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Aug. 24, 2021 - Viva & Barnes
58:37
Sidebar with Mikhaila Peterson! Viva & Barnes LIVE!
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Time Text
Second late because I hit the go live button before the confirm button.
Good morning, people.
This is an 11 o 'clock live stream.
I don't know what I'm going to do with myself for the rest of the day after we do this.
I know what I'm going to do.
I'm going to do a vlog because for those of you who haven't heard, the kid from the Nirvana album, the little nude kid swimming in the water after the dollar bill, is suing the band, all living members, and even some of the members who preceded that image.
For $100,000 in damages, I gotta see the lawsuit because something smells opportunistic, something smells time-barred, something smells tacit acceptance of any and all claims that he could have had or renunciation.
Alright, but today's a good one.
We don't have a lot of time because it's with Michaela Peterson and it is a one-hour max.
Now, just so no one has any crazy thoughts.
Robert is not able to make it today, and I think something came up work-wise, which is totally understandable.
So it's just going to be me and Michaela, and I don't want anyone thinking that there's any other reason for which Robert did not come today.
But he texted me and said that something came up, and he might not make it.
So if he doesn't make it, it's just going to be the two of us, and it's going to be fun.
Standard disclaimers.
YouTube takes 30% to Super Chat, so if you don't like that, don't give Super Chats.
I should be able to get to most of the Super Chats, but if I don't and you're going to be miffed, don't give the Super Chat.
No legal advice, no medical advice, no nothing advice that undermines the fortification of the 2020 elections.
We can't talk about any of that, nor will we.
So without further ado, I'll just take one Super Chat, and you should also set up an Odyssey account.
I like to focus my diversion attention to Rumble.
We are also simultaneously streaming on Rumble, so if you don't like YouTube as a platform...
There's rumble.
All right, without further ado, we're going to bring in Michaela Peterson, and then we're going to start discussing life as the child of a clinical psychologist.
But before we get there, Michaela, good morning.
How's everything going?
Good morning.
Things are going quite well, actually.
How are things going for you?
Well, if I can vent, I was at the hospital this morning, not for an emergency or anything serious, just for an appointment with one of my kids.
And I asked one of the...
One of the nurses, you know, how's everything going in terms of staffing, policy, you know, mandatory vaccines?
And the nurse said, you know, it's curious because we're already understaffed.
We already have staffing issues and implementing this vaccine passport is only going to exacerbate that problem.
But we're going to get into this probably later on in the stream.
But so where are you located, Michaela?
And for those of you actually, I guess, out there who don't know who Michaela is, Michaela, elevator pitch before we delve into your childhood.
Ooh, okay.
My name is Michaela Peterson.
I have a podcast that people seem to listen to, Michaela Peterson Podcast.
I just finished a book.
People probably know me from being the daughter of clinical psychologist Jordan Peterson and being on an all-meat diet for the last three years that has caused a lot of anger to a lot of people.
That's my elevator pitch.
I just watched one of the videos where you were describing the all-meat diet.
Let's go step by step here because those are three big things to break down.
But let's start from the beginning.
How many siblings do you have?
I have one younger brother.
He's 27. All right.
And now you're in adulthood.
Your dad is both famous and infamous, has a great reputation and also a notorious reputation.
Let's go back to the beginning.
What is it like being raised by a clinical psychologist?
I didn't actually think it was any different from how anyone else was raised until I was about 26. It took me way too long to figure out that dad was a bit eccentric.
And I think I used that term first when I was 25 or 26, and he didn't like it.
So nobody repeat that.
But, I mean, I grew up with a house that had 32 different colors in paint and over 100 different paintings from the Soviet Union The atrocities that can occur with totalitarianism.
So that was a bit of it.
And then I learned the psychological significance behind the biblical stories rather than going to church.
And that's a bit of a background.
It didn't feel much different until people online started.
Recognizing who he was and then telling me like, oh yeah, this guy's a little different than the usual parent.
Well, actually, first question first.
Generation-wise Canadian, how long has your family been in Canada?
Are you relatively new generations or have you been around for a while?
No.
Both sides of my family got here at least three generations ago.
So all my grandparents were born in Canada and then you can go back and there's like Irish, Scottish, but a lot of...
One side is American.
Like, I tracked relatives back to the 1500s on my mom's side.
So it's at least three generations Canadian, though.
Okay, so that's very interesting.
So it's curious.
You say your dad, growing up, had pictures to remind him of communism and those types of environments.
Yeah.
When do you recall him having that sort of...
Sorry, I should have put on the...
I actually turned off the no notifications just so I can hear from Robert if I need to.
So where did that come from and why did your dad have that...
I won't call it an infatuation.
Why did he have that interest in the first place?
So he grew up during the Cold War and it scared him.
The talk on the news of potential nuclear warfare, I guess, would scare most people.
But he grew up with that.
He also has a propensity towards depression that seems to run in our family.
So I think that combined with news about nuclear war scared him when he was little.
And so he spent a lot of time researching that and why that came to be and what kind of governments lead people to end up destroying their economy and murdering people.
And so...
He brought paintings into our house when I was in grade 6, and I had actually recently discovered eBay.
And I remember introducing eBay to my dad.
I was like, look at this platform, eBay.
And then he spent two and a half years with his free time on eBay buying up Soviet art because they were just able to ship the art out of the country.
So they were finally allowed to sell art that had been kind of trapped behind the wall for a really long time.
And he took advantage of it.
He's probably seen more Soviet art than anyone in the entire world.
Like, I don't know how many hundreds of thousands of paintings.
But he put them into Photoshop, look at them, see what quality it was.
And they were pretty cheap on eBay.
And then he bought as many as he could that were super high quality.
So that started around grade six.
All right.
Someone said your volume's a little low.
I don't know if you can bring your mic closer.
Is mine low?
Yeah.
Let's see if it's better.
Is that better?
That's better.
Or is it still quiet?
I can switch to AirPods, too.
Yeah, I think that's good enough.
Okay, so this is interesting.
So I have some experience with family members who are psychiatrists, not in my immediate family.
And I have grown up to learn that psychiatrists, psychologists, all tend to be eccentric, to put it mildly.
And so I'm wondering, when you reflect on your childhood growing up, what were some of the...
I mean, other than the...
Many paintings of communist art in the house.
some of the other indications that in retrospect, because it only makes sense in retrospect, that you had an eccentric or unique upbringing.
In retrospect, what would have been eccentric about my upbringing?
Well, I'm not sure.
It's hard for me to...
I wasn't very close with very many other families, so it's hard for me to differentiate between how I grew up and how other people grew up.
But if we ever had a problem, we had to talk it out.
Like any little tiny problem or any little bit of resentment was just like family sit down and then hash through it.
And I feel like, I don't know, it worked, but it was pretty stressful.
But any grievance anybody ever had, we had to.
Go through in great detail until everybody was happy.
And sometimes it was like nobody can leave the table until this is dealt with.
So that was a bit intense.
And then we had scheduling for everything.
So everything was on a schedule, like 8 o 'clock, you know, wake up or whenever that was, 8.15 breakfast, 8.30 this.
I wouldn't, like a lot of it was on 15 minute increments, but some of it was a bit less structured, but everything was scheduled out.
So those maybe are a bit different than how other people grew up.
I'm not sure.
Well, you mentioned it, and it's now public knowledge, and it's something that your dad is, I say, known for, but is addressed publicly, and it's an important question.
But growing up with a parent who has a propensity for depression, how did that materialize, and what sort of things did you experience as a kid growing up with a parent who's suffering from depression?
Well, we were both pretty volatile.
I had the same depression.
A similar depression.
So volatility and maybe more seriousness, although he has a great sense of humor.
So it was really hard to tell what he was like without the depression.
And I was also really suffering from depression at the same time.
It wasn't until that kind of lifted that things changed.
But we were both on SSRIs.
So it was...
Serotonin is something inhibited.
Serotonin.
Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors.
Okay, and those are basically the word for antidepressants.
Yes, yes, antidepressants.
So we were on those for most of my childhood, really.
I was put on them when I was 12. He was on them for a long time.
So I don't know how much of an impact the depression had, really.
It's kind of hard to say.
Things were serious.
He was still very similar to how he is now.
And from what I understood from some of the research I was doing before this, your depression, psychological depression, was also coupled with some childhood illness that you went into in great detail, but sort of led to the diet that you're on now.
For anybody who doesn't know what you went through in terms of illness as a child to adulthood, you want to explain that briefly?
Yeah, I'll do the really, really super brief version.
I was diagnosed...
By the time I was 23, I'd been diagnosed with juvenile rheumatoid arthritis, which was everywhere except for my spine.
I'd had two joints replaced, my hip and my ankle.
Because of the arthritis, I'd been on immune suppressants for like 15 years.
I was the first kid in Canada to be put on Enbrel, which is an injectable immune suppressant.
I'd been diagnosed with major depressive disorder, bipolar type 2, and chronic fatigue, diagnosed as idiopathic hypersomnia.
So I was really, really, really sick, and then I started getting a rash that wasn't healing.
And I was on like seven medications.
I was taking Adderall so I could stay awake.
And so what led me to the diet I'm on and that my dad is currently on was sheer desperation trying to get off the medications that were causing so much brain fog.
I could barely function.
I wasn't able to stay awake and I wasn't healing anymore.
So through trial and error, I went from kind of a paleo diet to...
Unbelievably, an all-meat diet.
So I've been eating beef and lamb and salt and water since December 2017.
And I wouldn't be doing that except that if I don't do that, my symptoms come back and my dad's in the same boat.
So he didn't have arthritis, but he has had major depressive disorder and neurological symptoms.
So like pain, kind of like fibromyalgia.
So he's got autoimmune markers in his blood, but it's hard to figure out exactly what it is.
So they thought maybe...
Fibromyalgia.
And so he's on the diet too to keep serious neurological symptoms and major depressive disorder in check.
And it seems to work and we're not really sure why.
And that's caused a bit of controversy as well.
I'm going to ask the stupid question because I cannot conceive.
I mean, I eat a lot of meat and probably 10 times more than what doctors say is the recommended daily amount.
But I could not conceive of not eating vegetables, cheese.
What else is big on my diet?
Eggs.
So when you say that you're on all beef and nothing but beef and salt and water, are you literally nothing but beef, salt and water?
Literally, yeah.
Literally salt.
Well, no, not quite.
And this just discredits the entire diet, but I can tell you it anyway.
I seem to be able to drink distilled alcohol.
That's like bourbon or vodka if there aren't any ingredients added in after without getting an autoimmune flare up.
I can't drink beer.
I can't drink wine.
I can't drink cider.
And I guess if you think of it as an inflammatory response from the body, then there aren't very many ingredients in distilled alcohol, given the fact it's distilled.
But yeah, so that's the diet.
I do that.
Dad doesn't.
But that doesn't seem to cause me any major problems.
Other than that, no, it's just lamb, beef, salt and water.
And I've tried to reintroduce things because, like, why would you not want to eat more foods than that?
But every time I introduce things, I get sick again.
And same goes for my dad.
So we're on it for...
That's interesting.
When I say no legal advice, no medical advice, I know when it comes to diet...
A lot of people have different theories.
A lot of people get very angry or personal over some theories.
It becomes a heated debate for no better reason.
So, I mean, if it works, all the better.
But I found it very interesting.
I saw the speech.
It's absurd.
It was an Australian thing.
It said Low Carb Down Under, I think, was the publication.
Oh, yeah.
I did a talk for that.
Yeah.
I just told the background details about my story.
But yeah, it's pretty weird.
I mean, it's even hard for us to believe.
Like, we tried introducing something recently and it went horrifically wrong.
It was like, is that really possible?
Is that really possible?
But I've met other people who have similar sensitivities to the same degree.
And so, I don't know.
It would be nice for the medical community to look into it a little further, but...
And a little TMI.
So I was diagnosed with IBS back when I was a kid, irritable bowel syndrome, hyperactive bladder, sleep apnea, a bunch of things.
So sensitivities to food, I swear to you, nobody believes me.
I can tell you if there's an onion or a radish mixed in somewhere in anything.
And so I do notice I feel better eating certain things, mostly a lot of meat and a lot of vegetables, but then I notice certain things just throw my stomach off.
That's the TMI part.
So I can relate to it, but I could never even relate to the idea of being, as much as I would want to be, all beef all the time.
Now I'm going to bring this chat up because we're going to get into some of the more juicy stuff.
Your dad inspired me to read the Gulag Archipelago.
His voice is my internal narrator for it.
I enjoyed how you two handled the Red Skull silliness.
Hail Lobster.
So here's the question.
And to relate, just to illustrate, I can relate, you know, I'm the son of my dad, as are most people.
And my dad had a big name in litigation in Quebec and Canada.
And when you are in the same field as your father, you live in your parents' shadow.
You, to say you live in the shadow of your dad, I mean, it might be a wrong way to express it, but you are, people will say, oh, you're Jordan Peterson's daughter.
And you're going to get flack or praise because of what people's impression is of your dad.
What does that feel like?
How does that materialize?
And how do you go about defining yourself in a way that goes beyond the reputation of your father?
I'm actually quite proud to be my daughter's father.
Wow.
Sorry.
I'm quite proud of the position I'm in.
So I don't mind it at all.
It's allowed me to...
Grab a whole bunch of opportunity.
It's allowed me to help him a lot.
Like, I think something that's misunderstood, because there's a percentage of his fans that are like, you're just taking advantage of your dad.
And when he got kind of thrown into infamy or controversy, it was very, very, very hard on my family.
It was really stressful.
He wasn't used to that at all.
And, you know, he thought he was going to lose his job at the university.
And that was his life.
Kind of.
So it was really tough.
And I ended up stepping in to try and relieve him of some of the just more administrative duties that he was doing when his, you know, email, when his inbox was overrun, scheduling podcasts, and then it just kind of grew.
So then I was differentiating what podcast he should be on, you know, where he should be spending his time.
And then I was growing social media.
He grew his YouTube, but the...
Instagram, Facebook, I set up.
So it was different social medias.
Then it was cutting content.
And then it was bringing people in-house to produce a podcast.
So it just grew and grew and grew.
And it grew into this huge business that I've been heading.
So I'm really happy with where I'm at.
I mean, it's a bit odd to be referred to by somebody else.
But I like what my dad stands for.
And I'm fully behind him.
Plus, it's kind of entertaining.
The opportunity is super weird.
Even this Red Skull thing, he got written in as the Nazi villain.
Right?
It's amazing.
But for those who don't know, when did the media and some of the internet turn on your dad?
It was back with the debate about compelled speech.
I think it was Bill C. Bill C-16.
Was it about then, or did it even start earlier that people started to either idolize or demonize your dad?
No, it was right then.
He released a video called Professor Against Bill C-16, and that's when controversy started.
So that was...
How do I quantify this?
That was eight months after we changed the diet, went strict paleo.
He lost a bunch of weight.
And then went viral.
I think that was October 2015.
And then with his book and the Kathy Newman speech, that's when people really started to recognize him.
But it was technically, I think, October 2015 when his video went viral.
I'm just going to read two of these chats because the second one is poignant.
My opinion, Michaela saved POS by getting him out of our Western medical crap.
And we're going to get into that.
And I lost my dad to suicide, so I have tons of respect for you and your family.
Thank you for doing the sidebar.
What tips would you give someone who battles depression and is looking for motivation?
I cannot, and I know that this isn't medical advice and I'm not a doctor, but I cannot understate how much fixing my diet changed my life.
I was on SSRIs and I was miserable.
It was like I was walking around in hell.
Like, my fight or flight response was...
Way over the top.
Any type of slight movement.
And I was jumping.
And I had this horrible impending doom feeling all the time.
And I couldn't think.
And I was brain foggy.
And I felt like I was walking through mud.
Like, it was just hell.
And I don't think I could have done it.
Like, motivation?
I used to write when I got angry to try and get the anger out of my head.
I tried to exercise, but that didn't seem to help.
Like, nothing really helped until I...
I cleaned up my diet.
And even when I went to paleo, which was heavy on meats and vegetables and no processed foods and no dairy and no eggs, those were inflammatory for me.
That really improved my mental well-being.
So I can't underestimate how much changing your diet can potentially help that.
And getting into the depression and the tough stuff, because people who have never faced this probably would have great difficulty appreciating it.
What it feels like to have...
They may not be the most relevant people on Earth, but they might be the most vocal and they might have the biggest platform.
Literally turn on an individual in order to destroy, demonize, and paint them into the Red Skull Yahtzee villain.
For someone who presumably has had an untarnished reputation, most people seek to be appreciated.
Most people seek to be liked.
When that sort of thing happens...
What do you see your dad go through?
And what do you go through yourself seeing your dad go through that and you yourself having gone through that?
So it's hard to say because it's compounded by the fact that we actually had made big dietary changes and we're trying to get the depression under control that way.
And so there were medication changes at the same time.
He ended up...
Going off of antidepressants too quickly.
And that gave him SSRI withdrawal, which we didn't even know existed.
The same thing happened to me.
So that SSRI withdrawal combined with the controversy, like, almost killed him.
It was really, really, really, really, really bad.
And it was really hard on my family.
And I can't underestimate the role the SSRI withdrawal caused.
But having the external pressure certainly didn't help.
So, how do I explain that?
I don't really know how to explain it.
It was, you know, let me give you what happened to me more than explaining what he went through.
When he got really sick, so he was put on benzodiazepines after the SSRI withdrawal, which are a horrible, horrible medication for some people, my dad in particular.
Just from the neurological side effects it gave him.
So dealing with that, trying to figure out the medical system, which didn't understand what akathisia was.
So trying to deal with that, plus having people attack me for that.
There were days I was just crying.
I couldn't go online because it was...
It was too hard.
And I'm pretty tough.
Things are okay now, so it's fine.
But I can understand how, with cancel culture and everything, I can understand how that can get people to jump out of a building.
That amount of societal pressure.
And even though, I think somebody more stable could probably think their way out of it.
But if you're also dealing with some mental health problems at the same time, that can be completely deadly.
I think people who have not experienced it, or I think most people can relate to some extent, but when you're in the thick of it, it's one thing to be demonized, it's one thing to think the entire world is against you, but then to be totally isolated at the same time.
It is overwhelming.
Adolescenthood growing up and adulthood is hard enough in general when you go through something like that, and when you see your father go through something like that, and when your father sees his own kid go through something like that.
I can only imagine how difficult it is.
Diet aside, how do you get over it?
How's your dad doing right now and how's the family doing?
Well, he got pretty sick.
I was in Russia in the summer and he got pretty sick and I came home and he'd just gone...
This sounds insane, but he'd just gone off the diet a little bit.
Not a lot.
It was like...
Really not a lot.
And he got really, really, really, really sick.
And so I came home and then was like, you got to get back on diet.
Got to get this under control.
He's like, stupid diet.
He hates this diet.
Stupid diet.
So he's back on the diet.
It's been about a month.
He's doing way better.
I do the intros to his podcast.
I put a couple out and I was like, it was scary.
I was like, dad's not doing well.
It's like neurological responses.
It's really unpleasant for him.
But he's doing much better.
So things are good right now, which is why I'm smiley.
So I'm pretty good.
I mean, the state of Canada is not great.
But my family is actually doing quite well.
So I'm hopeful.
I would say another month and he'll be over this last...
I think the most appropriate way to term it would be autoimmune response.
Because it's like this huge autoimmune flare-up.
Anyway, he's much better.
Amazing.
And just for people who don't understand, SSRI withdrawal, I've never, I've always had an absolute, I call it irrational, but probably a rational phobia to any sort of drug that alters the mind like that.
I would say rational.
That is a healthy, yeah.
Like, I mean, I was once, when I was a kid, they gave me something for migraines and it was a minor dose of an antidepressant and I just never took it.
It's a phobia, but for people who don't know what SSRI withdrawal is, that's a physical, like, where you feel shooting down the nerves of your arms, among other things.
Yeah.
Okay, so something like, I had to take OxyContin when I had my hip and ankle replaced, so I got off of OxyContin.
And so that withdrawal is something people are more familiar with, where it's, like, sweating, and, you know, if you stop suddenly, it can be, like, throwing up, and, like, a fever, and a hangover all at the same time.
SSRI withdrawal.
Is commonly misdiagnosed as your re-emergence of old symptoms.
So when you start weaning down, you get this.
For me, it was this feeling of horror.
And I had pain all over my arms.
And I had sensitivity to light and touch and sound.
So it was very like, it was like raw nerves.
And that can happen.
And I had no idea that that existed.
I didn't know that the SSRIs cause dependence if you take them for long enough.
I was on them for like 12 years.
And so that happened.
And then any of the psych meds can do that.
So benzodiazepines, antipsychotics.
So you have to be really careful getting off of them.
And one of the mistakes Dad and I made in the last number of years was getting off of them way too quickly and causing SSRI damage is basically what it is.
And I think that's why we are still stuck on this diet.
Because I think there's some damage there.
But a lot of that's just like hypothesis.
But I've been talking a bit about it because a lot of people reached out because we've been fairly vocal about what my dad went through.
And people have to be very, very aware that even some of these medications that aren't supposed to be addictive can cause dependence and then withdrawal.
So it's like, yeah, nerve pain all over, light sensitivity, sound sensitivity.
But the worst symptom was this horrible impending doom feeling.
Which is gone now.
But it was very, very unpleasant.
Actually, it got worse.
There's one more thing I'd like to mention.
I went on Joe Rogan to talk about this, and this is before I knew it was SSRI withdrawal causing these symptoms.
When I was eating super high carb and tried to reintroduce some of these foods, I'd get visual disturbances.
So I had hallucinations a number of times for the first year after I stopped taking them.
And I thought I was just really, really sensitive to foods.
It wasn't until this year when I realized, oh, it was the combination of suddenly stopping SSRIs and then, yeah.
Yeah, I mean, there's a bunch of people in the chat who can relate to this through personal experience.
The other thing that's amazing is, you know, once people see that, first of all, someone they've been demonizing, someone who gives advice that is...
Objectively great advice, regardless of whether or not the individual adheres to all of that advice.
Once they see someone stumble and fall, they pounce.
That was horrible.
It's as bad as when someone who has been vocally anti-vaccine gets COVID and passes away.
I know, and then you're like, you deserved it.
When it happened with your dad, I was familiarized with the internet.
I was familiarized with how your dad is both idolized and demonized, depending on the end of the spectrum.
But when he got ill and everyone was like, some people are like, you know, a man cannot, despite his good advice, still succumbs to the pressures of the world.
And others are like, hypocrite, can't even follow his own advice.
I mean, how do you, or do you respond to those comments?
Well, I thought, to tell you the truth, given the stigma around any type of drug dependence, I thought that the reaction he got could have been much, much, much, much more negative.
Like, even some of the news sources that had demonized Dad were like, can you just, like, give him a break?
The complication was, like, what happened to him wasn't just dependence.
It was really, really severe side effects.
And we didn't know what those were when the media kind of caught hold of it.
It took us, like, a year and a half to figure, or, like, a ridiculous amount of time to figure out, oh, this is akathisia and it's a side effect.
It's the worst side effect that I've ever seen that somebody can get.
So, do I have a response?
No.
I don't really have a response to anybody who kicks somebody when they're down.
Because why would you want to talk to those people?
Well, there will be no convincing them and then you just engage with it and just create more of it.
Now, your dad...
This was going back to when I first started doing vlogs and everyone was saying your dad was prophetic in terms of compelled speech in Canada.
I did a breakdown of that legislation that was amending the criminal code to add gender identity as aggravating factors to certain crimes.
So your dad's proven to be somewhat prophetic, but I don't think most people would have appreciated back then how prophetic he would be given where we're at now.
Look, let's get into the state of Canada and where things have gone in the last two years.
You're in Toronto now.
What is the...
Well, for those who don't know, Ontario had one of the strictest lockdowns in the world.
Talked about house arrest under the wonderful Doug Ford.
What's the ambiance like now in Toronto and how are things going there?
So, people are concerned.
People are scared.
The downtown is a mess compared to how it was.
The homeless population is up.
You know, a whole bunch of stores are shut down.
I'm really, really, really unhappy with what's going on here.
So, I don't know.
I just went down to the States.
I did a TEDx talk, getting some recognition for whatever this diet is, maybe, hopefully.
I did a TEDx talk, and then I was going around areas of the States because I actually don't want to live here anymore.
I'm worried enough.
I was looking at what's going on in Australia.
I was like, I don't know how far we are from that.
Because last year when we had a lockdown and a stay-at-home mandate, you know, there was talk about, oh, maybe the police should be asking what people are doing out if they're out of their house.
And the Toronto police said no.
But I mean, that was close.
So if we got that close last year and now there's like Delta, third wave or whatever wave we're on, fourth wave.
And then everything shuts down in October, and then there's a stay-at-home mandate, and then maybe police are more encouraging you to stay at home.
Like, I don't want to be here.
I don't see...
Even the current conservatives, like Aaron O'Toole, who I would really like to speak with, but we'll see if that happens.
Even his platform doesn't appear to be super different from the liberal platform.
Like, more conservative.
So I'm definitely going that direction, but not conservative enough.
And then Max Bernier, He's great, but he's small compared to Aaron O'Toole.
So I don't know how the Canadian government is going to navigate this given how strict people still are.
And so anyway, I went to the States to look around.
Nashville looks pretty nice.
I was like, I just need a getaway.
We are allowed to go to the States.
It's just that we're allowed.
It's so ridiculous.
They're like, oh, you're not allowed to travel.
You're allowed to travel.
People just say you're not allowed to travel.
I think you can't drive over the border, but you can certainly fly over the border.
Well, unfortunately, it's prohibitively complicated, and it was at one point prohibitively expensive to travel, or maybe not to go out, but to come back.
And I just had some family come from the states, two different states, and it's prohibitively complicated.
You've got to take tests.
It's stressful.
And it's stressful.
And then coming back, I had a family friend who...
The kids weren't vaccinated.
The parents were.
And coming back, they were told, the rules have changed.
Now the unvaccinated kids have to quarantine for two weeks upon return.
I saw that happen.
I saw that happen at the airport.
Two little kids.
And their parents were like, what?
Really?
They can't just stay with us?
We have to go to a hotel now?
And then when you get out of the hotel, if you can bypass it, all the better.
But two weeks at home.
They call it quarantining.
When it's one kid, it's isolation.
I don't know if it's scientific or not.
I know what I think, but it doesn't matter because I'm not a doctor.
I'm just a lawyer who thinks he knows everything.
You can travel.
It's going to cost you a lot more if you have to follow all the rules.
If you're politically connected, you'll just skip the rules like so many have been doing.
For those of you who don't know, you all know you've been watching the channel.
Australia, what did they lock down because of one case?
A seven-day snap lockdown that's now into several weeks with no end in sight.
An animal rescue shot at least two dogs dead because they didn't want the rescue people to travel and break the COVID rules to save them.
Australia, it's science fiction to the point where I was watching V for Vendetta yesterday.
Or with Australia.
I mean, there was no other way to say it.
But the sentiment in Toronto, do you talk to people?
Do they support this?
Are people getting fed up?
And what do they plan on doing?
There is no plan.
People, like the Uber I took home from the airport, I kind of like prodded around to see what his thoughts were.
And he went off.
He was from...
He had a crazy story.
He was from Africa, Somalia.
He'd moved here two years ago and I was like, oof, that was bad timing.
Sorry, man.
And he was like, yeah, I had more freedom.
He moved away from a very Muslim area where he didn't have a lot of freedom.
Like, he wasn't able to choose how he was dressing and things.
And he's like, I moved because I wanted more freedom.
And he's like, I had a better life there.
So he was angry because he's like, what is this?
I had more freedom.
Back then, there, than I do now.
So that was his story.
And then I think it's hard to say.
I think people are getting more fed up, but I mean, people should have been fed up a long time ago.
Like, I went to Nashville, and Nashville was like, it was full of, you know, kind of super, super Republican, gun-loving Christian Americans.
That's just Nashville in a nutshell.
But they were laughing at...
COVID restrictions.
And it was the entire city that was just like, yeah, we're not doing that.
Like, we're just not doing that.
And it feels like there's nowhere in Canada where people have all been feeling like that.
So I would not be that surprised if we ended up in a state like Australia, especially if the Liberal government's back in power, continues to have power.
Did you prod with the Uber driver as to where he was looking to vote next election?
Yeah.
I mean, he's going to vote conservative.
I asked him, but I don't know.
It was a short Twitter interaction, but I said, you know, the conservatives are as liberal as the liberals in the sense that pro-vaccine passports, O'Toole booted someone from Yukon because of their views on vaccine passports.
They're pro-lockdowns in that...
They, along with everyone else in Parliament, voted.
It was a symbolic vote not to hold an election because of the risk of COVID.
So you can't say that they're not anti-lockdown.
They're actually almost even worse anti-election.
And what else?
On the substance, you know, pro-carbon tax, just less, I guess.
They're like the liberal, the light version.
Whereas, you know, it's true.
I'm biased because I'm running for the PPC.
But when someone says, you know, the conservatives are the option.
They're the light version of the liberals, and once they get into power, they may not have the same incentive that they said they had before to undo things like Bill C-10 if it passed.
I completely agree.
I completely agree, but I mean, and I like the PPC for sure, but I mean, I'm concerned.
Aren't you just concerned?
Okay.
I agree with you too, but I'm concerned it'll split the vote.
And we'll end up with a liberal government again, which would be worse than a conservative government, even though those two are still way too far left.
But we're in this period of time where if we get a government that continues this, I'm concerned Canada is just like Australia, and I don't know when it's going to come back.
So I've had this...
I don't know.
Well, so these are my classic responses.
And again, this is not to convince anyone politically, but...
When you vote for the lesser of two evils, you still end up with evil.
We're going to end up with evil if liberals win, if the votes are split.
We're just fucked.
It doesn't matter what we do.
My running theory, and I genuinely believe it, is that the PPC is not splitting votes with the conservatives the way the NDP is splitting votes with the liberals.
I think at this point in time, the conservatives are splitting votes with the liberals.
That's what O'Toole wants.
And I genuinely believe...
That there are a lot of liberals, people who call themselves liberals, who voted liberal in the past, who are now looking at Justin Trudeau saying the things he's saying publicly and saying, holy crap, there's nothing liberal about this.
Screaming in a fevered pitch like a raging lunatic that unvaccinated people don't think you can get on a bus or a train and put the vaccinated at risk.
I think people are viewing this now as bona fide, genuinely unhinged.
And I do hope.
And believe that there might be an exodus of people who are genuinely liberal to espouse policies that are themselves genuinely liberal, such as valuing the individual freedom of choice.
But we'll see.
That's the message I'm trying to convey.
But the splitting of the vote, look, it's a bad argument in a sense because NDP does it with the liberals.
So it's going to happen on both sides, but I don't believe PPC is splitting the conservative vote.
I think they're getting rational people who are beginning to say enough is enough from all parties.
But we'll see.
I've been wrong.
I hope so.
I hope so.
I think they're just so new that a lot of people don't know of them.
Like the cab driver, the Uber driver I spoke with didn't know the party.
I was like, wow, we just need more.
And it's because it's new.
Just needs more time.
I want to bring a comment here that I saw.
Where was it?
It said the PPC is vote splitting.
They won one.
There we go.
This one.
Let me screenshot this because I'm saying now in advance.
The PPC is going to win a seat.
At least a seat.
They're going to win seats this election.
So that is my prediction.
I may not win in my riding because I think it's uphill battle is an understatement of the millennium.
They're going to win seats and they're already polling at 6% or 7%.
But whatever.
Nothing changes unless things change.
They are polling at 6% or 7%.
Which is, well...
Well, better than before.
Better than the Greens?
I think it's just people don't know enough about it.
Like, if it was just more spread out, people were more aware of it.
This should not turn into a total political discussion, but you are genuinely looking to move.
Yeah, well, I thought, so I don't have a visa.
I think I could get one of those fancy visas.
I think I could get an 01. It might take some time.
But I could go for six months because Canadians can go for six months.
So I'm very seriously considering leaving October.
Then I miss the winter.
My condo's up anyway, so I could stay there for six months and then just wait and see what happens.
I mean, maybe things will recover, but I am most certainly not staying here for another stay-at-home mandate for eight months in the wintertime.
No, it's by my mind, everything the government has told us to do has been counterproductive and actually not resolving any problem.
You know, it's not common sense.
I mean, it is common sense.
It's not rocket science.
Exercise, sunlight, healthy diet.
It's ironic that these are just not the things that have been on the table.
And I was at a hospital this morning for an appointment with a kid, nothing serious at all.
And I was talking on the one hand to one of the nurses.
And I'm just discreetly asking, like, you know, what does everyone feel about the compelled vaccination here?
She said, well, you know, the truth is most of us are already vaccinated, so we don't care.
But there are some who are worried.
And we're already understaffed.
And, you know, we're already understaffed and stressed in the first place.
This is only going to make matters worse.
And it's almost like it's...
It is almost as though whatever the government is doing is, in fact, exacerbating the problem while not addressing the underlying issues.
And watching this political campaign now, they seem to only be confirming that they don't...
They're riding on their own problems by promising solutions to the problems they've caused.
Has there been any backlash in Ontario about...
Well, are they talking about a vaccine passport in Ontario?
I think Ford has been good at least in that he's not promoting that or not supporting that.
Oh, I'm not sure, but I just assume that that's going to be all over Canada.
I don't think that's a Quebec problem.
That's a Canada problem.
Didn't they just implement it in BC?
This is not going to stop.
They've implemented it on the provincial level.
I think BC, Manitoba, Quebec.
I think Nova Scotia.
What are we going to have?
All the Ontarians are going to rise up and say no now?
No.
It's going to be everywhere.
Trudeau has also made it mandatory for federal workers.
We're going to see if the lawsuits are going to begin.
The question is going to be are the courts going to Uphold the Constitution?
Or are they going to justify the infringement on constitutional rights under the first section and the requisite Oaks test?
This was a back and forth I had with a reporter on Twitter.
I forget his name.
Slopinski.
Mark Slopinski.
I don't know who he is, but he seems to be a reporter.
And I don't say that to be mean.
I just didn't know who he was.
I looked up who he was before deciding to engage to make sure I wasn't going to start a fight with a total stranger.
And so he said, well, you know, when I said this is all unconstitutional, it violates human rights.
Even in a pandemic, there are certain things you can't do.
And then he says, reread section one of the charter.
And our Canadian charter has that section one, which says, this guarantees your rights and freedoms, except in as much as can be just, except infringements, which can be justified in a free and democratic society.
But it requires a reasonable justification.
And it requires the infringement to be prescribed by law.
And what people don't appreciate is like, these These vaccine passports have not even passed a legislative process.
In Quebec, you got petty tyrant Francois Legault saying, I don't even want to have a public debate on this because I don't want Quebecers being exposed to misinformation.
Yeah, I like that one.
It's laughable, except it's true and it's endless.
It's laughable, but it's also horrifying.
It's scary, which is why I'm like, no, I'm going to just wait it out.
At least I'm lucky enough that I do all my work online.
So I'm fortunate enough, because I know most people aren't, I'm fortunate enough to be able to go somewhere for six months and just wait.
But I'm very concerned.
And I've been very vocal about this since the beginning.
I think since like June, when I was like, this is going to lead to economic collapse.
And what they should have done, which was, not that, I mean, who listens to me anyway?
But what they could have done is they could have turned a bunch of the hotels downtown into ICUs, trained medical staffs.
to deal with the severe cases and then just kind of let everything go rampant, which is what they did in some countries.
Like that's what they did in Serbia.
They built hospitals in fields, in tents, and then just let everybody out.
And then they didn't end up using the hospitals because people didn't get that sick.
And then they kind of had immunity, although that doesn't seem to last.
Seems to last potentially a little longer than the immunity from the vaccines, which they're now saying immunity is not as long as they thought.
Now you're going to need boosters.
And this is where I believe people who are on the fence, and I brought up a chat to that effect as well, people who are on the fence are going to start realizing everyone who thought, okay, all I need to do is this, and this is it.
I mean, some of us learned it earlier on, and then others of us knew it from the beginning or thought it from the beginning.
And now a lot of people are beginning to realize it now.
I went door to door.
I had a discussion with an elderly lady, and she said, "You know, I'm for vaccine passports.
Why shouldn't we?" Yada, yada, yada.
I said, "Well, we may be for it now." Even people who are for it now are for it now on the current conditions.
Two vaccines, and that's it.
When it's a booster, when you get kicked out of a restaurant, and when you get refused because you didn't know, you're not going to say, "Oh, I should have just been following the rules." You're going to realize that it's a never-ending target.
And that this is not how a functional society can live.
Do you have political discussions with your dad?
I imagine you're on the same page for all of this.
He's been so sick for the last couple of years that COVID was actually the least of our concerns.
It was like when you have a family member sick.
Pandemic certainly didn't add on to it.
But recently now that he's feeling better, I've been like, hey, Nashville is looking good.
You just hang out there for the wintertime.
Just see what it's like, just in case.
Like, if things get bad, what if you're not allowed out of Canada?
And then what if there's a stay-at-home mandate?
And then what if there are police on the street making sure you stay at home?
You could just, like, come with me.
So we've gotten there a bit.
He doesn't think that we're going to get the civil liberties we've lost back.
He said that yesterday in the car.
He was like, well, then we should move, because I don't know.
It's...
Michele, a personal question.
You have no kids yet, right?
I do.
I have a four-year-old.
Oh, really?
Okay.
Then see, four-year-olds...
Well, no, I would just say in terms of not having established the roots that a child cannot or a young kid cannot give up without serious life disruption.
Four-year-old, you're getting to the limit now where they're going to start establishing friends, schooling system, where up and leaving with a kid is going to get exponentially more complicated than with a two-year-old or no kids.
And it's the reality that I'm facing is First of all, I kind of like Canada.
I was kind of born here and raised here.
I like Canada.
I'm not a fan of whatever I'm living in right now.
I liked Canada a lot.
I went to school in Montreal.
I love Montreal.
I really like Toronto.
It's one of the best cities in the world, but it most certainly isn't right now.
And I don't know when that's going to come back.
And I don't trust the government enough to make it come back.
I'd rather wait it out.
And then with Scarlett, even the kids at her, she's at a Montessori daycare.
So she goes to a couple times a week.
And even the kids there, they're kind of not, they're like anxious.
Their parents are worried about play dates.
And so I was like, well, okay, it'll be a bit disruptive.
But if we move somewhere and it's not full of anxiety and there are a bunch of kids to play with, I feel like that's healthier.
And even then she was like, I don't have to wear a mask yet, right?
I'm little.
This is a conversation we had yesterday.
I don't have to wear, because I was like, you don't have to wear a mask.
You're not wearing a mask.
She's already had COVID.
She had like, we were out and about, she got COVID.
So you don't have to wear a mask.
And she's like, well, I'll have to wear a mask when I get older.
I was like, no, you won't.
Because we're going to be living somewhere where that's not going to be a problem.
But anyway, I think that the disruption of the move is, at this point, worth the...
At four years old, I can definitely see it.
I'm not trying to...
It's harder at like seven or...
We got 12, 8, and 5. I mean, that's...
That's really hard.
Yeah.
And my parents are in Montreal.
I'm the only one who stayed in Montreal.
Two of my siblings went in Canada.
Two of them went to the States.
But then the question is, you get down to the States, you go to Florida.
Florida looks pretty free, but other places where it's only a matter of time, if this...
I don't like using the word global because it already brings up a term that people have connotations for, but this seems like an absolute global irrational wave.
I don't know.
You can have strong holdouts, but the question is, how do you counter this global hysteria?
What do you think we can do in Canada to help Canada reverse course?
Or do people even want to reverse course?
Do people just feel too safe with the government measures now that they don't ever want to go back to free and risky?
I don't know.
I'm very concerned that people don't want to go back to free and risky.
You're probably associating with a very small percentage of the population that's, like, more, you know, maybe less neurotic and more out there.
But I don't know what the average person looks like, and I'm concerned that the average person is like, yeah, okay, I'm okay like this.
I'm okay watching Netflix forever.
I'm okay with masks.
Like, I'm okay with it.
I don't want to move.
I don't want to change.
And so I don't know exactly how to fight back.
I've been trying to think about it.
I mean, I've been vocal about my opinion, and I was like, maybe if more people are vocal about their opinion, That's at least a place to start because then other people are like, oh, it's not just me thinking these things.
So I guess that's a place to start.
But I'm very seriously, like, I went to the U.S. to locate the city I thought where this would happen last.
And Nashville seemed better.
I went to Austin.
I don't think that's a good place to be.
That's even being infiltrated.
I was like, Nashville looks good.
And they're just going to buy a ranch somewhere in Tennessee and just like...
Wait, wait out there with my beef rations.
Was it, was this when you did the Rogan podcast or was this totally?
No, Rogan was a long time ago.
This was, this was recent.
I did Tim Pool.
I went to see Tim Pool's place in Virginia.
I think that's where it was.
It was amazing.
Yeah.
I was like, I need to do that.
A lot of people, I mean, I brought up the chats are saying, get out of cities, you want to go to the country and the funny thing is, oh, sorry, go ahead.
No, no, you go ahead.
I was going to say, when you get out of the city, it's a totally different ambiance.
Even in Quebec, New Brunswick, you drive around.
And it's not like people are less sensitive to the risk.
It's just that I think they have been less conditioned by the 24-7 hysteria.
They're not surrounded by it.
They're not immersed in the media hysteria.
And they just have a more realistic appreciation of the risk.
But in the city...
When you see people walking around alone in the streets, driving cars alone, wearing face masks, it's a frenzy that feeds on itself.
So I can appreciate getting out of the cities.
Yeah, and surrounding yourself also evolutionarily.
We've been primed to if we're around people who are experiencing fear.
It's natural for us to also be fearful because we're probably protecting ourselves from something.
So if you're in the middle of a city and everyone's fearful and you're living there, it's much more difficult to be like, oh, no, I'm fine.
Everything's calm if you're surrounded by a whole bunch of fearful people.
So I think it's kind of too late for some areas.
Yeah, I'm not very hopeful.
Well, now, and I mean, we're going to run out of time shortly, but since you've become increasingly vocal, have you noticed?
Anyone in social media or the media itself turning on you in terms of your public portrayal?
No.
It seems like they've given up, maybe.
I'm not sure.
For now, they've given up.
Plus, there's other things to be more controversial about.
Like, the all-beef diet seems to be more controversial than me not being happy with COVID.
And they're like, yeah, she's crazy anyway.
Look at the diet.
This is the question.
What did you study?
Because people are going to go after credentials.
I can see why you're going to get attacked personally or demonized if you don't have recognized credentials.
What did you study and is your knowledge of the subject self-acquired through life experience?
So I did two years of classics in psychology and then I did six months of makeup school and then I did two years of a biomedical degree.
The goal was to go into science until I...
Put my autoimmune disorder into remission, but I did that in two years.
So I stopped doing that and decided to grow my dad's business instead.
So I have no credentials, but I don't really care.
You'll get chewed up because the easiest way to attack an argument is to attack the person, especially when they lack the credentials that other people think other people should have.
But then even when you have the credentials, they'll find another way to go after you like they've done with any other doctor who publicly espouses any belief.
Yeah, it doesn't matter.
Yeah, I agree.
If you have the good opinion and you're a doctor, you're a doctor, therefore you're an authority.
If you have the bad opinion and you're a doctor, well, you're not an immunologist.
You're not a this, you're not a that, therefore we discredit.
If you are an immunologist and you have a bad opinion, well, then there's other things.
You're crazy, you're no longer, you're scrubbed from Wikipedia, so on and so forth.
We really need you and your dad to meet Robert Barnes for the best evidence of why America is different and there is a valid reason for hope.
And we got, even China is not mandating vaccine.
Even China is not mandating masks.
So I have a high school buddy who is currently in China and says, Canadian, we went to school together.
Can't believe what's happening here.
And I explained to him, he's like, it's not even anywhere near what we have in China.
So it's worse there.
No, no, no, no.
There have been no masks in schools from what he's been telling me.
Businesses are open.
They're just laughing.
They're over there like, ha ha, ha ha.
We knew this would happen.
I think they might, you know, it's an interesting thing.
Who is suffering as a result of all this?
I'll tell you one person or one group who are laughing are the political elite because as they do this, my goodness, have they not suffered a single consequence of this?
They've kept their paychecks, they've enhanced their power, and they've gotten an entire nation to live under fear and to relinquish their most basic civil rights and liberties for the promise of a little bit of safety.
What's next for you, Michaela, that people should be expecting?
Oh, I'm going to be doing some live events.
I'm doing live events in LA, I think, in November.
I think I'm going to do an Opposing Views podcast, where I host two people with opposing views.
It's not a debate, exactly, but I'm going to be turning that into a live event.
That's in November.
I'm going to Oxford to debate about whether meat or...
Is good for the climate or bad for the climate or healthy or worth keeping around, which I really have to prepare for because it's at Oxford.
I'm going to be against animal rights activists, so that's exciting.
Dad said he might come to that, so that would be fun.
So those two things are coming out, and then I have a TED Talk that's going to be released at some point, assuming TED is okay with talking about an all-meat diet and putting it online, so I'm hoping that's going to happen.
And I just finished my book.
It's called Could Be Worse.
It should be out in February.
And I'm releasing an app.
Self-published, or do you have a publisher?
I have a publisher.
Okay, and so it's going to be...
It's a small one.
A hardcover, or not hardcover, a physical book and a digital book?
Yes, definitely.
Is it going to be on Audible?
Because that's the only chance that I'm going to have to actually listen to it.
I'll be reading it on Audible, yeah.
Awesome.
And then there's one more thing.
There's one more thing.
I'm releasing an app with my dad called AIM, and it breaks your life down into eight different areas, so like work, health.
Love life, relationship, family, different aspects.
And then it allows you to identify where you're not happy, figure out what exactly you're not happy about, and set goals in order to improve those areas of your life.
So that's coming out too.
Well, that's a lot on the plate.
Not that anybody needs to know where to find you, but where can people find you?
I'm Michaela Peterson on Instagram, Michaela Peterson videos, Michaela Peterson podcast on YouTube.
And then if anyone's interested in learning about the diet, I have a couple of Facebook groups that people talk about diet and called Don't Eat That and The Lion Diet.
Yes, that's where I'm available.
All right, excellent.
And we're going to keep it to an hour because that's, I know, the time slot that you gave to us.
So Michaela, thank you very much.
Maybe we'll see.
If and when you move, I think Robert, someone's going to correct me.
I think Robert is from...
Nashville, if I'm not mistaken.
Someone will help me there.
Someone in that neighborhood.
Let's see if anyone in the chat knows.
We'll see what happens if you make the move.
We'll be following you and maybe we do this again in the near future to see how far down the path Canada goes.
Yeah, that'd be good.
Thank you for your time.
Stick around.
We'll say our proper goodbyes.
Everyone in the chat, thank you very much.
I'll see you all on Sunday.
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