Joe Rogan Experience #1501 - James Lindsay

Joe Rogan 0:00 ... do, what? You can ride an elephant in Thailand. I rode an elephant in Thailand.

Narrator 0:04 Nice.

James Lindsay 0:05 Yeah. It was actually, they were actually healthy, happy elephants that were well taken care of, because it's an elephant rescue. Um, so they're free. They're free elephants. They, they wander around. They, I mean, they literally came out of the mist in the jungle-

Narrator 0:19 (laughs) Oh, man.

Joe Rogan 0:19 Like, like a movie. It was crazy. And they're treated really, really well. So, um, I didn't like the riding part.

Narrator 0:27 No.

Joe Rogan 0:27 I thought that was kind of fucked up. But they don't give a fuck, man. You-

Narrator 0:30 They're huge.

Joe Rogan 0:30 ... you are literally like a hat to them.

James Lindsay 0:32 Yeah, they're huge.

Joe Rogan 0:33 Yeah.

James Lindsay 0:33 And strong.

Joe Rogan 0:34 But they came over, and, um, the whole idea was you pay for this experience with the elephants. And, uh, in that, they rehabilitate these elephants and they've released many of them back to the wild.

James Lindsay 0:46 Oh, that's good stuff.

Joe Rogan 0:47 'Cause they can... They don't need to be trained to be able to just eat vegetables and, and then let their-

James Lindsay 0:52 Right.

Joe Rogan 0:52 ... vegetation. They just do it. So they came over, and you were introduced to the elephant that you were gonna take care of for the day, and then you, you start feeding it sugarcane, and they love you.

James Lindsay 1:01 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:02 So you're feeding them and you touch them. They're super gentle, like, the, the, the most gentle creatures. And then you actually clean them off. You wash them off, and you, you, you... So there's, like, this grooming thing.

James Lindsay 1:13 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:13 And then when you go to get on them, they know you're trying to get on them, so they actually lift their leg up like this, so that you can step on their leg.

James Lindsay 1:21 Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:21 And then you step on them and you climb on top of them. It's difficult. Like-

James Lindsay 1:24 It was hard, dude.

Joe Rogan 1:25 ... it's hard to ride them. But, um, they literally don't give a fuck if you're on them, 'cause you're so light to them. And then they make their way through the jungle. But it was pretty cool.

James Lindsay 1:33 That's nuts, man.

Joe Rogan 1:34 Yeah, it was pretty cool. It was pretty cool. It was, um... It's humbling, you know? But that's, that's the only way I'd wanna be around them other than in the wild. Like, I get, I get bummed out at zoos.

James Lindsay 1:47 I do, too. That's... I mean, that's my story, right? So I've been yelled at for that. That's like the story of 2020, is getting yelled at for everything. But I rode... When I was a kid, you could ride elephants at the zoo. And so, I don't know-

Joe Rogan 1:58 People got mad at you for that? (laughs)

James Lindsay 1:59 'Cause I... I mean, I told the story one time and people, like, lost their minds on me, 'cause I guess it's not okay now. It was, like, cost a dollar, so they weren't rehabilitating elephants or doing anything good with it.

Joe Rogan 2:07 (laughs)

James Lindsay 2:07 I was, like, seven though, so I don't really remember it.

Joe Rogan 2:09 Mm.

James Lindsay 2:09 But it's like times have changed.

Joe Rogan 2:11 Yeah, but they're mad at you for something you did when you were little, which is funny. That's one of the things that's going on now, is-

James Lindsay 2:16 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 2:16 ... people are retroactively getting canceled for things.

James Lindsay 2:19 The... Yeah, they, like they did when they were kids.

Joe Rogan 2:21 Yeah.

James Lindsay 2:22 It's ridiculous. It... I mean, it's like everything's a permanent stain on, on you. There's no growth. You can't become a better person. You can't learn.

Joe Rogan 2:28 What do you think that is? Like, what's, what's... What is the desire that people have to do that? Like, where is that coming from?

James Lindsay 2:36 Well, you know, there's, th- there's two ways we could talk about it. We could talk about the psychological side of it, which is, like, this moral purity thing that's going bonkers, or we could talk about it in terms of the, the ideas, the theory, that's fueling this. And that's all about, um... That has this idea that, that comes from French philosophy that, that words and ideas and thoughts and patterns have traces that don't ever really go away. And so, if something, you know, used to be associated with something bad and we still use the word, or even if you pretend that it was the case, uh, and you still use the word, then it carries this negative trace. So, the moral panic and the psychology side of it's fueled by this kind of, like, stupid idea that words always have to mean kind of what they meant in the first place.

Joe Rogan 3:17 Are people aware of that, though? Is it... I mean, is this just conveniently connected to it or, or conveniently similar?

James Lindsay 3:23 I mean-

Joe Rogan 3:23 Or do you think that people are actually aware of this concept?

James Lindsay 3:26 I don't think they... I don't think most people do. Like, there's this w-... So, you know, we're, we're generally talking about this whatever woke thing that's happening.

Joe Rogan 3:33 Yeah.

James Lindsay 3:33 Right? And so, you gotta think of woke kind of like, kind of like a church, right? Like, you got... I grew up Catholic, so it's like you got cultural Catholics, like, they kind of go to church and maybe they go to confession sometimes, and they don't really... They do it, but they don't really do it. And then you have, like, the hardcores. Like, I had a friend in high school that, like, took notes at church.

Joe Rogan 3:51 Oh, wow.

James Lindsay 3:52 Right? I'm like, "A-

Joe Rogan 3:52 Serial killer. (laughs)

James Lindsay 3:53 Yeah, it's like, "You do what? You take notes?"

Joe Rogan 3:56 (laughs)

James Lindsay 3:56 And then, you know, you've got the pastor, and he obviously studies it, or the priest in a Catholic context, and they study it. And then you've got the theologians that really study it. And so, the stuff I'm talking about is, like, theology level. Like, that's, like, the scholars.

Joe Rogan 4:08 Mm.

James Lindsay 4:08 And then your average person just wants to feel like a good person.

Joe Rogan 4:11 So you've got, like, the woke academics, like, the seriously, the woke people that are teaching it to kids-

James Lindsay 4:19 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 4:19 ... that, that really teach it as, like, critical theory, like, critical race theory.

James Lindsay 4:24 That's right. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 4:25 Yeah. So those-

James Lindsay 4:26 I mean-

Joe Rogan 4:26 Those are the ones that are probably aware of all the nonsense.

James Lindsay 4:29 They're, they're making the nonsense, actually.

Joe Rogan 4:31 Yeah.

James Lindsay 4:31 It's... I think they pick some of it up from culture, you know, from activist groups or whatever. But then they refine it and turn it into something. And it, you know, has this really weird feeling to it. Like, you get the impression that it's like they're wrestling with their inner demons-

Joe Rogan 4:42 Mm.

James Lindsay 4:42 ... and then they're, like, writing it down.

Joe Rogan 4:44 Yes.

James Lindsay 4:44 Like, it... Like, th- this book now, White Fragility, right, Robin DiAngelo's book, White Fragility, it's number one-

Joe Rogan 4:49 That's the one that Matt Taibbi destroyed.

James Lindsay 4:51 Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Joe Rogan 4:52 You know, thank God for Matt Taibbi.

James Lindsay 4:54 Yeah, so good.

Joe Rogan 4:54 Thank the baby Jesus and Odin.

James Lindsay 4:56 That's right. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 4:57 (laughs)

James Lindsay 4:57 He is so good, though, um, because he's right.

Joe Rogan 4:59 Yeah.

James Lindsay 4:59 He's actually right about it. So if you read the book, there's all these weird vignettes that she tells, these stories. She's like, "Oh, I went to this potluck for work, and, um, I'm walking arou-... I walk up and then I see there's two parties. You are at the park, and there's two groups of people. One of them is all Black and one of them is not. And I had this moment of panic that I might have to be in the all-Black group." And it's like, "Lady, what's going on?" You know? And then it's like, "All white people are racist," is, like, her conclusion from this. And it's like, "Maybe it's you."

Joe Rogan 5:28 So-

James Lindsay 5:28 Maybe it's you.

Joe Rogan 5:29 She... (laughs) So she had this panic that she was gonna have to party at the park with Black people?

James Lindsay 5:34 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 5:34 And she was worried that she was racist because of that, and therefore all white people are racist?

James Lindsay 5:39 See, that's what I'm thinking is going on, right? So I'm thinking... I've thought this for a number of years, is that a lot of this stuff where you get these, like, woke activists doing their blogs or these scholars writing this stuff down, is that they're looking at their own lives. So you have these people that are like, they're walking down the street, you know, maybe whatever. They walk into the hotel, they walk into the restaurant, and they're like, "I saw a Black guy." And then it's like, "I'm not supposed to notice that."... and then they start having, like, this thing in their head, and then they go write an angry blog about how terrible racism is because they're wrestling with it themselves.

Joe Rogan 6:08 Mm-hmm.

James Lindsay 6:08 It's like Sigmund Freud, right? He had that whole idea, um, that everybody wants to have sex with their mothers-

Joe Rogan 6:14 Yeah.

James Lindsay 6:14 ... and like, your psychology is all how you resolve that problem.

Joe Rogan 6:17 (laughs)

James Lindsay 6:17 And it's like, "Maybe you just wanted to have sex with your mother, Sigmund Freud." You know? (laughs) And then now, it's everybody's a racist is, is kinda the, the vibe of the new thing. And there's like, this weird religious kind of-

Joe Rogan 6:29 Yeah.

James Lindsay 6:29 ... thing happening around it.

Joe Rogan 6:30 That's really the thing that gets me, is how similar this is to religious, or relige- r- r- not just reli- religious ideology, like how rigid it is, but also indoctrination, like religious cults, how they indoctrinate people. And one of my friends, Kurt Metzger, a really funny guy who, um, was a Jehovah's Witness when he was younger.

James Lindsay 6:52 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 6:52 And so, he's really, really, really sensitive to this stuff.

James Lindsay 6:55 Yep.

Joe Rogan 6:55 He's like, "I know where this is going."

James Lindsay 6:56 Yep.

Joe Rogan 6:56 Like, "this is the same thing that I got when I was into Jehovah's Witnesses."

James Lindsay 7:00 That's right.

Joe Rogan 7:00 "This is cult shit."

James Lindsay 7:01 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 7:01 It's, it's these rigid ideologies that cannot be challenged. You c- you can't in any way veer from the course.

James Lindsay 7:08 That's right. And they set you up, right? So every single, single one of these things, uh, sets you up. So for example, uh, I wa- one of my favorite examples of these kinda like, setups, right? Is, is, uh, historically, in the book, I talk about, um, historically, you know, the Black feminists came along and they were like, "Oh, feminism's too white. Feminism isn't paying attention to Black feminist issues or Black women's issues." And so then these feminists were like, "Oh, we have to fix that," you know? And they start writing about Black issues to the best of their ability. And then three years later, the lady writes a paper saying, "Oh, you're just sticking Black things in and it's fake, and you're tokenizing it and you're fetishizing it." And it's like, "So you can't do it right?" There's ... And so that- that is cult- uh, indoctrination stuff.

Joe Rogan 7:50 Yeah.

James Lindsay 7:50 So it's like you and I could be, you know, talking about something like this and you could say something and I'm like, "Don't you think it's a little bit racist?" And then the next step is like, "What are you gonna say? You're gonna say yes or no. If you say yes, now you've owned it, right?"

Joe Rogan 8:03 Yeah.

James Lindsay 8:03 "So now, now you're like, racist." And so I'm like, "Well, uh, do you interrogate your racism? D- like, do you spend time working on that?" And so you see- so you keep dragging people into it.

Joe Rogan 8:10 Yeah.

James Lindsay 8:11 And if you say no, I can say, "Well, one of the symptoms of participation in, in systemic racism is, is, is an inability to see it if you're white and, uh, it's invisible to you. And so maybe you need to look harder. W- and it seems like you're getting a little defensive."

Joe Rogan 8:26 Oh.

James Lindsay 8:27 You know? And it's-

Joe Rogan 8:27 Then you start panicking.

James Lindsay 8:28 And then you start panicking. And when you start to panic, when you start to stress out, they're like ... And, and literally, this lady emailed me the other day. This, this Indian woman. I get a lotta ... I get an insane number of emails about people-

Joe Rogan 8:39 From India?

James Lindsay 8:39 No, no. From Canada.

Joe Rogan 8:41 Oh. (laughs)

James Lindsay 8:41 But an insane number of emails from people who are in different, different, like, uh, levels of stress with different things that are happening in their lives around this woke explosion that's happened-

Joe Rogan 8:50 Mm-hmm.

James Lindsay 8:50 ... s- you know, in the last month or so. So this lady's like, "I had to go through a brown fragility training at work."

Joe Rogan 8:56 What?

James Lindsay 8:57 Yeah, brown fragility is a thing now too.

Joe Rogan 8:58 So it's not even Black? Now it's they're working their way down to Brown people?

James Lindsay 9:01 Yeah, and Brown people have fragility-

Joe Rogan 9:03 Oh, my God.

James Lindsay 9:03 ... and White people have fragility.

Joe Rogan 9:03 Those poor people. So people who racially were sort of like Switzerland ... Like, Indians like, in India? Like, no one ever thought they were racist.

James Lindsay 9:13 Right.

Joe Rogan 9:14 You never ... You would never hear about racist Indians.

James Lindsay 9:17 Right.

Joe Rogan 9:17 Maybe Russell Peters would joke around about it.

James Lindsay 9:19 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 9:19 Right?

James Lindsay 9:20 Well-

Joe Rogan 9:20 You know, you know Russell, the comedian?

James Lindsay 9:21 Yeah, yeah.

Joe Rogan 9:21 Yeah.

James Lindsay 9:21 Now, now you hear about it. And what they're doing is that they ha- that w- what happened was they explained to the ladies ... or not the lady. It was like, the whole group. It was done in a room, you know, in front of a bunch of people. And they explained, uh, Brown people in general, like it's some kinda block of Brownness or whatever. Uh, Brown people have anti-Black racism too and that upholds White supremacy.

Joe Rogan 9:42 Oh, my God.

James Lindsay 9:42 And then they start just doing this. And it's almost like cold reading. Right?

Joe Rogan 9:46 Yeah.

James Lindsay 9:46 You know, like, that Edwards guy? Whatever that guy's name was-

Joe Rogan 9:48 Yes.

James Lindsay 9:48 ... uh, that show. And so it's like they cold read and they wait for somebody to start looking like they're getting the sweat or something happening, and then they say, "Now what we need to do, now that we've introduced this idea of, of your Brown fragilities, we need to in- and your anti-Blackness, is we need to interrogate the feelings that came up." And so they go one by one through the room, and made every single one of them confess their feelings. Like, who's not gonna participate? And here's that double bind, 'cause it gets to you, right? And so what do you say? You say, "Well, I don't really know what you're talking about." Well they're gonna say-

Joe Rogan 10:17 And then you're inherently racist.

James Lindsay 10:18 ... "You're hearing it."

Joe Rogan 10:18 Yeah, you're hearing it.

James Lindsay 10:18 Exactly. And then if you confess to it, then, then you're falling in. So this is straight up cult indoctrination stuff.

Joe Rogan 10:24 It really is like those people in Game of Thrones. Y- you remember those, those people that almost like, took over the crown? (laughs)

James Lindsay 10:30 Yeah. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 10:30 And kidnapped Cersei? That, that ...

James Lindsay 10:32 Th- uh, mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 10:33 It is.

James Lindsay 10:34 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 10:34 It's like that sort of pattern, for whatever reason, just seems to reoccur with humans.

James Lindsay 10:41 You know, and I think it comes down to our natural religious impulses.

Joe Rogan 10:45 Yeah.

James Lindsay 10:45 That I think ... I mean, you, you know pretty well from my background, you know I don't believe in God. I- I'm an atheist.

Joe Rogan 10:50 How dare you.

James Lindsay 10:51 Oh, well. You know, we get along.

Joe Rogan 10:53 (laughs)

James Lindsay 10:53 And so (laughs) it's like, I still do think that we have certain impulses underneath that lead people to build religious structures-

Joe Rogan 11:00 Mm-hmm.

James Lindsay 11:00 ... around themselves and have religious, you know, thoughts and feelings, and wanna have spiritual development and all of this. And so religions can kind of do one of two things. Um, you know, I used to be kinda hard ass about religion and like, tough, like, you know, uh, angry atheist kinda picture. But I've thought about it more and ... which you're not allowed to think about things and change your mind now, but I did. And, um, what I realized is that some religions look up. They're like, looking at God and they're afraid of sin but they, th- they're paying attention to God. They're thinking about renewal, they're thinking about redemption, they're thinking about forgiveness. And then some religions look down and all they do is look at the sin.

Joe Rogan 11:33 Mm.

James Lindsay 11:33 And they focus on the sin, and that's where the witch hunts came from. That was when the Calvinists got like, you know, fire and brimstone, Jonathan Edwards screaming, you know-

Joe Rogan 11:40 Mm.

James Lindsay 11:41 ... sinners in the hands of an angry God. You're s- hanging on a spider's thread above the fires of Hell, and God d- should knock you into it 'cause everybody's full of sin. Next thing you know, they're killing witches. So it's like you start focus ... If you look up, you know, then religion, uh, can be great. It can actually lead people if they ... Spiritual development, community, so on. But if you're looking down, you're gonna start obsessing about everybody ... If you're obsessing about sin, you're gonna start obsessing about everybody else's sin too.

Joe Rogan 12:08 Yes.

James Lindsay 12:08 Uh, 'cause you're gonna wanna like-There's this feeling with, again, reading Robin DiAngelo's White Fragility. There's this feeling, like, uh, that she doesn't wanna feel alone. Like, she has these struggles and she doesn't wanna be alone. So there's like-

Joe Rogan 12:24 So she's a white lady?

James Lindsay 12:25 Oh, yeah. Robin DiAngelo's w- a white lady who (laughs) goes in and for, like, $12,000 a pop does these corporate seminars.

Joe Rogan 12:32 What?

James Lindsay 12:33 And... Yeah, 12, 12 grand for two hours, and teaches... She goes and tells white people that they're racists, and then-

Joe Rogan 12:38 (laughs)

James Lindsay 12:38 ... like, interrogates their feelings when they, when they get defensive about it.

Joe Rogan 12:42 Oh my goodness.

James Lindsay 12:43 It's like the biggest corporate, corporate training hustle ever. And her idea of white fragility, you can't disagree with it. There's no way to disagree. I've absolutely, like, r- rammed it on some people on Twitter who are these wokies that come and try to trash me. And I just say, "You know, that looks a little bit like white fragility." And I give some reason that's kinda out of the literature. And then they are like, "I can't have white fragility. I, you know, I'm whatever." And it's like, Oh, that's definitely... You're getting defensive. Defensiveness is one of the symptoms of white fragility. You just wanna deny your complicity in the system of racism that you benefit from. And it's-

Joe Rogan 13:14 (laughs)

James Lindsay 13:14 It's just like, you can't get away from it, because then-

Joe Rogan 13:16 Right. That kinda language, like what you just said, is like... It, uh, like you... That's like checkmate.

James Lindsay 13:21 It's (laughs) it's like, it's like the kinda stuff, like... So the other day, right? Stephen King got dragged into this with the whole trans thing.

Joe Rogan 13:29 Yeah. How did he get dragged into that? What happened?

James Lindsay 13:31 Well, so he's s- he's a longtime been a supporter of J. K. Rowling.

Joe Rogan 13:35 Yes.

James Lindsay 13:35 And J. K. Rowling has decided that she's had enough of this, you know, uh, trans rights thing going after the, the, the women's issues.

Joe Rogan 13:44 Mm-hmm.

James Lindsay 13:44 And so at first Stephen King stood up for her and, and, and she put out a tweet saying, you know, "You're such a good friend," blah, blah, blah. And then somebody came after him and he's like, "Trans women are women."

Joe Rogan 13:55 (laughs)

James Lindsay 13:55 And it's like, you know, he just caved, like, just immediately caved. And it's like all woke and no play makes Steve a dull boy, you know?

Joe Rogan 14:01 Mm-hmm.

James Lindsay 14:01 And so he caves, and then, um... You get this sense that it's like something outta one of the novels he would have wrote.

Joe Rogan 14:09 Yeah.

James Lindsay 14:09 Right? Like, all of a sudden, it's like Needful Things, it's like the whole town is going crazy because of demon possession and you have to get the stuff, the de- I don't know.

Joe Rogan 14:16 Trans women are trans women.

James Lindsay 14:18 That's what they're-

Joe Rogan 14:18 That's what they are.

James Lindsay 14:19 I don't see that as being difficult. As a matter of fact-

Joe Rogan 14:21 I don't think that's difficult and I don't think there's anything wrong with it. And I, I, I, I-

James Lindsay 14:23 That's what I said.

Joe Rogan 14:24 ... feel like they're equal to all of us and we're fine.

James Lindsay 14:27 Yeah. Like, what's the problem?

Joe Rogan 14:28 I got dragged into that, if you know, because of a mixed martial arts fighter.

James Lindsay 14:32 Oh, yeah.

Joe Rogan 14:33 There was a woman-

James Lindsay 14:34 Fallon Fox.

Joe Rogan 14:34 Mm-hmm.

James Lindsay 14:35 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 14:36 And I was like, "This is my hill. I will die on this hill."

James Lindsay 14:39 Oh, yeah. I mean, that's-

Joe Rogan 14:40 You're crazy.

James Lindsay 14:40 ... brutal.

Joe Rogan 14:41 Yeah. Watching the fights were brutal. And not skill-wise either. It was just raw strength and...

James Lindsay 14:46 It was a beat-down.

Joe Rogan 14:47 If you had someone who was taking steroids for 30 years and then they got off steroids for two, you would absolutely think that person had a massive advantage for being on steroids all those years.

James Lindsay 14:56 That's right.

Joe Rogan 14:57 If they're a woman.

James Lindsay 14:58 That's right.

Joe Rogan 14:58 Particularly. I mean, a man, yes, as well.

James Lindsay 15:00 Right.

Joe Rogan 15:00 But particularly if you're a woman and you were on steroids for 30 years and you get off them. That's what being a man is. It's not just being on steroids for 30 years and then transitioning to no steroids. It's also having the physical structure of a man. The differences in the hips, the shoulders-

James Lindsay 15:15 Right.

Joe Rogan 15:15 ... the size of the hands. There's a lot going on there.

James Lindsay 15:18 There's a lot going on there.

Joe Rogan 15:19 And this is an area of my own p-... I has- I have very few areas of expertise, but beating the fuck out of people is one of my areas of expertise.

James Lindsay 15:28 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 15:28 I'm a professional commentator-

James Lindsay 15:30 Uh, that's right.

Joe Rogan 15:30 ... on this. So when I see that... I mean, I used to teach martial arts for a living.

James Lindsay 15:34 Right.

Joe Rogan 15:34 I understand it. I understand fighting more than I probably understand most things. You're crazy if you think there's not a difference between f- female and male bodies. I-

James Lindsay 15:43 I mean, the data are un- une- unequivocal about that.

Joe Rogan 15:47 Yeah, but it was one of those things where I, like, I was like, "Okay, this is one of the rare places where I really..." If I go down on this one, like, this is not, this is not... You... I can't see trans women just dominating in women's MMA. It's crazy.

James Lindsay 16:00 No, I hear ya.

Joe Rogan 16:01 I do not mind that they choose to fight trans women if they know in advance.

James Lindsay 16:07 Sure.

Joe Rogan 16:08 The Fallon Fox issue was she had fought twice as a woman without letting anyone know-

James Lindsay 16:13 A: Yeah, that's not cool.

Joe Rogan 16:14 ... that she used to be a man for 30 years. And I was like, "You're crazy. You can't just do that." If someone wants to fight a trans woman and they're cool with it, like... There's a woman who fought in the, uh, UFC, her name is Ashley Evans Smith, and she wound up actually beating Fallon Fox-

James Lindsay 16:25 Yeah, yeah, yeah, I saw that.

Joe Rogan 16:26 ... and made her way to the UFC. But she's just far more skillful.

James Lindsay 16:29 Very skillful, yeah, is all that.

Joe Rogan 16:29 Yeah, but that's all that was.

James Lindsay 16:31 Right, right.

Joe Rogan 16:31 She's a real UFC-caliber fighter. That's why she was able... Like, like if I had to choose between, like...

James Lindsay 16:36 Oh, yeah.

Joe Rogan 16:36 Fallon Fox fought Amanda Nunes, who's like the greatest woman of all time, Amanda Nunes would kill her.

James Lindsay 16:41 Sure, yeah.

Joe Rogan 16:41 Kill her. But...

James Lindsay 16:42 Absolutely.

Joe Rogan 16:43 But it doesn't mean that she's a woman, you know? Just because that... Just 'cause Amanda Nunes... Amanda Nunes would probably fuck me up. It doesn't mean that sh- you know, that I'm a woman, you know? If this Fallon Fox guy gets, or woman rather, gets beat up by Amanda Nunes... I really didn't mean to misgender her there. But if she gets beat up by Amanda Nunes, it doesn't invalidate her as a trans woman. It doesn't. It just says you're not biologically a woman.

James Lindsay 17:06 Right.

Joe Rogan 17:07 And this is what sports are about. It's about... There's a... Like, there's... I had a conversation with a guy on this podcast about that. Um, and he, he was like, "I- I don't think that there's that big a difference in biological sex." I said, "Okay, so you cool with men competing in women's sports?"

James Lindsay 17:21 Right.

Joe Rogan 17:21 As men just-

James Lindsay 17:22 And what'd he say?

Joe Rogan 17:23 He didn't know where to go with it.

James Lindsay 17:24 And then... I mean, that's the thing, right? So, like, if we look at psychological profiles, for example, sometimes there are... You know, the data are always hard to parse with things like this, but there are s- very slight differences in the two... You know, the male distribution and the female distribution of, of all the people, what does it look like. They overlap really close, and there's little variations. When you look at upper body strength and you look at grip strength, there's... They don't, they almost don't overlap. Like, the- there are very, ver- the very top strongest women just barely cross over the weakest men in terms of grip strength and, and raw upper body strength.

Joe Rogan 17:57 Yeah.

James Lindsay 17:58 That's why women, you know, it's such a big deal when a woman gets to where she can do, like, 10 pull-ups or something like this.

Joe Rogan 18:02 Mm-hmm.

James Lindsay 18:02 Like, everybody should throw a party for that. It's nothing wrong with them, it's nothing to do with their, their effort or ability or anything. It's literally the- it, they're... It's a harder climb.... to get there.

Joe Rogan 18:12 Except those CrossFit ladies. Jesus Christ, I was-

James Lindsay 18:14 Oh, Jesus.

Joe Rogan 18:14 ... watching this documentary on these CrossFit ladies. This one lady had... Her abs were like if someone-

James Lindsay 18:21 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 18:21 ... took turtle shells and just shoved them under her skin. They were so thick. Everything about her was so thick.

James Lindsay 18:28 I mean, well, I mean, you gotta think, like what is CrossFit, right? CrossFit was like competitive exercise.

Joe Rogan 18:33 Mm-hmm.

James Lindsay 18:33 And I mean, that's like the whole point of it is like how do we turn exercise itself into a sport?

Joe Rogan 18:37 Some of those gals are pretty yoked.

James Lindsay 18:38 They are. They're- they're- they're super strong.

Joe Rogan 18:40 Yeah.

James Lindsay 18:40 I'm friends with actually some- some- some rather top athletes and, you know, men and women both that have been pretty significant in CrossFit and- and in other things. And you can get really strong, you can get really strong, but again, it's-

Joe Rogan 18:54 You can't get as strong as a man.

James Lindsay 18:55 No.

Joe Rogan 18:55 That's why there's men and women's divisions even in CrossFit, even those-

James Lindsay 18:58 Correct.

Joe Rogan 18:59 ... beastly CrossFit women who are monsters, they can't compete with the male CrossFit athletes.

James Lindsay 19:03 Exactly.

Joe Rogan 19:04 Yeah.

James Lindsay 19:04 And- and- and that's the thing is- is you're always, when you're looking at competitive people is you're always in that like tail end of good at this.

Joe Rogan 19:12 Yeah.

James Lindsay 19:12 You know, like the people who are already really developed, really good at it. And as far as like trans women are trans women, I feel like we should be using language in a way that increases clarity rather than decreases clarity.

Joe Rogan 19:23 Yes.

James Lindsay 19:23 So like you said, I mean, it's exactly like you said, there's literally nothing wrong in the world with being a trans woman.

Joe Rogan 19:28 Nothing.

James Lindsay 19:29 Nothing. If you wanna be the trans woman, I'm happy for you. I'll respect your pronouns, the whole thing. You know, I- I'm with you.

Joe Rogan 19:34 As long as you don't make them up.

James Lindsay 19:36 Well, yeah.

Joe Rogan 19:36 I'm not saying-

James Lindsay 19:36 There's a degree. I mean, there is a thing where, you know, you're forcing somebody to- to try to do something unnatural.

Joe Rogan 19:41 I'll say she, I'll say her, I'll say-

James Lindsay 19:43 Yeah, I'm with you, right?

Joe Rogan 19:44 ... anything female or male, but you can't make up new ones.

James Lindsay 19:45 Eh-

Joe Rogan 19:46 The world's confusing enough as it is.

James Lindsay 19:47 And- and- and- and so we should be trying to strive for more clarity, not less.

Joe Rogan 19:51 Yes.

James Lindsay 19:51 So a trans woman is a trans woman, and that allows for us to acknowledge what's actually going on in all regards.

Joe Rogan 19:59 Yeah.

James Lindsay 20:00 As opposed to saying trans women are women, woman is a- is a- is a broader category and it therefore confuses the situation. And I- I think that there's almost like a lot of manufactured drama, not just in that issue, but in all of this where the- these definitions are getting blurred out. So, I mean, that's what I do all the time now, the last year is like all I've been doing is researching how they misuse words and-

Joe Rogan 20:24 Mm-hmm.

James Lindsay 20:24 ... writing it in, not trans people specifically, but this whole woke ideology or the social justice scholarship. And I've been writing an encyclopedia on my website about that, and it's just like-

Joe Rogan 20:35 (laughs)

James Lindsay 20:36 ... I've been writing my own encyclopedia, uh, and it- it's- it's a monumental task, but it actually is really helping. People are- are emailing me every day and say, "You know, I can't make sense of this until- until I read your stuff."

Joe Rogan 20:46 Oh, wow.

James Lindsay 20:47 And so it's like I have... I called it Translations for the Woke- from the Wokish, like going off of a- off of, um, Tolkien, where he's got, you know, Bilbo-

Joe Rogan 20:57 Elvish.

James Lindsay 20:57 There's Elvish, yeah.

Joe Rogan 20:59 (laughs)

James Lindsay 20:59 And so I call it Translations from the Wokish. It's on my- my website, New Discourses, and, uh, it's got like 100 and something done now, 100 and something terms. So it's like, you know, they- they say the word folks. Why do they say folks?

Joe Rogan 21:13 Why do they say folks?

James Lindsay 21:13 Right?

Joe Rogan 21:13 I say folks all the time.

James Lindsay 21:15 Well, I do too. I'm from the South particularly, I have to, right? I can't get away from it.

Joe Rogan 21:18 I just like the way it sounds.

James Lindsay 21:19 Well, it's good, but-

Joe Rogan 21:20 These folks are crazy.

James Lindsay 21:21 Well, yeah.

Joe Rogan 21:21 I'm not saying that.

James Lindsay 21:22 But they say white folks-

Joe Rogan 21:23 Oh.

James Lindsay 21:23 ... Black folks, queer folks, lesbian folks, and they... and it's like, there's this identity folks, right?

Joe Rogan 21:29 Mm-hmm.

James Lindsay 21:29 And so I want... The purpose of that encyclopedia was to dig into this terminology and make it clear, again, more clarity, not less, so the people can understand where it's coming from. So the reason they say folks is the same reason the Germans said folks in the 1930s-

Joe Rogan 21:43 Mm-hmm.

James Lindsay 21:43 ... as it turns out. It's- it's an idea of a group culture, okay? So it's the idea of moving, uh, a culture into, you know, it's identifying a group of people and saying that it has... that they are a folk, that they have a culture. And of course, we're- we're most familiar with that, you know, as they say in the original German because, uh, somebody picked it up and yelled it a lot.

Joe Rogan 22:04 And there's- there's also this issue that if a culture has been maligned, right? If they are marginalized, like trans people-

James Lindsay 22:11 Yep.

Joe Rogan 22:11 ... then people who are not trans people are automatically thought of as in some way negative or bigoted or-

James Lindsay 22:21 Right.

Joe Rogan 22:21 ... y- y- if you're a straight white male, for instance-

James Lindsay 22:24 Right.

Joe Rogan 22:24 ... like you're automatically a piece of shit.

James Lindsay 22:26 That's right. That's-

Joe Rogan 22:28 It's... That's part of-

James Lindsay 22:28 That's what this is doing, yeah.

Joe Rogan 22:29 ... the Woke Olympics.

James Lindsay 22:30 And I don't think, like we said earlier, like a lot of the guy- the guys taking notes at church, they know that.

Joe Rogan 22:34 Yeah.

James Lindsay 22:34 But everybody below that doesn't really get it. They think this is just about helping people and being fair.

Joe Rogan 22:39 Right. That's what we would like.

James Lindsay 22:40 Right. And this actually comes from a place, like that- that's kind of what this book is about is- is that I've traced that for like... It goes back to actually... I don't- I don't wanna mislead people and say, "Oh, this is Marxism." You know, you have to whisper Marxism. Um, but it is Marx who took the idea, and he- he cooked up this idea called conflict theory. He actually took it from other German philosophers and made this... You can't even say what he changed. He changed Hegel's idea of what's called, you can't even say this anymore, the master-slave dialectic because those master and slave have traces that, you know, even though that's what it was called, you can't talk about it. So, uh, Marx took the idea of the master-slave dialectic, which was that people who have... Hegel wrote that people who have power, uh, and then there are people who don't have power. The person that's being oppressed by the power understands the oppression, whereas the person who's doing the oppression can't, right? Simple enough. Marx cooked this up into this idea called conflict theory that says, oh, different groups in society, and he mostly meant rich people versus poor people, have... are- are in... are completely separate from one another and there's no idea that they help each other, like that the rich building a- a... like amazon.com and making a super successful business that makes it easier to move products and to, you know, generates more income for the society. There's no positive sum story according to Marx. It's all conflict.

Joe Rogan 23:57 Mm-hmm.

James Lindsay 23:58 And so what Marx's idea was is that the- the oppressor class is always the enemy of the underclass, and this has actually traced down through history. It was economics then and then this- this philosophical school started in- in Germany at first, moved to Columbia University during the World War II.... and it's called the, the Frankfurt School of critical theory, and they moved it into ideology and culture, and then so the dominant culture, whoever, uh, you know, has the most status and power, the elites, which at the time was gen- genuinely like white straight men for the most part, those people basically brainwash the underclass into not realizing that they should rise up against. So you have this whole dynamic of conflict where the oppressor class doesn't realize what it's like to be oppressed. The oppressed class constantly can't get away from it. That's where you see this phrase now, "People are being killed in the street every day," which isn't even true, but it doesn't matter 'cause it's a matter of feeling. And then y- th- the underclass always has to be at war to try to overturn the power above them, which is called hegemony-

Joe Rogan 25:06 Mm-hmm.

James Lindsay 25:06 ... which comes from this guy Antomi- Antonio Gramsci who is a Italian philosopher who came up with the idea of long march through the institutions, which I think we're now seeing for sure happening, like take over the institutions from within with this stuff. So this stuff all has like... I mean, we don't have to be dorks, but I mean, I can do that on my own, but this is a, a very long history. This isn't like... It didn't just pop up in 2014 when, when Michael Brown got shot.

Joe Rogan 25:30 Do you think when things happen like the George Floyd murder, that it just, uh, it opens up a door and this stuff comes through and then the vibration changes? Like it, it moves to a higher frequency because it's more common?

James Lindsay 25:42 Yes. That's right. That's right. Uh, and I mean, there's a lot going on here too, right? So, um, the George Floyd case is, is actually fairly straightforward because, I mean, eight minutes and 46 seconds is fucked up. There's nothing else to say about it. I, I mean-

Joe Rogan 25:58 Dude, 20 seconds is fucked up.

James Lindsay 26:00 I know. I-

Joe Rogan 26:01 Espe- especially if you've got the guy down already.

James Lindsay 26:02 Three guys and you-

Joe Rogan 26:03 Yeah.

James Lindsay 26:04 How hard is it to put cuffs on three guys?

Joe Rogan 26:05 I mean, he's a... George Floyd was a big fellow.

James Lindsay 26:07 Sure.

Joe Rogan 26:07 He's a big strong fellow, but there's no reason not just put a knee on the man's back.

James Lindsay 26:12 Exactly.

Joe Rogan 26:12 If you want, yeah.

James Lindsay 26:12 And then how,how long do cuffs take?

Joe Rogan 26:14 Right. Once the guy is cuffed, you, you just... You get him in the fucking car. You know, and just-

James Lindsay 26:18 Yeah. Let him, let him do what he's gonna do in the back of the car.

Joe Rogan 26:20 I guess they had some sort of animosity, personal animosity to each other

Narrator 26:23 That's what I've heard. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 26:24 ... which, you know, I would wonder if that would move it to first degree murder.

James Lindsay 26:28 I have no idea.

Joe Rogan 26:29 But...

James Lindsay 26:29 But, uh, what we have now is this culture where video goes viral, right? And this is a striking thing, so it's really more prominent in... I mean, it's pretty clear you could see the video with George Floyd, but if you back up to Michael Brown it's more complicated, in Ferguson.

Joe Rogan 26:46 Mm-hmm.

James Lindsay 26:46 Because, you know, the short video that went viral in the first place was, you know, a few s- you know, not very many seconds clip of this Black guy getting shot by... unarmed Black guy getting shot by a cop. But it doesn't tell the preceding story which has now come to light that involved, you know, him trying to take the cop's gun and like wrestling with him and charging at him. So the... it... A more complicated story where-

Joe Rogan 27:08 Is that true though? Do we know that for a fact?

James Lindsay 27:09 I, I'm, I'm not an expert in this.

Joe Rogan 27:11 I'm scared of that narrative because, you know, I don't... uh, but I'd heard that narrative, but I'm like, "I would hate to get behind that and defend it."

James Lindsay 27:18 Sure. Sure. Sure. And that's actually my point. That's actually my point. So I was sent a video. I'm gonna skip tracks to a different video 'cause I wanna make a point that we live in a... we live in a mediated world now, right? A mediated epistemology is what I would call it. The, the m- media itself, social media, so all of us participating are able to spin narratives around like a 30-second video. So the other day this guy sends me a video on Twitter and I watch it and it's some Black guy with a microphone and in a, you know, like in a radio studio and he's like going and he's like, "You know, these white people ain't gonna take it no more. They ain't gonna take it no..." And he's like yelling. He's like, "Oh, they're gonna rise up." You know, and it's, it's obvious what... you're watching it and you're like, "Man, this guy is like... These riots are out of control." And so I wanted to share it, but it was sent to me on Twitter and I couldn't figure out how, so I looked it up on YouTube. And so I had like a 40-second clip sent to me and I'm like, "Oh, about these riots." And I wanted to show it to somebody and so I, I go and I find it on YouTube and I watch it and it's the same thing, 40 seconds and it ends. But the video that I watched was several minutes, and then the next thing the guy says is, "This president is divisive. This president is the problem. It's so divisive. He's causing all this division." And it's like, "Holy shit, he's actually talking about Trump." And then I kept watching and he's like, "President Obama has got to go," at the end. And so it depends on which part of that clip you see. The story changes completely. I watched the 40-

Joe Rogan 28:39 Hmm.

James Lindsay 28:39 ... seconds and I was like, "Holy shit. This is the riots." And then, "Oh my God, it's about Trump." And then boom, now it's, it's this dude railing about Obama-

Joe Rogan 28:47 Oh, wow.

James Lindsay 28:47 ... several years ago.

Joe Rogan 28:48 Oh.

James Lindsay 28:49 And the video was sent to me because it was going crazy with the implication that it was about the riots, but it hadn't. It was about Obama.

Joe Rogan 28:56 That's crazy.

James Lindsay 28:57 So this is like the deal, right? We... you... what we're seeing isn't always the whole story.

Joe Rogan 29:04 Right.

James Lindsay 29:04 And, and there's-

Joe Rogan 29:04 We live in this clip culture now, which is a real problem.

James Lindsay 29:07 Right. And we piece together-

Joe Rogan 29:08 Yeah.

James Lindsay 29:08 ... the story we believe based on, you know, our prior assumptions about it.

Joe Rogan 29:12 Like the Covington case.

James Lindsay 29:13 Exactly.

Joe Rogan 29:14 Where that kid was just standing there and the Native American guy came up to him with a drum.

James Lindsay 29:18 That's right.

Joe Rogan 29:18 And he was smiling in the Native American's face and they got a photo of it and it loo- really looks like this kid's a prick and that he's taunting these Native Americans-

James Lindsay 29:26 That's right.

Joe Rogan 29:26 ... who are just peacefully banging on their drums.

James Lindsay 29:29 That's exactly right. So we live in this situation now where the m- I don't wanna say the media like it's this entity because actually in a sense we are all participating. These clips, you know, that people-

Joe Rogan 29:37 Yes.

James Lindsay 29:37 ... are loading up on Twitter. That whole context isn't there. And it... you said, you know, does it just jack everything up to a higher frequency? And absolutely it does, because everybody can take that clip and then just upload their story of what they wanna have to be true into that clip. And it becomes like... It's like... and I mean, we, we're already talking about religion. It's like a miracle. Like, you know, back in... 2000, 3000 years ago, you know, some- something weird happened and then, you know, uh, people... one person tells another and another and another and then it's like, "And I swear, you know, an angel came down from the sky and touched him and he was healed and he could walk again." You know, and so it's like a miracle story, but mediated through partially informative video.

Joe Rogan 30:20 Mm-hmm.

James Lindsay 30:20 It's, it's almost like, you know, everybody's scared that deepfake is coming where they can basically put your face on whatever porn star or saying some horrible thing that you never said or whatever, but AI-

Joe Rogan 30:29 Yeah. That's definitely coming, right?

James Lindsay 30:30 It's, it's... it is the precursor to that.

Joe Rogan 30:32 Mm-hmm.

James Lindsay 30:33 Because you can cut that clip just right-... and then all of a sudden, it means one thing, and if you cut it just another way, it means something exactly the opposite or totally different. And different groups that wanna push a narrative, which is, like, everybody, latches onto it and runs with it. And this, of course, causes crazy polarization.

Joe Rogan 30:51 Yeah.

James Lindsay 30:52 Right? So that same clip I saw, I don't know that it would be a good example, but you know, you could take it as the riots and, you know, the... yeah, well, that black guy's sick of the riots, and so the right wing's all over it. Like, "Look at this guy," you know. And then, boom, this president's so divisive and now it's the left's story, and you cut it right there, and the next thing you know, it's President Obama, you know. And all of a sudden-

Joe Rogan 31:12 It's history.

James Lindsay 31:12 ... it's switched si- it switches sides again.

Joe Rogan 31:14 And it's-

James Lindsay 31:14 Right.

Joe Rogan 31:15 ... it's also history.

James Lindsay 31:15 And it's also history.

Joe Rogan 31:16 Yeah.

James Lindsay 31:16 And then even the thing I watched that was longer was four and a half minutes, and then the whole thing is like an hour.

Joe Rogan 31:22 Oh, wow.

James Lindsay 31:22 So what really... w- was really the whole g- the pole- the guy's-

Joe Rogan 31:26 Right.

James Lindsay 31:26 ... whole point? And so, um, we're getting away from being able to understand because, you know, our attention spans are so short. You live in Twitter, it's like you have the attention span of, like, a goldfish, man. You can't pay attention to anything. We're marinating in dopamine all the time. Brain doesn't work right. So you don't have time to, like, parse anything together. You see this thing, you're pissed off, you retweet, you know, snarky comment.

Joe Rogan 31:45 Don't you think that also just the, the format of Twitter itself is just... I think it's detrimental to people's mental health.

James Lindsay 31:53 Big time.

Joe Rogan 31:54 Communicating through these small little sentences-

James Lindsay 31:58 That's right.

Joe Rogan 31:59 ... and, and little paragraphs of 280 words-

James Lindsay 32:01 That's right.

Joe Rogan 32:01 ... or characters.

James Lindsay 32:02 Characters, yeah, yeah, so it's like 30 words.

Joe Rogan 32:04 Yeah, yeah.

James Lindsay 32:04 And so this... I actually call Twitter a deconstruction machine, which is straight out of this, again, the same critical postmodern philosophy stuff that I kinda keep circling around. Deconstruction is the idea that, um... a- and it's the same thing as the media, mediated ideas, that we're gonna take a thing apart, make it look absurd, or we're gonna show, show it in a particular light, and then, you know, pull it apart into a, uh, to- till you don't really trust its validity anymore.

Joe Rogan 32:30 Mm-hmm.

James Lindsay 32:31 And that's it... specifically its purpose, is to make it so that you don't trust the validity of the thing anymore. And so anything you put on Twitter, once you get an account of a certain size at least, anything... Like, I have an account that's big enough now, so I experience this regularly. It's a 100% chance that some jackass is gonna say something that just messes with your head, right?

Joe Rogan 32:51 Mm-hmm.

James Lindsay 32:51 And... or somebody's gonna take it out of context or they're gonna-

Joe Rogan 32:53 Yeah.

James Lindsay 32:53 ... they're gonna tell you what they thought you mean and now that's the thing you mean, or they're gonna screenshot it and it's gonna go around. And they're gonna... like, it's like... I mean, you're famous enough where it obviously happens to you all the time, I'm sure. It's like they take something that you say, you know, in a podcast or you put it on Twitter or your shows or whatever, and they clip it up, and then there's like... you know who Joe Rogan is, but then there's like this new Joe Rogan that they created that's out in the universe.

Joe Rogan 33:16 Mm-hmm.

James Lindsay 33:16 Right? So they take you apart. They deconstruct you, the, the real Joe Rogan and your real intentions and your real meaning, and then they put it out into the world, and then there's this new Joe Rogan that does horrible thing or this new Joe Rogan maybe that's a saint.

Joe Rogan 33:27 Well, I always tell people too, like, if you have a, an issue with some of the things that I say, guess what? I have an issue with some of the things I say.

James Lindsay 33:34 Me too.

Joe Rogan 33:35 And if you were here with me when I say things and you disagreed, I'd listen to your point. I'm not an idealist or an ideologue-

James Lindsay 33:43 Yeah, yeah.

Joe Rogan 33:43 ... when it comes to, uh, ideas-

James Lindsay 33:46 And that's thing.

Joe Rogan 33:46 ... when it comes to concepts. I'm not married to anything that I say.

James Lindsay 33:50 Right. So we need to be able to talk about it, right?

Joe Rogan 33:52 Yeah.

James Lindsay 33:52 So you say a thing and then I n- I'm like-

Joe Rogan 33:55 But I think part of the problem is they can't talk about it.

James Lindsay 33:57 No, they can't.

Joe Rogan 33:57 So they have to tweet about it. So b- because they're not in the room and they don't have your attention-

James Lindsay 34:02 Right.

Joe Rogan 34:02 ... so then they get angry, and that's part of the problem with podcasts as well, is like right, right now, you and I are having a conversation-

James Lindsay 34:08 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 34:08 ... but millions of people are listening to this conversation.

James Lindsay 34:10 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 34:11 And there's a lot of them that wish they could chime in.

James Lindsay 34:13 Exactly.

Joe Rogan 34:13 And they don't get to.

James Lindsay 34:14 That's right.

Joe Rogan 34:14 So what they do is they get angry, and they put some stuff on Twitter.

James Lindsay 34:17 That's right.

Joe Rogan 34:17 I understand the motivation. I understand the thought process behind it. I really do.

James Lindsay 34:22 Yup.

Joe Rogan 34:22 But I, I personally can't engage because it's just too unhealthy.

James Lindsay 34:26 Right, exactly. So yeah, I think social media is, and Twitter in particular, uh, among social media, I don't, I, I don't interact on Facebook anymore, so I don't really know.

Joe Rogan 34:35 I don't use Facebook at all.

James Lindsay 34:35 Oh, it's a mess. I just bailed out.

Joe Rogan 34:36 I use... it just posts from my Instagram to Facebook, but I don't look at it at all.

James Lindsay 34:41 Yeah, yeah. Uh-

Joe Rogan 34:42 It's just too weird.

James Lindsay 34:43 It's weird. It's-

Joe Rogan 34:43 Plus Zuckerberg gives me the creeps.

James Lindsay 34:45 Yeah, I mean, big time.

Joe Rogan 34:46 I don't like the way he drinks water.

James Lindsay 34:48 I haven't even seen... I don't wanna know.

Joe Rogan 34:49 Like this (gulping) .

James Lindsay 34:50 All I know is that when-

Joe Rogan 34:51 Blah.

James Lindsay 34:51 ... Zuckerberg sits down and he opens his laptop, you see he's got his little camera covered up, and I'm like, "What's up with this? He knows something."

Joe Rogan 34:57 Yeah, he knows... he's got a fucking strap-on and a dress and-

James Lindsay 35:00 Yeah, no.

Joe Rogan 35:01 ... all kinds of weird shit.

James Lindsay 35:02 So yeah, I don't, I don't, I don't do that, but I... Twitter, Twitter chews your mind up, man. It's made to be bad. It's ma- it's, it's really a bad place, and I really feel bad 'cause I feel like I've kinda, like, uploaded myself into the matrix of Twitter.

Joe Rogan 35:15 You're on it every day though.

James Lindsay 35:17 I'm, I'm-

Joe Rogan 35:17 I go to your page-

James Lindsay 35:18 So so at Twitter.

Joe Rogan 35:18 ... just to see who you're arguing with. (laughs)

James Lindsay 35:20 Sometimes it's funny. Sometimes it's bad. Sometimes-

Joe Rogan 35:22 Are you... do you get uncomfortable with it? Like is it-

James Lindsay 35:25 No.

Joe Rogan 35:25 ... one of those things where-

James Lindsay 35:26 I did in the past.

Joe Rogan 35:27 So you're getting better at being hard?

James Lindsay 35:29 Yeah, I mean, you have to. You have to harden up. You have to n- realize that it actually doesn't matter, um, that, that, you know... It's kinda like... I made the, the analogy actually a while back that it's like doing... I mean, I've never done a stage show, so don't... I've given talks, but I haven't done, like, a stage show. But you get a heckler in the audience, but really you have like 70,000 of them.

Joe Rogan 35:54 Mm-hmm.

James Lindsay 35:54 And when, when you're doing the show, you know, as a comedian, you either interact with the heckler a little bit or you try to s- flip it on him or whatever, or you, um, you know, try to ignore it as long as it's, like, not too obtrusive. And you kinda have to have that same mindset. You have to think of Twitter as being on stage.

Joe Rogan 36:11 Right.

James Lindsay 36:12 And that the audience, though... Like, when you do a real show, the audience isn't supposed to yell at you all the time.

Joe Rogan 36:18 Right.

James Lindsay 36:18 But on Twitter, everything you say, they're gonna yell at you, so you have to just, like, tune it out. I've actually found in the past several... I've been trying to figure it out over the last couple of years. I've found that if I look at my feed that I've s- you know, I follow these people and I look at what they tweet, whatever, and if I look at my direct messages that people send me, whatever, but if I look at people replying to me and whether I got likes or retweets, if I pay any attention to that, it drives me nuts.

Joe Rogan 36:42 Mmm.

James Lindsay 36:43 So when I stop paying attention to that, like, I only look at it at a, like, you know-... all right, I got half an hour, I'm gonna dick around with it and just have a good time, or whatever. Fine, 'cause it's in a controlled dose. But if you get hooked into that, man, you get pulled into this cycle and it's like... y- it's bad.

Joe Rogan 36:58 Well, there's a lot of people that are doing it too. Like, I, I know people that are mentally unwell that are on Twitter 12 hours a day.

James Lindsay 37:05 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 37:06 And they're just constantly arguing with people. And I can just imagine them nervous and sweating and freaking out-

James Lindsay 37:11 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 37:11 ... reading the at replies and seeing if it's going their way or not-

James Lindsay 37:14 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Joe Rogan 37:14 ... or people are piling onto them and then they freak out.

James Lindsay 37:17 You know, I think this is actually a big part of how the woke thing mainstreamed, was the internet, at first... You gotta think, when the internet first came out, you know, uh, the kids aren't old enough to even know this, but, you know, we know this. When the internet first came out, who was on the internet all the time? Who were the first so- two online people?

Joe Rogan 37:33 Shut-ins.

James Lindsay 37:34 Yeah. Uh, people who were socially awkward, who, if they went out with their friends, it didn't really work out great a lot of times. They said awkward stuff, it got shut down, it wasn't fun for them. So that it, it gave them a social outlet where, where the, you know, they could fit in. And I think that this actually has contributed. Like, internet, social media culture is so strongly built by people, A, who are that way now, and B, by people who were that way when these things were getting set up-

Joe Rogan 38:02 Mm.

James Lindsay 38:02 ... that it's all kind of built around, um, you know, maybe people with personality disorders, people who are just socially awkward, people who, who don't wanna interact with human beings in the normal way. And so it's-

Joe Rogan 38:12 But just the whole structure of it, though. Even if you're a normally, uh, like, a personable human-

James Lindsay 38:18 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 38:18 ... when you're typing things out and just sending it out there and, you know, you got an egg for an avatar and-

James Lindsay 38:24 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 38:24 ... someone reads it, you're completely anonymous and... It's just a bizarre way to interact with people.

James Lindsay 38:29 It's so weird. It's so i- it's unnatural. And, like, how quick you'll just get rid of people.

Joe Rogan 38:34 Mm-hmm.

James Lindsay 38:34 Like, that guy said... I, that guy and I have been a- interacting for, like, two years, you know, here and there, I don't really know him, he's some dude, and then he made one comment and I'm like, gone, you know?

Joe Rogan 38:42 (laughs)

James Lindsay 38:43 That's it. To cut out of my life. The thing though, though, that, like, that's gonna translate. You know, you get in that habit where if somebody pisses you off then you just cut them out of your life, because on Twitter that's what you would do-

Joe Rogan 38:53 Yeah, you block them.

James Lindsay 38:53 ... or Facebook, you're like, you unfriend somebody or whatever.

Joe Rogan 38:55 Yeah.

James Lindsay 38:56 And like, I actually have felt that impulse in real life, like, you know, I'm hanging out with somebody and he says some dickheaded comment and I'm just like-

Joe Rogan 39:02 Block.

James Lindsay 39:03 Yeah, "Where's my block button? How do I remove this person from my life, like, right now?"

Joe Rogan 39:07 (laughs) There's no room for nuance and there's no room for... Uh, there's no room for, like you said earlier, for growth, for someone to, to learn, live and learn and get better at it.

James Lindsay 39:17 And that's what galls me about this woke stuff, because they're like, "This is about healing." And it's like, it's not. It's like the, it's like the least healing thing I've ever heard in my... It's like, make everybody walk on eggshells, think they're gonna get canceled, get, you know, um, hot takes dropped on them... That's another thing with social media too, right, is hot takes.

Joe Rogan 39:36 Mm-hmm.

James Lindsay 39:36 What's gonna go viral is like that dude totally dunking on that other dude, right?

Joe Rogan 39:40 Right. Yeah.

James Lindsay 39:40 And it's not the nuanced analysis, it's not the guy who knows-

Joe Rogan 39:43 Right.

James Lindsay 39:43 ... what he's talking about or is thoughtful.

Joe Rogan 39:45 Yeah.

James Lindsay 39:45 He's, he's just getting tore up in his mentions and freaking out and sweating about it.

Joe Rogan 39:48 Yeah. It's, it's fast food information. Yeah.

James Lindsay 39:50 But hot takes are critical theory.

Joe Rogan 39:53 Mm.

James Lindsay 39:53 Hot takes are critical theory. As a comic you'll get it, 'cause like, there's the, there are different kinds of comedy, right? There's like narrative comedy and you're telling a story and it's a funny story and it works, but then you have the kind of... And, and you can do this good and bad, right? There's a good way and a bad way, but you can get on stage and you can be that guy who just kinda, like, you're trying to blow people's mind but you're just kinda, like, criticizing something.

Joe Rogan 40:14 Mm-hmm.

James Lindsay 40:14 Uh, I don't wanna put down Jerry Seinfeld, 'cause I think he's brilliant, he's one of my favorites of all time, but you know, "What's the deal with..." you know, something, and he just says some-

Joe Rogan 40:21 Yeah.

James Lindsay 40:21 ... something kinda stupid afterwards. Or, you know, um, Gallagher was big with that, with like the stupid words. You know, it's like, "How? Now? Bo." You know, "English is stupid." You know, that, that-

Joe Rogan 40:34 Mm-hmm.

James Lindsay 40:34 ... that's actually critical theory. You don't actually have to know what made the thing work but you can just tell this kinda like dunking joke on it that kind of gets yucks or whatever. And then in comedy, fine, you know, we know a good comic from a bad comic, we laugh. That's the point, is to make something funny and everybody bombs. But when you start doing that with, like, people's lives and social philosophy and calling them, calling them things like racist and sexist that can, can ruin their lives and... It's a totally different ballgame, right? So it's like looking for that place to just be critical becomes a-

Joe Rogan 41:07 Yeah.

James Lindsay 41:07 ... becomes a, a problem.

Joe Rogan 41:08 Don't you think it's also just because it can be done? Like, if you gave people a keyboard and if you told them, "Look, every time you press that Q button, a rocket's gonna fly out of the sky and slam into, uh, a part of the planet."

James Lindsay 41:22 Yeah, yeah.

Joe Rogan 41:22 People would hit that button, man.

James Lindsay 41:24 Oh, man. There would be people like, you know-

Joe Rogan 41:26 If they just knew and they don't even have to be there when it hits-

James Lindsay 41:29 Yeah, yeah.

Joe Rogan 41:29 ... 'cause you, you're essentially like... If you say something mean to someone online and, and it really gets them-

James Lindsay 41:35 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 41:35 ... you know, especially if you're anonymous, you're sending an emotional bomb their way.

James Lindsay 41:39 Exactly. And, I mean, I know a lot of 15-year-old guys, 'cause I hung out with several of them and at times I probably was one, who would basically have like two little like, uh, like xylophone hammers that was like chchchch on the-

Joe Rogan 41:51 Oh, yeah.

James Lindsay 41:51 ... key the whole time.

Joe Rogan 41:52 Oh my God.

James Lindsay 41:52 It's like they go-

Joe Rogan 41:53 I was horrible when I was 15.

James Lindsay 41:54 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 41:54 I don't know what I would do. And that's one of the things that I try to tell people when they're interacting with folks on Twitter and getting heated. I'm like, "That could be a 15-year-old kid laughing his ass off that he got you to respond to him."

James Lindsay 42:06 Yeah. Uh, and the bigger you are, the funnier it is.

Joe Rogan 42:08 Yes. Yeah.

James Lindsay 42:09 And like, yeah. Uh, uh, it's, it's just absolutely not a good place. It's such not a good place.

Joe Rogan 42:16 But there's some good to it, right? There's a l-

James Lindsay 42:18 Of course.

Joe Rogan 42:18 First of all, if you follow a lot of people, um, you can get a lot of interesting information or, uh, fast-breaking news, uh-

James Lindsay 42:26 I, I swear it knows the news before it happens.

Joe Rogan 42:28 Well, I got all my news about CHAZ. Is it CHAZ or is it CHOP now? What do they call it now?

James Lindsay 42:32 Well, it's over now, is what it is.

Joe Rogan 42:33 Is it really over?

James Lindsay 42:34 I just saw that this morning. Yeah, apparently they, the cops went in and it took an hour and it was over.

Joe Rogan 42:38 And they cleaned it up?

James Lindsay 42:39 Well, they're cleaning it up. I mean, it's a, it was a wreck, but...

Joe Rogan 42:43 (sighs)

James Lindsay 42:43 I- it was CHAZ and it became CHOP. So Capitol Hill, uh, Autonomous Zone is CHAZ and then CHOP, they, I think they derived directly from the French Revolution, like they're gonna get guillotines, like these badasses are gonna get guillotines.

Joe Rogan 42:54 Well, they put a guillotine outside of Jeff Bezos's house.

James Lindsay 42:56 I saw that.

Joe Rogan 42:57 What did he do?

James Lindsay 42:58 I don't know.

Joe Rogan 42:59 Other than make a lot of money.

James Lindsay 43:00 Probably. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 43:01 Is that it?

James Lindsay 43:01 He, he put-

Joe Rogan 43:02 That's all it took?

James Lindsay 43:03 Yeah. I mean...

Joe Rogan 43:03 He's not a bad guy, is he?

James Lindsay 43:05 I don't know.

Joe Rogan 43:05 I mean, he's not known as a bad guy.

James Lindsay 43:07 I know.

Joe Rogan 43:07 It's not like... He's not doing terrible things, is he?

James Lindsay 43:09 I don't think he is. I don't know.

Joe Rogan 43:10 Maybe he's not paying people enough or something? Is that the idea?

James Lindsay 43:12 I mean, when the COVID hit, he gave everybody a $2 an hour raise, like, across the board, like, right away.

Joe Rogan 43:16 Did he?

James Lindsay 43:17 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 43:18 Well, why are they, why do they have a guillotine outside his house? Just 'cause he represents capitalism, right?

James Lindsay 43:21 Yeah, probably.

Joe Rogan 43:22 Yeah.

James Lindsay 43:22 They don't like capitalism.

Joe Rogan 43:24 Yeah.

James Lindsay 43:25 Um, which sucks. But again, that's that critical thing.

Joe Rogan 43:28 Yeah.

James Lindsay 43:28 Like, there's this, there's... Okay, so there's a difference between building a thing and tearing a thing down.

Joe Rogan 43:32 Mm-hmm.

James Lindsay 43:32 It's easy to tear th-

Joe Rogan 43:33 For sure.

James Lindsay 43:33 I read a poem about this. Maybe e- like a lot of people did, I think, when we were in school. I don't know, maybe even you read it. I can't requote, like quote it. But there's this poem talking about... It's the builder or something. And it's like, or the, maybe it was the demo guy, but it's, like, this poem about how easy it is to just knock the bricks down and knock the building down. And it's like, "This took builders, like, six months to build, and it took me a day to knock it down," or whatever.

Joe Rogan 43:55 Mm-hmm.

James Lindsay 43:55 It's easy to tear things down. And it's easy to do, like, this kind of hot take complaining thing, to tear people down or tear ideas down. But it's hard to understand a thing and it's hard to build a thing.

Joe Rogan 44:06 Yeah.

James Lindsay 44:06 Right? And so that's kind of how we ended up here in the long run. Uh, again, I go back to that Frankfurt School to kind of root this in deep philosophy and history. They, they came up with this idea of critical theory that we've talked about now, and then this other idea, traditional theory, and they said you're supposed to use them together. Critical theory was how you complain that things aren't Marxist enough, more or less. And then, uh, that's... People bomb me for saying that, but it is actually general- generally true. Uh, traditional theory was understanding things. It's philosophy, it's science, it's figuring how to, you know, make airplanes work and figure out how to get the, the air traffic control so they don't crash into each other, the whole complicated mess. And one of these things... You're supposed to use them together, but one of these things is a lot easier, right? So, what happens when you start kinda getting a lot of half-ass PhDs in the academic world who need something to do? You think they're gonna do the hard thing versus the easy thing? I mean, everybody who did... I mean, I, I majored in math. I'm gonna be my little elitist, you know, dorky thing here. Everybody who majored in something hard watched people bounce off of their hard major into the easier majors-

Joe Rogan 45:11 Hmm.

James Lindsay 45:12 ... and, like, so they could still just get a degree. So you start... Like, they call this overproduction, a cultural overproduction or cultural elite overproduction. You start putting too many people into degree programs that, that they're not, you know, they're, they're not gonna graduate with an engineering degree. It's freaking hard. And so what they end up doing is they get these degrees in things that are easy. Well, complaining is easy. Tearing down is easy. Building up is hard. So there's this bias that's happened over the last 100 years in academia toward this easier thing, criticism, and away from the harder thing, which is understanding and developing, you know, fundamental research and so on. And i- it's basically taken over academia now. And that's how we... I think that's actually a lot of how we got here, is that the easy thing is the easy thing, and complaining is cheap.

Joe Rogan 45:57 Is there pushback against that idea? Or did... Is there any?

James Lindsay 46:00 Uh, uh, which part?

Joe Rogan 46:01 A- about whether or not these people initially started in difficult studies and then moved their way into, like, these-

James Lindsay 46:09 So, yeah. So it's a-

Joe Rogan 46:09 ... soft social...

James Lindsay 46:10 It sort of really... I mean, well, that just happens.

Joe Rogan 46:13 Mm-hmm.

James Lindsay 46:13 I mean, my, my best friend in college was, you know, he was gonna be a mechanical engineer, and then calculus just took care of that. He was not going (laughs) to be a mechanical engineer anymore, 'cause he couldn't pass calculus. So that... I mean, but he did graduate college with another degree. So there is this kind of chopping down to easier degrees.

Joe Rogan 46:30 Right.

James Lindsay 46:31 Um, but as far as, like, this anti-intellectualism trend that, that I was describing, this actually did... It, it, it was recognized along the way. So there's this... One of the guys in the Frankfurt School's name was Herbert Marcuse. This is the guy who laid out the idea of repressive tolerance, that you have to violently fight against ideas that might cause intolerance to rise up. He did that in 1965. What happened in 1967 and 1968? You know, riots, um, following his ideas exactly. And so Marcuse was on TV in, like, '77 right before he died. He died, I think, in the early 80s or late 70s. And he complained about his own movement that he started, that it had got completely anti-intellectual. They weren't doing the hard work.

Joe Rogan 47:12 Hmm.

James Lindsay 47:12 They weren't doing the right stuff. They were just doing the easy stuff. And he actually complained on TV that this had happened, that there'd been a sliding away from the serious work and toward the easier complaining stuff. And so, yeah, I think that it's, it's historically justifiable that that's exactly what happened. And of course, you know, I was here before, and we talked about those fake papers that-

Joe Rogan 47:32 Yes.

James Lindsay 47:32 ... Peter and Helen and I wrote.

Joe Rogan 47:33 Let's tell everybody what those are just, just because-

James Lindsay 47:35 Okay. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 47:35 ... it's an amazing source of enjoyment and entertainment for folks that are looking for something to read.

James Lindsay 47:41 Right. So, sp- so we don't lose the point, real quick, we did, in less than, like, 10 months, the almost equivalent of a whole academic career in this stuff, and we're amateurs. So it's easy.

Joe Rogan 47:52 And you did it as a joke-

James Lindsay 47:53 As a joke.

Joe Rogan 47:54 ... and it got passed off as real and then actually applauded.

James Lindsay 47:57 That's right. So we wrote, uh, 20 fake academic papers in these exact fields, critical race theory, gender studies-

Joe Rogan 48:03 So we should tell... Uh, Peter Boghossian did it with you.

James Lindsay 48:05 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 48:05 And, uh-

James Lindsay 48:06 Helen Pluckrose.

Joe Rogan 48:06 ... Helen, Helen. It's Pluckrose.

James Lindsay 48:08 Yeah, Pluckrose.

Joe Rogan 48:09 Pluckrose.

James Lindsay 48:10 Yeah. Most English-

Joe Rogan 48:11 That word-

James Lindsay 48:11 The second most English name ever.

Joe Rogan 48:12 And she wrote, uh, Cynical Theories with you.

James Lindsay 48:15 Yeah. So, um-

Joe Rogan 48:17 Yeah, that's a very English name.

James Lindsay 48:18 It is a very English name. So we, we wrote these papers to try to show that this scholarship is bogus.

Joe Rogan 48:25 Right.

James Lindsay 48:26 And so we spent just under a year writing crazy stuff.

Joe Rogan 48:30 Please tell people the dog park one.

James Lindsay 48:32 You love them. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 48:33 My favorite.

James Lindsay 48:33 So the dog park story... Dog park paper was actually, I think, kind of the masterpiece of the thing. So we, we wrote this paper where we claimed that we were a feminist researcher who spent 1,000 hours in Portland, Oregon dog parks over the course of one year. Never in the heavy rain. We put that in the paper, "Never in the heavy rain," like that's some relevant detail or something. So 1,000 hours over a year is already ridiculous. That's like six hours a day.

Joe Rogan 48:58 (laughs)

James Lindsay 48:58 (laughs) Every day. Oh.

Joe Rogan 49:00 That's so much time.

James Lindsay 49:01 I know. And what-

Joe Rogan 49:02 Ugh.

James Lindsay 49:02 What we said she did was she, she watched dog humping incidents-... and, uh, tried to determine when they counted as dog rapes and when they didn't.

Joe Rogan 49:11 (laughs) What's the name of the paper, though?

James Lindsay 49:13 Oh, it was, uh, what was it, um, Queer Performativity and, uh... whoa, how does it go? 'Cause they had all of the buzzwords, right?

Joe Rogan 49:22 Yeah. Heteronormative was in there.

James Lindsay 49:23 Yeah, that's right. Yeah, that's right. Um, Queer Performativity in Urban Dog Parks in, in Portland, Oregon. Rape culture and queer performativity, that's what it was, rape culture.

Joe Rogan 49:32 That, that's what it was.

James Lindsay 49:32 Yeah, so, uh, so we had the... we, we, we said that she, she watched these dog fights and dog rapes and all this stuff, and we put this crazy stuff in there like sometimes they try to break up a dog fight by doing jumping jacks by the dog, or singing songs, and just ridiculous. And the dogs were pooping on each other, we put that in the paper. And then we said when there was a dog humping, uh, that she would go up and she would inspect the dogs' genitals, and she inspected 10,000 dogs' genitals-

Joe Rogan 49:58 (laughs)

James Lindsay 49:58 ... and then interrogated the owners about their sexual orientations. And what she wanted to find out was if straight men would discourage gay dog humping versus straight dog humping, and if it, if it was different for women and, and gay men. And then the, the, we, we said we're gonna pass that data through Black feminist criminology, which makes no sense.

Joe Rogan 50:17 (laughs)

James Lindsay 50:18 And then that, that, we said that the conclusion was that dog parks are petri dishes of canine rape culture, and that they are rape-condoning spaces just like human nightclubs. So human nightclubs are automatically now rape-condoning spaces.

Joe Rogan 50:32 (sighs)

James Lindsay 50:32 And so the conclusion was that we now have to train men the way that we train dogs, with, like, leashes and shock collars and, and things-

Joe Rogan 50:40 (laughs)

James Lindsay 50:40 ... in order to, in order (laughs) to get rape culture to go away. And th- they give this an award. The, the-

Joe Rogan 50:46 (laughs)

James Lindsay 50:46 (laughs) And so it's like this, the bullshit level is just insane.

Joe Rogan 50:52 What was the, what was the award?

James Lindsay 50:53 So they, they had a thing, it was their anniversary. The journal is the number one feminist geography journal in the world, and there was their 25th anniversary edition.

Joe Rogan 51:02 What's the name of the journal?

James Lindsay 51:03 Gender, Place and Culture. And it's, it's the leading feminist geography journal in the world, and they had their 25th year, so they're in their 25th anniversary, and so what they wanted to do was highlight one paper per issue the entire year as being exemplary scholarship in feminist geography, and ours was chosen.

Joe Rogan 51:21 (laughs)

James Lindsay 51:23 I can tell you, man, it was the craziest thing ever. I remember, uh, I'm almost positive it was May 7th, 2018, I got the email. And that's like, I can remember, it's just like, go in the house, I was out doing, like, yard work or something, and I come in. And I check my email, and I just remember, like, gaping at the screen. I'm like, "This can't be r- this can't be happening." 'Cause I thought, I saw the editor and I'm like, "Oh, no. They figured it out, right?"

Joe Rogan 51:48 Ugh.

James Lindsay 51:48 And it's, we're gonna give it an award. And so I end up, I grab... 'cause, 'cause we're making a documentary about it, right? So we got a filmmaker, Mike Naina, he's the one that did that three-part documentary of Evergreen that showed everybody how... I mean, that's wh- where everybody's evergreen now. And so Mike is like, "Anything that happens, film it." So I grab my GoPro and I have this footage and it's, like, sideways 'cause I didn't even, like, think about it, and I'm just, like, running outside trying to find my wife, I'm like, "You aren't gonna believe this. You aren't gonna believe this. Oh my gosh." You know? There's a really freaking crazy, you know, like, it's almost like... it was almost like the world slid off of its foundation a little bit when they gave that paper an award for me. It was just so weird.

Joe Rogan 52:25 Well, you nailed it.

James Lindsay 52:27 We did.

Joe Rogan 52:27 You really nailed it. You c- you came so close to reality, but yet still lived in the world of parody.

James Lindsay 52:35 That's right.

Joe Rogan 52:35 But you said all the things that you needed to. It just shows that there's such a high tolerance for bullshit-

James Lindsay 52:41 That's right.

Joe Rogan 52:41 ... in those, air quotes, disciplines.

James Lindsay 52:43 Right. In those, air quotes, disciplines are now being, like, mainlined into, like, every university, every school, every corporate boardroom.

Joe Rogan 52:50 How did that happen?

James Lindsay 52:51 Um, I mean, we were talking about, you know, the raise in the frequency thing when these events happen, uh, but mostly it's that they took over our colleges of education about 1980, and so they've been slowly turning teachers to the project.

Joe Rogan 53:06 (sighs)

James Lindsay 53:06 And then in 2002 and '03, there were a couple Supreme Court cases that, that were talking about affirmative action, uh, and they said that if you wanna do affirmative action, you can do it if it increases diversity and equity and inclusion, so they started to build these offices in the university. And those university offices started to, like, dictate what you could and couldn't say, you could get in trouble or brought up to hearings. Even if you don't, even if the hearing finds you innocent, you still had to waste your time going to this humiliating hearing, and they're bringing up stuff and all your, you know... how do you, imagine you're, like, in a, in a department, right? And you get hauled before the diversity office, what are all your colleagues thinking about you now? Like, what did he do? Right?

Joe Rogan 53:43 Right. Of course.

James Lindsay 53:44 So all of a sudden, it starts just pushing everybody to not criticize this stuff.

Joe Rogan 53:48 Mm-hmm.

James Lindsay 53:49 Right? And it j-

Joe Rogan 53:49 Self-censorship-

James Lindsay 53:50 Exactly.

Joe Rogan 53:51 ... out of fear.

James Lindsay 53:52 Silencing people. Getting them to silence-

Joe Rogan 53:53 Yeah.

James Lindsay 53:54 ... themselves-

Joe Rogan 53:54 Yes.

James Lindsay 53:54 ... actually. And so then they take that, that lack of criticism and then they can just go crazy with their stuff. It's like critical race theory specifically, people email me all the time and they say, "Where are the scholarly criticisms of critical race theory?" And I actually write back, I'm like, (laughs) "Huh, it d- you're not allowed to do that." Like, the most recent ones in law journals, like substantive ones, are from the 1990s. So there's nobody criticizing this stuff.

Joe Rogan 54:19 Oh, wow.

James Lindsay 54:19 So when you aren't criticizing it, I mean, scholarship depends on people shooting down your bad ideas.

Joe Rogan 54:24 Peer review.

James Lindsay 54:25 You know when South Park talks about them smelling their own farts or whatever, smelling each other's farts, it literally, it's like, it's that, that's what's happening.

Joe Rogan 54:31 Right. Yeah.

James Lindsay 54:32 Nobody's ever telling them that they're wrong. Nobody's ever allowed to cri- and you can't criticize it. Why? Because if you criticize critical race theory, you must be a racist.

Joe Rogan 54:39 Now, what was the response to you guys getting an award for that once you revealed that this was all horseshit?

James Lindsay 54:46 Oh, she wasn't happy. The editor of that journal was not happy. She felt, like, betrayed, like, you know, and-

Joe Rogan 54:51 Well, she was.

James Lindsay 54:52 She was. She was. But she felt, you know, like I had been so nice (laughs) . I was so kind to her, and she was very kind to me, I have to be... she's, she was a very nice person. Most of these people, that's very important to them, these are mostly nice people. There are-

Joe Rogan 55:03 Mm-hmm.

James Lindsay 55:04 ... some hustlers.

Joe Rogan 55:04 Right.

James Lindsay 55:04 And they take advantage of that situation.

Joe Rogan 55:06 Yeah.

James Lindsay 55:06 'Cause that's what this is really wide open to, is the hustlers.

Joe Rogan 55:09 So, she was a nice person but she's living in that world and she thought that all that stuff made sense.

James Lindsay 55:13 Yeah. Yeah, she... I mean, that's the thing, is they think this stuff's all real. Like-

Joe Rogan 55:17 Yeah.

James Lindsay 55:18 It's, it's like they've kind of gone into this mass delusion, where, where everything's power dynamics and the power dynamics define how everybody experiences life, and...

Joe Rogan 55:29 Do you remember when Jordan Peterson was on television, on the CBC, and he was talking to, uh, some professor, I think may or may not have been transgender, who, uh, was saying that there's no such thing as biological sex. And I can unpack that-

James Lindsay 55:43 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Joe Rogan 55:43 ... for you-

James Lindsay 55:44 Yeah, yeah.

Joe Rogan 55:44 ... if you'd like. And then, keeps going, as if it's just, like, you made a statement, that there's no such thing as biological sex. Like...

James Lindsay 55:51 Right. Yeah, that, that's... I mean, that's got a pedigree in the academic literature going back to actually, uh, uh, at least the early 1990s.

Joe Rogan 55:59 I had a, an argument with a professor about it on this show. It was like, it's not... There's no diff- I go, I say, "There's no difference between males and females." I go, "So if you buy a male puppy and they give you a female, do you complain?"

James Lindsay 56:09 (laughs) What'd he say to that?

Joe Rogan 56:10 What happens then... It was a he. He didn't know what to say.

James Lindsay 56:12 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 56:12 He was just... He... You could tell when he was saying the things he was saying, that he was knowing that he was going to get support from the people that he works with.

James Lindsay 56:20 Exactly.

Joe Rogan 56:21 It's just this thing that you do, where you've indoctrinated yourself into this world, or you've been indoctrinated, and now you have to sort of keep up-

James Lindsay 56:30 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 56:31 ... that nonsense talk.

James Lindsay 56:32 You hit it exactly then, earlier. 'Cause I don't know if you've ever, like, let a Jehovah's Witness in, like, and talk to them. But if you get them to where they have to go off script, sometimes there'll be like two of them and they'll like look at each other and they kind of mumble for a minute and they're like, "We'll have to go back and consult about that, and we'll come back and talk to you later."

Joe Rogan 56:48 Mm-hmm.

James Lindsay 56:48 It's like, if they don't, if they're not on the script they don't know what to do.

Joe Rogan 56:51 Yes. Yeah.

James Lindsay 56:51 So you, you catch them in this thing. And that's actually the thing, is it's crazy this stuff's taken over right now... Mostly it's not, because they're just calling people racist and everybody's good intentions are being played upon. But, uh, if you give the slightest pushback they don't know what to do, except to call you names.

Joe Rogan 57:06 Well, yeah, because in their world you can say there's no such thing as biological sex.

James Lindsay 57:10 Right.

Joe Rogan 57:11 Yeah, I have a friend who works at a very large newspaper and they said they can't say that there are two genders. Like, if you say there are two genders, he will literally get thrown out of the office. And they were like, "We're not exaggerating this."

James Lindsay 57:27 That... I mean, yeah, imagine that.

Joe Rogan 57:28 Yeah.

James Lindsay 57:28 I have a, I have a friend that works in journalism who's gay and has a gay sensitivity reader, to make sure that his writing is gay-sensitive enough.

Joe Rogan 57:38 He's gay?

James Lindsay 57:39 He's gay.

Joe Rogan 57:39 And he has a gay sensitivity reader-

James Lindsay 57:42 To make sure his writing is gay enough.

Joe Rogan 57:44 Can't he just check with himself?

James Lindsay 57:45 You would think so.

Joe Rogan 57:46 Yeah, I would imagine.

James Lindsay 57:47 You would think so.

Joe Rogan 57:48 Douglas Murray, uh, put it, put something up on his Twitter because someone was describing, uh, a gay person as a cisgendered non-heteronormative, like something really crazy. And he said, "I think there's another word for that." (laughs)

James Lindsay 58:03 Right. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 58:04 It's gay. He's a gay person.

James Lindsay 58:05 Yeah, that's right.

Joe Rogan 58:06 But it's like this, like, super complicated nonsense expression-

James Lindsay 58:11 Right, and so-

Joe Rogan 58:12 ... that just meant gay, a gay person.

James Lindsay 58:13 Okay. That's where like, uh, again, there's good comedy and bad comedy. That's where George Carlin had that awesome classic bit, where he talked about adding syllables and hyphens, you know?

Joe Rogan 58:21 Mm-hmm.

James Lindsay 58:21 He's like, "World War I, it was shell shock, and now it's post-traumatic stress disorder." Eight syllables, one hyphen, you know he's counting them.

Joe Rogan 58:27 Yeah.

James Lindsay 58:27 So it's like, um... Uh, there's this weird language thing happening there-

Joe Rogan 58:34 Yeah.

James Lindsay 58:34 ... with all these like, like... He called it desensitizing or, or sterilizing language. And that's what's happening. So it takes all that meaning away, right?

Joe Rogan 58:42 Yeah.

James Lindsay 58:42 So nobody knows what it means except for the guy preaching it. So the guy doing the diversity training... I watched a diversity training somebody sent me from their job the other day. And this woman's like just droning on. It felt like you're just getting v- You know, imagine you're at the job, like you have to do this for work. You don't want to do it. And you're just watching this webinar and this lady's just ramrodding like 12-syllable words at you. She's like, "Okay, so we have to talk about microaggressions and there are different kinds of microaggressions. There are microassaults, there are micro..." And it's just like, "What the hell is this?"

Joe Rogan 59:10 Microassaults?

James Lindsay 59:11 Microinsults and then micro-

Joe Rogan 59:13 What's a microassault?

James Lindsay 59:14 A microassault is when you, when you do it on purpose. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 59:18 Like, but what is a microassault?

James Lindsay 59:20 Uh, so a microassault would be, um, you know, making a, a small but, you know, racially salient comment in the presence of a person of that race.

Joe Rogan 59:32 Oh, so it's not even necessarily assault.

James Lindsay 59:33 Not necessarily racist. No, it's not an assault. No, these people... Violence is all words and, and, and discursive aggression.

Joe Rogan 59:39 So a microassault can just be an insult?

James Lindsay 59:43 I- and they're all insults. Micro everything has to just be like words or standing in the wrong place.

Joe Rogan 59:48 Oh, boy. Jamie just pulled it up here. "A microassault is an explicit racial derogations characterized..." What is that? How... Look at that expression. "A microassault is an explicit racial derogations."

James Lindsay 1:00:04 So you've put somebody down on purpose.

Joe Rogan 1:00:06 I know, but that's a weird way of describing it. "An explicit racial derogations," plural?

James Lindsay 1:00:11 Oh, yeah. Some-

Joe Rogan 1:00:12 N-

James Lindsay 1:00:13 Who wrote that?

Joe Rogan 1:00:13 ... versus singular.

James Lindsay 1:00:14 Yeah, that's not right.

Joe Rogan 1:00:15 And then-

James Lindsay 1:00:15 Yeah. They need an editor.

Joe Rogan 1:00:17 And then... Derogations, plural, characterized primarily by verbal or non-verbal attack meant to hurt the intended victim through name-calling, there's your hyphen, avoidant behavior or purposeful discriminatory, dot, actions, dot.

James Lindsay 1:00:31 (laughs) The, the grammar on that's broken all to pieces.

Joe Rogan 1:00:33 It's a mess.

James Lindsay 1:00:34 It is a mess.

Joe Rogan 1:00:34 And that's, uh, kzu.edu. Reason.kzu.edu.

James Lindsay 1:00:39 Nice. I mean, it's like all these-

Joe Rogan 1:00:40 They, they didn't even bother like editing that motherfucker. Look at that.

James Lindsay 1:00:43 (laughs) There's so many of these things that are like for education that are like this.

Joe Rogan 1:00:46 Ugh.

James Lindsay 1:00:46 And it's like the, uh, they say stuff like themself and it's just like-

Joe Rogan 1:00:50 Hmm.

James Lindsay 1:00:51 ... this is supposed to be for education and it's barely literate.

Joe Rogan 1:00:53 Right.

James Lindsay 1:00:53 What is going on?

Joe Rogan 1:00:54 Well, that's a problem when you're using they and them as well, right?

James Lindsay 1:00:56 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:00:56 You start using they and them pronouns, which are really supposed to, I mean, f- for the most part indicate multiple people.

James Lindsay 1:01:04 Yeah, right.

Joe Rogan 1:01:05 Yeah.

James Lindsay 1:01:05 Right, yeah, the singular they-

Joe Rogan 1:01:08 You could say they... You know, so this guy... What, what... You could say, "They thought," or-... they thought they would get away with it. I mean, you could say it. You could say-

James Lindsay 1:01:18 Right.

Joe Rogan 1:01:18 ... but it's hard to use it that way all the time.

James Lindsay 1:01:21 Right. It's hard to use it intentionally, actually.

Joe Rogan 1:01:23 Yes.

James Lindsay 1:01:23 It's, it's... It comes up naturally sometimes and then it's fine, but it's hard to use intentionally.

Joe Rogan 1:01:28 Yeah. If a person wanted to go to the store, they could go.

James Lindsay 1:01:31 Right.

Joe Rogan 1:01:31 Yeah.

James Lindsay 1:01:31 And so there's something, like, kinda totalitarian about making people do things like that, that are difficult-

Joe Rogan 1:01:36 Yes.

James Lindsay 1:01:36 ... like jumping through these little hoops and then-

Joe Rogan 1:01:38 Yes.

James Lindsay 1:01:38 ... holding them to massive account.

Joe Rogan 1:01:40 Yes.

James Lindsay 1:01:40 And it's like... I mean, even, like, the Black Lives Matter thing. Like, Black Lives Matter as a sentence is obvious. Forcing somebody to say an obvious thing.

Joe Rogan 1:01:49 That's a great name 'cause you can't argue with it.

James Lindsay 1:01:51 You also can't argue with it.

Joe Rogan 1:01:52 Yeah. I mean, what are you gonna say?

James Lindsay 1:01:53 What else is gonna matter? And, of course, it's... I mean, it's so complicated because it's like if somebody asked me, they said, "Okay, do you support Black Lives Matter? James, do you support Black Lives Matter?" And, of course, they're gonna try to catch me on this and it's like, "Which one?" There's at least five. I support one of them, and I think the other four are nuts, right? So there's blacklivesmatter., a- all lowercase letters. It's a sentence, you can't disagree with it because, uh, it's obvious that Black lives actually matter and you shouldn't be forced to say obvious things. But what that, what is that? That's a, that's a call, right?

Joe Rogan 1:02:22 Mm-hmm.

James Lindsay 1:02:22 They're saying, "Hey, look. White people, uh, people of other races, we have a different experience with this society and it's bad."

Joe Rogan 1:02:29 Yes.

James Lindsay 1:02:30 "And we need you to hear us and we want you to care and we want there to be action taken that we can work on together to figure out." And who couldn't support that movement? I think everybody in the world supports that movement.

Joe Rogan 1:02:40 Right.

James Lindsay 1:02:40 But then you have the, the official one and their website's full of, like, literally neo-Marxist stuff and they're, like, weird, like, queer feminist something or another. Like, seriously, it's all on their About page on the Black Lives Matter website.

Joe Rogan 1:02:53 Yeah.

James Lindsay 1:02:53 And it's like, "There's a lot of baggage, man. I don't know if I'm for that." And then you have, like, the training video comes out with the ones saying, "Oh, we're trained Marxists." And they're, they're... They are, they're trained activists. You don't actually have to go along with all of that to agree with the sentence.

Joe Rogan 1:03:05 Right.

James Lindsay 1:03:05 Then you have this thing with, with white people. There's, like, a Black Lives Matter movement that's white people that are, like, washing Black people's feet and, like-

Joe Rogan 1:03:14 (laughs)

James Lindsay 1:03:14 ... calling 'em and apologizing and they're, like, freaking 'em out. And, I mean, this is actually horrible too, but-

Joe Rogan 1:03:19 Oh, it's amazing. (laughs)

James Lindsay 1:03:20 Could you imagine what it's like being, like, somebody calls you... Like, all your f- all your white friends start calling you and they're like, "By the way, I've always kind of been racist." Like, you had a relationship-

Joe Rogan 1:03:29 (laughs)

James Lindsay 1:03:29 ... with that person and now it's so awkward.

Joe Rogan 1:03:32 My favorite one was the white actors that all got together in that black and white film.

James Lindsay 1:03:37 Oh, no kidding.

Joe Rogan 1:03:38 Wasn't that amazing? (laughs)

James Lindsay 1:03:39 That was so... Oh my God.

Joe Rogan 1:03:41 It's so stupid.

James Lindsay 1:03:42 Oh.

Joe Rogan 1:03:42 And there was ones in there that I really enjoyed. I really enjoyed-

James Lindsay 1:03:44 I know.

Joe Rogan 1:03:45 ... their work. The problem is, these motherfuckers haven't worked in months and they want attention.

James Lindsay 1:03:49 That's right.

Joe Rogan 1:03:50 They wanted attention-

James Lindsay 1:03:51 Me, me, me, me, me.

Joe Rogan 1:03:51 ... and they weren't getting it, so they're like-

James Lindsay 1:03:52 Me, me, me, me, me.

Joe Rogan 1:03:52 ... "I know, I know how to really juice this up in my favor."

James Lindsay 1:03:56 Me, me, me, me, me, me, me.

Joe Rogan 1:03:57 It's so dumb. It's so dumb. Aaron Paul, he broke my heart.

James Lindsay 1:04:00 Oh. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:04:01 I saw him in there.

James Lindsay 1:04:02 Yeah. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:04:02 That actor? The Breaking Bad guy?

James Lindsay 1:04:04 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:04:04 He's amaze-... I love that dude.

James Lindsay 1:04:05 And then-

Joe Rogan 1:04:06 I was like, "Bruh, I wish I would've talked to you before that."

James Lindsay 1:04:08 I know.

Joe Rogan 1:04:08 "I can tell you how this goes."

James Lindsay 1:04:10 "I can tell you what happens next."

Joe Rogan 1:04:11 (laughs) This is good, man-

James Lindsay 1:04:12 Made a good-

Joe Rogan 1:04:13 ... 'cause guys like me are gonna watch it.

James Lindsay 1:04:14 That's right.

Joe Rogan 1:04:15 Let me tell you, we're gonna make fun of it a lot.

James Lindsay 1:04:16 A lot. That's right.

Joe Rogan 1:04:18 Get the fuck outta here.

James Lindsay 1:04:18 It was so funny. Uh, but... So then there's two more. We'll just drop 'em as... Whatever these... So, like-

Joe Rogan 1:04:24 What ha-... But I wanted to get back to this if you don't mind.

James Lindsay 1:04:26 No.

Joe Rogan 1:04:26 When th- that piece came out and you got the award-

James Lindsay 1:04:29 Oh. Right.

Joe Rogan 1:04:29 ... and then they found out.

James Lindsay 1:04:31 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:04:31 Like, what was th-... You said that she was pissed off.

James Lindsay 1:04:33 I mean, it- it was just... I got this email from her that was, like, short, but it was like, "I'm really hurt that you were deceptive to me." You know? It was kinda like that. And I felt bad, actually.

Joe Rogan 1:04:42 Oh.

James Lindsay 1:04:42 Like, I don't... I'm not-

Joe Rogan 1:04:43 Shit.

James Lindsay 1:04:44 I didn't do it to, like, be mean to people.

Joe Rogan 1:04:46 Right. You did it to prove a point.

James Lindsay 1:04:47 Like, I actually... You know th- the saying, you know, "You play the ball, don't play the man." Right?

Joe Rogan 1:04:52 Yes.

James Lindsay 1:04:52 So, uh, I guess I said it backwards if it's a saying. It's "Don't play the man, play the ball." Uh, this was about ideas for me. Like, that project was about the ideas.

Joe Rogan 1:05:01 Mm-hmm.

James Lindsay 1:05:01 It was about the scholarship. It wasn't about the people, and I felt like it was really unfortunate that there were people implicated in it. I actually did f- feel bad for them in almost every case. There were a couple of them that actually, like, pissed me off with some of the stuff they wrote to me, but... So, I didn't feel bad about them so much, but that's a human failing. I, you know, I'm not a perfect person.

Joe Rogan 1:05:19 When they pissed you off 'cause they... What'd they write?

James Lindsay 1:05:22 Oh, this one woman... We wrote a paper about masculinity and, uh, at Hooters.

Joe Rogan 1:05:27 (laughs)

James Lindsay 1:05:28 And we said that the only reason guys go there is... I mean, besides the obvious, wanting to ogle chicks, but the main reason was so that they could order, like... Double meaning in the word order, right? Order their food. They can order pretty young women around that have to do what they say.

Joe Rogan 1:05:43 Mm-hmm.

James Lindsay 1:05:43 And, you know, they can patriarchally order w- uh, taking their order is wh-... Is a pun. And, uh, this one woman wrote, like, this long review of it and she was like, "This paper..." It was... Remember, it was