | ||
| About a year ago we left Aura and went fully independent so we could 100% control the content we were creating as well as the business behind it. | ||
| I consider this phase of our show to be season 2. | ||
| I don't know if any show out there has a more diverse guest list over the past 2 years and I intend on expanding on that, going deeper on the important issues we're talking about and more. | ||
| Your support allows me to do what I think is right instead of focusing on what content will make a dime. | ||
| Whether YouTube demonetizes us or the algorithms work against us because of dangerous or controversial topics that we cover, the Rubin Report will continue to cover the issues that really matter, having the detailed, nuanced conversations you'll never get on mainstream news. | ||
| With this in mind, I'm thrilled to be launching Season 3 of the Rubin Report with one of the few people I find that consistently makes some sense of the endless noise that we're constantly bombarded with. | ||
| Phil DeFranco, host of the aptly titled Phil DeFranco Show, is one of the guys I turn to to get unbiased, sourced and credible analysis of current events. | ||
| As one of the first big YouTubers around, he's had an interesting personal and political evolution himself, something he's done in front of the camera for years now. | ||
| Our friends at Learn Liberty are partnering with us for this episode and Phil has requested that his honorarium for this show be given to the Polycystic Disease Foundation, a cause which is very personal to him. | ||
| After the show, Learn Liberty will be writing a check of $1500 to the foundation and you can find out more about this cause at pkdcure.org. | ||
| Alright, I'm back, I'm bearded, and I'm ready to talk about the important issues of the day. | ||
| If there's a specific issue you want us to cover, or a special person you want us to talk to this season, let us know in the comments right down below. | ||
| since I've been off the internet for a while, I assume that all YouTube comments | ||
| are positive and friendly now. | ||
| So I look forward to seeing what you come up with. | ||
|
unidentified
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(upbeat music) | |
| All right, people, I am officially back on the grid this week. | ||
| And joining me to make some sense of the world that I missed is host of the aptly titled | ||
| Philip DeFranco Show right here on the YouTube. | ||
| Phil DeFranco. | ||
| I love that you've put that on me, of trying to make sense of whatever the hell it is we're living in right now. | ||
| Well, I have to tell you, you have a lot of pressure on you because I could have selected anybody for the beginning of Season 3. | ||
| I'm back on the grid. | ||
| I lost my razor. | ||
| I'm trying to figure out what happened. | ||
| And for some reason, I chose you. | ||
| I'm loving this, though. | ||
| I'm just jealous. | ||
| I know I was saying it before, but I want to go on the record. | ||
| I'm just very jealous of the facial hair. | ||
| I feel good about it. | ||
| Maybe you could grow out a little something. | ||
| Oh no, I can grow out a little something. | ||
| A little something. | ||
| But it's not an actual something. | ||
| Yeah, but you're a respectable guy and you're doing videos every day. | ||
| Do people want to see you change your look? | ||
| I don't know what people want. | ||
| You've had a pretty consistent look over the years. | ||
| Yes, all I do is I fluctuate 60 pounds depending on the stress level of that time. | ||
| Because I will say, I'm so glad the timing worked out, but I was still a little iffy on doing this because I know that side angle, and I don't like the way I look from the side, and that was like, that was the 50-50 coin flip of if I do this or not. | ||
| That's hilarious. | ||
| But I love you so much, I was like, yes. | ||
| Well, okay, so there's a few things going on here. | ||
| So one of the reasons I wanted to have you on was just to catch me up on some of this stuff. | ||
| And I wanted it to be from somebody that I think is consistently trying to be honest and do good stuff. | ||
| But you are an insanely busy person. | ||
| It turned out that we live literally within walking distance of each other, which is almost impossible in LA. | ||
| And yet we were trying to connect for like a year and it couldn't happen. | ||
| When it finally did, you got in your car and realized that it was a half a second away. | ||
| I never actually go on this specific street, and so I'd gone off the highway and I was like, oh, oh, what? | ||
| And for a second I thought I was getting pranked. | ||
| I was like, okay, I'm just driving home. | ||
| But yeah, no, it's crazy. | ||
| But that's also, I think that's very much LA. | ||
| It doesn't matter where you, none of us exist in the real world. | ||
| We're point A, point B. There's no in between. | ||
| We've got some people, some normies walking around the neighborhood, being outside, living life. | ||
| Walking dogs. | ||
| Or you now for the past month, but yeah, I mean for the most part I'm in one place or another. | ||
| Yeah, and you are a busy guy because all I did for the last month when I was here, besides I was doing some writing and some gardening, but I was walking my dog a lot and I kept thinking I'm gonna have to see him at some point because I'm walking around for hours aimlessly. | ||
| Never. | ||
| But it proves my point that you are, you're a busy guy. | ||
| Yes, well I'm trying to. | ||
| You make a lot of content. | ||
| Yeah, well the goal is to make more. | ||
| So right now we put out, across the two channels, eight videos a week. | ||
| But the big next step that we've been kind of building up to the launch of is a daily one hour live show. | ||
| Just finding the right people to be involved. | ||
| What I've done in the past has been more comedy first and then news was attached to it. | ||
| For me now the next step is news first and Then make it relatable, make it funny, but that's a second thing, because I think people need to be informed, or at least informed of what other people are saying. | ||
| Yeah, so as if you're not busy enough just with the show, you also have a second child due, I believe in two days from right now? | ||
| Two days, unless your producer gets a phone call, in which case I will have to hop out of this. | ||
| For the record, I was willing to let you keep the phone in front of you, which we normally don't do, but you said no-no? | ||
| No. | ||
| If the baby's coming, the baby can wait. | ||
| Wait, what? | ||
| I did not say anything! | ||
| You said rooming is very important. | ||
| No, but your phone is in there in case something happens, because it could happen. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Are you ready for a second one? | ||
| Yeah, it'll be great. | ||
| And it's also an excuse to take a week off so that I can be home, try and make some normalcy in the beginning of the chaos, but I'm excited. | ||
| But two and done. | ||
| Two and done. | ||
| No more. | ||
| Don't want to be outnumbered. | ||
| Two's great. | ||
| Fair enough. | ||
| So for people who don't know you. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| I mean, I'm on YouTube, too. | ||
| Right. | ||
| But there might be somebody here that doesn't know you. | ||
| Plenty, yeah. | ||
| For the people that don't know you, what possessed you to start talking to the camera? | ||
| Being really bored in college. | ||
| I've been on YouTube now for over ten years. | ||
| Anytime I mention who I used to watch back in the day, one percent of my audience knows who I'm talking about, but it was a lot of talking heads, and I think it's a lot of what people still feel today and why they jump into it. | ||
| They see some people that may be doing a good job, but they think they can do as good, or they want to be that great, or they think they're garbage and do way better. | ||
| And that's kind of how I jumped into it. | ||
| I wanted to talk about the news because I just wanted to talk to someone about everything that was happening, right? | ||
| I've always been like a very, like a loner, kind of loser type, stuck to myself. | ||
| The closer I get to talking to someone, like I found myself trying to jump into things like Magic the Gathering card so I just had someone to talk to about something. | ||
| Because not a lot of people wanted to talk about news in high school, right? | ||
| So yeah, just really bored, really poor in college. | ||
| Started making videos, talking about current events, pretty much anything back in the day to chase the front page. | ||
| But it was always news, there was always conversation. | ||
| But that's really it. | ||
| When did you realize that it was actually becoming something more than just taking care of a little loneliness? | ||
| I like to think that it's right around the time that I dropped out of college, because I was at this point where my grades were starting to fail. | ||
| I was blaming YouTube for it, but my heart really just wasn't in it anymore. | ||
| For like seven years, my dad told me, like, you're gonna be a doctor. | ||
| And so I was in the pre-med program, and I hated it. | ||
| I hated it. | ||
| My brain did not work for that skill set. | ||
| And then one day, right when I was about to quit YouTube, YouTube gave me a call and informed me about the partner program, right? | ||
| Kind of like it is. | ||
| Wait, so why were you going to quit? | ||
| Oh, because you thought it was affecting your grades? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| And you were trying to get rid of that. | ||
| Yeah, well at least, yeah, that's what I was thinking. | ||
| And then the moment I realized, and they said I was going to make a lot more money than | ||
| I initially was, right? | ||
| And so I was like, oh, well screw this. | ||
| I'll just focus on this. | ||
| I'll drop out. | ||
| It'll be fine. | ||
| And it was not fine initially. | ||
| I had to just figure out a way to make it work for several years. | ||
| And then I think, once I finally found myself in California, with some of the old faces, Shay Carl, Kasim G, Danny Diamonds, to start Maker, that's the moment I think I realized, okay, this is a real thing. | ||
| This could be a real, real thing. | ||
| It's not just me in a room by myself. | ||
| This is the rise of something new. | ||
| Do you look at that with a certain amount of nostalgia now? | ||
| Sort of like the good old days? | ||
| No one kind of knew what was happening. | ||
| You didn't realize whether this was gonna be a money thing or a career thing or what. | ||
| And just everybody didn't have a handle on how big this all could be. | ||
| I think for me it's never really, so obviously the money is fantastic. | ||
| The money is an enabler and I will not talk shit on money. | ||
| But for me it is really what we're putting out there, right? | ||
| Yes, I put out vlogs, and that's supposed to be entertaining in some sense, give people behind the scenes of the personalities that are working on something. | ||
| But that's also just my attempt to reach out and talk to someone about something that's not news. | ||
| The other bit, it's just... | ||
| Especially now, it's just so important to talk about what's happening because everyone's so confused and frustrated. | ||
| That's one of the reasons I left Maker early days. | ||
| It was business first, everything else second. | ||
| My bank account would look slightly different, but I'm so glad personally as far as the work and what I'm doing that I decided that I want to do it my way. | ||
| That every move that I've done, while money might have been a part of it, that it's always been about what is the end result of the content we could make or we want to make. | ||
| Sometimes some of those things did not fully get fleshed out, but it's why I'm still doing it ten years out and I don't have to. | ||
| It's because I really love this and I really care about it. | ||
| Yeah, and you've had some business ups and downs and bumps and bruises along the way, and you just kind of kept doing it, and now you're fully independent, which, just from everything you just said, I mean, it's sort of like the greatest thing that you can have as a creator, right? | ||
| So it's the best thing in the world to be independent, but you also lose one thing, right? | ||
| And that's the ability to blame someone else, right? | ||
| I don't like to blame anyone that's underneath me, because their mistake is my mistake, right? | ||
| You put people in control, and that's ultimately, like, that's you. | ||
| The net result is you. | ||
| So I don't get to do that anymore. | ||
| But the upside is the 99%, that's great. | ||
| Yeah, how much do you find that having the business part of this and being the head of the company and all that, do you like that or do you find that to be, that it takes you away from the stuff that you really care about, creating that content? | ||
| Right, at times. | ||
| Especially when I initially launched and we were setting everything up and you get into kind of like that, Okay, I'm remembering what it was like to be back in college and staying at Panera Bread for way too long and I was like doing everything myself and being on every phone call. | ||
| And there's a point where that's a rush and then at about a month and a half it's like, okay, so I'm ready for this new step. | ||
| And so that's even something, we're still growing, right? | ||
| So right now one of our newest hires is gonna be our new COO. | ||
| Someone that can just make sure that everything's working as intended, grows the company for us while I'm in, | ||
| hopefully, the more creative sessions. | ||
| Yeah. Where do you want to go with all this? | ||
| Now that you're independent, and I see it's just grown and grown and grown, and I think you've hit something that's very sort of similar to what I've tried to build around here, which is just, like it really, I think the secret is just basic decency. | ||
| Like when I watch your videos, you strike me as fundamentally decent, and I feel like that's just kinda, yes, and you have a commitment to the truth, and you actually are trying to hear both sides and all that stuff, but I think underlying that is just kinda like a decency. | ||
| Yeah, I think one of the biggest things that I've always found, and it's something my dad taught me when I was a kid, is even when you're disagreeing with someone, try your best. | ||
| No matter how much you disagree with them and everything that they're saying, leave them with a door open. | ||
| Right? | ||
| To save some face, to maybe realize that part of what they were thinking, there is a misstep there. | ||
| Because when you put someone in a corner, all you're really confirming, or all you're really doing is locking them down in their belief. | ||
| Right? | ||
| I've been there. | ||
| Right? | ||
| When, in the past, if I've been talking to someone and they hit me with something that proves something I previously thought was wrong, It almost feels like I'm being attacked, or I'm being told I'm stupid, and it's not a great feeling. | ||
| So when you're arguing with someone, if the real intent is to hopefully promote truth, hopefully promote the right thought, hopefully then you're leaving the door open for them. | ||
| So you're saying that not screaming at everybody that they're a racist and a bigot and all that, that might not work? | ||
| But we're all guilty of it. | ||
| When I see you or sometimes I say something about, like, the left, right? | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| And it's easy to talk in generalities, right? | ||
| Sometimes you have to talk in generalities on certain subjects, but sometimes we get a little swept away with it and we end up causing the same problems that we say that we're fighting against. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I find it, and what sucks is We're doing it openly on the internet in this grand experiment, so every time you falter, everyone sees it, right? | ||
| And more importantly, you see it, and it's just there. | ||
| And so hopefully, you don't do that thing that I just said, where we then just lock down, and we're like, well no, I'm different for some reason, that we grow from it. | ||
| It's hard, it's painful, but I think you just have to keep trying. | ||
| You're gonna fail a lot, but keep trying. | ||
| Yeah, and we all make these mistakes, and it's interesting, I don't remember what the specific instance was, but you did a video on, I think it had something to do with a terror attack or something, and I jumped the gun on either the name of the guy, I don't remember the specifics, if you do, feel free to say it, but I liked the fact that you said, I like Dave Rubin, he screwed this one up, or whatever you said, and I actually liked it, because I was like, A, I did do it. | ||
| You didn't accuse me of doing something that I didn't do. | ||
| I screwed up something. | ||
| I did correct it once I found out. | ||
| But often when you correct things, that gets much less traction than the original thing. | ||
| That's a whole other problem of social media and all that. | ||
| But I thought your intention wasn't to mock me. | ||
| You were showing that even people that you like screw up sometimes. | ||
| And I feel like everyone always wants to pretend that they're so infallible and it's just silly. | ||
| And it's important. | ||
| I think it's important that people know that we are all infallible, but also that if we're going to point out all the flaws of mainstream media, that we don't then just repeat the same mistakes that we're criticizing, right? | ||
| They're not perfect. | ||
| I think the reason a lot of people get angry is There are people in the industry that see themselves as higher, right? | ||
| You see it every time there's someone that writes about a YouTuber in a very disrespectful light, like we're all just nothing, right? | ||
| We're this fad, even though this is the swing of the new normal. | ||
| Right, even if CNN had the numbers that you had, they'd be thrilled. | ||
| I mean, if you shut CNN off at airports, Whatever their numbers would be? | ||
| Phil DeFranco's doing a lot of that. | ||
| I'd be interested. | ||
| It'd be pretty damn close, let's put it that. | ||
| I think, I mean, I think most, a lot of the up-and-comers definitely beat the mainstream outlets as far as the 18 to 35. | ||
| As far as full numbers, I don't know. | ||
| You're talking about an international company. | ||
| I like to puff my chest up every now and then and talk numbers. | ||
| I was giving you a little something there. | ||
| I know, I know, but I always have to like bring myself down a little. | ||
| Well at least in terms of the influence that I see. | ||
| From what I can garner online and what the conversations are about and people that are talking about the right things, if I was to watch 10 minutes of one of your videos on what happened in the world versus watching 10 minutes of CNN, say, doing another poll about Trump, Is like, I actually learn a lot more. | ||
| So you have a certain amount of, by doing good work, you've now put yourself in a position | ||
| where there's a lot of pressure on you to keep doing good work. | ||
| Yeah, the time I feel the most pressure is any time I meet people, like I go to an event | ||
| or for some reason I'm in a public setting for once in a long time and people are like, | ||
| "You're the only person I watch," | ||
| which one, I will always say, "Please watch more." | ||
| Right, please take in more sources. | ||
| But then, that makes me feel so horrible about off days, where I'm like, you know what? | ||
| I got two hours of sleep again. | ||
| I was like, we're gonna try and do an eight minute show, and it's a day that I personally feel like I let people down, no matter what the numbers are online. | ||
| I personally feel it. | ||
| What does that tell you about the state of things, that people say that kind of thing to you? | ||
| Well, I think it's like we were saying earlier, that people don't know where to go, or they just want, they do want a voice to bounce off of, but they want a voice that they can also respect, that they don't see themselves as always right. | ||
| But I also think that by only posting like only posting 10 to 18 minutes a day as a main show I have an advantage over the mainstream outlets who do have to do 24 hours, right? | ||
| So It's the reason why you have CNN talking It's talking about that like a plane crash for weeks and weeks and weeks to the point where you have someone talking about "the theory that the plane went into a black hole." | ||
| Right? - Yeah. | ||
| I don't have to. (laughs) | ||
| We're not that desperate. | ||
| That we're taking crazy-ass questions. | ||
| You were like, "Yeah, that maybe "would be in the 19th minute." | ||
| You know, yeah. | ||
| That's what happens when it extends. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| What do you make of just the general situation on YouTube right now? | ||
| There's a lot of people very frustrated with YouTube, from creators to people watching, | ||
| people are feeling this whole demonetization thing, which you've done a bunch of videos on. | ||
| There's a feeling that there's some censorship being involved, happening right now. | ||
| I don't know if you noticed this one, I mentioned it on my live stream earlier, that we now have videos, for this month that I was gone, we had videos in our backend that were not tagged, not titled, they had no metadata attached to them, and they were demonetized. | ||
| Yeah, that's something that we noticed specifically on our vlog channel. | ||
| Really? | ||
| Not on the Philip DeFranco Show, which was very strange. | ||
| We had a video where we were just standing around talking, auto-flagged. | ||
| We changed the information multiple times. | ||
| I mean, this is like, it's not a unique story. | ||
| It's so weird and confusing. | ||
| And I don't get it. | ||
| Do you have any contact with the YouTube people? | ||
| I had so much... I mean it took me literally two years to finally... I did the one work thing I did last month. | ||
| I got one phone call with them. | ||
| I totally get that. | ||
| I put this on YouTube, I want this to work. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| I'm not sitting here so we can just talk shit about them. | ||
| I want it to be a better product because this is how we get our stuff out. | ||
| Yeah, we criticize the things we love because we want it to be better. | ||
| I totally get that. | ||
| Now, I've had the same contact at YouTube for about seven years. | ||
| When you said that they were gonna potentially offer someone | ||
| from their PR department to talk, I was like, who is that? | ||
| Because I have a person and I talk to them, I get information from them, a lot of it Ends up being stuff that they haven't cleared to be on the record. | ||
| So if you get a source that is willing to talk publicly, that'd be great. | ||
| Because otherwise all we get are people having to talk to their partners and then YouTube uploading some video they don't realize is condescending and everyone gets angry. | ||
| Yeah, well, you know, we had this back and forth going on with them because people kept telling us they were being unsubscribed from our channel, and we saw the growth just didn't make sense. | ||
| And we got an email from someone there saying, yes, there is a bug on your channel. | ||
| We're looking into it. | ||
| And then like the next day, they put up that video. | ||
| Remember that like six months ago? | ||
| Those two kids being like, no, it's never happened before. | ||
| We have no evidence. | ||
| Well, that's a great question. | ||
| It's so frustrating. | ||
| It's so frustrating. | ||
| Sometimes it's easy for it to feel so personal, but I think that there's so many moving pieces, there are times where people don't realize things. | ||
| I've talked about certain things on the show and then talked to people at YouTube and they were like, we didn't know that was a thing on the site, that there was a problem. | ||
| And so I try whenever I can to also message them before I cover a story, not to give them a heads up, but just to go like, if there is an explanation, I'd love, I'd love to be able to include it. | ||
| But it is so frustrating, especially because for most people, it's most of their income, right? | ||
| because they haven't diversified or they haven't, I saw your new shirts focusing on merch, | ||
| or having some sort of alternate thing. | ||
| And I mean, the good end is if you have a good product, then you can use that as a way to then convert audience | ||
| that really care about the content. | ||
| But otherwise, like you're just, right now you're just fucked. | ||
| Yeah, well that's why I think, and that's why I asked you the question | ||
| about the business side and how much you put into that versus the creation, because I think for me, | ||
| it's actually by doing this, and as you know, you're in my, this was my garage, it's now a studio. | ||
| The things that I talk about on the show, I've been able to put into practice. | ||
| The beliefs that I have, I've been able to put into practice into the business. | ||
| So it's more like, the more that these, if YouTube closes a door on me on this or whatever, it's like, yeah, in life, you just gotta be smart and go where the next thing is. | ||
| Or else, do you care how people watch or where people watch or any of that stuff? | ||
| Well, especially thanks to the Patreon and the Franco Elite, I don't care. | ||
| If they watch, we're going to start maybe uploading smaller videos to Twitter as well, just to get the most traction everywhere. | ||
| But if you're watching on Facebook, awesome. | ||
| If you're watching on YouTube, great. | ||
| If we then jump to another platform, fantastic. | ||
| I always treat my videos like a shiny thing, or like keys, right? | ||
| And just I want to leave those things everywhere. | ||
| So no matter where you turn, it's right there. | ||
| I don't know about your numbers because it's longer form, but most of my views are now mobile. | ||
| Mobile or iPad or every now and then it's like there's been a jump for like Xboxes and smart TVs, but the numbers for computer are at an all-time low. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Do you think an offer could be made to you that would swipe you up? | ||
| No. | ||
|
unidentified
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No. | |
| We were having a conversation recently and I was trying to explain why I couldn't do certain things and why I would never sell again. | ||
| And when people hear that, they hear something that's emotional, right? | ||
| They hear something that's like, never again. | ||
| It's not like I'm suffering from some sort of thing. | ||
| It's just, I don't like the feeling of not being in control, right? | ||
| So you could say, okay, well that means just hold on to 51%, but I have a different mindset about it because with this launch, so much of it was fan funded, right? | ||
| And I'd feel like I'm giving that to someone else rather than putting it into the content. | ||
| There are justifications where you could say, well, by getting this person, it affects the content. | ||
| Maybe I'll evolve on that, I don't think so. | ||
| But no, never again. | ||
| Do you ever have a moment where you think, oh, I could say this thing or cover this topic that could actually, now half my patrons might be pissed at me or leave or anything like that? | ||
| No, I think that's one of the benefits of trying to cover everything as honestly and try and convey other people's points of view is that, I mean, every video, I'm offending someone, right? | ||
| And that's like, it's strange to hear for some people because there are people that are like, Phil has never had an opinion that people disagreed with, which is an insane thing to say, right? | ||
| That's like going, well, everyone thinks this one thing. | ||
| I've made people angry, and that's fine. | ||
| My hope is that I've formed a relationship with people where it's okay to do that. | ||
| That I'm your friend or that person that you're friendly with, that you talk about stuff with, that you don't necessarily agree with. | ||
| That's my goal. | ||
| And what's kind of great about that is, yes, I'll always be shedding, like some subscribers, I'll always be shedding some patrons, but if I'm doing an effective job, I'll continue to grow over time. | ||
| And so that's, if anything, it's made me feel more comfortable that there were that number of people that were supportive enough to go like, I might disagree with you, but let's do this. | ||
| Isn't that also the beauty of fan funding in general? | ||
| Whether you're doing it on Patreon or anything else, it's like, if I wanted to sell out to my audience or whatever that is, I truly, I would not even know which way that meant. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| Because I don't know. | ||
| Well, I was gonna say, when you say sell out, what's your mindset? | ||
| Because a lot of people have a different, Mindset around it. | ||
| Does that mean no sponsors? | ||
| Does that mean? | ||
| No, I mean, look, we have sponsors on our audio podcast, which, by the way, we didn't do for three years almost, and we finally did to make up some of the YouTube stuff. | ||
| We only accept the ones that I think are actually worth accepting. | ||
| But at this point, I feel very much what you said there. | ||
| I own and control and operate my own business the way that I want to. | ||
| It's successful, it's growing, all of those things. | ||
| I don't know what package could ever be put together. | ||
| Yeah, I could make more money, but I'm not in it for that. | ||
| I'm doing all right. | ||
| I don't know that something could supersede that beautiful thing that we have. | ||
| It's like what every artist is fighting for all the time in the history of the world. | ||
| And we have it for hopefully more than a brief moment. | ||
| It's beautiful. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Everything you said is exactly what I'm thinking. | ||
| All right. | ||
| All that beauty aside of what you've accomplished here, let's talk politics for a little bit. | ||
| Do you have a label that you put on yourself? | ||
| No. | ||
| I think I labeled myself a libertarian years ago. | ||
| I think a lot of people use that. | ||
| I forget what moment it was. | ||
| Someone asked me, actually someone bombarded me with a question about wealth distribution, redistribution, and I was just really caught off guard and I didn't know because I wasn't really at that time, and I would even argue now, well versed in that, right? | ||
| That taxation is wealth and that big, big push. | ||
| So I don't know. | ||
| I just consider myself Pretty liberal on things like gay marriage, trans rights in bathrooms, stuff like that, and pretty conservative when it comes to business, taxes, things like that. | ||
| That's it. | ||
| So almost every seemingly sane person that I meet these days Says something along those lines. | ||
| I'm socially liberal and I'm fiscally conservative. | ||
| Now, of course, there's people on both sides of that that disagree. | ||
| I think what I've seen myself labeled, like, so a lot of people say I'm a lot of different things. | ||
| I think the closest thing I've seen is I'm a moderate free speech liberal. | ||
| That's the closest thing I could be like, okay. | ||
| I mean, that's fine. | ||
| I mean, it doesn't matter, because the moment you put liberal in there, there's a good amount of people that are gonna automatically dismiss you, same as there'd be a good amount of people if you said you were a Republican. | ||
| So that's why I just go like, I don't know. | ||
| Are you saying I haven't done the perfect job in cleaning up the word liberal? | ||
| My life's work, are you saying it didn't convince everyone? | ||
| Classical liberal, new center. | ||
| I didn't get there with every single person, is that what you're telling me? | ||
| I still have work to do? | ||
| No one, no one ever. | ||
| No one ever will find it. | ||
| And I mean, those, the words are going to change, the labels are going to change. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| I just, I don't want to stomp down on people's rights and I don't want the government in | ||
| every facet of my life. | ||
| Right? | ||
| That's it. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Right? | ||
| There's a lot of holes you can poke into a very broad statement like that, but when it | ||
| comes to generalities, I think that's where I lie. | ||
| Specific issues, I might have like a weird outlier situation, but otherwise, yeah. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So I know you voted for Gary Johnson in 2012. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Did you publicly say who you voted for this year? | |
| I did not. | ||
| You didn't publicly say it? | ||
| No. | ||
| I didn't vote for either of the main two. | ||
| But you're also not saying you voted for Gary? | ||
| No, I'm not saying. | ||
| I mean, I was disappointed by Gary Johnson as far as the way he was perceived by the public and his responses to it. | ||
| I think that if there was ever a chance, and I hate saying it because I've met him, we had him on for the 2012 election, he's one of the nicest guys in the world. | ||
| Could not agree more. | ||
| So cool. | ||
| But I was really disappointed because it ended up being this opportunity for a third party to stand up in some meaningful way. | ||
| And it felt, you can blame the media all you want, the moments happened, right? | ||
| You didn't have to take certain things out of context. | ||
| It just looked bad. | ||
| It looked like a sideshow, which is really unfortunate because I think there are a lot of people, a lot of really smart people, a lot of passionate people that believe in that, of being a libertarian. | ||
| The numbers weren't great, the whole perception wasn't great. | ||
| Will there be a chance in the future? | ||
| Yes, but it's not gonna be in 2020. | ||
| Everyone's slowly, everyone's gonna be voting hard in 2018, but also 2020. | ||
| Yeah, in the month that I've taken off, it seems to me that, although I didn't think the chasm could have gotten bigger, it seems like it actually got bigger, just even in the month. | ||
| Well, what's fun for me is just seeing, it's almost like, it feels like, The WWE, in a sense, right? | ||
| There are people rooting for people they didn't think before. | ||
| Like, I saw some of my, like, super-left friends, like, for a moment being pro-Bannon on some things. | ||
| And the same thing with the Attorney General. | ||
| People just, like, flip-flopping, going issue to issue, throwing out their... some misconceptions, some of their... where they were predisposed on people for this specific issue. | ||
| And so that's been really, really interesting. | ||
| I think there's still a lot of people that are hardline, but as far as the people that are a little more center, seeing some of the way that flows has been so interesting. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| How big do you think the fringes actually are? | ||
| Because it seems to me we're constantly being, the conversation is being just driven by the fringes. | ||
| So just in my last day back on, so now it seems like this white nationalist thing has now sort of regained some traction or whatever it is. | ||
| I find it hard to figure out. | ||
| Do these people have real traction? | ||
| Is this a real group of people or is it 5,000 people with no influence or is this making headway into our political system or any of that? | ||
| I think it's hard to tell because our perception is reality and I think a lot of people, their perception is | ||
| that it is two groups of, not equal size, but everyone's of some sort of extreme. | ||
| So everyone's either Antifa who are attacking people or everyone's a white supremacist | ||
| that's running people over with their car. | ||
| And there's a lot of people that are in the middle there. | ||
| Now, I think when it comes to Charlottesville and I know a section of your audience, | ||
| they're not gonna be happy with it, but if I was there for the lulls, | ||
| if I was there for the memes, or I was there legitimately for the statue, | ||
| I would potentially have some issue and personally want some separation | ||
| to the people throwing out Nazi salutes, right? | ||
| To the people chanting old Nazi slogans. | ||
| Like that's... | ||
| There's a point where I'm like, I'm gonna peace out, right? | ||
| And I think that there were people like that, right? | ||
| 100%. | ||
| But you can't deny seeing that number of people there for some really shitty reasons, right? | ||
| I think that freaked out a lot of people. | ||
| You can say... | ||
| The numbers being, you know, kind of blown out of proportion. | ||
| You can, I think, validly argue that we're seeing the rise in part to people filling a role that the media has said existed, and so they're just filling it up. | ||
| But... | ||
| There's, I mean, there's a real, there's a real issue with that. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Well, that's the part that I think is hard to decipher. | ||
| How much is real versus how much is these guys that, that led this thing? | ||
| And again, I'm just back on the grid, so I haven't even read enough about this specifically, but like, how much is just them doing exactly what will get the media to cover them? | ||
| Exactly what will get their videos to go viral? | ||
| Exactly what'll get them more Twitter followers? | ||
| and all that nonsense. | ||
| And as someone that was just off the grid, seeing us led by all the online stuff now | ||
| seems particularly dangerous to me right now. | ||
| Oh yeah. | ||
| Well I mean, I think because extreme reactions to extremism, it's cyclical. | ||
| 100%. | ||
| I mean, you start seeing the KKK. | ||
| You start seeing them right next to white nationalists and then you have that poor woman that was hit by that car and murdered. | ||
| And then all of a sudden, for some people, that's going to make them go, well... | ||
| Antifa what they did here. | ||
| It's not that bad. | ||
| It's just a reaction right and we start off into this Justification, but then we get stuck in these these constant comparisons of why? | ||
| If you can't prove that someone is in the wrong Then you're just gonna prove that the other person is also wrong right and that gets us nowhere And it's and it's extremely frustrating and I understand it because it's an emotional response It's it's it's kind of once we were like we were talking about it's like a punch to the brain but I mean, if you said, how do you make it better? | ||
| I have no idea. | ||
| I have zero clue on how you make it better. | ||
| Well, I think you make it better by pretty much doing what you're doing, which is giving room for a lot of this stuff to do. | ||
| Well, hopefully. | ||
| Hopefully, but trying to do that. | ||
| Is there ever a video or a story that you cover that you think you completely screwed up, like looking back? | ||
| At least probably. | ||
| I live within like kind of a 36 hour window. | ||
| Like before you were even filming and I was trying to talk about some of my past and I was just like, I have to like look off and try and remember. | ||
| I mean, I think part of that is me trying to suppress stuff, but I have really, I live within a 36 hour window. | ||
| So if I rightly get called out for something, I 100% want to look into it because my goal is not to always be right. | ||
| My goal is to try and tell the truth and to also grow personally. | ||
| Yeah, and it seems to be working. | ||
| So far. | ||
| From what I can tell. | ||
| Maybe when I'm a little older, I'll be locked down in all my beliefs, and that's just who I'll be till I die. | ||
| That would be an interesting shift in the business and in the content. | ||
| Yeah, the new slogan's gonna be, fuck everyone, I'm right. | ||
| What do you make of this Trump guy? | ||
| We haven't said his name this whole time. | ||
| No, he's not Voldemort. | ||
| It's not like that. | ||
| But people think, I mean, there are people who literally don't want to mention his name. | ||
| They're giving him the Voldemort effect. | ||
| Well, I think, yeah, I think when you make the big claims, Trump's a racist, right? | ||
| You automatically invalidate your arguments with like 50% of the people you're talking to. | ||
| Can he do things that Is it going to negatively affect a lot of people that aren't his skin color? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| I think that certain times, I think that he wants his way so much That sometimes he's not going to care that maybe the Constitution gets in his way. | ||
| But I think we also see that with other world leaders. | ||
| Is it this level of extremism or, more importantly, is it more in our faces every day, right? | ||
| When I wake up every morning at six o'clock, I know that Trump's probably tweeted an hour ago about something. | ||
| Today it was that he was going to, I think it was, allow for larger purchases for South Korea and Japan as far as military equipment. | ||
| And so I feel like it's just more in everyone's face, right? | ||
| We wouldn't see the past president saying, like, DACA! | ||
| Exclamation mark. | ||
| So I think, I'm not saying that it's right or wrong, right? | ||
| A lot of people that support Trump see that as the best tool in the world. | ||
| They don't have to wait for an official, fancy, stupid press conference. | ||
| They're just, they're being told. | ||
| From the person they voted for immediately, right? | ||
| Text straight to my phone. | ||
| So I think it's just more in everybody's face. | ||
| And so I think, I mean, he's a polarizing guy. | ||
| I mean, a lot of people don't talk about him the same way, but to a lesser extent, Obama was a very polarizing guy to a certain section of people. | ||
| And I think you don't realize that a lot of people are just on the other end of that this time. | ||
| Yeah, what do you make of just sort of the way everyone deals with it? | ||
| So yeah, you know, you wake up any given morning, you know he's gonna tweet something crazy. | ||
| I don't think that ever I've really gone after one of the tweets specifically because it just seems like such theater and sideshow to me. | ||
| Like, they're all lies. | ||
| Like, I'm a firm believer that pretty much all politicians Especially at that high level. | ||
| They're lying either by, like there's just a system of half-truths and omissions constantly. | ||
| And yes, Obama lied the way that we liked presidents to lie. | ||
| Or said, you know, like the red line, which was a lie that I think, the red line in Syria that, even though I didn't want to go to war in Syria, you laid out the red line, then you don't do anything. | ||
| Right, or you'll be able to keep your doctor no matter what. | ||
| You can keep, right, so that's a more specific example, right? | ||
| You can keep your doctor. | ||
| They knew it was a lie, and they still did it, but he did it in the sort of, You know, wearing a suit, speaking nicely, giving long speeches, the notion of this, that, like they lied in a certain way. | ||
| Trump's just lying in a different way. | ||
| It's gross and disgusting, and I care about ideas and thoughts and all that stuff, so I don't want the conversation to be about this, but I just see it as a different version of lying. | ||
| So a different version of lying. | ||
| So I see that, but I also go like, There's also something a little bit... I'm not defending it, by the way. | ||
| I just see it as that. | ||
| It's not like I'd attack you for that or something. | ||
| No, because I think you're making me think that, yeah, the main difference then is that you have someone that's lying in a different way, but at the same time, half of their shtick is saying that other people are lying. | ||
|
unidentified
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Right? | |
| And so, like, that adds, like, a different layer. | ||
| Like, I've talked about in the past, but several times, like, literally in tweets where he's saying, this is fake news, what he's saying is a lie. | ||
| I think that is a prime example of... | ||
| Some of the stuff that's like really messed up and wrong. | ||
| I'm not someone that wakes up going like, fuck Trump, right? | ||
| How am I gonna skewer the guy today? | ||
| And I end up finding myself having to defend them when they get attacked for stupid things. | ||
| Like when people went after Melania Trump because she wore high heels, right? | ||
| And they're like, they're gonna go to Texas because of Hurricane Harvey, and what's she gonna do in heels? | ||
| What's FLOTUS gonna do, right? | ||
| what's FLOTUS gonna do, right? | ||
| Whether it's Melania or any other person ever. | ||
| It's just frustrating. | ||
| It's. | ||
| There is a reason to be bothered by a lot of the stuff that's happening. | ||
| And I think the place I find myself the most frustrated is the things that are illogical or don't matter. | ||
| Right. | ||
| And we're slammed with those. | ||
| Those are the ones we're slammed with. | ||
| And that's kind of like the problem is when you stress out about these minor things and you give them, especially because of a 24-hour news cycle or the fact that so many of these organizations are so competitive and they're giving things that don't matter airtime compared to when they really mess up and it is a really big deal. | ||
| You just take away how important the other thing is, right? | ||
| And you end up just kind of hurting your own argument when you have the stronger argument because you're complaining about everything. | ||
| How much do you think social media is just adding to the craziness? | ||
| I don't even mean Trump's Twitter, but I mean just the general, just as I'm getting back on, just looking at that and seeing, ah, the same people fighting about the same things, and it's like, does any of this matter? | ||
| Does any of this actually matter? | ||
| Well, then you're gonna just end up in some existential thing, right? | ||
| I mean, my whole view on life is that none of this kind of matters. | ||
| While I exist and what I try and provide for my family and everyone I interact with, I hope that I put more good into the world than I take, but as far as does any of it matter, the bickering, I don't know. | ||
| Part of it's WWE bullshit, not fake fighting, but meaningless fighting, and then there's the stuff where lives are going to be affected. | ||
| When we're talking about DACA today. | ||
| That's like a real thing. | ||
| Now, everyone complaining about it online? | ||
| No, that's just noise. | ||
| But then, at the end of the day, you're talking about real lives, a real impact. | ||
| So, some of it matters, but a lot of it does not. | ||
| It's the beauty and the downfall of giving everyone a massive megaphone. | ||
| Yeah, and I'd rather have it this way. | ||
| I'd rather have everyone have the chance to get their voice out, but of course that does come with some stuff. | ||
| Who are just some people in general, or organizations that you trust? | ||
| Because I get that one all the time. | ||
| I don't trust anyone, man. | ||
| No, I don't. | ||
| Well, when you're doing research and you've got your guys looking at stories and everything. | ||
| We look everywhere. | ||
| We look everywhere. | ||
| Even when we provide links to sources, we don't even include everything. | ||
| We try to get as many different viewpoints and ways that something's covered as possible. | ||
| Because sometimes there are places that miss things, maybe they omitted it, maybe people just think they omitted it. | ||
| And then there's a completely different viewpoint, a completely different angle. | ||
| And my goal is to kind of, as much as I can, cover a little bit of both sides, in the sense of at least understanding where the angle's coming from, even if I massively disagree with it. | ||
| But I mean, as far as, like, if we talk about individuals, I don't know if I would automatically say trust, where I respect or am interested in. | ||
| Obviously, like, I'm doing this, so you, to an extent, Dave, everyone knows that you're a crazy communist, blah, blah. | ||
| No, I, we were talking earlier, Ben Shapiro, always fascinated by what he's gonna say or his kind of, like, viewpoint. | ||
| And then a few others that I don't wanna call out by name, but yeah. | ||
| Isn't that funny? | ||
| You don't wanna call them out by name, even though you'd be probably saying something nice about them. | ||
| But I get it, because then it puts this odd pressure, but then it's like, oh, you've endorsed them, and now they screw up tomorrow, and it's like, ah! | ||
| Well, especially because you don't know everything about every single person, right? | ||
| You're gonna be like, "Well, in 1999," | ||
| I'd be like, "Well, apparently I'm a Nazi now." | ||
| What do you do to get out of the mess and the matrix and all that stuff? | ||
| So as of a week and a half ago, I've recently started riding my, well, | ||
| real bike and then also a cycling bike. | ||
| It's the only way that I can get energy anymore since I am way too overweight | ||
| and I've stopped taking Adderall a long time ago. | ||
| So it's like this beautiful burst of energy. | ||
| So right after we're done here, I'm gonna go home, knock out 45 minutes, slowly, slowly make my life a little better, both mentally and hopefully physically. | ||
| Does Adderall lead to jump cuts? | ||
| Do you think? | ||
| Which came first, Adderall or jump cuts? | ||
| The jump cut. | ||
| The jump cut. | ||
| The Adderall, I think it was right before I did my first tour. | ||
| I initially got it just because I was having a hard time multitasking, but I think part | ||
| of that was probably just I was putting too much on myself. | ||
| But it's so incredibly easy to, it's incredibly habit-forming. | ||
| In the first month that I stopped taking it, it was like moving through water. | ||
| It was rough. | ||
| Do you have ADD or something? | ||
| I was prescribed the medication, and so they said I did, but I think if you ever go to a doctor, it's one of the most over-prescribed medications, easily. | ||
| Although, I will say, in California, they're a little weird about it. | ||
| You can only go month to month, whereas in Atlanta, you could get several months. | ||
| I don't know if the law has changed, but that was the biggest difference, and I was like, You guys are letting people smoke weed and you're freaking out about this? | ||
| The reason I say it like that is it was so alien to me because I had lived in a place where it was obviously illegal. | ||
| Right. | ||
| You are okay with weed though? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I don't smoke it anymore just because I feel like Especially now, I'm always having to be in dad mode. | ||
| It's so weird. | ||
| I'm so stressed about something going wrong, so I should probably smoke, but I'm worried that if I smoke, I'm not gonna be there to be able to handle the situation. | ||
| And so that's why I've stopped. | ||
| Speaking of dad mode, as you might have a second kid while we're doing this right now, so your wife puts up DeFranco family videos, and I assume the new baby will be involved in this. | ||
| Well, there's at least, Probably. | ||
| He'll probably be there. | ||
| Where do you try to draw that line of how much of what you guys do is public versus private? | ||
| Does she come to you and talk about any of this stuff? | ||
| The thing is we don't share a bunch. | ||
| It's usually... I feel like... | ||
| She puts a lot of work into the editing and I'm like really proud and impressed because I don't do any of that for myself anymore. | ||
| But, no, I mean, I think it's going to be a bigger part of the conversation as our oldest gets older. | ||
| Because, I mean, YouTube's been around long enough. | ||
| There have been family vloggers that have now, like, the kids have grown up and they're like a big part of the vlog. | ||
| And it is definitely different. | ||
| I know, and I don't want to mention them by name, but like There are YouTube families that have had to remove their kids from school, right? | ||
| Because people were showing up to the school trying to either see them or take them. | ||
| And you also have to take into account if the kid actually wants to do it, right? | ||
| And making it, and if it's what mom and dad are doing, not making it so they don't feel guilty if they don't want to, because I've seen examples of that as well. | ||
| And that's not even taken into account that You're part of a family vlog, and then you're going into school with people that are watching your family vlog. | ||
| And so it can make you like a celebrity, but if something horrible happens, or something happens with your parents, everyone's gonna know about it. | ||
| So, I don't know, I think... | ||
| I like sharing it because, or I like seeing it, because I loved that all of a sudden I saw a little gif of my son when he was six months old and I was like, oh wait, I think I know what video that's from. | ||
| And I got to watch this video of my kid. | ||
| Now I could do that personally. | ||
| It seems like such a weird alien thought of why would I edit a video that I don't put out to the public or share because and I'm not trying to be cliche or corny in that way, | ||
| but when you get used to sharing it with people, it almost ends up being like an extension of family, | ||
| extended family, but family. | ||
| But it does have this potential to become everyone criticizing your life. | ||
| It's why I never fully jumped into I'm going to be a full-on vlogger, | ||
| because people talking about me is completely different than people talking about | ||
| them thinking that my opinion is garbage. | ||
| Completely different extremes. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Wow, all right, well you gave me a couple. | ||
| I ramble through all my thoughts. | ||
|
unidentified
|
No, no, no. | |
| That was good, but you said something sort of, you kind of had a throwaway there that I thought was a great moment, that you don't do any of your editing anymore. | ||
|
unidentified
|
No. | |
| Must have been a beautiful, beautiful moment. | ||
| I mean, I know for me that when I've been able to take certain things off my plate and give it to my team or just Add different things or focus more on writing the direct message or whatever. | ||
| Then I get to do what I'm supposed to be doing. | ||
| That must have been a beautiful moment for you. | ||
| It was so scary. | ||
| No, it was so scary. | ||
| Because the way that I used to edit the show, so you were talking about jump cuts, I would literally say a sentence, see if it worked. | ||
| Say a sentence, see if it worked. | ||
| Because I edited in iMovie, and I think I recorded directly with the iMovie camera at first, or something I had connected that could read that camera. | ||
| Yeah, I would just... Sup guys, welcome to the show! | ||
|
unidentified
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Okay. | |
| Completely horrible process like it's why the tone is different in the old videos But I felt like I had control at the time I thought it was like I was my editing something special And the moment I introduced people or brought in an editor It was the best thing in the world because it does free you up to just focus on that Yeah, all of a sudden the videos can be longer you can focus more on the creative make sure or now fact-checking Are you ever worried that you're gonna hand them something and they're editing your words that, you know, they're gonna mangle something? | ||
| That's the fear part. | ||
| Well, I mean, I always review. | ||
| Oh my god, yeah. | ||
| No, I try to, at least. | ||
| Like, even today, I was like, guys, we gotta do this early. | ||
| I gotta get out, get everything up. | ||
| But no, I mean, I'm sure my editors have, like, a fuck-fill folder for, like, if I was ever, like, you're fired, all of a sudden there'd be, like, a three minute long montage of me saying, like, Lines that I ended up going, eh, cut that. | ||
| But, no, I mean, you have to open yourself up and be a little vulnerable, especially once you bring people into the process, because, especially with what we're talking about, I feel like, I don't know about you, but I'm a little fluid with my thinking on some things, and so as I'm covering it, I'm trying to digest the whole situation. | ||
| And so, as I'm filming, my opinion might change on something fresh, especially if some new information comes out. | ||
| And that's also, you have to worry about that because then... | ||
| You're doing something based off of information that's not fully updated. | ||
| Right, and then you know damn well, sure, that someone's gonna find a video you did five years ago saying, oh, he said that! | ||
| It was the reverse! | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And it's like, well, I evolved? | ||
| How about that? | ||
| Yeah, well, that's what, every now and then, I'll get into an argument with someone, and they'll be like, look at this video you did seven years ago, where you said this kind of off-color thing. | ||
| And I was like, well, one, you took it out of context. | ||
| Two, I was kind of a dick. | ||
| I would say things that I thought were super edgy, and that's how you make jokes, and it's just horrible. | ||
| Yeah, I saw something in a video that you did from many years ago, something about being the type of feminist you are or something, and you had some joke about, something about, it was like some sex joke about women or something, like it was just a joke. | ||
| Maybe. | ||
| I don't even remember exactly what it was, but it was like, I saw somebody attacking you over it, and it's like, alright, so you cheer the country on. | ||
| There's always something, I don't know, I don't know what the specific was, so I'd be able to like comment on that specifically, because of my 36 hour memory, but I, A 36-hour memory these days is actually quite long for what's going on in the real world. | ||
| All right, let's shift a little bit because, so this episode, so I've been trying to get you on forever and we had to get schedules to match up and everything, but Learn Liberty, who's one of our partners, did partner up with us to do this, and when they usually send us professors or something, you've never worked with Learn Liberty or had any contact with them ever, but they said to me, if Phil wants to do the show, we'd love to sponsor the show, and I said that to you and you said immediately, whatever they were gonna, they give like an honorarium to our guests, usually it's for travel sometimes, people coming from other countries or whatever, but you said immediately, I don't want the money, I want the money to go to the PKD Foundation. | ||
| Oh yeah, the PKD Cure. | ||
| So yeah, so I want to talk about that a little bit. | ||
| So tell me about PKD and why you care about it. | ||
| Well, I care about it for two reasons. | ||
| My dad has it. | ||
| PKD is polycystic kidney disease. | ||
| Essentially, to kind of simplify it, your kidneys are eventually going to fail. | ||
| And so my dad had it. | ||
| He ended up losing function in his kidneys. | ||
| He had to be on dialysis for a while. | ||
| I have it, and my kids could have it, because it's passed down through great carriers like myself. | ||
| But no, I mean, it sucks. | ||
| I never know how to talk about it, because it's such a depressing thing to me, and I always try and put that stuff out of my mind and think that I'm... | ||
| Life's never gonna catch up with me, but no, I mean, it's just, people's kidneys are gonna fail. | ||
| It affects a lot of people. | ||
| PKD Cure is out there trying to help fund research. | ||
| There are PKD walks. | ||
| And I also just didn't want to take your money. | ||
| Well, they wouldn't have been giving the money to me, by the way. | ||
| They just give it to the guests, so it's not that I get it. | ||
| I wanted to be on here for, I don't know, It sounds weird, but if I took money for being here, it'd feel dirty. | ||
| I wanna be here. | ||
| For the record, we don't pay our guests ever. | ||
| This is just when Learn Liberty does things. | ||
| I'll take you out to dinner or something. | ||
| No, we have to, why are you lying, Dave? | ||
| We have to have some drama so that you actually, so we can boost each other. | ||
| We should create drama. | ||
| All right, let me figure out ways we can finish with a little drama. | ||
| I'm excited for your diss track. | ||
| Here we go. | ||
| Let's try to create some drama. | ||
| Do you think the social justice thing's just imploding altogether? | ||
| What we say about talking about generalities, I think there is a problem, right? | ||
| Moving to California pushed me more center. | ||
| Being online and seeing how crazy things were getting as far as things you would label SJW, right? | ||
| That pushed me more center. | ||
| Talking in a video six years ago and using the wrong pronoun accidentally on a story about a trans person pushed me more center and further, not even center, just pushed me away. | ||
| And when you see things like we covered the, oh I'm gonna mess up her name, the trans model who just got booted from a L'Oreal campaign because she went on this rant where she said It's all white people, white people violence. | ||
| And then she said she was taken out of context because she was talking around the events of Charlottesville. | ||
| And it's like, no, you can let's say it's not even in a vacuum or it's not. | ||
| You're still no matter if someone's an ally, you're still using this This all-encompassing language, and you can try and justify it, but it ends up pushing people away, right? | ||
| People that could be your allies. | ||
| And I'm not saying tone yourself down for people to like you, right? | ||
| Just understand that if you're going to use all-encompassing language, that it's not great. | ||
| It's not great for your cause. | ||
| But as far as is it imploding? | ||
| I mean, as far as generalities, I'd hope that people stop being ridiculous but care about actual people, right? | ||
| I think that's the goal, right? | ||
| I think that it then becomes this fucking crazy toxic thing where you have, what is it, Evergreen State University, where you have places like that of students going up to a teacher and saying that because he's talking with his hands, which, oh my God, I would be committing a hate crime, that that's a microaggression and see, this is how you do it. | ||
| That's insane, it's insane. | ||
| We're just, it doesn't need to be that extreme. | ||
| Yeah, well I guess by imploding, that's what I meant, the hysteria and those types of things, or they're just pushing good people's center, which I think ultimately is actually good. | ||
| So yeah, there's always gonna be a certain amount of hysteria on both extremes, of course, but that the more there is, the more you make decent people, you know, a guy who accidentally screws up a pronoun who isn't, a transphobe or anything like that. | ||
| It makes them reevaluate and go, ah, maybe this isn't exactly where I'm supposed to be. | ||
| Yeah, by being extreme, you make extremists. | ||
| It's something we said earlier, and it's just true, in my opinion. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Oh, these are all your opinions? | ||
| Just my opinion. | ||
| Ah! | ||
| You should be ending every sentence with that. | ||
| I'm leaving the door open. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I feel we should finish on free speech in general, because we didn't say it once, and you're a big free speech guy. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Basically, I think you're a free speech absolutist, right? | ||
| Is there... | ||
| I think so, yeah. | ||
| I'm trying to think. | ||
| I'm so intrigued by the thought, and I think I've heard your opinion on it, of because people are going around and they have the swastikas on, because it is a symbol for this horrible group, this horrible thing, that that somehow then changes the conversation on free speech. | ||
| What are your thoughts? | ||
| So I'm just hearing this, literally, just as I just got back on. | ||
| I read one article about this this morning, about this idea that these ideas are so inherently linked to violence, right, that they in and of themselves are violence, that the image or the words that these people are saying. | ||
| I don't agree. | ||
| I don't agree. | ||
| It sucks. | ||
| As I've mentioned many times, I had family members on both sides of my family die in the Holocaust. | ||
| I grew up around Holocaust survivors. | ||
| So this is not something that I hold lightly, any of what these people were doing in Charlottesville, any of this. | ||
| These are disgusting people that are doing this. | ||
| Do they have the right to say and do horrible things? | ||
| Actually, the Supreme Court has affirmed that right with the march in Skokie, Illinois. | ||
| So it sucks. | ||
| Like, it doesn't feel good. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| Like, I want to say something to you that'll make me feel good about it. | ||
| Yeah, fuck these guys and get out there and punch a Nazi. | ||
| You know, like all these Twitter warriors want you to punch Nazis. | ||
| You know, they never do it, but they all want you to punch Nazis. | ||
| Well, at least two have. | ||
| Touche, touche. | ||
| But it doesn't feel good, but I don't wanna trade something that doesn't feel good to sacrifice what I believe is the most important thing here, which is free expression. | ||
| And I think you hit on a really good point, is it doesn't feel good. | ||
| And that's why it's one of those things of, when you say a free speech absolutist, I'm like, yes, but this one thing has me feeling dirty. | ||
| There are legal reasons why you can sort of hedge that a little bit, which is if he's up there screaming, kill the Jews or hang black people, now there's a criminal part to this, the call to violence. | ||
| But short of that, I think you have to let these, I think you've said it somewhere, I read a quote in something about that, if you just, if you stifle these people, you'll always make them stronger. | ||
| I mean, that's sort of... Right, and I think that there's also, there's also this weird line that you end up creating. | ||
| There's a YouTuber, I forget his real name, but he goes by the name of Count Dankula, Count Dankula, and he's... Yes, yes, I know the work of Count Dankula. | ||
| Yes, yes, no, but and he's he's having to go and I don't know if it got postponed I know it's supposed to be sometime around right around now But he's facing jail time because he put out a video of him jokingly making his dog Do the Nazi salute? | ||
| Facing Child Time, where? | ||
| What country is this guy in? | ||
| Is it Scotland? | ||
| Oh, okay, but it's not the United States. | ||
|
unidentified
|
No, no, no. | |
| So this is one of those... So that's why you look elsewhere, and you're like, oh shit. | ||
| You see what happens. | ||
| Right, and so it's like, and so that's why you end up caring about the line, right, of holding on something, because then it becomes that, which I will say... | ||
| It's distasteful. | ||
| In context, it was a really stupid joke because his whole argument was his girlfriend loves the dog so much that he wants to ruin the dog, and so the best way to ruin something is to make it a Nazi, right? | ||
| In context, it's like, okay, but then outside of that, there's such a negative feeling that when do you start doing things that are just ridiculous? | ||
| The fact that he's facing jail time, I think, is ridiculous. | ||
| I'm open to other people being sensitive about it, being offended by it, but the fact that a court can go, that's illegal, that's crazy. | ||
| And so I think that's why I try to at all times understand that free speech should be no matter how despicable we think it is. | ||
| Not the dog, the actual Nazis. | ||
| Yeah, and it just sucks. | ||
| Like it just, and that's the part of the conversation that I think people are always afraid to have. | ||
| Like we're all, everyone, if you ask anyone, are you for free speech? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| But then the second you get them to a place that's uncomfortable for them, | ||
| then they say, well, that's the one, that's the one I can't. | ||
| But it's like, yeah, it really is sucky. | ||
| But you can't be up, you can't be calling for violence. | ||
| You can't obviously be committing violence. | ||
| But short of that, you gotta let people do, Otherwise you actually make them the victim, | ||
| which is what they really want more than anything else. | ||
| They wanna trade in that victimhood, and that's, I don't wanna trade in that. | ||
| Phil DeFranco, I feel I should leave you to your wife. | ||
| Yeah, well, I don't know. | ||
| Unless your producer is the worst person in the world, I don't think she had the baby. | ||
| We said we were gonna give you a fair warning, but what if they felt this was so gripping... So gripping. | ||
| ...that you have another kid. | ||
| That I miss the birth of my child. | ||
| I would have to make everything I do from here on out to destroy your show. | ||
| But it'd be a great promo. | ||
| It'd be a great promo for you. | ||
| Actually, that would be nothing. | ||
| You do what you gotta do. | ||
| All right, well, I'm so glad we finally did this. | ||
| Now I know I'm gonna bump into you halfway down the street, probably at the end of the day. | ||
| Maybe, one day, if I ever go outside. | ||
| Yeah, but now you got this indoor bike, too. | ||
| Yeah, so I get to just stay inside, air-conditioned, since I've lived in California for like seven years, and 100 degrees is just unbearable to me. | ||
| It's made me so weak. | ||
| All right, well, it was a pleasure, which I expected it to be. | ||
| And for more on Phil, you can find him making sense of the madness. | ||
| Is that too much pressure? | ||
| No, I like that. | ||
| That might be my new slogan. |
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