Joe Rogan Experience #1191 - Peter Boghossian & James Lindsay

Peter Boghossian 0:00 ... could even hear their breathing, it's so sensitive.

Joe Rogan 0:02 Yeah, it's good stuff. (breathing) Live already? Damn, there's no countdown? Jimmy, you're radical. You're radical. Mr. Boghossian, welcome back. Good to see you again, sir.

Peter Boghossian 0:16 Thanks. Thanks. Good to be here. Thanks.

Joe Rogan 0:17 Mr. Lindsay-

James (Jim) Lindsay 0:18 Good to be here.

Joe Rogan 0:18 ... James or Jim, depending upon preferences.

James (Jim) Lindsay 0:20 That's all right, go with Jim.

Joe Rogan 0:22 Uh, J- first of all, gentlemen, and there, there was one other person that you did this with, this whole project.

Peter Boghossian 0:27 Helen Pluckrose from England.

Joe Rogan 0:29 Uh, shout out to Helen from England.

Peter Boghossian 0:31 Thanks.

Joe Rogan 0:31 Uh, is she back across the pond right now?

Peter Boghossian 0:33 She's across the pond. She's, uh...

Joe Rogan 0:34 Oh, fish and chips and-

Peter Boghossian 0:36 She's making tea and managing-

James (Jim) Lindsay 0:38 Fish and chips.

Peter Boghossian 0:38 ... Aerial Magazine.

James (Jim) Lindsay 0:39 That's right.

Joe Rogan 0:39 Oh, excellent. All right. Well, shout out to her as well. Um, let's explain what you guys did and what's so significant about it, because, uh, when I first read it, my f- first inclination, I, I had two reactions. One was a, a huge laugh. I laughed really hard. And then I said, "Thank God somebody exposed this."

James (Jim) Lindsay 1:01 Exhales ] Yep.

Peter Boghossian 1:01 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:01 So, tell me, tell me what you guys did.

Peter Boghossian 1:04 Jim, go for it.

James (Jim) Lindsay 1:05 Yeah, so over-

Joe Rogan 1:06 Oh, fr- let's explain who you guys are and what you do.

James (Jim) Lindsay 1:08 Oh, okay, yeah.

Peter Boghossian 1:09 Okay.

James (Jim) Lindsay 1:09 Um, my background is in mathematics. I bailed out on academia in 2010, though, because I kind of see the writing on the wall and, uh, so now I am a renegade gender scholar, and I write nonsense about genitals.

Joe Rogan 1:23 (laughs)

James (Jim) Lindsay 1:23 That's primarily what I do. (laughs) I mean, I manage a business at home, so I, I got outta academia.

Peter Boghossian 1:29 Yeah, and I'm a, uh, I teach philosophy at Portland State University, and, uh, I met Jim years ago. We collaborated and we've written a number of things over the years, and at some point, it just came to be, we had to do something about this. It was just too ridiculous. And it was translating into the real world, and so we collaborated, and here we are.

Joe Rogan 1:52 Well, let's explain what you did and what was ridiculous. Um, what we're talking about, what was ridiculous is, there's many fields of studies, um, that you can get legitimate degrees in that are absolutely preposterous.

Peter Boghossian 2:07 Right.

Joe Rogan 2:08 L- literally filled with nonsense-

Peter Boghossian 2:10 Right.

James (Jim) Lindsay 2:11 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 2:11 ... taught by nonsense people-

Peter Boghossian 2:12 Yep.

Joe Rogan 2:13 ... who live in these nonsense bubbles-

Peter Boghossian 2:15 Right.

Joe Rogan 2:15 ... and then they give these degrees, and these people go out in the real world-

Peter Boghossian 2:18 Exactly.

Joe Rogan 2:19 ... and they infect things.

Peter Boghossian 2:21 Yep.

Joe Rogan 2:21 They inf- their, their ridiculousness infect certain, particularly tech industry businesses.

James (Jim) Lindsay 2:27 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 2:27 Like, you, you see it infecting-

Peter Boghossian 2:28 Damore, James Damore.

Joe Rogan 2:29 Mm-hmm, yeah, yeah.

Peter Boghossian 2:31 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 2:31 Well, well, let's explain what you guys did.

James (Jim) Lindsay 2:32 Yeah, so we started about a year, I guess a year and a half ago now, it was last summer, we started writing a bunch of academic papers for the journals that represent these fields. And so everybody understands what an academic paper is, getting out of the gate, this isn't like an op-ed that you dash off for, like, Washington Post or some magazine or whatever. This is a thing, like, academics work their careers to write one or two of these a year.

Peter Boghossian 2:57 Yeah.

James (Jim) Lindsay 2:57 And so they're really hard to write, they're supposed to be hard to get published, so we wrote 20 of them in 10 months.

Joe Rogan 3:04 (laughs)

Peter Boghossian 3:06 (laughs)

James (Jim) Lindsay 3:06 (laughs) And, uh, seven of those got accepted, four were actually published, and, um-

Peter Boghossian 3:12 Then we got busted.

James (Jim) Lindsay 3:13 ... like at least four more, yeah, we got busted, and-

Peter Boghossian 3:15 Yeah.

James (Jim) Lindsay 3:15 ... at least four more were on track. Maybe five or six more would have gotten in.

Joe Rogan 3:18 What's the difference between getting accepted and getting published?

James (Jim) Lindsay 3:21 So the process with everything in academia is really slow, and a lot of people don't know this. So you send off this article, the editor looks at it, and the editor either gives it the thumbs up or the thumbs down. If they give it the thumbs up, it goes off to peer reviewers, and that process takes months.

Peter Boghossian 3:35 Mm-hmm.

James (Jim) Lindsay 3:35 Uh, often as long as, I mean, we had one paper that was eight months under peer review. So the reviewers look at it, they try to figure out if the arguments are good, they try to figure out if the research is good, they evaluate that, they give extensive comments, they send it back to you, then you have to revise it according to whatever they say, make it better, is what's supposed to happen. They made ours crazier.

Peter Boghossian 3:57 (laughs)

James (Jim) Lindsay 3:57 And so then, yeah, they did, every single time.

Peter Boghossian 3:59 We took the feedback and made the papers just the most extreme things.

James (Jim) Lindsay 4:02 Most extreme things. And so then you send them back, so now you're probably three, four months in, just the review process, not to the writing, which should also take months.

Peter Boghossian 4:11 Yeah.

James (Jim) Lindsay 4:11 And then the editor will either send it back to the reviewers to see if it was good enough or they'll just evaluate it themselves, depending on where it stands, and then they'll make a decision as to whether or not-

Peter Boghossian 4:21 Right.

James (Jim) Lindsay 4:21 ... to accept it or reject it or ask for more revisions. And then when they accept it, that means the journal is ready to publish it, but then the publishing process requires all the typesetting, proofing-

Peter Boghossian 4:32 Nice.

James (Jim) Lindsay 4:33 ... all the stuff that goes into making it professional for an academic journal.

Peter Boghossian 4:36 And-

James (Jim) Lindsay 4:36 And that can take months.

Peter Boghossian 4:37 ... and, and, and publishing is the coin of the realm, like, that's it. So the ideal is one paper every year in the humanities, broadly. So if you, that's how you credential yourself, that's how you get tenure, which is a job for life. That's how you get to teach people these ideas, who then, as you said, go out into the workforce, you know, five, six years later and in- infect everybody with total silliness. So the, it's the gold standard peer review. So we saw a tremendous problem.

Joe Rogan 5:08 Can we tell people some of the titles of these-

James (Jim) Lindsay 5:10 Sure.

Joe Rogan 5:10 ... articles? Right now, they're like, "What the hell are these guys talking about?" (laughs)

James (Jim) Lindsay 5:13 So we had a article, the one that got the most press was about dog humping in Portland, Oregon. Um, it was called, how did it go? Was it called, um, Queer Performativity and, uh, was it Rape Culture?

Peter Boghossian 5:26 Rape Culture in Port-

James (Jim) Lindsay 5:27 Queer Performativity and Dog Parks in Portland, Oregon.

Joe Rogan 5:29 (laughs)

Peter Boghossian 5:29 Yeah, we, we claim to have examined, under a fake name-

Joe Rogan 5:32 Is that a real word?

Peter Boghossian 5:33 ... under all fake names.

Joe Rogan 5:34 Performativity?

James (Jim) Lindsay 5:35 Oh yeah, totally.

Peter Boghossian 5:36 They have their own lingo, their own, you know...

Joe Rogan 5:38 But is that a word in the English language, performativity?

James (Jim) Lindsay 5:41 I mean, in the academic English language.

Peter Boghossian 5:43 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

James (Jim) Lindsay 5:43 Not in common, common parlance. But that's, like, the whole thing. This is huge, right? This goes back-

Joe Rogan 5:47 Right.

James (Jim) Lindsay 5:47 ... a long way. That's Judith Butler's whole thing was that gender is performative.

Joe Rogan 5:51 Who's Judith Butler?

James (Jim) Lindsay 5:52 Judith Butler is probably the most influential feminist scholar, or gender scholar, actually, I should say, that, that's been in maybe the last 30 years.... she's, she's big time. And so she had this whole thing that gender is performative, it's something you perform, it's not something that has anything to do with your biology.

Joe Rogan 6:09 (laughs) Retracted article.

James (Jim) Lindsay 6:10 Oh, yeah. There it is.

Joe Rogan 6:10 Human reactions to rape culture and queer performativity at urban dog parks in Portland, Oregon. Why is it retracted?

James (Jim) Lindsay 6:18 Uh, because there's-

Joe Rogan 6:19 (laughs)

James (Jim) Lindsay 6:19 ... 'cause it's bogus.

Joe Rogan 6:19 ... because they realized that you guys were hosing them.

James (Jim) Lindsay 6:21 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 6:22 Human reactions to rape culture and queer performativity.

Peter Boghossian 6:24 We claimed to have closely examined the genitals of s-

James (Jim) Lindsay 6:28 Just under 10,000 dogs.

Peter Boghossian 6:29 Just under 10,000 dogs, and then interrogated their owners as to their sexual orientation.

Joe Rogan 6:35 (sighs)

James (Jim) Lindsay 6:35 So we checked out the dogs' nuts and then said, "Excuse me, sir, are you gay?"

Peter Boghossian 6:38 Yeah. (laughs)

James (Jim) Lindsay 6:40 And you asked them-

Joe Rogan 6:41 So that's when-

James (Jim) Lindsay 6:41 ... if they gendered their dogs.

Peter Boghossian 6:43 Yeah. Well, we made up these totally insane, you know, dogs humping incidents and how they, they beat female dogs, but they didn't beat male dogs. So that's one of the papers that we made. You know, the other paper that we wrote-

James (Jim) Lindsay 6:56 Well, with this one also, they had the whole thing, like, if a male dog humps another male dog, especially men would freak out and break it up-

Peter Boghossian 7:03 Yeah.

James (Jim) Lindsay 7:03 ... and stop that, because that's the queer performativity part.

Peter Boghossian 7:05 Yeah.

James (Jim) Lindsay 7:06 But then if a male dog humped a female dog, they'd be like, you know, "Get her, girl."

Peter Boghossian 7:09 Yeah.

James (Jim) Lindsay 7:10 "Get her, get her." You know, "Get on it."

Joe Rogan 7:11 So you, you were basically raging against hetero-normativity.

James (Jim) Lindsay 7:16 Mm-hmm.

Peter Boghossian 7:16 That's e- exactly correct.

James (Jim) Lindsay 7:17 Yeah.

Peter Boghossian 7:17 We told them-

Joe Rogan 7:17 (laughs)

Peter Boghossian 7:17 ... exactly what they wanted to hear. And we gave them bogus statistics to fuel what they already wanted to believe.

James (Jim) Lindsay 7:23 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 7:23 (laughs)

James (Jim) Lindsay 7:23 We started off with the idea that ... what we wanted to get to was a conclusion, and then we made up all the crap in between to get to it.

Peter Boghossian 7:29 Yeah.

James (Jim) Lindsay 7:29 And the conclusion was feminism should train men the way we train dogs, so that we can get rid of rape culture.

Peter Boghossian 7:34 You know, put them on leashes, you know.

James (Jim) Lindsay 7:35 Yeah.

Peter Boghossian 7:35 It's right in the paper.

James (Jim) Lindsay 7:36 Yes.

Peter Boghossian 7:36 It's all there. "Unfortunately, we cannot put men on leashes." "It's not politically feasible to put men on leashes."

Joe Rogan 7:41 You guys wrote that?

James (Jim) Lindsay 7:42 Yeah.

Peter Boghossian 7:42 Yeah., T- they published it.

James (Jim) Lindsay 7:44 Or to yank their leashes when they misbehave.

Peter Boghossian 7:45 Yeah.

James (Jim) Lindsay 7:46 And this paper didn't just get published.

Joe Rogan 7:48 (sighs)

James (Jim) Lindsay 7:48 The journal said that this was exemplary scholarship and gave it an award. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 7:55 (laughs)

Peter Boghossian 7:55 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 7:57 Oh, my God. Oh, my God.

Peter Boghossian 7:58 Yeah.

James (Jim) Lindsay 7:58 Says one of the best pieces. It's-

Joe Rogan 8:00 (laughs)

James (Jim) Lindsay 8:00 This year is their 25th anniversary, so this journal's been doing this for 25 years.

Peter Boghossian 8:03 Yeah.

James (Jim) Lindsay 8:04 And it's their 25th anniversary, so they're picking out the best papers throughout the whole year.

Peter Boghossian 8:08 Best of the year. Yeah.

James (Jim) Lindsay 8:08 And putting them, you know, probably to place in some, some, uh, issue of their journal and ours was gonna be in the seventh issue as-

Joe Rogan 8:15 So it either is great-

James (Jim) Lindsay 8:16 ... gonna be number one.

Joe Rogan 8:16 ... or it's not great. So it t- it either is great or it's not great. Like, why are they retracting it?

Peter Boghossian 8:22 Oh, yeah.

James (Jim) Lindsay 8:22 Oh, 'cause they know we were, were bogus.

Joe Rogan 8:24 So what? (laughs) You were right.

Peter Boghossian 8:27 Well, uh-

James (Jim) Lindsay 8:28 (laughs)

Peter Boghossian 8:28 ... it's like a broken clock. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 8:29 The clock's broken.

Peter Boghossian 8:30 Well-

Joe Rogan 8:31 But it is actually 12 o'clock.

Peter Boghossian 8:33 So, so they would, they would claim it's-

Joe Rogan 8:35 (laughs)

Peter Boghossian 8:35 ... i- incorrectly that we fabricated statistics, but we, we wrote other papers c- w- called f- one was fat body building. So they claim that there should be a category introduced in traditional body building called fat body building, where people come and display their fat (laughs) before the audience. And we didn't manufacture any statistics for that and they loved that. They thought it ... you know, one line in that paper was, "A fat body is a built body." (laughs) And then one of the reviewers was like, "I-"

James (Jim) Lindsay 9:01 "I wholeheartedly agree," or something like that.

Peter Boghossian 9:03 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 9:05 Oh, Jesus Christ.

James (Jim) Lindsay 9:05 Yeah. And then we wrote other papers like To Hypatia, we published a, a pa- it got accepted, not published. But that one, we claimed that it's, uh, it's unacceptable- It's uneth- it's unethical to make fun of anything to do with social justice.

Peter Boghossian 9:19 Right.

James (Jim) Lindsay 9:20 And so if you wanna make fun of things that don't have anything to do with social justice, that's good. So if we wanted to make fun of men, that's great. If you wanna make fun of white people, that's great. If you wanna make fun of, uh, anything to do with social justice, that's a problem.

Peter Boghossian 9:32 Right.

James (Jim) Lindsay 9:32 So we made ... we, we said that, you know, South Park's a huge problem. The Simpsons is a huge problem. We went into talking about how-

Joe Rogan 9:39 (laughs)

James (Jim) Lindsay 9:39 ... Stephen Colbert and, and, uh, Jon Stewart have the right idea, but then the journal was like, "Uh, but they're straight white males, so you have to, you know, nuance around that."

Peter Boghossian 9:48 Right.

James (Jim) Lindsay 9:48 "To make it clear that their position as white men, even though they're on the side of social justice, it's not quite good enough," you know.

Peter Boghossian 9:55 (sighs) So they published that.

James (Jim) Lindsay 9:57 They published that.

Peter Boghossian 9:58 They published that.

James (Jim) Lindsay 9:58 What was that ... what was that one called?

Joe Rogan 10:00 (laughs)

James (Jim) Lindsay 10:00 That one was called When the Joke's on You.

Peter Boghossian 10:02 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 10:03 (laughs)

James (Jim) Lindsay 10:04 (laughs)

Peter Boghossian 10:04 And we made ... we, we wrote it so that they would think the joke is on us, because we cited our own work in there.

Joe Rogan 10:09 Right.

James (Jim) Lindsay 10:10 Yeah.

Peter Boghossian 10:10 But the joke was actually on them for publishing it.

James (Jim) Lindsay 10:13 Yep.

Peter Boghossian 10:13 Yeah.

James (Jim) Lindsay 10:14 Yeah.

Peter Boghossian 10:14 Duh.

James (Jim) Lindsay 10:14 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 10:15 Yeah. Th- this i- it's so ... it's so funny how racist you can be as long as you're racist against white people.

James (Jim) Lindsay 10:21 That's what we saw-

Joe Rogan 10:22 (laughs)

James (Jim) Lindsay 10:22 ... is that as long as you are going up the river against privilege, then you can-

Joe Rogan 10:27 Yeah.

James (Jim) Lindsay 10:27 ... really just get away with some nasty stuff.

Peter Boghossian 10:29 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 10:29 Yeah. And you could generalize. Like-

James (Jim) Lindsay 10:31 Oh, totally.

Joe Rogan 10:32 Gross generalizations.

Peter Boghossian 10:33 Gross generalizations.

James (Jim) Lindsay 10:34 Absolutely.

Joe Rogan 10:34 Do not treat people as individuals.

Peter Boghossian 10:36 Absolutely.

James (Jim) Lindsay 10:37 Nope.

Joe Rogan 10:37 It's, it's very strange. It's very strange that this is the left. You know, I was a kid in San Francisco in the 1970s. Uh, we lived in, you know, like, there was ... the hippie times. And that's ... I c- I lived there from age seven to 11 and it kind of formed a lot of my opinions about people, like, the who gives a shit part of my-

James (Jim) Lindsay 11:00 Exactly.

Joe Rogan 11:00 ... my, my appreciation for a- any group, wha- whatever it is, w- whether it's race or gender or sexual orientation, and I just ... I don't understand it from either way. I certainly don't understand it from a racist perspective, but I, I really don't understand it from racism that's condoned because it's racism against white people.

James (Jim) Lindsay 11:22 Oh, yeah.

Joe Rogan 11:22 That this is the left. This is ... that th- these are ... these are the people that are preaching against hate.

James (Jim) Lindsay 11:28 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 11:28 And these are the people that used to be the people that were supposedly so open-minded and so open to ideas and now they're trying to sh- stifle creativity-

James (Jim) Lindsay 11:39 Right.

Joe Rogan 11:39 ... and stifle dissent-

James (Jim) Lindsay 11:40 Yep.

Joe Rogan 11:40 ... and stifle, stifle anything that doesn't fit inside that v- very narrow paradigm that they're trying to push. It's very strange.

James (Jim) Lindsay 11:48 You know, they co-opted the, the Civil Rights movement. The good name of the Civil Rights movement is kind of the brand that they ride on. You know, they're fighting against racism, they're fighting against sexism, misogyny, et cetera. And the thing is, is that's not really what's going on here. They've actually tapped into this, to, to throw around the term, this postmodern notion that everything in society has to do with power dynamics. And the power dynamics have to be st- understood in terms of groups and how those groups have traditionally held power and exercised power. And so immediately it becomes-... stuck in this idea that it's all about this group or that group, and how they relate to one another. And I don't mean like, "Hey, let's get along" relate. I mean like, white people a- are imagined to always be over Black people and therefore, y- you know, there's always this natural power dynamic of, of, of oppressor versus oppressed. And this is stuff that came straight out of this weird postmodern philosophy where you saw these dissatisfied French philosophers in the '60s, you know, all when this, all this stuff you're talking about was going down. Um, they saw all this stuff and they said, "Wow, you know, okay, power dynamics are the thing." Because s- I should go back a step. The, the postmodern philosophers like Foucault and all of this got all hooked up on power because they were dissatisfied with seeing what they called grand narratives. Christianity, uh, capitalism, Marxism, they saw all these huge, you know, explanations for how the world works and said, you know, "They're not working. Look how bad communism failed. Look how there's so much, you know, bullshit coming out of this or that from religion. It's not working. We need to just get rid of all of it. We're gonna deconstruct this. We're gonna break it down to its power dynamics. And then we're gonna look at it in terms of who has masterhood over, over who, who's oppressing what, where's dominance." And it's just kind of grown. It got picked up in the, in the academic culture in the 1960s. That's how old this stuff is. And then it took this huge turn in the 1990s and got really vicious, and that's where it really got ... You know, that's when it turned intersectional actually.

Joe Rogan 13:45 That was during the politically correct days? That's-

James (Jim) Lindsay 13:48 That's when the-

Joe Rogan 13:48 ... that's when-

James (Jim) Lindsay 13:48 ... politically correct thing kind of blew up, yeah, is when all the stuff was coming out. So that would have been, you know, late 1980s is really when all of this political correctness stuff started coming out at the academy. And then a few years later, you see it coming all over politics, which is typically what happens. It starts in the academy. A few years later-

Joe Rogan 14:03 Right.

James (Jim) Lindsay 14:03 ... it leaks into the culture.

Joe Rogan 14:04 Right.

James (Jim) Lindsay 14:05 And politics or media, or the tech sector now, whatever it happens to be.

Joe Rogan 14:10 The stifling of creativity is the, the most disturbing part about it. Like, the s- the, like, the, the agreement that South Park and The Simpsons-

James (Jim) Lindsay 14:17 Right.

Joe Rogan 14:18 ... are a real problem. It's so bizarre, 'cause like here's the thing, if they miss the mark and it's not funny, it won't work-

James (Jim) Lindsay 14:25 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 14:25 ... and then it'll be a bad show and no one will like it.

James (Jim) Lindsay 14:27 Mm.

Joe Rogan 14:27 But if it's funny, there has to be something about it that people find ironic-

James (Jim) Lindsay 14:33 (snaps fingers) Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 14:33 ... satirical. There has to be something about it that people are enjoying.

James (Jim) Lindsay 14:36 Mm.

Joe Rogan 14:37 It has to point to some truth.

James (Jim) Lindsay 14:39 Yep.

Joe Rogan 14:39 And the denial of this, and instead, like they're saying, "Oh, it's white males that are causing this problem and you shouldn't attack-

James (Jim) Lindsay 14:46 Right.

Joe Rogan 14:47 ... this or that." Or, you know, there's subjects that are off limits and social justice should never be attacked. Like, the, to agree to that-

James (Jim) Lindsay 14:53 Mm.

Joe Rogan 14:54 ... is, is so, it's so preposterous. This is life we're talking about.

James (Jim) Lindsay 14:57 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 14:58 This is literally the nuance of life, all the various strange things in the spectrum of human behavior and, and all the things you encounter in life. And to segment and limit what is and is not, w- what's off limits and what's not off limits based on race-

James (Jim) Lindsay 15:15 Mm.

Joe Rogan 15:16 ... based on things that a person can't control at all.

James (Jim) Lindsay 15:19 Mm.

Joe Rogan 15:19 You're just born white.

James (Jim) Lindsay 15:21 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 15:21 So if you're born white, you're born an oppressor.

James (Jim) Lindsay 15:23 Mm-hmm. Right. Exactly.

Joe Rogan 15:24 You're, you're born a victimizer.

James (Jim) Lindsay 15:25 Right.

Joe Rogan 15:25 And if you're a white male, you're a fucking piece of shit.

James (Jim) Lindsay 15:28 Right.

Joe Rogan 15:28 And you can say that.

Peter Boghossian 15:29 White hetero male, in particular.

James (Jim) Lindsay 15:30 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 15:30 Oh, God. I, I, I mean, I've seen so many tweets from people, that means so many virtue signaling tweets, but one of my favorite ones is this feminist who said, "All white m- uh, uh, white straight men are trash unless proven otherwise." (laughs)

James (Jim) Lindsay 15:45 Yeah, that's the thing, right? (laughs)

Peter Boghossian 15:48 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 15:48 All of us?

James (Jim) Lindsay 15:49 All of us.

Joe Rogan 15:49 All of us.

Peter Boghossian 15:50 All of us.

Joe Rogan 15:50 There's 150 million-

Peter Boghossian 15:53 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 15:54 ... of us. I mean, give or take, you know, how many gay folks there are?

James (Jim) Lindsay 15:57 Yeah, trash.

Peter Boghossian 15:58 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 15:58 Yeah. Trash.

James (Jim) Lindsay 16:00 No problem. Prove-

Joe Rogan 16:00 And let's proven otherwise.

James (Jim) Lindsay 16:01 A- and prove you're not, right?

Joe Rogan 16:02 Yeah.

James (Jim) Lindsay 16:02 How do you do that? That's like witch trials.

Joe Rogan 16:04 You gotta be an ally. You have to be an ally.

James (Jim) Lindsay 16:05 Oh, no. They, they asked us to problematize allyship too. You see, this power dynamics, once you say, "Hey, I'm an ally," now you've made it so that you have like a shield where people can't call you a white supremacist anymore.

Joe Rogan 16:14 Mm-hmm.

James (Jim) Lindsay 16:15 And you are acting on behalf of other people, and, you know, you're speaking for them, so you now have assumed power.

Peter Boghossian 16:21 That was-

James (Jim) Lindsay 16:21 And you're reproducing the same power dynamics.

Joe Rogan 16:23 Right, that was the Mein Kampf paper.

James (Jim) Lindsay 16:25 Yeah, our paper that rewrote Mein Kampf-

Joe Rogan 16:26 Oh. (laughs)

James (Jim) Lindsay 16:27 ... actually was about-

Peter Boghossian 16:28 We had two-

James (Jim) Lindsay 16:28 ... allyship. And they were like, "You didn't problematize allyship."

Joe Rogan 16:30 (laughs)

Peter Boghossian 16:30 Yeah, we had two, two of them that did Mein Kampf. One of them, we just more or less replaced whites, re- replaced Jews with white men. And you a-

Joe Rogan 16:39 You, you literally took Mein Kampf, the actual words from Mein Kampf-

Peter Boghossian 16:43 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 16:43 ... and put it in this paper, and replaced the word Jews with the word white men, and they accepted that.

Peter Boghossian 16:49 Well, we had two papers that did Mein Kampf.

James (Jim) Lindsay 16:51 Yeah. (laughs)

Peter Boghossian 16:51 We had two versions. (laughs)

James (Jim) Lindsay 16:53 So that one did not get accepted.

Peter Boghossian 16:54 The, what did the-

Joe Rogan 16:54 What, what were the quotes that you guys used?

James (Jim) Lindsay 16:57 I mean, so with that one, what, what we did was we took the whole document on- online and we just searched the word Jew. And we just started picking sentences and paragraphs. So, what was it? That at the end, it was something like, "If we don't combat whiteness, it's gonna be the funeral wreath for mankind."

Joe Rogan 17:14 Yeah. (laughs)

James (Jim) Lindsay 17:14 That's straight out of Mein Kampf.

Peter Boghossian 17:16 Oh my God. (laughs)

James (Jim) Lindsay 17:16 Now, they didn't ac- yeah, they didn't, they didn't accept that paper though, because that paper, uh, turns out was written from the perspective of a white lesbian who hated her own whiteness, and they said that it was positioning her as a good white.

Peter Boghossian 17:28 Yeah.

James (Jim) Lindsay 17:28 And because she's making herself out as a good white, again, allyship isn't as all is cracked up to be.

Joe Rogan 17:33 Mm.

James (Jim) Lindsay 17:33 She, you know, was making a problem. She should have really been forwarding the ideas of the Black scholars that she read way more and not talking about herself so much, even though it was-

Joe Rogan 17:42 Oh.

James (Jim) Lindsay 17:42 ... a paper designed to be talking about herself.

Peter Boghossian 17:44 Yeah, because that was what Hitler did, so that's what we had to do.

Joe Rogan 17:46 (laughs)

James (Jim) Lindsay 17:48 Yeah.

Peter Boghossian 17:48 (laughs)

James (Jim) Lindsay 17:49 Now, the other Mein Kampf paper was about-

Joe Rogan 17:51 Mm.

James (Jim) Lindsay 17:51 ... feminism and what we did was we took the chapter, it's chapter 12, we took the chapter where he says, "This is why we should have the Nazi Party and what is expected of people who are gonna be part of it." And we took out our movement, our party. He didn't call it a Nazi Party in the chapter, but everywhere he's like, "Our movement..." Took that out, put in intersectional feminism.And then-

Joe Rogan 18:09 (sighs)

James (Jim) Lindsay 18:10 ... modified the words and added theory around it so that it would fly. And-

Joe Rogan 18:15 Theory? (laughs)

James (Jim) Lindsay 18:15 Yeah, theory, that's what they call it.

Joe Rogan 18:16 Theory is a good... I love that word.

James (Jim) Lindsay 18:16 Yeah, theory.

Joe Rogan 18:17 I love when... Feminist theory. I love when they throw that around. Like, "What are you saying?" But you're saying things that, like, o- once you say that, you're c- you're good. Like, you've s- Yeah.

James (Jim) Lindsay 18:27 You can say something ridiculous and then say feminist theory.

Joe Rogan 18:30 Yeah.

James (Jim) Lindsay 18:30 And they're like, "Oh, it's in feminist theory."

Joe Rogan 18:32 Yeah.

Peter Boghossian 18:32 Yeah, that's-

James (Jim) Lindsay 18:33 That's the thing, right, is so much of the stuff they come up with... Let me throw them an olive branch. Like, so much of the stuff they come up with is a creative idea. Maybe there's something to some of this stuff, right?

Joe Rogan 18:40 Right.

Peter Boghossian 18:40 Mm-hmm.

James (Jim) Lindsay 18:40 But what they're putting forward is hypotheses, and then they're treating them as conclusions. So they're putting forward this idea. I saw one on Twitter today, it was something like... It was about South Park, how it's been laundering racism into society and making everybody comfortable with racism, and that's why everything is so racist and people are shooting Jews, is because South Park made it normal.

Joe Rogan 18:58 (laughs)

Peter Boghossian 18:59 Oh.

James (Jim) Lindsay 18:59 But that's a c-... That... They're treating that as a conclusion, but that's a hypothesis, right? So we could test that. It's conceivable that you could actually try to parse out what variables need to be controlled, see-

Joe Rogan 19:09 Yeah.

James (Jim) Lindsay 19:10 ... you know, South Park came out and started doing these themes. What... How does it track? Statisticians can do kind of amazing things with that stuff. But they're not doing that. They're not testing it.

Joe Rogan 19:19 And then they-

James (Jim) Lindsay 19:19 Instead of testing it-

Joe Rogan 19:20 Right.

James (Jim) Lindsay 19:20 ... they're concluding it-

Joe Rogan 19:21 And then-

James (Jim) Lindsay 19:21 ... and they're using theory to do so.

Joe Rogan 19:23 And they're g-... No, go ahead.

James (Jim) Lindsay 19:24 No, no, it's even bigger than that, 'cause why don't they test it? Well, if they tested it, and this isn't... I'm not making this shit up. You won't believe me, but this is true. If they tested it and the test showed that their hypothesis was wrong, they would say that the test was racist.

Joe Rogan 19:36 Right. (laughs)

James (Jim) Lindsay 19:37 That the test is condoning racism and that's why it didn't give them the desired result.

Joe Rogan 19:40 Right. How would you test something like that?

James (Jim) Lindsay 19:42 'Cause, I mean, I'm not a statistician. Actually, I'm a mathematician, but I'm not a statistician. They're two different things. So I'm not exactly sure how you would test that. But conceivably, you could gather data, survey data, and see how attitudes have changed. Maybe you could track kinds of articles, kinds of-

Joe Rogan 19:57 Yeah, who-

James (Jim) Lindsay 19:57 ... events that are coming out. You could kind of pair that up with what's been shown on South Park.

Joe Rogan 20:02 Who, yeah, who watched South Park and tracked that with attitudes. I mean, you could-

James (Jim) Lindsay 20:05 Yeah, but they're not... There's no effort to do this. They're like, "Oh, South Park presents these ideas," which they then cherry-pick, 'cause there's other ideas that they don't talk about that are-

Joe Rogan 20:11 Yeah.

James (Jim) Lindsay 20:11 ... you know, point the other direction. These ideas are problematic. That's the big word. Theoretically, that's a problem. Why? Because they... And I'm not joking. They literally believe that use of language creates the power dynamics that define society. So South Park's using language and imagery that creates a power dynamic that makes people more comfortable being racist.

Joe Rogan 20:31 (laughs)

James (Jim) Lindsay 20:32 Boom, theory done.

Joe Rogan 20:33 All right, so they-

James (Jim) Lindsay 20:34 No test needed. No even attempt test.

Joe Rogan 20:36 Right. They-

James (Jim) Lindsay 20:37 Even if the test happened, the test itself would be racist unless it confirmed the hypothesis.

Joe Rogan 20:41 Right. So they start with an agenda, and then... You mentioned the word laundering, which could... Your former guest, Bret and Heather, talked about, uh, idea laundering. S- t-... I think that's important for the listeners.

James (Jim) Lindsay 20:51 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So what's... That's what really what's going on here, is, um, they're forwarding these hypotheses. They treat, they don't treat them as hypotheses. And then they write up a paper. Paper, like we were saying, is the absolute gold standard of academic work. They send the paper off. The reviewers, in our case, has made our papers crazier every single time.

Joe Rogan 21:11 (laughs)

James (Jim) Lindsay 21:11 So they push it further into the ideology or the madness.

Joe Rogan 21:14 But how does a reviewer do something like that? What, what input do they get to have?

James (Jim) Lindsay 21:18 Well, they said, for example, that we should problematize allyship if we're gonna... If we want our paper published, we've got to problematize allyship.

Joe Rogan 21:23 I love that word problematize. It's another way to say-

Peter Boghossian 21:25 Everything, everything is a... Everything, problematize everything. Dog parks, problematize everything.

James (Jim) Lindsay 21:29 Yeah. (laughs)

Peter Boghossian 21:29 Everything, problematize. Literally anything can be problematized-

James (Jim) Lindsay 21:31 Yeah.

Peter Boghossian 21:32 ... and looked at through a feminist lens.

Joe Rogan 21:33 It's, it's, it's a great word.

Peter Boghossian 21:34 They problematize everything. Everything, the whole world's a fucking problem.

James (Jim) Lindsay 21:38 That's, that's their tool.

Joe Rogan 21:38 (laughs)

James (Jim) Lindsay 21:38 That's why we call it grievance studies. The whole world's a problem.

Peter Boghossian 21:40 Yeah, but it's a grievance. This is... They're, they're massively... Okay, so then... But to do the, the homo, the transphobia thing-

James (Jim) Lindsay 21:45 Yeah, the trans paper.

Peter Boghossian 21:47 (laughs)

James (Jim) Lindsay 21:47 So we wrote this paper saying that straight men are generally transphobic, meaning, in particular, the, their kind of niche weird definition that you see on the internet and activists sometimes, that they aren't interested in having sex with trans people who have penises, trans women who have a penis in particular. And so we said that, "Well, that's a kind of transphobia." And clearly the reason that they might be transphobic is because they don't practice putting things in their butts.

Joe Rogan 22:13 (laughs)

Peter Boghossian 22:13 (laughs)

James (Jim) Lindsay 22:13 So if they start putting stuff up their butts... In particular, we called the paper Dildos, so you can imagine what we were saying, that you put up your butt.

Joe Rogan 22:18 The whole paper was called Dildos?

James (Jim) Lindsay 22:20 No, that was the, that was the nickname we gave it. The paper was called Going in through the Back Door. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 22:25 Really?

Peter Boghossian 22:25 Yeah.

James (Jim) Lindsay 22:26 Really.

Peter Boghossian 22:26 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

James (Jim) Lindsay 22:27 Go- Going in through the Back Door.

Joe Rogan 22:28 And we, we argued that-

James (Jim) Lindsay 22:29 And then there's a lot of technical words.

Joe Rogan 22:30 You took... Did that one get published?

Peter Boghossian 22:31 Yeah, that's called...

James (Jim) Lindsay 22:32 That's published.

Peter Boghossian 22:32 You can see it online.

Joe Rogan 22:33 (laughs)

Peter Boghossian 22:33 You can see it online. So we argued that, that, uh, if straight men just penetrated themselves and had their girlfriends peg them through exposure therapy, you know, you start small and then work your way up, you can remediate transphobia.

James (Jim) Lindsay 22:46 Yeah, we'll make them less transphobic.

Peter Boghossian 22:48 So by-

James (Jim) Lindsay 22:48 As a result.

Peter Boghossian 22:49 ... self-penetrating or having your girlfriend peg you, you can be less transphobic. And they thought this is a great idea.

Joe Rogan 22:54 (laughs)

James (Jim) Lindsay 22:54 And so we based this off of, off of eight interviews, really 13 interviews, but with men. And I say really eight, f- 13. There were 13 interviews documented, but five of them were with gay people, not even straight people. So they don't really apply. So then we have these eight interviews with straight men. We made one of them a conservative. And he's just... So we could just put in, like, you know, crazy things that a conservative might say about this. And they were like, "Why don't... Why weren't there more conservatives participating?" So I was like, "Well, I'm gonna run with this."

Joe Rogan 23:22 (laughs)

Peter Boghossian 23:22 (laughs)

James (Jim) Lindsay 23:22 And I was... I wrote this whole thing. We invited six conservatives to participate.

Joe Rogan 23:27 (laughs)

James (Jim) Lindsay 23:27 And only one accepted. And to kind of summarize why, in the words... And this is in the paper. In the words of one, "I don't want to be a part of some stupid liberal study about shoving things up your butt."

Joe Rogan 23:38 (laughs)

Peter Boghossian 23:39 And they published it.

James (Jim) Lindsay 23:40 And they published that.

Peter Boghossian 23:40 Boom, right in.

Joe Rogan 23:41 (laughs)

Peter Boghossian 23:41 Right in.

James (Jim) Lindsay 23:42 Right in.

Joe Rogan 23:43 Oh my God. (laughs) Oh.

James (Jim) Lindsay 23:45 So we wrote-

Joe Rogan 23:45 Here it is: retracted article.

James (Jim) Lindsay 23:47 Yep.

Joe Rogan 23:48 (laughs)

Peter Boghossian 23:50 (laughs)

James (Jim) Lindsay 23:50 Going in through the back door, right there.

Joe Rogan 23:52 Oh my God. Now, did they contact you after they retracted your article? Did they go, "You guys are fucking assholes"?

James (Jim) Lindsay 23:58 Not only-

Joe Rogan 23:58 "You're wasting our time. We spent hours reviewing your papers."

James (Jim) Lindsay 24:01 We got a couple of pretty bitter responses, but mostly no, mostly they've kind of put their head in the sand and kind of avoided talking to us.

Joe Rogan 24:08 There... What, what I was saying before the show started that I read one article that was really diminishing the impact of what you guys have done, saying, like, what... "It's not a big deal." You know?

James (Jim) Lindsay 24:18 Wrong. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 24:19 What, what... They were trying to make it seem as if what you guys had written was just a prank.... you know?

James (Jim) Lindsay 24:26 Yeah, that's, that's not what happened here.

Peter Boghossian 24:27 That's absolutely false.

James (Jim) Lindsay 24:28 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 24:29 There's a lot of papers that seem like parody that make it through that you guys aren't writing.

James (Jim) Lindsay 24:34 Oh, yeah. We could pull up one about how hot wings... Like, there's a TV show, Spicy Ones or something like that, about hot wings.

Joe Rogan 24:39 Oh, yeah, yeah. The- the- the YouTube show.

James (Jim) Lindsay 24:41 Yeah, yeah. So they- they had a whole p-

Joe Rogan 24:43 Hot Ones?

James (Jim) Lindsay 24:43 Hot Ones, that's what it was. They had a whole, uh... There is a paper out there about that show and it's all about how, you know, hot sauce has everything to do with masculinity and being manly and they didn't have enough women on the show.

Peter Boghossian 24:54 Problematized.

James (Jim) Lindsay 24:55 And it's because it's, because it's sexist and the hot-

Joe Rogan 24:57 It says Emily.

James (Jim) Lindsay 24:57 Hot sauce, I think, was the sexist part.

Peter Boghossian 24:59 Hmm.

James (Jim) Lindsay 24:59 And it has all these bizarre conclusions. We cited that in the paper we wrote-

Peter Boghossian 25:03 (laughs)

James (Jim) Lindsay 25:03 ... about Hooters. We put in the part that there was, you know, masculinity contests of eating the hot wings, who can eat more hot wings, and then they'd say, "Oh, I ate 20 hot wings. Ask out the Hooters girl." Um-

Joe Rogan 25:12 Professor-

James (Jim) Lindsay 25:13 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 25:13 ... wing-eating show Hot Ones is problematic for women.

James (Jim) Lindsay 25:16 See? Problematic.

Peter Boghossian 25:16 He's an ally. There we go.

Joe Rogan 25:17 (laughs)

James (Jim) Lindsay 25:17 But yeah, that's a real paper, right?

Peter Boghossian 25:19 Ah...

James (Jim) Lindsay 25:19 So we cited that paper. It's real.

Joe Rogan 25:21 Oh... (laughs)

James (Jim) Lindsay 25:22 There are thousands of papers like this.

Peter Boghossian 25:24 (laughs)

James (Jim) Lindsay 25:25 There it is.

Joe Rogan 25:25 The Spicy Spectacular.

Peter Boghossian 25:27 There it is.

Joe Rogan 25:27 Food, Gender, and Celebrity on Hot Ones.

Peter Boghossian 25:29 And so, as a professor, he probably teaches this stuff-

James (Jim) Lindsay 25:33 Yeah.

Peter Boghossian 25:33 ... to his students, right?

Joe Rogan 25:34 Mm-hmm.

Peter Boghossian 25:34 So now everything's problematized and this is what credentials him. You get seven of... In general, you get seven of these.

Joe Rogan 25:40 It says Emily. It says it's a woman.

Peter Boghossian 25:41 Seven years.

Narrator 25:42 Yeah.

Peter Boghossian 25:42 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Joe Rogan 25:43 Emily, she wrote it, but who's the other one? Tisha Atien... Who wrote that introduction?

James (Jim) Lindsay 25:49 Oh, it's-

Joe Rogan 25:49 What's the difference? There's two people there.

James (Jim) Lindsay 25:51 Um...

Peter Boghossian 25:51 Oh, it's a commentary?

Joe Rogan 25:52 I'm confused.

Peter Boghossian 25:52 Is it, is it an article about the article?

Joe Rogan 25:55 Introduction?

James (Jim) Lindsay 25:55 Yeah, that's probably what's going on is-

Joe Rogan 25:57 Commentary and criticism. Hmm.

James (Jim) Lindsay 25:59 Yeah, this is... It looks like... I mean, I haven't read this specifically, but-

Peter Boghossian 26:02 (laughs)

James (Jim) Lindsay 26:02 Wait a minute. Listen to the first statement. "Food media have been recognized as cultural artifacts that reference culturally and historically specific ideals of gender-"

Peter Boghossian 26:11 Exactly.

James (Jim) Lindsay 26:12 "... drawing on the simultaneously mundane and omnis-" (laughs)

Peter Boghossian 26:17 (laughs)

James (Jim) Lindsay 26:17 "... qualities, (laughs) qualities of food as a medium for interrogating, interrogating ideas about feminism and identity performance." See, what I was telling you?

Joe Rogan 26:25 Shut the fuck up!

Peter Boghossian 26:26 It's all there, man. That's, like, everything we're talking about.

James (Jim) Lindsay 26:29 This is what we're talking about.

Joe Rogan 26:29 This is such unbelievable horse shit-

James (Jim) Lindsay 26:32 No.

Joe Rogan 26:32 ... that this person is teaching at Central Michigan University?

Peter Boghossian 26:35 Yeah.

James (Jim) Lindsay 26:35 Yeah. This is for real.

Joe Rogan 26:37 Uh...

James (Jim) Lindsay 26:37 This is for real.

Joe Rogan 26:38 Uh...

Peter Boghossian 26:38 Uh, and so there is now a, an ever expanding group of these folks.

Joe Rogan 26:44 (laughs)

Peter Boghossian 26:44 They teach. Do you wanna read more of it? Is it-

Joe Rogan 26:46 It's so fucking funny.

Peter Boghossian 26:47 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 26:48 "In this commentary-"

James (Jim) Lindsay 26:48 We didn't write this one.

Joe Rogan 26:49 "... and criticism section, the authors introduce a diverse sample of case studies that demonstrate the emergence of feminist ideas in and through food media."

James (Jim) Lindsay 26:59 Oh, yeah, man.

Peter Boghossian 26:59 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 26:59 What the fuck are you talking about?

James (Jim) Lindsay 27:00 They were really worried about that.

Joe Rogan 27:03 Get a job! Get a real job! Go out there and work! Do something that someone wants to pay for!

Peter Boghossian 27:11 Engage-

Joe Rogan 27:11 Do something of value.

Peter Boghossian 27:13 ... engagement with hot sauce.

James (Jim) Lindsay 27:14 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 27:15 That is so crazy.

Peter Boghossian 27:16 Right.

James (Jim) Lindsay 27:17 Uh-huh.

Peter Boghossian 27:17 And this is what they're teaching our kids.

Joe Rogan 27:19 Racial assumptions inherent to post-feminist food culture.

James (Jim) Lindsay 27:23 Oh, yeah. I was gonna write a paper about how cornbread is being gentrified and that's why we'll never get over racism.

Peter Boghossian 27:28 (sighs) Oh...

James (Jim) Lindsay 27:28 Because white people are making, like, pumpkin spice cornbread.

Joe Rogan 27:30 There's something that I tweeted the other day about some... What... Lo- Good... Gad Saad tweeted it and I retweeted it, about some, some woman, she's taking back bone broth.

Peter Boghossian 27:42 Oh, I saw that.

James (Jim) Lindsay 27:42 Oh, yeah.

Peter Boghossian 27:43 Yeah, that's good.

Joe Rogan 27:43 What in the fuck are you talking about?

Peter Boghossian 27:45 Yeah.

James (Jim) Lindsay 27:45 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 27:45 People have been cooking bone broth-

Peter Boghossian 27:46 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 27:46 ... for thousands of years.

James (Jim) Lindsay 27:48 For thousands of years.

Joe Rogan 27:49 It's a way of getting nutrients from the, the, the food you eat.

Peter Boghossian 27:51 They've problematized it.

James (Jim) Lindsay 27:53 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 27:53 Oh, look at this. "Queer woman of color wants to decolonize bone broth."

James (Jim) Lindsay 28:00 Stop appropriating my culture.

Peter Boghossian 28:02 (laughs) Yeah.

Joe Rogan 28:03 It's Gad Saad. He's awesome.

James (Jim) Lindsay 28:05 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 28:05 That is so fucking preposterous, a queer woman of color.

James (Jim) Lindsay 28:09 This is what I'm saying, man. There's a thousand papers like this out there for every one we wrote.

Joe Rogan 28:13 Yeah.

Peter Boghossian 28:13 Yeah.

James (Jim) Lindsay 28:13 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 28:13 A thousand of them that you might as well have written.

James (Jim) Lindsay 28:15 Well, you couldn't tell if we did or didn't.

Peter Boghossian 28:17 Th- and that's part of the thing is people can't differentiate what we've done. Um, in fact, not only can they not differentiate, they give us an award. So they can't differentiate it from the stuff that's already out there. And the stuff that's already out there is polluting people's minds.

Joe Rogan 28:30 Now, you-

Peter Boghossian 28:31 It's-

Joe Rogan 28:31 ... you guys, you guys, at least you used to work in academia.

James (Jim) Lindsay 28:35 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 28:35 You work in academia.

Peter Boghossian 28:36 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 28:36 Like, what is... How are, how are your peers treating this?

James (Jim) Lindsay 28:40 (laughs)

Peter Boghossian 28:40 Are people mad at you?

James (Jim) Lindsay 28:41 There are... Well, Pete has... Is gonna have a lot to say about that, I think. But for me, I've had to... From academic people, I've had two kinds of responses. But the overwhelming... But some of those are like, "Oh, you guys." And then the overwhelming of them are the same thing over and over and over again, and I mean, a lot of people. "Thank you so much for doing this, but I can't. Don't tell anybody."

Peter Boghossian 29:00 You can't talk about it, right.

Joe Rogan 29:01 Yeah, keep it under the rug.

James (Jim) Lindsay 29:01 "Just, I'm trying to get a job."

Peter Boghossian 29:02 Right.

James (Jim) Lindsay 29:02 "I- I'm up for tenure, I can't talk about... Thank you. This needs to go."

Joe Rogan 29:05 Hmm.

Peter Boghossian 29:05 Up for tenure.

James (Jim) Lindsay 29:05 And that's everywhere. It's everywhere.

Joe Rogan 29:08 Oh...

James (Jim) Lindsay 29:08 You can't proceed through academia now unless you bow to this stuff.

Joe Rogan 29:14 Tenure sounds like tyranny. It's just, the whole, the whole thing sounds preposterous that you can keep a job for life.

James (Jim) Lindsay 29:19 Well, the idea was supposed to be that you work your ass off for a few years and then you...

Peter Boghossian 29:23 Right.

James (Jim) Lindsay 29:23 It was supposed to be to defend academic freedom.

Joe Rogan 29:25 Yes.

James (Jim) Lindsay 29:25 So you get tenure, then you can go forth and put out some crazy ideas, really, like, dig into some stuff and they can't fire you for, you know, coming up with maybe weird stuff. And then people would argue about it. But now it's kind of become the situation where people get in this... Th- they get in their job and then you can't get rid of them.

Peter Boghossian 29:42 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 29:42 Right, right, right.

Peter Boghossian 29:43 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 29:44 (clears throat) What... Is there a way to fire people?

James (Jim) Lindsay 29:46 Well, if they do something like sexual harassment, then usually, yeah.

Peter Boghossian 29:49 Yeah, th- you can find a way around the tenure thing.

Joe Rogan 29:52 Hmm.

Peter Boghossian 29:52 So...

Joe Rogan 29:53 What is it like for you? Now, you, you are actually teaching.

Peter Boghossian 29:56 It's super uncomfortable.

Joe Rogan 29:57 Are people upset at you?

Peter Boghossian 29:59 Th- Yeah, I'd say they're enraged. (laughs)

James (Jim) Lindsay 30:03 (laughs)

Peter Boghossian 30:03 You know, I mean, the only, the only thing I can think of is like if, if you taught at a Christian school and then you went in and, you know, took videos and posted them on YouTube of defecating in the Bible and then just walked into the school. So I think it- it's kind of similar in that they, they have bought hook, line, and sinker into microaggressions, trigger warnings, safe spaces, diversity initiatives. There- there are no... There's no questioning. There's... And it- and it's something for me that makes me...... deeply uncomfortable when my students can't ask questions, when, when they, they can't... They're, they're just uncomfortable to voice their opinions about things. And I think that, that pe- to say the least, a lot of people are enraged at me, but exactly what Jim said, some people will come and they're like, "Oh, thank you so much." Like, and that... But again, I can't be public about this.

Joe Rogan 30:53 What is the ratio?

Peter Boghossian 30:55 (sighs)

James (Jim) Lindsay 30:56 I mean, for me, it's like 95% people who are really happy it happened and can't let it be known.

Joe Rogan 31:03 Mm-hmm.

James (Jim) Lindsay 31:03 But I'm not, you know, facing these people every day.

Peter Boghossian 31:06 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 31:07 Well, you know, w- through the videos from Evergreen State... (clears throat)

Peter Boghossian 31:11 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 31:11 You can see Bret Weinstein's interactions with not just students, but also some of the professors that were there. There were some of these preposterous people that he had to work with-

James (Jim) Lindsay 31:19 Oh, yeah.

Peter Boghossian 31:19 Right.

Joe Rogan 31:19 ... that are b- buying in hook, line, and sinker to this stuff and they live in these insulated worlds.

Peter Boghossian 31:24 Absolutely.

Joe Rogan 31:25 And this... And they just... They, they create these people that also want to stay inside these insulated worlds and then just d- sort of stew in these ideas, and then again, go out into the real world.

Peter Boghossian 31:39 Yeah, and they think they're better people as a result.

Joe Rogan 31:41 Yeah.

James (Jim) Lindsay 31:41 Right?

Peter Boghossian 31:41 Yeah.

James (Jim) Lindsay 31:42 So it's a big trick.

Joe Rogan 31:43 They're doing the good work.

Peter Boghossian 31:44 Yeah.

James (Jim) Lindsay 31:44 Yeah, 'cause to like question this, maybe to look at it and say, "Uh, you know, that kind of looks like bullshit, but I don't know." A lot of these guys are left-leaning people or outright leftists. A lot of them want to do the right thing, right?

Joe Rogan 31:56 Yeah.

James (Jim) Lindsay 31:56 They really do. These people really care about progressive agendas-

Peter Boghossian 31:59 (coughs)

James (Jim) Lindsay 32:00 ... uh, you know, getting over any lingering discrimination that's going on, racism, sexism, et cetera. They really want to do the right thing. Good for them, right? That's what we want.

Joe Rogan 32:10 Yeah.

James (Jim) Lindsay 32:10 But they actually have to question or like run county. You think of that like as a, as a river of morality running through them, through their mind. They actually have to go upstream a little bit and that's hard and it feels weird. You have to say, "Wait a minute, maybe this scholarship, maybe this stuff isn't the best way to do it."

Peter Boghossian 32:27 Mm-hmm.

James (Jim) Lindsay 32:27 But then the first thought you have is, "Well, these guys are... These, these people in these disciplines, grievance studies are, are fighting racism. So if I go against them, then I'm going against the people fighting racism, so maybe I'm helping racism." And that's what we keep... If we get any criticism, that's what it always is, "You're helping racists. You're a tool of the right," et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

Peter Boghossian 32:45 Yeah, "You're a racist."

James (Jim) Lindsay 32:46 Yeah. Or, "We are outright racists."

Joe Rogan 32:48 Yeah, outright racist and (clears throat) a- and accused of being alt-right-

Peter Boghossian 32:52 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 32:52 ... if you disagree with any of this stuff.

Peter Boghossian 32:53 Any of it.

James (Jim) Lindsay 32:54 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 32:54 Any of it. I get accused of being alt-right all the time. I lean so far left.

Peter Boghossian 32:59 Right. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 32:59 Universal healthcare, universal basic income, uh-

Peter Boghossian 33:02 Right there.

Joe Rogan 33:02 ... free schooling. I think, I think education should be free. I think we should pay for... I believe in a lot of socialist ideas.

James (Jim) Lindsay 33:09 Totally.

Joe Rogan 33:09 But I'm right-wing-

Peter Boghossian 33:11 Right.

Joe Rogan 33:11 ... because I make fun of people that-

Peter Boghossian 33:13 Right.

Joe Rogan 33:13 ... want to study problematization of dogs fucking. (laughs)

Peter Boghossian 33:15 Yeah, exactly. (laughs)

James (Jim) Lindsay 33:16 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 33:16 I mean, this is really where it is.

James (Jim) Lindsay 33:18 That's where it is.

Joe Rogan 33:19 Like, if you look at like whether I support gay rights, women's rights, I'm on, uh, I'm on board.

James (Jim) Lindsay 33:23 I'm all right.

Joe Rogan 33:24 All of them.

Peter Boghossian 33:24 Right.

Joe Rogan 33:25 I'm on board with all that shit.

Peter Boghossian 33:26 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 33:27 Take more of my taxes. I, I fucking...

Peter Boghossian 33:28 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 33:29 I can-

Peter Boghossian 33:29 Right.

Joe Rogan 33:29 ... I can afford to pay more if I really believe that people are gonna get real healthcare-

Peter Boghossian 33:33 Right.

Joe Rogan 33:33 ... and real education.

Peter Boghossian 33:34 We're the same.

Joe Rogan 33:35 I would be-

Peter Boghossian 33:35 Totally.

Joe Rogan 33:36 ... fucking very happy. Very happy.

James (Jim) Lindsay 33:38 Yep.

Peter Boghossian 33:39 Mm-hmm. Yep.

Joe Rogan 33:39 If I thought it was all being appropriated and used correctly, fuck yeah. Let's, let's make the world a better place.

James (Jim) Lindsay 33:44 So that's the thing, right? Is if all this scholarship that they were doing on race and gender, all that, that's important stuff.

Joe Rogan 33:50 Right.

James (Jim) Lindsay 33:50 So if they're doing that right, why wouldn't you want to be behind it?

Joe Rogan 33:53 Right.

James (Jim) Lindsay 33:54 But they're not doing it right. How do I know? 'Cause I made up papers about dog humping and made up the conclusion before I wrote the paper, and then boom, they publish it and give it an award.

Joe Rogan 34:04 Also-

James (Jim) Lindsay 34:04 If I can start with the conclusion and then work backwards to that conclusion, then I'm not doing (laughs) rigorous scholarship. I'm making shit up.

Joe Rogan 34:10 Well also, there's no room for dissent and there's no room-

Peter Boghossian 34:13 None, absolutely none.

Joe Rogan 34:14 Yeah.

Peter Boghossian 34:14 Zero.

James (Jim) Lindsay 34:14 None.

Peter Boghossian 34:15 And, and, in academia, you can't even... You have to teach whatever the moral orthodoxy is. So just imagine this, going into a university, you're trying to... You're a young mind, you're a young kid, and I'm deeply concerned about these kids that are going in. They never hear the other side of an issue about immigration. They never hear the other s- they... So they become brittle over time. So when they hear it, they just... They don't know what to do, they're shocked by it. Professors are terrified that, that they'll get a complaint, they'll have to go to the diversity board. I've been told that I'm not allowed to render my opinion about protected classes when I hand out-

James (Jim) Lindsay 34:47 And you teach ethics.

Peter Boghossian 34:48 And I teach ethics. Yeah, I don't teach accounting.

Joe Rogan 34:49 Protected classes, like-

Peter Boghossian 34:50 Yeah, protected classes. I've also... That's a great ques-

Joe Rogan 34:53 What does that mean?

Peter Boghossian 34:53 Tha- Thank you for asking that.

James (Jim) Lindsay 34:54 (laughs)

Peter Boghossian 34:54 I've asked for a definition of protected classes, a list of protected classes. I didn't receive any. Uh, I'm n-

Joe Rogan 35:00 But yet you can be criticized for-

Peter Boghossian 35:02 Yeah, I cannot, I cannot offer-

Joe Rogan 35:03 ... be fired for it.

Peter Boghossian 35:04 Yeah, yeah, I cannot offer-

Joe Rogan 35:05 (laughs) There's no list?

Peter Boghossian 35:06 ... under-

James (Jim) Lindsay 35:07 Oh, no, no, no, no, no.

Joe Rogan 35:07 (laughs)

Peter Boghossian 35:08 ... no, so, so yeah, I was up on a Title IX violation. I'm not...

Joe Rogan 35:11 You were up for a violation?

Peter Boghossian 35:12 A Title IX violation. My, that I can't-

Joe Rogan 35:14 What is a Title IX violation?

Peter Boghossian 35:15 Title IX violation is serious shit. It's-

James (Jim) Lindsay 35:17 That's federal discrimination law in universities.

Peter Boghossian 35:20 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 35:20 You were?

James (Jim) Lindsay 35:21 Did.

Joe Rogan 35:21 You? You? What did you do?

Peter Boghossian 35:22 I can't talk about it. It's illegal.

Joe Rogan 35:24 Okay.

Peter Boghossian 35:24 It's illegal. But, but among the other things that came out in that meeting were, uh, I'm not allowed to render my opinion about a protected class. And so for example, uh, I can't... So homosexuals I know are covered under protected classes. Uh-

Joe Rogan 35:40 You can't have an opinion on homosexual people?

Peter Boghossian 35:42 I can have an opinion, but I can't-

Joe Rogan 35:44 What if it's a positive opinion?

Peter Boghossian 35:45 Well, o- so the example that was used in class was evident- evidently, I made a comment s-... Okay, so let's take a step back.

Joe Rogan 35:53 Okay.

Peter Boghossian 35:54 So this is an ethics class-

James (Jim) Lindsay 35:56 (coughs)

Peter Boghossian 35:56 ... and I was talking about how mor- uh, sexual choice does not fall into the realm of morality. So if, if a guy's gay and he likes another guy, that's just not a moral thing, that's just-

Joe Rogan 36:07 Preference or...

Peter Boghossian 36:08 Yeah, it's just is what it is.

James (Jim) Lindsay 36:09 Yeah.

Peter Boghossian 36:09 Like a matter of taste.

Joe Rogan 36:10 Sure.

Peter Boghossian 36:11 And some... I don't remember the whole thing, but someone in, someone in the class said, "Well, you know, you shouldn't have tastes or something." Or, "You shouldn't have an..." I can't remember the exact frame because I'm getting this third-hand from the, uh, from my violation, you know, my, my trial.

Joe Rogan 36:27 So someone came to someone else...

Peter Boghossian 36:30 S- somebody said in class, "Well, what about this?" And I, I made the comment... I said...... everybody has something, everybody has a preference. Like you can't say that no one had a preference. I said it-

Joe Rogan 36:41 Right.

Peter Boghossian 36:41 ... it would be as if... It, it was... It would be as if I said, "Well, you know, I don't wanna date someone who's 400 pounds." So that comment then got turned into something when they called somebody else in, the Office of Diversity Inclusion called someone else in, and it was made that I was rendering my opinion about people who were 400 pounds. When my... What I was doing is saying that homosexuality itself, there's no, there's no reason to give that... It's, it's just not a moral thing, but people lump it in. But the main point of this whole thing is that we have situations in which professors can't talk about protected classes. Students are afraid to ask questions. Everybody's walking on eggshells and the students aren't learning.

Joe Rogan 37:23 And phrases are taken out of context.

Peter Boghossian 37:25 Phrases are taken out of context. Now, now if you want a place to go to celebrate whatever the reigning moral orthodoxy is, then the university is a great place for you.

Joe Rogan 37:34 Did you explain what you meant by saying that you like... Saying you don't wanna date people over 400 pounds? Did you explain the context of the use of...

Peter Boghossian 37:43 She wasn't interested in the context of it.

Joe Rogan 37:46 (laughs) And the truth-

James (Jim) Lindsay 37:46 But the thing is, he didn't even say he doesn't wanna date people over 400 pounds.

Peter Boghossian 37:49 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 37:49 He said-

James (Jim) Lindsay 37:49 He said it's as if I said that.

Peter Boghossian 37:50 It's like... Exactly. I phrased it as a hypothetical.

Joe Rogan 37:52 Right.

Peter Boghossian 37:53 Right. So there are entire things-

Joe Rogan 37:56 But if you had said, "Maybe I don't like... I don't wanna date people over seven feet tall," maybe you could've got away with that.

Peter Boghossian 38:03 Yeah, I don't think people over seven feet tall are a protected class.

Joe Rogan 38:06 Right. You could've got away with that.

Peter Boghossian 38:07 Yeah.

James (Jim) Lindsay 38:07 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 38:07 Even though it's still basically the same thing.

Peter Boghossian 38:09 So-

Joe Rogan 38:09 It's a preference issue.

Peter Boghossian 38:10 So I mentioned this to one of my colleagues and he said to me, "Oh, you... That's... You can't say that. You should never have said that." And I said, "Really? Why?" He said, "Well, you should have said, well, well, 'I don't like dating blue or green people.'" I'm like, "Why?" They're-

Joe Rogan 38:22 They don't exist. (laughs)

Peter Boghossian 38:23 They're, they're... They, they don't ex-

James (Jim) Lindsay 38:23 (laughs)

Peter Boghossian 38:23 There were no blue or green people. Who is that gonna resonate with?

Joe Rogan 38:26 But what if they start coming around, man, and then they become a protected class. And then someone goes back-

Peter Boghossian 38:30 Right. Blue-

Joe Rogan 38:31 ... and looks at what you said 10 years ago about blue or green people.

Peter Boghossian 38:33 So that's how-

Joe Rogan 38:34 And you get fired.

James (Jim) Lindsay 38:35 Right and that's how that works. Uh, if you look at... There's all this stuff been coming out about victimhood culture.

Joe Rogan 38:40 Yeah.

James (Jim) Lindsay 38:40 And how it propagates and how it develops. And that's one of the things, it's called competitive victimhood.

Peter Boghossian 38:44 Right.

James (Jim) Lindsay 38:44 Um, you could call it-

Peter Boghossian 38:45 Competitive victimhood.

Joe Rogan 38:46 Competitive victimhood.

James (Jim) Lindsay 38:47 That's the formal term of people who study this.

Joe Rogan 38:49 I love that.

Peter Boghossian 38:50 (laughs)

James (Jim) Lindsay 38:51 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 38:51 That's wonderful. When people are fighting over who's a bigger victim. Oh.

James (Jim) Lindsay 38:55 But you see it all the time. It's like you see people in society, it's like, "Oh, the Black Lives Matter people go nuts." And then all of a sudden the white supremacists are out and they're like, "Oh, white people have it hard too." The second they... The second somebody hears, "Oh, black people have it hard," somebody's gonna be like, "White people have it hard too." That's competitive victimhood.

Peter Boghossian 39:10 Right.

James (Jim) Lindsay 39:10 And so then when you have like a moral economy, if you will, where you can kind of cash in and gain status or gain access to, to speaking or whatever it happens to be, by holding a certain status of, of victimhood or grievance, then you're gonna find people competing to find ways to get that for themselves.

Joe Rogan 39:29 Yes.

Peter Boghossian 39:29 Right.

James (Jim) Lindsay 39:29 Everybody's gonna go... I mean, you have the infrastructure there, everybody's gonna go after trying to maximize their own utility within that.

Joe Rogan 39:35 Yeah.

James (Jim) Lindsay 39:36 So people over seven feet tall aren't a protected class yet, but the second they realize that they might be able to cash in on it, they will... Might lobby for it.

Peter Boghossian 39:44 It's competitive victimhood. Grievance jockeying, it's been also called.

James (Jim) Lindsay 39:46 Yeah, I've called it grievance jockeying. I think Gad Saad, since you mentioned him, called it the Oppression Olympics.

Peter Boghossian 39:51 Yep.

Joe Rogan 39:51 Yeah. It's, well, it's wonderful times.

James (Jim) Lindsay 39:55 (laughs)

Peter Boghossian 39:55 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 39:55 It really is. I mean-

Peter Boghossian 39:56 So if you look at the root... So here's the, the thing that we, that I thought about extensively. If you look at the root, where is this stuff coming from? All of this stuff is coming from these... The canons of knowledge, their bodies of literature, their peer-reviewed, and that's the idea laundering thing again, which we should get to.

James (Jim) Lindsay 40:15 Yeah. Yeah.

Peter Boghossian 40:15 So all of that stuff is coming from, from this. And if you wanna make... If you wanna get back to constructive politics, to get back to people having conversations... And that's the thing, like that's... I think one of the reasons that your show has been so successful is it's a, it's a combination of authenticity with... You can have... You're totally willing to have conversations with no holds barred. Right? You can't have that in the academy.

James (Jim) Lindsay 40:39 Mm-mm.

Peter Boghossian 40:40 So people need to go to you to hear these thoughts and to wrestle with ideas and to engage. It's just a... You can... You can-

Joe Rogan 40:49 But you can... You can't really do it anywhere else other than a podcast, because-

Peter Boghossian 40:53 Well, you can't do it in the academy.

Joe Rogan 40:54 But you can't even do it on the Today Show. They fired Megyn Kelly for-

Peter Boghossian 40:58 Right, right.

Joe Rogan 40:58 ... wa- asking why is blackface racist.

Peter Boghossian 41:01 Right.

Joe Rogan 41:02 Which is a stupid fucking question.

James (Jim) Lindsay 41:03 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 41:03 No doubt. She's not a bright woman in, in that regard, socially. Right?

James (Jim) Lindsay 41:07 So-

Joe Rogan 41:08 It's a very clumsy, clunky thing to say.

James (Jim) Lindsay 41:10 Clunky.

Peter Boghossian 41:10 Clunky.

Joe Rogan 41:10 But they just fire her.

Peter Boghossian 41:12 They fire her.

James (Jim) Lindsay 41:12 Yep.

Joe Rogan 41:12 They should have... What they should have done was brought in Black scholars and Black intellectuals-

Peter Boghossian 41:19 Exactly.

Joe Rogan 41:19 ... for a week just to fucking grill her.

Peter Boghossian 41:21 Exactly.

Joe Rogan 41:22 And that would have been amazing television.

James (Jim) Lindsay 41:24 Yeah, yeah.

Peter Boghossian 41:24 But that attitude that you have is not what they have.

Joe Rogan 41:28 Right. Well, they're just panicking.

Peter Boghossian 41:28 So they wanna punish the transgressor. Right? They-

Joe Rogan 41:31 Well, the... Well, I think they just wanna stop hemorrhaging... And I think they didn't like her anyway.

James (Jim) Lindsay 41:35 No, that's true.

Joe Rogan 41:36 I mean, the word, the word is they really didn't enjoy her and that she wasn't a nice person and she was a, a mean person on set.

Peter Boghossian 41:41 But it was a learning moment, right? It was a teaching moment that's lost now.

Joe Rogan 41:44 Yes, yes, yes.

James (Jim) Lindsay 41:45 But, but, but think-

Peter Boghossian 41:45 It's lost.

James (Jim) Lindsay 41:46 But think about it in terms of what we were talking about earlier, where the, the scholarships stretching back again to the '60s. You have this idea that all of society is constructed out of power dynamics that are mediated through language, media, imagery. And so she just now became problematic.

Peter Boghossian 42:02 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 42:03 (laughs)

James (Jim) Lindsay 42:03 And she put out ideas that would be dangerous and poisonous.

Joe Rogan 42:06 Yeah.

James (Jim) Lindsay 42:06 Not something to discuss the merits or dismerits of, not something to work through, not something as a teachable moment. She put out an idea that's dangerous. She can't put out ideas anymore.

Joe Rogan 42:15 Well, you know, what was really interesting too, she tried... She was so disingenuous in how she approached it. It was so obvious. You know, what... A black person, is it... Why is it wrong for a Black person dressed as a white person?

Peter Boghossian 42:25 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 42:26 It's not. No one ever said that. Why are you pretending? You're just setting it up so that you can say a white person wearing black ma-... Blackface.

James (Jim) Lindsay 42:34 Right.

Peter Boghossian 42:34 Th- think about the-

Joe Rogan 42:35 Well, you know.

Peter Boghossian 42:35 Think about the other cultural moment there too. So like you said, they bring in Black scholars, and at the end of that, she said, "You know, I really listened to that." And-

Joe Rogan 42:42 Yeah.

Peter Boghossian 42:42 "I didn't know that and I was wrong and I'm changing my mind."

Joe Rogan 42:45 There was this woman on Twitter that said her video looked like... I retweeted it, that it looked like a hostage video.

James (Jim) Lindsay 42:50 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Joe Rogan 42:51 The only thing that was missing was her holding up a newspaper that showed the date.

Peter Boghossian 42:54 I saw that. Yeah, yeah.

James (Jim) Lindsay 42:55 Yeah, yeah.

Joe Rogan 42:55 (laughs)

James (Jim) Lindsay 42:56 Yeah, yeah, it was an Australian woman.

Peter Boghossian 42:57 Yeah.

James (Jim) Lindsay 42:59 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 43:00 The whole thing is so fucking funny. But that is one of the worst ways to, to really dissect ideas, because first of all, there's a studio audience. That, that fucks everything up.

James (Jim) Lindsay 43:11 Right.

Joe Rogan 43:11 Second of all, you have these massive time constraints.

James (Jim) Lindsay 43:15 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 43:15 And then you have advertisers, then you have a bunch of executives that are all cowards. They're all just ready to pull the trigger on anything.

James (Jim) Lindsay 43:21 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Joe Rogan 43:21 Anytime they can blame you for anything that went wrong and get rid of you or fire you, "Fire her! Fire him! Get rid of him! Get rid of him!"

James (Jim) Lindsay 43:28 Yep.

Joe Rogan 43:28 "Get rid of him. Bring in the next person." You know?

James (Jim) Lindsay 43:30 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 43:30 And then they'll, what they'll most likely do is to, to show that they've learned, they'll hire an all-black crew-

James (Jim) Lindsay 43:38 Right.

Joe Rogan 43:38 ... for that-

James (Jim) Lindsay 43:38 A diverse crew.

Joe Rogan 43:39 Yes. That's probably-

James (Jim) Lindsay 43:40 That, that's all they're usually... Yeah.

Joe Rogan 43:40 ... what they're gonna do.

James (Jim) Lindsay 43:41 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 43:41 Matter of fact, I think I read... Isn't... Aren't they doing that? See, see if they do that. They're replacing Megyn Kelly with a, a crew of, of color. (laughs)

James (Jim) Lindsay 43:52 It's temporary.

Joe Rogan 43:53 It's just... Think about-

James (Jim) Lindsay 43:54 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 43:54 ... where that works, right? It works... You said they're cowards. They're afraid they're gonna, you know, damage their brand or whatever it is. Yeah.

James (Jim) Lindsay 43:59 Where does that work? Or who works on that? Bullies, right? So these people, why are they so pervasive in the academy? Why are they so p- so pervasive in media? They know they can bully these people. They know that they can go lean on this stuff and somebody's gonna be cowardly, and then they're gonna be able to, you know, make something change in the direction they want it to change.

Joe Rogan 44:17 Right.

James (Jim) Lindsay 44:17 You see it even creeping into politics. They, they try to do it with policymakers. You see it a lot more in, in a lot of other countries. Right now, we're in this massive, like, backlash against it in American politics.

Joe Rogan 44:27 Yeah.

James (Jim) Lindsay 44:27 How's that going? You know, did (laughs) did-

Joe Rogan 44:29 (laughs)

James (Jim) Lindsay 44:29 ... 2016 help your progressive agenda, gang? Like, holy crap.

Joe Rogan 44:34 Well, that is a part of the problem with the... What are they, what are they saying?

James (Jim) Lindsay 44:37 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 44:37 So yeah. Look at this. "Today, as you know, we're starting a new chapter. In the third hour of our show, as it evolves..." It's evolving. It's a fucking living being. "We want you to know, the entire Today family will continue to bring you informative and important stories, just as we always have." And look, two black guys and a brown chick. (laughs)

James (Jim) Lindsay 44:58 And it's 100% diverse.

Joe Rogan 45:00 We, we got rid of the ice princess.

James (Jim) Lindsay 45:01 It's all diverse. That's the thing-

Joe Rogan 45:03 Yeah.

James (Jim) Lindsay 45:03 ... is the way that di- diversity is d- uh, defined. If you had a panel that was just black guys, it would be 100% diverse.

Joe Rogan 45:10 Whoa.

James (Jim) Lindsay 45:10 Yeah, so they've redefined the word diversity.

Joe Rogan 45:12 Yeah.

James (Jim) Lindsay 45:12 They've redefined the word inclusion.

Joe Rogan 45:14 Yeah.

James (Jim) Lindsay 45:14 So... But to people outside the academy, they, they think, "Oh, diversity. It's a great thing," right?

Joe Rogan 45:19 Right.

James (Jim) Lindsay 45:19 You know, we have... But that's not what it means. It means kind of when everybody has the same ideas about something. And-

Joe Rogan 45:26 It's also when you... If you are enforcing diversity, for what... Look, we have to... We would have to find out, like ultimately, the goal is to find out what, what causes people to succeed and e- especially succeeding in something that is benign as talking, right? You're just talking.

James (Jim) Lindsay 45:46 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 45:46 That's all you're doing. So what causes someone to succeed in talking? What makes their ideas valuable? What makes them someone you'd enjoy listening to? And then finding, like, what, what impediments there are to that in, in all the various communities and fix it at the root level. W- what doesn't work is saying, "We need one Chinese lady."

James (Jim) Lindsay 46:07 Right.

Joe Rogan 46:07 "We need one black guy, and we need one white guy." 'Cause if you do something like that, you're not gonna get the best show.

James (Jim) Lindsay 46:14 Nope.

Joe Rogan 46:14 Or you're not gonna get the best anything.

James (Jim) Lindsay 46:16 Well, you're not even guaranteed to achieve the goal you're claiming. So it's, again, it goes back to theory. In theory, and I mean theory in terms of postmodern critical theory that this stuff's all based in that we studied, the idea is that if you have a particular identity, now you have a particular view of the world, and people of other identities have different ones.

Joe Rogan 46:33 Mm-hmm.

James (Jim) Lindsay 46:33 And in fact, there's this whole thing called standpoint epistemology that says that if you have a marginalized identity, you know more about the world than other people because you live in two worlds at once. So the i- the idea is, "Oh, if we get a black guy in here, he's had a different life experience, therefore he can speak truly to that.

Joe Rogan 46:50 Right.

James (Jim) Lindsay 46:50 If you get a Chinese lady in here, she can speak to that." So on and so forth. So the guess is that by virtue merely of bringing in people who look different with different, uh, races or genders or sexes or sexualities, then you automatically get a diverse set of opinions.

Joe Rogan 47:08 Right.

James (Jim) Lindsay 47:09 But that doesn't work. That's not how that actually works. You could take people of every race, educate them on the exact same social justice curriculum, and they all think exactly the same thing.

Joe Rogan 47:18 But at least in something like hosting the Today Show, you are just talking. Once you put these sort of diversity standards to something like mathematics-

James (Jim) Lindsay 47:27 Oh, yeah.

Joe Rogan 47:27 ... then, that's, that's when things get super squirrelly.

James (Jim) Lindsay 47:29 Yeah, they're trying to do that a little bit.

Joe Rogan 47:31 I'm sure they are, yeah.

James (Jim) Lindsay 47:31 You Retweeted that thing I wrote about the mathematics, and they wanted people to sign an equity, which is another-

Joe Rogan 47:37 Yes.

James (Jim) Lindsay 47:37 ... word that they've co-opted. They wanted folks to sign an equity statement and a diversity statement.

Joe Rogan 47:42 Well, explain that.

James (Jim) Lindsay 47:43 And the thing is-

Joe Rogan 47:43 Explain what they're trying to... That you, you, you have a commitment to diversity.

James (Jim) Lindsay 47:47 Yeah, you have a commitment to diversity, and you have a, a commitment to equity. And so equity does not mean treating people equally. It's not like you have a commitment to equality, which is... We should all have a commitment-

Joe Rogan 47:59 Sure.

James (Jim) Lindsay 47:59 ... to equality. Uh, it's... Equity is defined differently. It's to make up for past injustices or to make up for, um, some deficiency that has occurred somewhere along the line, so you have- Yeah, affirmative action is an equity movement. It's to treat people differently in order to level the playing field.

Joe Rogan 48:20 Yeah.

James (Jim) Lindsay 48:21 (laughs) So it's not treating people... It's not treating people equally, and that's the key thing.

Joe Rogan 48:25 Yeah.

James (Jim) Lindsay 48:25 It sounds like it is-

Joe Rogan 48:26 Right?

James (Jim) Lindsay 48:26 ... but it's not.

Joe Rogan 48:27 It's a word that they've smuggled in. These stories-

James (Jim) Lindsay 48:29 Straight out of the literature again.

Joe Rogan 48:30 It's, again, out of... All the stuff comes back to the literature. So if you look at the word equity in the dictionary, you get one definition, but if you look at the word equity as they're applying it...

James (Jim) Lindsay 48:40 Yeah, in sociological definitions, it's a very specific thing that means something slightly different-

Joe Rogan 48:46 Yeah.

James (Jim) Lindsay 48:46 ... from what people assume it means.

Joe Rogan 48:47 So here's the question you should ask somebody. Anytime you hear someone use the word equity, just ask, "Oh, I'm, I'm curious, why didn't you use the word equality?"Mm.

Peter Boghossian 48:55 Can, can you, can you think of a ... Would the sentence be the same? Would the meaning be the same? Well, the meaning is not the same. That's why they used equity and not equality.

Joe Rogan 49:03 Well, equity is a finance word. That's why it's weird.

Peter Boghossian 49:06 Equity is also a fin-

James (Jim) Lindsay 49:07 Yeah.

Peter Boghossian 49:07 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 49:07 Yeah, yeah.

Peter Boghossian 49:07 So they don't make up new words, right? They, they-

Joe Rogan 49:09 Right. They co-opt.

Peter Boghossian 49:10 Yeah. They co-opt, they change, and then they smuggle diversity, inclusion.

Joe Rogan 49:14 Yeah.

James (Jim) Lindsay 49:15 And they write these academic papers, and they come up with these ideas. They start with a conclusion. They push it through. It gets published, and that's just like ... It's like the academic equivalent of money laundering.

Peter Boghossian 49:24 Yes. (laughs)

James (Jim) Lindsay 49:25 Right? So what ... How does money laundering work?

Peter Boghossian 49:27 Yes.

James (Jim) Lindsay 49:27 You take some money. You got, you know, ill-gotten money. You put it through, you know, this shell company or this thing or the other thing, and it comes back to you. And now it's had a legal trail that makes it legit, right? Well, here you take some prejudice. You write it down as an academic paper. You publish the thing. It gets the academic standard stamp on it. It's the gold standard of knowledge now, and now this is ... This prejudice you started with now looks like legitimate knowledge-

Peter Boghossian 49:51 Right.

James (Jim) Lindsay 49:51 ... that can go straight in the classroom. It can go straight to-

Peter Boghossian 49:53 Exactly.

James (Jim) Lindsay 49:53 ... activists or policymakers. It's a real problem.

Peter Boghossian 49:56 Yeah. And when they, when they-

Joe Rogan 49:57 It's really funny though that you bring ... (laughs) It's like academic money laundering.

James (Jim) Lindsay 50:00 It is. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 50:01 It is.

Peter Boghossian 50:02 Yeah. That's Bret, that's just-

James (Jim) Lindsay 50:03 That's where Weinstein said that. Bret Weinstein said that.

Joe Rogan 50:05 (laughs) And that's what it is. It comes out the other side as knowledge. Yeah.

Peter Boghossian 50:09 So then they think they have knowledge.

Joe Rogan 50:11 Right. So we're, we're-

James (Jim) Lindsay 50:12 Yeah. Our paper about the dildos, the guy said, "This paper is an important contribution to knowledge."

Peter Boghossian 50:16 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 50:17 Who, who said that?

James (Jim) Lindsay 50:18 The reviewer one, I think, out of the-

Joe Rogan 50:20 Reviewer one, who the fuck are you?

James (Jim) Lindsay 50:22 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 50:22 (laughs)

James (Jim) Lindsay 50:22 "Important contribution to knowledge."

Joe Rogan 50:24 I w- I would hope reviewer one was just hitting a bong right before he wrote that.

Peter Boghossian 50:28 (laughs)

James (Jim) Lindsay 50:28 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 50:28 Just baked out of his mind.

Peter Boghossian 50:30 All right.

Joe Rogan 50:30 Laughing, laughing at the whole thing.

James (Jim) Lindsay 50:32 Knowledge.

Joe Rogan 50:32 Who ... What kind of person gets attracted to wholeheartedly agreeing to these ridiculous ideas? Like what, what are the people like?

Peter Boghossian 50:43 It's a great question.

James (Jim) Lindsay 50:44 I think it's people who wanna save the world.

Joe Rogan 50:46 Well, we ... I think we would all like to save the world.

James (Jim) Lindsay 50:48 Yeah.

Peter Boghossian 50:49 I'm much more cynical than you, but-

James (Jim) Lindsay 50:50 But they ... Yeah. They've gotta-

Joe Rogan 50:53 (laughs)

Peter Boghossian 50:55 (laughs)

James (Jim) Lindsay 50:55 (laughs) No, they've got ... They've, they've got this idea that ... I mean, we talked a moment ago about, about privilege, and we kinda, you know, brushed real close the idea that it fits kinda like original sin.

Joe Rogan 51:06 Mm.

James (Jim) Lindsay 51:06 And so they see the, the, the downside of privilege, the opposite side, discrimination or racism, sexism, et cetera. Hate is the big word, you know, fight hate. Uh, he's, he, he's using hate. This is hate speech. That's where I think they got the, the term. That's like the evil thing. You're born with privilege. That's like original sin. So what do they wanna do? They wanna, they wanna fix ... To save the world by clearing out the evil of privilege, by clearing out hate from the world. The ... For them, utopia means nobody hates. And by hate, we mean something like racism, sexism, et cetera. So it's a noble idea. But then when you, you start looking at it in this like ridiculous way, like you're born with privilege and now you're just stuck with it, right? What can you do? It's original sin. You can be sorry for it. You can try to be an ally and work it off. You can check it, whatever the hell that means. You can do a lot of things, but you can't actually atone for it. You can't get over it. You can't get rid of it. Then you get the situation where it's like they really, really need to take desperate measures, like, "Let's lock it all down. Let's, let's tell these people that they're wrong. Let's try to point out how white supremacy is in them because they're White. Let's point out how masculinity is an ideology that needs to be destroyed." That was Lisa Wade. She wrote that last year. Uh, feminists-

Joe Rogan 52:19 Masculinity is an ideology-

James (Jim) Lindsay 52:21 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 52:21 ... that needs to be destroyed?

Peter Boghossian 52:23 Right. Top sh-

James (Jim) Lindsay 52:23 Yeah, needs to be ... Because Trump.

Joe Rogan 52:25 Masculinity, yeah.

James (Jim) Lindsay 52:25 And this is the thing, right? I think in the, in the past couple of years ... Of course before Trump, it wasn't n- ... They had other avatars. I think there's a lotta anger and frustration, justifiably so, at Trump. And they see this. And so I read so many other usually op-eds, not their academic pieces, and it's like, "Men are like this. Men are blah, blah, blah." And you can tell they're just talking about Trump, but they can't touch him, so they're pissed off. And they try to take it out on all men. I think that's like a huge thing. They see these problems. They exaggerate the problems. They practice problematizing, and that's a thing, right? They practice this stuff. You go to school. It's in the general ed curriculum. Maybe they major in this stuff. You get good at finding problems. I was just talking yesterday, came over at ... I never actually ... I got to Los Angeles a couple times before, but I've never been to the beach. I never actually made it down. So I went down to Santa Monica. I go to one of these burger places right on the, on the ... Right by the pier, and it says that this is the burger that made Santa Monica famous. And immediately, you saw the Hot Ones thing, right? I was like, "There's a paper in this."

Joe Rogan 53:21 (laughs)

James (Jim) Lindsay 53:22 You see the problems. Here you have this manly double cheeseburger being marketed. That's what made Santa Monica famous? Oh, so manly food culture is the kind of like, um, colonialism that goes and makes a city become a city. It beco- ... Makes a place into a place. And you could ... I could write a paper about that in three days.

Joe Rogan 53:39 Do you have to have credentials to write a paper?

Peter Boghossian 53:41 No.

Joe Rogan 53:42 Do you have to have a PhD?

James (Jim) Lindsay 53:42 No, technically not.

Peter Boghossian 53:44 No.

James (Jim) Lindsay 53:44 And that's a sad thing 'cause it's w- ... Their response to this has been, "Oh, we're gonna screen better to see who is actually writing these papers, so they can't trick us." But that's bullshit.

Joe Rogan 53:53 Well, how could they possibly trick you?

Peter Boghossian 53:54 (laughs)

James (Jim) Lindsay 53:54 The point is that with scholarship is that it should stand on its merits.

Joe Rogan 53:57 Right.

Peter Boghossian 53:57 Right.

James (Jim) Lindsay 53:57 If the argument's solid, if the research is good, and they thought our research was good, so-

Joe Rogan 54:01 That's my point about the dog humping thing.

Peter Boghossian 54:04 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 54:04 It sh- ... They should leave it the way it is if they're saying that this is such an important piece.

James (Jim) Lindsay 54:09 Right. Well, I mean, I would walk back on that one 'cause we did make up the data.

Peter Boghossian 54:13 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 54:13 (laughs)

James (Jim) Lindsay 54:13 And falsifying data is not cool.

Joe Rogan 54:15 Well, what data would be incorrect? Like what ... When you do false-

James (Jim) Lindsay 54:18 Oh, we didn't even go to the dog park.

Joe Rogan 54:21 (laughs)

Peter Boghossian 54:21 (laughs)

James (Jim) Lindsay 54:21 We definitely didn't ask anybody about their dogs or their genitals or anything.

Joe Rogan 54:24 Yeah. I bet you could've and achieved similar results.

James (Jim) Lindsay 54:27 I mean, we said ... We said that there's a dog crapping on another dog's head in the paper. And like that didn't happen. I'm sure that didn't happen. And maybe it did happen. I don't know.

Peter Boghossian 54:35 Oh, yeah.

Joe Rogan 54:35 (laughs)

James (Jim) Lindsay 54:35 Who's e- ... I mean, this stuff's i- insane. But we had other papers that didn't do that. Fat bodybuilding didn't do that. The one that's ... The one, The Joke's on You didn't do that. There's no made-up data in most of our papers. And why shouldn't those stand? Right?

Joe Rogan 54:47 Right.

Peter Boghossian 54:47 Right. Exactly.

James (Jim) Lindsay 54:47 Why should they stand by those?

Peter Boghossian 54:48 Exactly.

Joe Rogan 54:49 Yeah.

James (Jim) Lindsay 54:49 I can get it because we-

Peter Boghossian 54:50 Because they can't differentiate real scholarship from bullshit because they're in this crazy ecosystem-

James (Jim) Lindsay 54:55 Yeah.

Peter Boghossian 54:55 ... in which their ability to make discerning judgments about things has been dulled because they put an agenda before the truth.

James (Jim) Lindsay 55:02 I keep seeing all these academics coming like they got their got you moment on us. They're like, "Ah, I read your paper. It's actually a real paper. It's good."

Peter Boghossian 55:08 Yeah. How crazy is that?

James (Jim) Lindsay 55:09 It's like, "Yeah. Thanks for noticing, you know, asshole. That's exactly what we were trying to do." We weren't writing just stupid pranks. The dog park paper's pretty funny, but we were actually trying to learn what's going on there. Thanks for noticing. Somebody finally did." But that means, of course, they don't wanna admit that we actually learned this stuff because then when we say, "It's shit," they're stuck with somebody who knows what they're talking about saying it sucks. And they don't want that either.

Joe Rogan 55:31 (laughs)

Narrator 55:32 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 55:33 Now, when you said there's people that are trying to save the world-

Peter Boghossian 55:35 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 55:36 ... like, what, what do y- what do you really mean by that?

James (Jim) Lindsay 55:39 I think they're the people who are trying to build the kingdom of God on the planet Earth. They, it's, you know, to draw a metaphor, a religious metaphor, they are people who see an evil and they wanna purge the world of that evil by any means necessary.

Joe Rogan 55:50 And, the evil being, like-

James (Jim) Lindsay 55:52 Privilege.

Peter Boghossian 55:53 Privilege, yeah.

James (Jim) Lindsay 55:53 Privilege.

Joe Rogan 55:54 Hate.

Peter Boghossian 55:55 And, it's, it's-

James (Jim) Lindsay 55:55 White supremacy.

Peter Boghossian 55:56 ... a new religion.

James (Jim) Lindsay 55:56 Patriarchy.

Peter Boghossian 55:57 So, it's Christianity goes down, it's just, you know, the ... Game of Thrones.

Joe Rogan 56:00 Mm-hmm.

Peter Boghossian 56:00 The only reason you need new gods are because people don't believe in the old gods.

Joe Rogan 56:03 Right.

Peter Boghossian 56:04 And so, we have these religious modules or what have you-

James (Jim) Lindsay 56:06 (sighs)

Peter Boghossian 56:06 ... in our brain. And, the new religion is intersectionality. And, we see-

James (Jim) Lindsay 56:11 And, that really is what it is, right?

Peter Boghossian 56:13 That's exactly what it is. And, we're also-

James (Jim) Lindsay 56:14 Yeah, the parallels are staggering.

Peter Boghossian 56:15 ... we've been writing about that and talking about that for years now.

James (Jim) Lindsay 56:17 And, I've been studying-

Joe Rogan 56:18 That's really-

James (Jim) Lindsay 56:18 ... religious psychology for years.

Joe Rogan 56:20 Yeah.

James (Jim) Lindsay 56:20 And, it's, it's all over the place in this.

Peter Boghossian 56:21 It is, it is, political correctness is paralleled-

Joe Rogan 56:25 And, even if-

Peter Boghossian 56:25 ... with blasphemy. It's the same thing.

Joe Rogan 56:26 E- even the parallels of heresy.

James (Jim) Lindsay 56:28 Yeah.

Peter Boghossian 56:28 The parallels, that's exactly right.

James (Jim) Lindsay 56:30 That's exactly right.

Peter Boghossian 56:31 Heresy. Yeah.

James (Jim) Lindsay 56:31 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 56:31 I mean, it's, it's so stunning how easily people sort of slide into these-

James (Jim) Lindsay 56:36 Prepped.

Joe Rogan 56:36 ... pre-conditioned slots.

Peter Boghossian 56:38 Here's the one difference, and I think this is a key difference. The reason that it's easier... And I, I mentioned this to Pen Jillette when we did a talk, and he just couldn't believe it. The reason that it's easier to talk to a Christian, for example, about faith or about their religion, is 'cause at the end of the day, it comes down to faith. These people don't have any faith. They have "knowledge," quote unquote. They have their bodies of scholarly literature, which were idea laundered. That's what they have.

Joe Rogan 57:07 Mm.

James (Jim) Lindsay 57:07 Yeah.

Peter Boghossian 57:07 So, they can point to these things and say, "Well, I don't know have any f- I know." All right. "Well, how do you know?" "Well, Robin DiAngelo's White Fragility."

Joe Rogan 57:14 Mm-hmm.

Peter Boghossian 57:14 How do you know?

James (Jim) Lindsay 57:15 There's a study, there's a study.

Joe Rogan 57:15 Yeah.

James (Jim) Lindsay 57:15 There's a study, there's a study, there's a study.

Joe Rogan 57:17 Yeah.

James (Jim) Lindsay 57:18 I know how those, some of those studies are written, and I don't trust them.

Joe Rogan 57:21 (laughs)

Peter Boghossian 57:21 (laughs)

James (Jim) Lindsay 57:21 And, you shouldn't trust them either.

Joe Rogan 57:23 Yeah.

James (Jim) Lindsay 57:23 Yep.

Peter Boghossian 57:24 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 57:24 Well, you see the, I mean, even in nutrition, I mean, you see it in everything. This, this i- uh, in, in terms of, like, almost a religious or religion-like acceptance-

Peter Boghossian 57:34 Exactly.

Joe Rogan 57:34 ... of specific ways of eating-

Peter Boghossian 57:36 Right.

Joe Rogan 57:36 ... or specific ways of communicating, specific ways of being. It's, uh, just so strange how people seem to have this natural inclination to adopt predetermined patterns of behavior.

Peter Boghossian 57:49 Right.

James (Jim) Lindsay 57:49 Yeah. I think actually there's pretty decent understanding of that from, from the perspective of moral psychology. You've got this idea that somebody has, has seen something as good, so it elevates them, it makes them better. So, clean eating might be good, right? Whatever clean eating means. For some people, it's vegan. For some people, it's like, all you eat is grass-fed beef. Who knows? But, you've got clean eating and you've got dirty eating, and you go into the clean thing. And so, you've got this kinda, like, purity thing. And eventually, you take this so seriously that it becomes kind of a sacred value to you. Well, what's sacred mean? You know, we have this kind of vague sense, oh, you know, holy, this, that. That's sacred, and it's something really important to somebody. Well, what it really means is that it's taken on so much moral importance to somebody that they no longer will allow it to be questioned.

Joe Rogan 58:32 Mm-hmm.

Peter Boghossian 58:32 Mm-hmm.

James (Jim) Lindsay 58:32 When something's sacred, it's now been removed from the, the sphere of being doubted, questioned, or whatever.

Peter Boghossian 58:36 Mm-hmm.

James (Jim) Lindsay 58:36 And so, when you have this idea like, that, um, let's say, that, that privilege is the cause of, of racism, and you've elevated that... Or, the, the problem with everything in society even, and you've elevated that to, like, a sacred value that can't be questioned. You can't say, "Maybe there's another dimension to it." That's when you start getting these kind of religious-like behaviors. You start getting these, these problems.

Joe Rogan 59:01 Mm-hmm.

James (Jim) Lindsay 59:01 Because, you've got a place where it can't be, A, questioned, B, made fun of. We were talking about the comedy earlier. This is killing comedy, right? It's absolutely killing comedy, because you can't make a joke 'cause if the joke goes a little bit wrong, now you, you've committed a heresy, you're a blasphemer, they're gonna-

Joe Rogan 59:17 You can... Yes, but no, because people love when you go against it.

James (Jim) Lindsay 59:22 That's true.

Joe Rogan 59:22 Like, the weight-

James (Jim) Lindsay 59:23 So-

Joe Rogan 59:23 ... the weight of it is there, but when you resist it, people scream and throw their hands up.

James (Jim) Lindsay 59:28 Yes, yes, yes. So, this is really interesting, because if we take their theory about humor at face value, right, that you can only go against a power thing. So, we say, "Okay, you know what?" We wrote a paper, one of our papers, The Joke's On You, is about that. Let's say they're right. Why do people love it? Well, it's because everybody knows these gu- these guys have power. They're trying to pretend that they don't have power, that they are the victims, they're the oppressed. Meanwhile, they're bullying everybody into everything. They're firing people for saying the wrong thing in class, you know, whatever it is. That's only possible if they have power. And the joke... When South Park makes fun of, like, what was it? PC principal or whatever? When South Park makes fun of that, the only reason people laugh, if their theory is right, is because they're powerful.

Joe Rogan 1:00:07 Mm.

Peter Boghossian 1:00:07 Mm.

Joe Rogan 1:00:08 If their theory's wrong, 'cause it's just funny, then we can talk about something different. But, if they're actually right, if they're actually making a point here, they're not recognizing that they're admitting that they have seized a lot of cultural power. And, that's why people celebrate when, when you go back against the stuff. That's why people have sent us so many emails like, "This is the greatest thing ever. Thank you so much for doing this." There's all this sh- shit like, "You guys are heroes," blah, blah, blah. Why? Because they wanted to see you laugh. Why? Because it's funny as hell is why. And why? Because these people are ... They're, they're influencing the shit out of stuff. Yeah.

James (Jim) Lindsay 1:00:40 And, if they weren't, if they were just, you know, victims who don't have a voice, who can't make any impact, who aren't bullying people, everybody would be like, "Why are you bullying those guys? Why are you being a dick?" Right? But, everybody thinks it's funny, and why? Because-

Joe Rogan 1:00:53 Because they have real impact.

James (Jim) Lindsay 1:00:55 They have real impact.

Peter Boghossian 1:00:55 They have real impact, yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:00:56 Yeah.

Peter Boghossian 1:00:56 And, that's one of the things that we really wanna convey to people, is that this, what happens in the academy does not stay in the academy.

Joe Rogan 1:01:02 No, it's spread.

James (Jim) Lindsay 1:01:03 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:01:03 It's spread throughout the world now.

James (Jim) Lindsay 1:01:05 (clears throat)

Joe Rogan 1:01:05 And, I've, I've read some articles about some things that we've said on this show, that are just fucking completely preposterous and taken totally out of context, and presented as some evidence of, you know, whatever transgression that's im- im- im-

Peter Boghossian 1:01:19 Right.

Joe Rogan 1:01:19 ... impossible to defend.

Peter Boghossian 1:01:22 Right.

Joe Rogan 1:01:22 It's very strange. It's, it's a very strange time for-... for communication. It's a very strange time for ideas.

Peter Boghossian 1:01:29 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:01:29 But I also think it's really exciting. It's exciting that all this nonsense is going on. That's one of the things that I really loved about what you guys have done. It's exciting. It's exciting that you guys have, uh, you've infiltrated and had these fucking dummies publ- not just publish your shit, but praise it.

Peter Boghossian 1:01:45 Yeah, yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:01:46 And, and say how amazing it is that you wrote a bit about fat bodybuilding. (laughs)

Peter Boghossian 1:01:52 (laughs) Yeah.

Narrator 1:01:54 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:01:54 I mean, fat acceptance-

Peter Boghossian 1:01:56 You could say that.

Joe Rogan 1:01:56 ... is this one, fat shaming and fat acceptance, they're, they're two preposterous phrases. They really are. You know, I mean, you, you shouldn't be mean to people. That's it. But fat shaming, because someone's fat, no, you, if you, "You can't call me fat 'cause I'm not fat," doesn't work.

Peter Boghossian 1:02:12 Yeah, so that's the-

Joe Rogan 1:02:13 It's really similar.

Peter Boghossian 1:02:14 ... so, so that body of literature, here's something that, that I learned when I, I read this, is they don't use the word obesity because, this is really interesting, because obesity, it gets back to what Jim was saying, obesity is a narrative. It's just a story. So they use the word fat. (clears throat) Excuse me. So there's not obesity bodybuilding, there's fat bodybuilding. And there are all these narratives. So why would one, (clears throat) excuse me, wanna buy into one narrative rather than another narrative?

Joe Rogan 1:02:42 Why is fat okay and obesity bad?

Peter Boghossian 1:02:43 Ah, because obesity is a medicalized narrative. That's right. Where fat is just a description. Yeah, so-

Joe Rogan 1:02:50 So they're rejecting medicalized terms.

Peter Boghossian 1:02:52 Well, they call it healthism. I'm not making that up.

Joe Rogan 1:02:55 What?

Peter Boghossian 1:02:56 Healthism is a narrative. It's a power structure where healthy and thin people are imposing their view of how a body should be-

Joe Rogan 1:03:05 Yes.

Peter Boghossian 1:03:05 ... on fat and unhealthy people.

Joe Rogan 1:03:06 And there's he- and there's thin privilege. Like they'd look at you, and you've got all the, you know, 'cause you're muscular too, so you wouldn't just be straight, white, heterosexual, cis, et cetera.

Peter Boghossian 1:03:15 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:03:15 I mean, you've got-

Peter Boghossian 1:03:15 You, you've got health privilege and-

Joe Rogan 1:03:16 You, you've got health privilege and it's just-

Peter Boghossian 1:03:18 Fitness privilege probably. Thinness privilege for sure.

Joe Rogan 1:03:20 And also an ableist.

Peter Boghossian 1:03:21 Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Joe Rogan 1:03:21 Ableist, you've got that privilege too. You're really-

Peter Boghossian 1:03:23 Well, it falls into ableism.

Joe Rogan 1:03:23 (laughs) You're really ... It's not good for you.

Peter Boghossian 1:03:25 Yeah, it falls into that. So, um-

Joe Rogan 1:03:27 Health privilege, that's real? That's a, that's a real one they're using?

Peter Boghossian 1:03:30 Yeah, and they, and they also claim to be, uh, the h- healthy at every size movement. You can be healthy at every size, and obesity is just a medicalized narrative. Yeah, and that's really important though, because the, the point of that is to say if your doctor tells you you're fat and it's a health concern-

Joe Rogan 1:03:44 (laughs)

Peter Boghossian 1:03:45 ... then you don't have to listen.

Joe Rogan 1:03:47 Yeah, that is a, a ... I've read that before.

Peter Boghossian 1:03:50 And then-

Joe Rogan 1:03:50 And I read an article by this woman who was morbidly obese.

Peter Boghossian 1:03:53 Charlotte Cooper?

Joe Rogan 1:03:54 I don't think-

Peter Boghossian 1:03:55 She's the name.

Joe Rogan 1:03:55 ... I don't know what her name was.

Peter Boghossian 1:03:56 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:03:56 But she was talking, she was also using, or like really misusing some studies, uh, on ... There was some, there, there, there have been some studies on people who are overweight and that there could possibly be some health benefits to being overweight. These studies have been widely dismissed now. Not only dismissed, but they go in direct contrast to the great volume of studies that show how terrible it is for your health to be that, that fat and that heavy. But this person, I don't remember who it was or why she was doing this, but she was clinging to these one or two studies that have been dismissed.

Peter Boghossian 1:04:39 Right.

Joe Rogan 1:04:39 These are biased epidemiological studies that have been dismissed. But she was put- putting 'em in this blog as if this is some sort of evidence that not only is it not unhealthy to be fat, but it might be healthy to be fat.

Peter Boghossian 1:04:53 Right. And now think about this person in an academic position as a professor teaching young people this, par- partic- particularly young girls.

Joe Rogan 1:05:00 Partic- particularly young girls who might have eating disorders.

Peter Boghossian 1:05:03 Exactly.

Joe Rogan 1:05:04 "Health: A White Privilege?" (laughs) What?

Peter Boghossian 1:05:07 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:05:07 Oh my God, is this real?

Peter Boghossian 1:05:08 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:05:08 This is a real paper?

Peter Boghossian 1:05:09 This is definitely real.

Joe Rogan 1:05:10 Oh my God.

James (Jim) Lindsay 1:05:10 No, this is how this stuff goes, man. They think it's a, they think it's ... Like when the doctor says you're overweight, it's a concern for your health, they see that as a form of fat shaming, saying that they're not all right the way that they are. They're not being accepted the way that they are. There's a power dynamic that healthy people are imposing upon overweight people. They have myriad issues that they come up with. And I mean, sure, some of these complaints have got to be somewhat real. You know, they don't make as many oversized clothes, you know, plus-sized clothes. It's harder to get styles where ... There's some legit stuff, you know, that they might want to say, "Hey, what, can we do something about this?" But on, on the other hand, the whole thing that like saying that it has nothing to do with health, it has nothing to do with your, like, triglyceride levels, heart disease, et cetera.

Peter Boghossian 1:05:51 It's ju- it's just, it runs ... It's anti-evidence. It runs-

James (Jim) Lindsay 1:05:55 Yeah.

Peter Boghossian 1:05:55 ... in the face of every conceivable piece of evidence. They're teaching kids this. They're in schools, and there are classes, fat studies classes. And there's an actual-

Joe Rogan 1:06:03 Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. There's fat studies?

Peter Boghossian 1:06:05 There's fat stu-

James (Jim) Lindsay 1:06:06 Yeah, that's the journal they publish the fat bodybuilding-

Peter Boghossian 1:06:07 There's fat stu- the journal is Fat Studies. Jamie's gonna bring it up.

Joe Rogan 1:06:10 The jour- (laughs)

James (Jim) Lindsay 1:06:11 (laughs) I told you, Pete. I told you 30 million people are waiting to find out-

Joe Rogan 1:06:15 Fat Studies, an interdisciplinary journal-

James (Jim) Lindsay 1:06:18 That fat studies is real.

Joe Rogan 1:06:18 ... of body weight and society.

Peter Boghossian 1:06:19 Yeah. This is, and this is what Jim was telling me. He's like, "When, when we do this, 30 million people are gonna now know that there's something fat studies." Now, Fat Studies doesn't do what you think it does. You probably think, "Oh, Fat Studies, you know, what are triglycerides? How much should you exercise?"

Joe Rogan 1:06:32 Right. "No."

Peter Boghossian 1:06:32 "What's a good diet? How much sugar is too much sugar?" Well, that is absolutely not what this journal does.

James (Jim) Lindsay 1:06:38 Frozen: A Fat Tale of Immigration. What the hell?

Joe Rogan 1:06:40 Crafting Weight Stigma ... Hold on a second.

James (Jim) Lindsay 1:06:43 All right.

Joe Rogan 1:06:44 Crafting Weight Stigma in Slimming Classes: A Case Study in Irony? (laughs)

James (Jim) Lindsay 1:06:49 That's what I'm telling you. You go to a slimming class, you're gonna go lose weight, you take a, take a fitness class or something, whatever slimming classes are.

Peter Boghossian 1:06:55 Fatness and temporality.

James (Jim) Lindsay 1:06:56 And they use a stigma against being fat. They, they basically say fat's bad for you.

Joe Rogan 1:07:00 Look at this one. Theorizing Fat Oppression Intersectional-... approaches and methodological innovations. You just said a bunch of nonsense.

Peter Boghossian 1:07:10 The oppression of fat people is built into institutions, pervades the cultural landscape, and affects ...

Joe Rogan 1:07:14 (laughs)

Peter Boghossian 1:07:14 Ju- dude, we could have written this. It affects the relationship and perceptions of people of size. People of size. Uh, it is this introduction to the special issue on-

Joe Rogan 1:07:21 I love people of size is now the new people of color.

James (Jim) Lindsay 1:07:24 Yeah.

Peter Boghossian 1:07:24 Right, exactly.

Joe Rogan 1:07:25 Yeah.

James (Jim) Lindsay 1:07:25 Oh, yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:07:25 Fat is the new Black. (laughs)

Peter Boghossian 1:07:26 That's the parallel. That's right.

James (Jim) Lindsay 1:07:27 Well, people of color is a problem now, too. You gotta split that up.

Peter Boghossian 1:07:29 Yeah, that-

Joe Rogan 1:07:29 You can't say people of color?

Peter Boghossian 1:07:30 That's been problematized.

James (Jim) Lindsay 1:07:30 Well, you can, but you see, there's people of color and then there's B-I-P-O-C, which I don't know how you pronounce that. I don't know if it's BiPOC or what. But, uh, that would be Black and indigenous people of color because they have even more oppression than the other people of color. And they've gotta fight over who gets-

Joe Rogan 1:07:43 More than yellow people of color?

James (Jim) Lindsay 1:07:45 Yeah, for example. Or probably brown-

Joe Rogan 1:07:47 But is that why Harvard can discriminate against Asians-

Peter Boghossian 1:07:49 Asians.

Joe Rogan 1:07:49 ... that are trying to get in?

James (Jim) Lindsay 1:07:50 Let's tap our noses and just move on, right?

Joe Rogan 1:07:53 (laughs)

Peter Boghossian 1:07:53 (laughs)

James (Jim) Lindsay 1:07:53 So, (laughs) so but then that's even a problem because indigenous-

Joe Rogan 1:07:57 Fuck.

James (Jim) Lindsay 1:07:57 ... has rac- recently been branded a racist term because you're not actually honoring-

Joe Rogan 1:08:01 Whackd?

James (Jim) Lindsay 1:08:01 Yeah, you're not hitting the actual tribal identity. If you get right on the cutting edge of this stuff, it's, like, really going into meltdown mode.

Joe Rogan 1:08:08 Indigenous is ... because it's too random?

James (Jim) Lindsay 1:08:10 Well, yeah, you're, it's just, you're not-

Peter Boghossian 1:08:12 Because you're not saying-

James (Jim) Lindsay 1:08:12 You're generalizing. You're-

Joe Rogan 1:08:13 ... Cherokee-

James (Jim) Lindsay 1:08:13 What ... exactly.

Joe Rogan 1:08:14 ... Navajo.

Peter Boghossian 1:08:14 Yes.

James (Jim) Lindsay 1:08:15 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:08:15 Hmm, Nez Perce. Yeah, okay. Well-

James (Jim) Lindsay 1:08:18 So you can see, again, the competitive victimhood going on, who gets to claim more of the, the victimhood pie. And, oh, now we've got this thing about people of color, so they get, you know, victimhood status. But