April 22, 2024 - Where There's Woke - Thomas Smith
50:41
WTW48: There Once Was a Jordan Peterson MBA Program. What Happened to It?
This wild ride into JBP's dealings wouldn't be the same without a deeper dive into the MBA Fellowship he "founded" and a look into how he conducts the rest of his businesses. Spoiler: like the man himself, it's all just really strange. And we talk about Mikhaila Peterson, the OG meat-eater, for the first time in this series! Wired Investigation into Registered Agents, Inc. Lawsuit RA Inc Named Feel free to email us at lydia@seriouspod.com or thomas@seriouspod.com! Please pretty please consider becoming a patron at patreon.com/wherethereswoke!
Anywhere you see diversity, equity, and inclusion, you see Marxism and you see woke principles being pushed.
Wokeness is a virus more dangerous than any pandemic hands down.
The woke monster is here and it's coming for everything.
Instead of go-go boots, the seductress Green Eminem will now wear sneakers.
Hello and welcome to Where There's Woke.
This is episode 48.
I'm Thomas Smith.
That over there is Lydia Smith.
How are you doing?
I am doing pretty well.
How are you?
Good.
I'm excited to finally be...
Well, no, can't say finishing, but I mean, we're getting to the kind of the pausing point on some Jordan Peterson content.
Yeah.
There are some just very strange things and like a little mini side quest.
He's a very strange man.
Yeah.
And so I hope everyone enjoys this.
I have been knee deep in a lot of like corporate filings and random stuff.
So, yeah.
First, I think you have a bit of an update in terms of information on the Jordan B. Peterson master's program.
So the Acton MBA, I had mentioned that Peterson developed this with another guy, and I didn't really get into the other guy at all in our previous episode because we were talking about Peterson, right?
But I think it is important to know that it was... Adolf Hitler was the other guy.
It's important to say that now.
I mean, so his name is Jeff Sandifer, and he's a Texan billionaire making his money in what would you expect?
Oil.
Wow.
So he made all of his money in oil, then launched a conservative foundation called the Ed Foundation that helps fund libertarian think tanks, politicians.
It's affiliated with the Koch brothers.
And he had a program at the University of Texas that he did.
He wanted to give back, I guess, and this entrepreneurship sort of thing.
I've taken so much from the world in terms of Polluting, ruining the environment, taking all the money, ruining everyone's life.
I think I'll give back by training others to do so as well.
Yeah, but it was really important to him because he doesn't like education.
So it was really important to him that the program that he was overseeing... That no one would learn anything.
Well, at University of Texas, that the other people affiliated with him would be Part-time instructors, like they're people from the industry kind of thing.
Oh, like people who would be educated.
Oh, no.
What?
Wait, what?
Like, not professors.
Not professors.
Right.
It was very important to him.
Like, these are people who walk the walk, talk the talk, you know?
And so they're going to come in part-time to instruct students.
OK, because only a fucking commie would teach college students.
Is that what it is?
So he's like, from this guy's mind, he's like, I can't.
Anyone who would be a college professor is a fucking commie.
I'm not.
Well, yeah, so we're starting to get into that, the early, you know, anti-tenure stuff that was happening at the time because the University of Texas converted the program and they ended up hiring all tenure-track professors.
Converted what program?
It was like a master's of business sort of thing that he was doing.
I'm sorry, I might have lost track.
Are you saying this was before the Jordan-Peterson?
Oh, okay, I gotcha.
Yeah, so this was back in like the 90s.
Oh, okay, so this was the asshole oil money guy MBA.
Yep, oil money guy.
And then you're saying at some point, was he out?
In 2002, yeah.
So the school decided to replace all the instructors with tenure track professors.
They were doing a big conversion of the program.
And when that happened, he quit because he was like, this is not what I signed up for.
Taking my oil and I'm going home.
Just grabs like a bunch of oil in his arms and leaves.
Then he founded the Acton School of Business, and so this is how we get to Acton.
A private MBA program based in Austin, it ended up becoming affiliated with a private Baptist university called the Hardin-Simmons University.
Mm-hmm.
And it was housed there from 2002 to, spoiler alert, 2019.
The reviews for the program prior to the fellowship, you know, because it existed for a long time without Jordan Peterson's involvement.
But the reviews ranged from things that were invaluable and life changing or failed experiment for trust fund kids.
So very polarized position here.
It's a program that condenses an MBA, you know, at the time, like most MBA programs are like two years or 18 months.
Condensed it down to a one-year program, and they said, you're going to work really, really hard.
100-hour weeks is the norm here, and if you're not ready for that, then don't bother applying.
Eventually, come, you know, 2018, Hardin-Simmons University was going to start cutting funding for the program, and so Sandifer needed something to jazz up Acton.
Okay.
If you're an MBA program and you're not making, you're like the lost leader of the Baptist school, like that's a bad sign.
Of a private school too, they can charge whatever they want.
Yeah.
So he needed something to kind of jazz it up and ended up connecting with Peterson.
They met at a steakhouse in Iowa during his book tour.
And they decided like, let's do this together.
We're going to launch this fellowship.
And it was going to be a nine month, essentially nine month, right?
The academic year.
Peterson Fellowship, and it was a nice timing for Jordan Peterson because this lines up with when he was telling all of his patron supporters, you know, that your money is going to help fund an online education environment, online educational institution.
And so I think this was like a glimmer of putting that promise to practice a little bit for him.
Yeah.
You know, in a way, again, I keep making Trump comparisons and I actually think it makes sense because you know how Trump can't run as an insider?
He's always an outsider because you're just running on everything currently sucks and I'm lying about how everything's ruined and horrible and all that.
And I am the outsider to make it better.
And so Peterson, I think it's a weird position for him to have been in, to be a college, active college professor, but be like, everything that's happening in universities fucking sucks, man.
And so I think there's been this pressure and you see that with University of Austin or whatever it is, which hopefully we'll get to eventually, where they're like, we need to do our own version of school.
And it's not going to have any of the woke crap.
They're kind of backed into that corner, logically speaking, like they have to, you know, Yeah, so it was going to be a fellowship kind of reinventing what they would be doing.
Very, again, entrepreneurship focused, but then also pulling in this meaning of life bit that Peterson would bring to the table.
That they can't get him to shut up about, so he has to?
Yeah.
And it would be like a hybrid environment, so they would have the initial part of the fellowship would be online, and then five months in Austin for those that wanted to continue or were allowed to continue.
2,500 people applied for this first year.
They had 50 slots that they would be offering.
Wow.
Yeah.
It's the best of the best of the best, sir!
And then a graduate said the program ultimately ended up with 37 folks.
Very small, you know, insular group of people.
Yeah, but I mean, for a MBA program, that might be, I don't know what the norm would be.
I don't know.
Well, consider an MBA is like the business-y version of graduate degree.
It's like you don't take, no one takes on 37 PhD students.
My cohort was like 10 and we all had different advisors.
I wouldn't be surprised if this, that was actually quite large for an MBA program.
Okay.
But on Reddit, people shared stories about what this process looked like for their applications.
I spoke a little bit about it in the previous one, but I got some more information from my additional research.
So they reported that Acton offered them a position, but they had a time limit to it.
So you had to accept.
The offer within 72 hours, in addition to, you know, your $1,000 that you would be sending over to them.
So you had to make a very, very quick decision.
One person actually emailed the school after the initial, you know, acceptance that they received and expressed some concerns about, like, the vagueness of the program.
And part of it is because after that meeting in the Iowa Steakhouse, two months later, they launched the program.
It was very, very fast.
Yeah.
Meanwhile, he probably calls Christine Brovie, hey, can you put together an entire thing?
Like he just, that's why, like we, we played in the video last episode, Christine being like, yeah, you need, he moves on, you know, he has an idea and moves on, which, hey, hey, I sympathize with.
Yeah.
But she's like, he, yeah, he needs people who, you know, like in so many words is like, who will, you know, do the stuff that he claims he'll do a little bit while he moves on to the next fucking thing.
Yeah.
So the person that was emailing with the university, essentially they were emailing with Jeff Sandefur, the billionaire oil guy.
And they said, you know, I have some concerns with how vague some of the material is and what to expect here.
So, like, I'm having a hard time committing.
Well, now, in fairness, though, if that guy already had some sort of MBA program before, couldn't he just, like, he's like, all right, I got the curriculum, but add in the fucking lobster bullshit from Jordan Peterson.
Bam.
Done.
Yeah, but that's not how it was presented on the website at all.
So it was vague.
People were having a hard time figuring it out.
I think to your point in the previous episode, it wasn't clear what Peterson's involvement would be in the actual program.
This person wanted clarification, you know, like, is this something where, you know, Jordan Peterson will be present for any of it?
Or is it just his name?
What is that level of involvement and wanting more information there?
And Sandifer ended up writing back a paragraph, essentially.
And part of it says, I applaud your skepticism.
It's a valuable trait.
However, it doesn't sound as if this is the right opportunity for you.
God, this is such a manipulation tactic.
This happens a lot in religion, I think, too.
Hey, yeah, it's great to be skeptical kind of thing, but also, no, don't be skeptical.
And now you have to lose out.
It's an ultimatum, yeah.
Oh, it's great that you're skeptical, however, see you later.
And then either the person leaves or they're like, oh, okay, never mind.
Yep, and then he goes on to say, in very corporate speak, I think you'll appreciate this, the work we'll be doing together requires... Touch base.
The work we'll be doing together requires a tolerance for ambiguity and will be messy.
We've got a terrific team and an extraordinary group coming to Austin, but it's a pioneering bunch.
We don't know many of the answers because emergent growth is unpredictable, and we'll be co-creating the future as we go.
But one thing's very clear, you will still be paying tens of thousands of dollars.
That part, that's not ambiguous.
Yeah.
And so you're right.
It was essentially an ultimatum.
It's feeding off of the cult of personality to try and, you know, get people to sign up without answering legitimate questions.
I do want to give some credit to Luke Rinaldi out of Toronto Life.
He put together a great article in March of 2021 detailing a lot of this stuff.
And he actually followed up with some graduates of the program, two fellows.
One of them was from the inaugural class in 2019, the one that had 2,500 people apply for the 50 slots and 37 left.
And then the other one was from the second cohort, which was cut short by COVID, so they never got to do any in-person classes.
And then they ended up disbanding the program altogether.
But both of them said to Rinaldi that Peterson had no direct involvement in the program, no face-to-face time over Zoom or the like.
Nothing.
It's Trump University.
It really is.
It's crazy.
But that the fellows briefly beta-tested educational projects related to his online institution.
So he basically used them for his research.
Yeah.
And then in 2019, shortly thereafter, Hardin-Simmons cut funding to Acton.
Acton lost its accreditation, but they, you know, framed it in the way of like, we don't need accreditation because what we're doing is beyond what these accrediting entities would do.
We don't want that accreditation anyway.
Yeah.
And then they set up shop.
Of course, the business capital of the world.
Business capital of the world.
Yeah, yeah.
Sandifer is not out there, but the Acton School of Business is out there now.
And they are continuing to get folks to sign up for their program.
No Peterson Fellowship, though.
That has officially been suspended, I guess, is what they would say.
Wow.
And it also never really happened.
And it never really happened.
Wow.
Yeah.
So after Acton sort of dissolved, the program did not continue unless you're out in Spain.
And if you're Peterson, you're no longer affiliated with it.
And arguably, you may never have been actually affiliated with it, with the exception of putting your name to it.
But, you know, Jordan Peterson, one of his goals has always been to start his own college, his own university.
And he got another opportunity to do that.
He launched in collaboration with his daughter, Michaela Peterson.
I don't think we haven't even talked about her.
She hasn't come up at all, surprisingly yet.
But we're going to talk about her a bit today.
They launched Peterson Academy.
And I'm going to go ahead and put launched in quotes because it still doesn't exist.
It kind of does, but it has not officially started happening.
However, they have been talking about it, launching with dates, for a bit of time now.
We'll go over and listen to Fox News towards the end of a segment with Bret Baier, where Jordan Peterson speaks to what is to come with Peterson Academy.
Weird that it's on Fox News.
I don't get why that would be.
Online school, you and your daughter working together.
Yeah.
What should we know and how do we get it?
Well, we've got about 30 courses recorded so far in a studio in Miami.
They look very good.
They're very professionally produced.
We are trying to find the best lecturers in the world.
So if you think you're a good lecturer and you want to participate, give that some thought.
That's Peterson Academy.
We hope we'll be ready to roll in November.
We want to make sure that we have the best lectures that we can possibly provide on the most germane topics, and then we're going to ally that with a very stringent testing and accrediting system so that if you are a graduate of this particular institution, the people who hire you will know that you learned what you were...
Aiming at learning and that you did the proper work.
And that's extraordinarily important because employers need to know that.
Absolutely.
Dr. Jordan Peterson, I know you- That's so good.
Imagine being such an arrogant asshole that you're like, um, people keep saying I'm wrong, so I'm going to leave university and start my own.
It's going to be in my name.
It's going to be stuff I think is right.
Everyone should learn it.
And we're going to like test people on what, if they've learned the stuff I think is, like, it's just, I can't imagine he means they're actually getting accredited.
Right?
I mean, there's no way.
Pin in that.
We'll get there.
But first, you know, he had mentioned, we're hoping to launch in November.
That was November 2023.
Not November 2024.
This was back in October that he was talking about this.
Oh, wow.
Yeah.
I just assumed he meant November.
Nope.
So that date came and went.
No Peterson Academy is available online yet.
Campus Reform reported on this as well at the time in October, saying, you know, the Peterson Academy coming November 2023.
Then they reported again in January 2024, and they said, Peterson Academy coming February 2024.
Zero acknowledgement anywhere.
Yeah.
Like they previously had reported that it was coming out before.
Notice how also Peterson said in that interview, we have 30 courses already already filmed and everything.
They're looking great.
What a course is for Peterson Academy is a two to three hour lecture.
Yeah.
That's it.
He meant like 30 class sessions, kind of.
Yes, but that is all that counts as, like, the credit.
Like, you would combine, like, two of those equals the credit.
Yeah, so this is more like PragerU, right?
Yes, it absolutely is.
He just wants his own version of that.
Yeah.
So, February 2024, as you can imagine, we're not in February anymore.
That date has come and passed and no Peterson Academy still.
And now, everywhere where you look, Peterson Academy's Twitter, the website itself, it all now says, coming soon.
So there is no longer a date attached to it.
I'm sure it'll be soon then.
Sounds like it'll be soon.
Any day now.
But he is correct in that, yes, they have filmed a number of these courses.
That I can confirm in plenty of different places.
He, you know, has pictures and stuff of folks lecturing.
There are some of the professors, and some of them are professors, you know, like tweeting that they participated in this and trying to get people excited for it.
Some of the lecturers include Heather Hying and Brett Weinstein.
Yeah, of course.
Yep.
Best lecturers in the world is why.
Yeah.
Jordan Peterson, Stephen Hicks, and then through reporting done by DSMOG, by looking at... DSMOG?
Yeah, they're like a climate change activist organization.
Okay.
And... It is really anti-climate stuff.
Yeah.
And they're very concerned by like the climate positions of a lot of the guests professors that they're seeing here.
They did like a whole article regarding Peterson Academy specifically.
And they said, you know, other people that from our research using Internet Archive, right, way back and looking at audience application forms because they have like a like a studio audience and you're responsible for getting to Miami yourself like.
Oh, Oh, for these lectures?
Yeah, yeah.
Oh, wow.
So it's not just like the person, right, that you're looking at.
You're looking at them teaching, in quotes, a room full of people in this like, it's very white room, very modern looking.
It's interesting.
But they also cited that Michael Shermer is doing lecture about skepticism, I think.
Richard Hanania is there.
Andrew Doyle, a.k.a.
Titania McGrath, is doing a Shakespeare course.
And Jordan Peterson was like really upset about this reporting.
So DSMOG had posted this on Twitter and Jordan Peterson... Posted what exactly?
They said, over a dozen instructors associated with Peterson Academy created by... Oh, they did that rundown that you just kind of gave us?
Yeah, conservative influencer, yeah, disputed the existence of a climate emergency or opposed solutions.
Here's the article.
And Peterson Academy, which I think is just Jordan Peterson, but I guess theoretically it could also be Michaela, I don't know.
But they responded, we haven't released our lineup of professors, so there's absolutely no way you could know that.
Except they cite all their sources.
It's literally from the Peterson Academy website.
Like just their announcements kind of thing?
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's like fill out an audience application.
The audience member will know what course they're applying to be, you know, in the audience for.
Oh, I see what you're saying.
I didn't quite.
Okay.
So you made it sound like they could see who applied to be in the audience.
No, no.
So the form tells you, like, I want to go watch this person.
Right.
It says, like, upcoming courses and it lists the name and the dates.
There's no possible way that they could know that.
Yeah, no possible way.
Get out of my head!
Desmog!
Yeah, incredible.
Are you watching me?
God, such a paranoid idiot.
So one of the other things that DSMOG had put in there, they did like a little interview with someone named Tanner Mirrlees, an associate professor at Ontario Tech University.
He is a member of the Center on Hate, Bias and Extremism organization.
And his opinion is that the school, the virtual school, will become a Fox News model of education.
And in quotes, time will tell, but I fear Jordan Peterson's Academy will become misinformation packaged as educational enlightenment and sold to unwitting students by a conservative media company that's not a real university.
Ouch.
Yeah.
I was going to say, I mean, is it University of Austin, the name of the stupid fake one they're doing?
Yeah.
This one makes that look like Harvard.
I mean, that one, they may actually get accredited in some way, or they already did a little bit, I think.
I can't remember.
But like, this is like several steps down from that bullshit.
Yeah.
It's funny that you mentioned University of Austin, because the Financial Times did a story back at the end of October last year, October 2023, Looking into all of these various independent, I guess, universities and colleges that are being created and the funding behind them.
So I don't know, actually, if you remember this, but University of Austin is right now it's being housed in a building owned by Harlan Crow.
Oh, wow.
He's a big money source behind University of Austin, and he's, you know, very open about it and stuff.
Like, he thinks it's very exciting, of course.
It's all connected.
But one of the other sources of funding for University of Austin and other schools like that is Sir Paul Marshall, who is a hedge fund manager out of Britain.
He is also known as, you know, the ex-banjo player from Mumford & Sons.
Yeah.
Winston Marshall, that's his dad.
Oh God, no way.
That's his dad.
What does he do again?
So is that asshole a Nepo baby essentially?
So like he went and actually lectured, again, I'm using quotes all the time with my little air quotes.
He lectured at University of Austin.
Oh, I guess I might've missed it.
What's his thing?
What is he?
Sorry, Paul Marshall or his son?
Paul Marshall.
Oh, Paul Marshall, no.
So he just sends his money to all these places.
Yeah, but how does he have money?
Well, he is the hedge fund manager and has like a huge amount through that, but he also is the owner of UnHerd.
Oh, really?
Yeah.
Oh, wow.
Yeah.
And he's like trying to buy, I think, The Verge.
And there's so much.
Like he has so much money and he's knighted, which kills me.
God.
Yeah.
And so there was like a dinner that happened December 2021 that had like all of these people there.
Jordan Peterson was also there.
And he met Paul Marshall that night.
And Peterson and Michaela Peterson are not disclosing their funding for Peterson Academy.
Why would they?
They're just doing a YouTube channel.
That's all it is.
It's a YouTube channel.
You're not doing a real thing.
Yeah.
I mean, she's come out and said that $3 million of the seed money is from her and her dad, basically.
But beyond that, they aren't disclosing where funding is coming from.
So there there are thoughts that Paul Marshall is, you know, potentially involved in this as well.
And you just kind of see the network that we've talked about with the media system.
And, you know, like kind of it's been piecemeal that network across existing institutions and now sort of like Coalescing into these, like, independent college educational institutions.
Yeah, because, I mean, it really is a small group of people in reality, and they try to astroturf by the fact that, like, it's reactionary politics.
It's helping keep taxes low and protect entrenched power.
Yeah.
And so entrenched power has a lot of money, and they're like, yeah, I'll fund a bunch of bullshit to make this happen.
And so it's the same three people who have Millions or billions of dollars.
And you know, I will say this is one reason why I like, I do think what I covered in that GoFundMe type thing was fraudulent, but it's why it's like, I don't even know how much it matters.
Cause this guy has access to so much money.
Like Jordan Peterson has access to tons and tons of money.
I'm sure he was already well off, but I don't know what happened with the GoFundMe campaign exactly.
And maybe back then he wasn't as well off, but like now he, he can just do whatever he wants.
He has so much money.
Yeah, he really, really does.
Additionally, Peterson Academy is a for-profit institution, of course, and so the way that they've set this up, this is according to Michaela Peterson in an interview, the professors get a speaking fee and then they will receive a share of the revenue that is based on the students that are attracted to their course.
Oh, like that course in particular, so it's like a performance med thing?
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Interesting.
It's kind of interesting.
Oh, the other piece that I forgot to mention.
So Sir Paul Marshall is obviously incredibly religious.
Incredibly, incredibly, incredibly religious, as is Jordan Peterson, as is, you know, all these people.
I watched that asshole, his son, the banjo player.
Yeah.
I watched something of his.
I forget why.
I don't remember what it was researched for, but like...
Yeah, he's done this whole like, yeah, I'm so glad I can speak out now, speak the truth.
Yes.
Yeah, I'm just, I've just been the lowly famous son of a billionaire who's a knight.
You know, it's just like so pathetic.
Yeah.
I had no idea.
I didn't know who he was other than being the banjo player.
It's hilarious to me that he's a fucking hedge fund nepo baby.
Obviously he would be.
Yeah.
Yeah, I know.
It's crazy.
One of the quotes that he did for this lecture with the University of Austin students, Winston Marshall, the ex-banjo player, he said, It wasn't just one tweet that got me in trouble.
It was 10 years of being in an industry where saying the wrong thing would get you in trouble.
I can actually speak freely now.
Yeah.
Oh, God.
Crybaby.
Then Kathleen Stock spoke after him, and she's, you know, transphobe, out of England, and she opened up her lecture by saying, I've had some tough gigs in my time, but I've never literally followed a rock star.
Wow.
Amazing.
Amazing.
So Peterson Academy, you had asked, hey, did they get accreditation?
You know, like, are they accredited?
What's going on there?
There's no, I did not ask that.
They're definitely not getting accredited.
At least not anytime soon.
Yeah.
Why don't we, uh, I'm going to send you a little link so we can Kind of hear the pitch from Michaela and Jordan themselves.
It would be funny if we could blow apart the university system a little bit because it's broken because of what it did to you.
You were alienated out of your job, basically.
You'll be damn fortunate if we can provide you with a list of people who've graduated.
And if you had any sense, you'll employ them preferentially because we did the rigorous screening work.
I know how to do the rigorous screening work because I studied that for like 25 years.
A degree from our university will signify high-level conscientiousness and general cognitive ability, and those are very valuable for any employer with a clue.
So I think you can just skip the accommodation process and go right to the employers.
We are planning a soft launch in November, and we might be able to change the education system.
That's funny.
It's weird.
Up yours, woke moralists.
We'll see who cancels who.
Exactly.
That kind of funny.
Oh yeah, that kind of funny.
God.
So we don't know if that's their music or if somebody else added that.
We apologize.
It's really loud and annoying and sucks.
Yeah, so basically they have decided that they're not going to pursue accreditation because the accreditation agencies are taken by the same problems as the universities.
Oh, they're in it too!
Oh no, wouldn't you know it.
Yeah, and the employers of their students will become the de facto accreditors because, you know, they're going to be the ones that show that.
They're going to see that Peterson Academy degree and they'll be like, I need that person on my team.
So crazy.
That's such a joke.
High-level conscientiousness and general cognitive ability.
General!
Yeah.
And again, it goes to his complete misunderstanding of fucking psychology, apparently.
Like, that's what it's going to be if you graduate or if you go here or whatever, whichever.
The thing that's really going to be valuable to employers is knowing that that has like a slight correlation in his mind with some big five personality trait, rather than just like, are you a good worker?
Did you get good grades?
Are you, you know, like, it's so stupid.
I know.
I know.
So Peterson Academy is one of.
One of Jordan Peterson's companies.
He has several.
I bet.
We've talked a little bit about self-authoring, right?
And that's one bit of his empire.
It's such a weird situation that Toronto Life ran a story about His entire, like, business dealings.
Basically saying, you know, like, that he has this self-authoring suite and how things kind of grew from that.
And so I started looking into, you know, how are all of these things connected?
How are these things registered?
Where are they registered?
Who's on the list of directors?
All of those things, right?
So, I started with the self-authoring, figuring out the company that was behind self-authoring, that's the company he's owned the longest.
Yeah, and that's kind of what launched us because, again, I strongly believe that he diverted all that funding from the fundraiser into that.
Under the, like this is again, I don't have rock solid proof, but it's the explanation that makes the most sense.
So I really was trying to ask you at first, I was like, so who makes money from that?
Cause like, I don't know.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I was wondering if like maybe Brophy was in on the business in some way and it doesn't seem like she's in on ownership or anything.
Right.
No.
So the self-authoring program or suite is through a company called ExamCorp Incorporated, and it was incorporated October 31st, 1996 as Executive Acumen Measurement Corporation, and then changed its name in 2000, just four years later, to ExamCorp Inc.
Self-authoring is an entity under that company.
It was registered in Florida by Robert Peel and Jordan Peterson.
So Robert Peel Robert Peel is one of the individuals that is associated with self-authoring.
He's one of the three white guys you mentioned.
The only officers that are ever listed on any of their annual statements ever since they were first incorporated in 1996 through now are Robert Peel and Jordan Peterson.
That's it.
Robert Peel is the registered agent as well.
What is so confusing to me is the registered address is in Deerfield Beach, Florida.
It appears to be Robert Peel's house.
Three bedrooms, three baths, 2,700 square feet.
Is it listed?
Valued at 1.3 million dollars.
And what is confusing to me is Robert Peel is a professor at McGill University.
He was Jordan Peterson's graduate supervisor.
Oh, weird.
Very weird.
The other white guy that's associated with self-authoring who's not on any of this documentation but is part of the company is a student that Jordan Peterson had when he taught at Harvard.
So it's the three of them.
And then I was watching a video of him interviewing the two of them.
And Robert Peel, by the way, is like 86 years old.
He's very old.
And he studied alcohol and alcoholism and aggression and that's kind of how they got connected.
But Jordan Peterson states in that video that it's always been the three of them and then recently they hired a customer service person.
So that's it.
Those are the only people that get money from self-authoring.
Wow.
Self-authoring and ExamCorp has remained kind of like a separate entity from everything else, which is also kind of interesting.
Well, yeah, I mean that's kind of normal practice for businesses.
You do want to have new entities for everything.
Yes, however, recently there was an amalgamation paperwork that was That was done to basically like house everything else under one parent company.
So Luminant Enterprises Limited on August 1st, 2022, it was amalgamated with the following corporations.
Luminant Universal Education Systems Limited, Luminant Psychological Services Limited, Luminant Media Incorporated, Luminant Turing Incorporated, Luminant Holdings and Services Limited.
So all of these separate entities ended up being amalgamated under this one umbrella company.
And this was where things got very weird for me.
Because then I was looking into that and I was like, okay, I can see, you know, Jordan Peterson listed here.
And then I see Michaela Peterson listed as an officer as well.
She was named CEO, by the way, of Luminant Productions.
Is that the whole?
No, that's not the whole.
No, so I think she was CEO of Luminant Enterprises Incorporated, which is one of the sub-companies of the limited Canadian corporation.
Interesting.
But when I was looking at all the companies that were affiliated with Luminant Enterprises Limited, one of them is Luminant Productions Florida Incorporated, which piqued my interest because I was like, okay, Peterson Academy, they're filming out of Miami, but Peterson lives in Toronto.
I wasn't sure where Michaela Peterson was living at the time, necessarily.
So I was like, OK, well, maybe, you know, I know she's affiliated with it.
Maybe that's why it says, you know, Florida.
Let me look into this company a little bit more.
And the people that are named as officers are Jordan Peterson and Michaela Peterson.
It was incorporated June 26, 2023.
But then it was classified as a branch of a company.
And I was like, what?
And it said it was a branch of a Wyoming company.
And I was like, what?
And the reason why is because they used, and I don't know why, and this isn't necessarily nefarious in itself.
They used a registered agent company.
Okay.
Called Registered Agents Incorporated.
And the branch is because they used a branch of the original Wyoming Registered Agents Incorporated.
This is a company that has locations all over.
Right, but you don't have to do that.
Okay, so in case anyone doesn't know, using a registered agent is no big deal.
Because the way that this paperwork often works is like you have to register and put your information up and that'll go on the Secretary of State website.
Plenty of people don't want their information out there.
Yeah, like how I just read Robert Peel's home information.
Yeah, yeah.
Or they, you know, it's like any number of reasons.
It's the same with websites, actually, where you like register a thing and then you can like, yeah.
So that's totally normal.
However, what's not normal is having to register it as a branch of whatever the registered agent company is.
That's, I don't know what that is.
I have no idea.
So this led me down a crazy rabbit hole that basically had me stepping back to be like, why did they do this?
Because often when you're using a registered agent, yes, there's like the anonymity that you want from the address.
A lot of times people will use it so they don't have to list themselves on directors or anything like that.
But Jordan Peterson and Michaela Peterson continue to do so.
They could have gone to.
Well, no, you still have to list yourself.
So you'd still have to list the officers.
No.
So here's the thing.
Registered Agents Incorporated is sketchy AF because it was started by a man named Dan Keen.
He incorporated, registered agents incorporated back in 2010.
No one really knows who this guy is.
There was a wired investigation that came out March 4th this year.
There's like, it's freaking crazy.
He is an enigma.
He doesn't trust the system at all.
And after a certain period of time, July 29th, 2015, They changed from Registered Agents Incorporated, changed from Dan Keene as the president and the registered agent to a guy named Bill Hover.
And Wired looked into that and there was a biography on Registered Agents, Inc.
website, an archive version.
And it says, Bill grew up in Wyoming.
He went to, you know, Cal Berkeley in the 70s, but then had to withdraw and go back to Wyoming for a family emergency, yada, yada, yada.
This person's not real.
Oh, really?
Completely fake.
That is a fake person, a fake story, and Dan Keen wanted his name off of all of this stuff.
Former employees spoke with Wired and said they used fake names all the time.
Dan Keen encouraged them to do it because he thinks that people are out to get him or out to get the company.
And it's insane to me.
And this is just the registered agent company, right?
Whatever that is, we don't really know fully.
Yeah.
So it's the registered agent company.
And I guess where I'm coming from is like, this is a company where I just Googled and I found all of these things from like local journalism in Wyoming saying another scam leading to 30 North Gould Street or whatever it is.
Because this registered agents branch, this one in particular, is so successful because Wyoming has like really lax tax laws and stuff.
And even though it is a felony to file a false document in Wyoming state.
Sure.
Two years in prison, $2,000 fine, and you have former employees saying that they are doing this, that this company is doing this.
No one's really pursuing that or anything.
And poor Wyoming state officials will get calls, consumer boards and things like that, they'll get phone calls from people who are like, I paid for this thing and I never received services.
You know, I'm trying to get a hold of the company I'm supposed to be working with for whatever thing, and they're not answering my calls.
And they're always like, what's the address?
And they say 30 North Gould.
And they're like, not again.
Thousands and thousands and thousands of companies are registered through this one branch of Registered Agents Incorporated.
And I was like looking up, man, it was just like this crazy rabbit hole.
It was honestly like a black hole, more likely.
One of the things I was interested in is like, well, have they been involved in lawsuits?
I keep seeing like scams affiliated with them.
Yeah, you would think so.
And so like I was looking through names and a lawsuit popped up and I opened it and I was like, what is this?
Because it's a lawsuit filed by someone who's in prison.
So it was, you know, on like lined paper because they were, you know, representing themselves and had to do like all the legal stuff themselves.
And it named the three individuals, like the legal counsel and like the people who are affiliated with registered agents incorporated like their business documents.
And he filed suit against them, but they were able to get themselves removed from it because they said, oh, no, his problem is with, you know, this company and we're not affiliated with that company.
We just.
Right.
Well, is it LLC or is it a. Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, that's technically.
Yeah.
Like kind of the purpose of.
Yeah, but I mean, I might share this document with patrons because it's like it's not related to Jordan Peterson, but it is just really sad and basically it's someone who started a company with a couple guys and then he ended up going to jail and they stole it from him while he was in jail.
Wow.
And like changed things and stuff because they had access to certain things.
It's really sad.
So I might share it just because it's an interesting thing.
But yeah, it's just been so interesting.
There's been like no repercussions.
This is something that even the United States government is very well aware of, that there is a problem here with registered agents and the lack of regulation around this industry.
They had a hearing back in 2006 because from a Very conservative sort of standpoint.
This impedes law enforcement.
If you don't know the company that like you are supposed to be serving, you don't have an address to go serve them.
They had like Patriot Act concerns and they specifically called out in the hearing Delaware, Wyoming and Nevada and the lax rules there.
Yeah.
Nothing's changed.
Most all corporations are formed in Delaware.
Yeah.
Wyoming and Nevada are able to have nominee officers, which is something that I don't think exists in Delaware.
So there's like some benefit to that specific to those states.
Businesses that use registered agents incorporated or other big firms like that.
are often able to evade accountability.
There has been a lot of harm that's been done.
And like I said, independent journalism in Wyoming, specifically the Sheridan Press, is covering a lot of this because it's it's just really it's really sad.
So do we can't really tell why Peterson used them?
I mean, he definitely did, though, right?
Yeah, they definitely don't know if there's a connection.
Maybe it is just they saw an advertisement somewhere or maybe if they specifically want to be protected against some repercussions by using them.
I mean, perhaps, but I'm able to find their addresses like everywhere else.
Yeah.
Because Peterson lists his address for other things and Tammy, his wife, lists her address for her companies.
Tammy.
Yeah, Tammy.
Oh, a recent Catholic, you know, she just converted over Easter weekend, yeah.
So, I know where they live.
I can see that.
McKayla Peterson, too, you know, like, she's pretty online.
123 Meat Fart Street.
Well, like they just moved to Scottsdale, Arizona.
Like, I know that.
You know, like all these things.
Beef gas avenue.
They just eat meat.
It must be disgusting.
It must be absolutely disgusting.
Oh, she said on a podcast, she said sometimes she has soup, but what her soup is, is just like pulverized steak.
Yeah.
That is so gross.
Disgusting.
Apparently, they are happy with the service that they are receiving via using registered agents rather than using, you know, Jordan Peterson's friend, Robert Peel, who is already serving.
I mean, you could just have an attorney do it, too.
Like, it's kind of a weird thing.
It's very weird that one of the companies, one of like the sub companies, was incorporated December 28th, 2023.
And this is one of the versions of Luminant Enterprises Incorporated.
This one, again, was out of Wyoming.
And I was like, OK, just another one through.
the Registered Agents Incorporated, but they used something called CAPC Services, which is a registered agent boutique firm for families with a lot of money, basically.
It's like a luxury registered agent firm and families with high net worth.
That's what they specialize in.
Can't find anything else really about them anywhere, including anybody who's affiliated with it.
But this is a real problem.
It popped up a lot during the Pandora Papers investigation.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, because the other people who use registered agents and Registered Agents Incorporated are foreign governments and nefarious actors from other countries who are trying to move some money around and do some money laundering and evade taxes for, you know, their countries.
Yeah, it just felt so sketchy to me.
Yeah.
What are the odds?
Yeah.
So weird.
So weird.
But like I said, you know, there's, there's nothing like illegal about it.
Yeah.
And it's not, there's no, I guess, proof of anything nefarious that Peterson is doing by using these people, right?
No, no.
It's just, it just feels shady and weird.
Another level of sketch.
Yeah, especially because, like I said from the beginning, you know, his other entity that's not amalgamated with this stuff, the Exam Corp Incorporated, that, you know, has one of his co-founders of self-authoring acting as the registered agent, even though I can't figure out why.
He still teaches at McGill, apparently, too, like according to that.
So how is he teaching at McGill in Canada, but then also living, I don't know.
I'm trying to figure this out too, this 85, 86 year old man.
Yeah, but you know, he has been on time filing his annual statement every year.
He's done a very good job.
Yeah.
Wow.
Yeah.
And it could be another thing where, again, once you get in this ecosystem of like religious, conservative, reactionary, whatever, and they know a guy and they know a guy, it's like, you know, who knows?
It could just be like some connection.
It could, but that's a small ecosystem of paranoid reactionaries, and that could be why he ends up kind of weirdly doing business with some of these entities.
It's not necessarily nefarious, but it's like, all right, man, this is just a weird thing.
Oh, I did have one other thing that I forgot to mention.
So Registered Agents Incorporated, they are starting to branch out.
So not only are they serving as a registered agent around the country for whoever will send them stuff, and they never verify anything, by the way.
They just take people's words for it.
Email addresses might be fake.
They use fake names all the time.
I'll share the Wired investigation in the show notes, too, because I think there's some really interesting things there.
The other thing that they've recently dipped their toes in is they acquired a web host.
Do you know which web host it might be?
Oh God, is it something like GoDaddy or something?
It's Epic.
Epic?
I don't know what Epic is.
It's the far-right's web host because they don't care if you're a Nazi.
They don't care if you're, you know, crazy extremist.
Most web hosts don't, but yeah.
Well, but it was like all the web hosting that refused to, you know, have the websites for all the QAnon stuff or websites harassing transgender people.
Epic gladly welcomes them.
Registered Agents Incorporated is the owner now of Epic for web hosting.
We're in the market for any sketch ass business.
We're looking to acquire a portfolio of sketchiest shit stuff.
It's so crazy.
So crazy.
Soon they're like, we need an index in the stock market, like the sketchy, you know, you got the Nasdaq, you got your Dow.
I want just like the sketch industry.
I want to see how it's going.
Man, I just, like, I can't believe this.
Like, it's just so freaking weird.
And I'm not Jordan Peterson, obviously, and I'm not Michaela Peterson.
I don't eat meat.
We have the exact opposite diets.
But I feel like if I were starting a business, I would kind of care about, like, the other businesses that are affiliated with my business, even if it's just, like, a registered agent.
I don't know.
I just, I don't like it.
I don't like it.
Yeah, I mean a lot of people just have somebody handle stuff like that.
Who knows, you know?
A lawyer could be handling it and the lawyer could be some connection they had that's a right-wing freak or like a Mormon.
Yeah.
You know, anti-government, but who knows?
Or Sir Paul Marshall.
Yeah.
Trying to evade His Majesty's tax burden.
Oh boy.
Can I keep saying Her Majesty?
Can I just?
I don't care.
Yeah, I know you don't care.
Literally, tune out whatever that is.
Some of our listeners will.
All right.
Well, yeah, like I said, I mean, we're not going to be done with Jordan Peterson, obviously, but I think that'll kind of conclude this bit.
Although we could get back to the rap song we started this with.
Maybe I will.
We'll see.
That's kind of a different topic.
But what if there's another claim like three and a half minutes in that we have to research for a month?
What will we do then in two months?
I don't know.
Go to bed.
All right, thanks so much for listening, everybody.
I do still intend to get that Ben Shapiro bonus out.
I did a couple sessions on it and it just wasn't feeling right, so need to re-examine that.
It's, you know, quality control.
It's like, I don't want to give you a thing that sucks, and so I need to do another Round of kind of research to fill that out.
But we'll have that up for you.
And it's fun.
And there's so much.
The comedy never stops.
There's so much to make fun of when it comes to these people.
I also could take out a full time job just Debunking these stupid debates he's doing like even debunking both sides too because like I watched the destiny Jordan Peterson debate just because it seemed like maybe they were touching on stuff like this that I saw a clip from it that was someone was making fun of it and said Jordan Peterson was gonna do a study to figure out whether or not Nazis were right wing, but then he didn't end up doing it.
And I was like, oh, is that gonna be related to this mystery funding?
And it kind of is, because it's yet another thing Peterson says he was going to study, but couldn't because of whatever his dog ate his funding or something.
And the study was, he wants to finally get to the bottom of whether or not Nazis were left or right wing.
Here's his methodology he proposed.
He's going to write down their policies, but not put any names to it.
And just poll who tends to agree with them more, right-wingers or left-wingers in today's... It's like, okay, man.
Amazing.
I don't think their policy positions vis-a-vis Taxes or zoning laws or something are really going to matter that much.
I think the key thing with, you know, being a Nazi is the Nazi part, like all that part.
