What They Don't Want You To Know About Cancel Culture - Rikki Schlott

1. 0:00 – 6:34

   Have Calls for Cancellation Increased?

   1. CWChris Williamson0:00

      I feel like if there was ever a conspiracy to try and launch a book, a ton of free speech furors at some of America's highest education institutions might very well be it. So I'm not saying that you and Greg started all of this stuff off.

   2. RSRikki Schlott0:16

      (laughs)

   3. CWChris Williamson0:16

      But I am saying that it seems to be conveniently timed.

   4. RSRikki Schlott0:20

      Yeah. Um, I, we convinced all of the Ivy League and elite institutions to just self-detonate exactly as we were dropping this book about how terrible and dire the state of free speech is on their campus and the state of discourse. So-

   5. CWChris Williamson0:32

      I knew it.

   6. RSRikki Schlott0:32

      ... it's been an interesting time for sure. Also, uh, often an unideal time to be a vocal free speech absolutist, um, because it requires that you defend speech that is often very heinous even in the depths of an unfolding crisis. Um, but certainly, I think we're seeing the, the consequences of decades of just the, these major elite institutions in America just abdicating the value of free speech, completely throwing it to the wayside, and then allowing radicalism and, and some really frightening illiberal tendencies to fester in its place.

   7. CWChris Williamson1:06

      What has happened to the rates of calls for cancellation over the last few years?

   8. RSRikki Schlott1:12

      It's been absolutely staggering. And since 2014, um, fire, which is my, my co-author, Greg Lukianoff, is the, the president of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, and they've tallied more than 1,000 attempts to get professors fired, 200 of which have been successful in getting them sanctioned. Um, and that actually is twice the rate of the, uh, 10 years that roughly constitute what McCarthyism was. And so if we're looking back in historical context, we look at that as a horrendous blight on our record as a country in terms of, you know, firing people for ideological reasons. And we are now outstripping that at roughly twice the pace. So I think, in the future, historians will be looking back at this moment in time and studying it much as we did, um, and rightfully so, the 1950s.

   9. CWChris Williamson1:59

      What is driving this increase? Why is it ramping up so much? What are the, the undercurrents that are causing this thing to happen?

   10. RSRikki Schlott2:07

       Yeah. So I think the, the major catalyst here and why we define cancel culture as starting in 2014 in its modern iteration is because social media allows it to just take off like wildfire. And we, um, we kind of refer to Richard Dawkins' idea of a meme because cancel culture is very, uh, it's very effective. You know, you don't have to actually engage with somebody's argument. You just attack them ad hominem. You make an example of them. You make sure that no one else wants to tread the same ideological path as them. And in the end, people see that and watch that and replicate that. And I think that social media has allowed for an unprecedented amount of scrutiny on institutions, ideas, and people, which, of course, is a good thing. However, we're in one of those, like, post-printing press moments of social unrest where we haven't yet figured out how to navigate this world in which now billions of people are in the cultural conversation. And, um, and anyone could be te- torn down at any moment unceremoniously, fairly, unfairly. And so I think, you know, this is, our book is a, an attempt to call attention to the issue and also, um, hopefully get more people on board to figuring out how we get out of this mess because I think that there actually is a lot of, um, just general desire and, and a general understanding that, that things have gone too far, that people are walking on eggshells, and that that's not a healthy way to live.

   11. CWChris Williamson3:30

       Right. So if you're saying that the distribution mechanism of social media, frictionless, free communication, ubiquitous, instantly, globally accessible, that is, that's almost like the delivery mechanism driving the virus in some way. Is there anything deeper than that? Or i- is the main driver of this just the fact that humans have perverse incentives, there are a bunch of strange things that go on in our psychology, and when the opportunity arises to be able to do this, it activates something inside of us? Or has there been a deeper cultural change too that's driven the cancellation increase?

   12. RSRikki Schlott4:07

       Yeah. I mean, I think that the, this, the seeds have been sown for decades here, where we've just seen a general, um, institutional creep away from free speech values, a generational creep as well. Um, and we, we definitely believe that cancel culture started in its, um, kind of fledgling form on American campuses in the '80s and '90s when the first wave of political correctness was coming around. Like, Bill Maher was doing The Politically Incorrect Show before I was even born, and it was kind of laughable at that point in time. But then all of a sudden, as soon as social media came onto the forefront and Gen Z, unfortunately my generation, came to college campuses and began unceremoniously shouting down and tearing down their professors, um, it exploded out into the open in a way that it hadn't really historically. However, um, the, the creep away from classical liberal values has been consistent. Um, and, you know, one thing that was really frightening writing this book is realizing how different Greg, my co-author is, um, nearing 50 and I'm 23. So we have totally different generational span. And the, the old idioms and kind of, um, kind of foundational principles of American society that he grew up with, like to each his own and sticks and stones, I wasn't raised with any of them. Um, we, I was, I was raised with words can wound you and, um, oppressed people need to be protected and, and you need to be the, the warrior to step in on their behalf, lest they be offended. And it's just a fundamental flip. And I think that, uh, as a culture, we've just moved more towards protectionism and an, a feeling that we're all feeble rather than this resilient sort of anti-fragile framework that used to be kind of core to, to the American spirit, I think.

   13. CWChris Williamson5:47

       It's the British, it's the British spirit too. You know, like-

   14. RSRikki Schlott5:50

       Yeah.

   15. CWChris Williamson5:50

       ... stiff upper lip. That's-

   16. RSRikki Schlott5:52

       Yeah.

   17. CWChris Williamson5:52

       ... what we were known for, the stiff upper lip. And, you know, um, mustn't grumble.

   18. RSRikki Schlott5:57

       Yeah.

   19. CWChris Williamson5:58

       Mustn't grumble. Things are going badly but mustn't grumble. Uh, yeah, there's-... a increase in fragility, right? A rampant fragility. But it's n- (sighs) it's hollow, because it's not like there's an actual change. People are living longer than ever before. People have got-

   20. RSRikki Schlott6:13

       Mm-hmm.

   21. CWChris Williamson6:13

       ... better healthcare than ever before. You're more able to deal with anything, from the car accident, to the bad weather, to the heat, to the cold, to whatever it is. So, it's odd that you have real world situations going in one direction whilst perceptions of how bad it is going in another. But (sighs)

2. 6:34 – 10:50

   Stats About Self-Censorship in Academia

   1. CWChris Williamson6:34

      just how bad is it now? Like, what, what stats have you found to back up just how many people are being canceled or, or what the, the sense, the cultural thermometer is saying?

   2. RSRikki Schlott6:44

      Yeah, I mean, FIRE does these tremendous surveys of student sentiment around the country. And we know that roughly two thirds of students on college campuses say that they're self-censoring. Um, we also know that roughly 90% of professors say the same, and that one in 10 have been investigated for what they're, what should be protected speech. Um, and so I think that one of the things that's interesting is there, there tends to consistently be ebbs and flows of cancel culture wh- where people say, "Oh, it's behind us and, like, it's no- it's no longer an issue. 2016 was a rough moment, but, like, now we're back to normal." And then the pandemic happens, and it's even worse in the wake of 2020. And then, "Oh no, maybe we're back to normal." And then the Israel-Palestine conflict erupts. And it's just anytime there's a moment of social unrest, a, a culture that is not actually deeply rooted in its free speech values will tend towards illiberalism, censorship, um, attacking disagreers or dissenters from the predominant viewpoint. And I think that we see that time and again. And every single time, it's been getting more severe. So, if you look at the caseloads that FIRE, um, gets from students and faculty across the country, uh, 2020 was a record-breaking year, despite the fact that kids weren't even on campuses. So, they had an unprecedented caseload. And, you know, if you also look at the, the raw statistics of the surveys of, of Americans, consistently, roughly four in five Americans will agree that political correctness has gone too far, that cancel culture is a problem, that they feel that they have to self-censor. And I think it's genuinely a tyranny of the minority. It's just the problem is that that remaining 20% squeaky wheels who actually do tear people down have such an outsized impact on society where we're all self-censoring. And I felt that myself being a- an NYU student in the, the recent past, for sure.

   3. CWChris Williamson8:33

      What was your experience on campus like when you got there?

   4. RSRikki Schlott8:37

      I had gone to a, um, a boarding school that was almost like a mini college before. So, I feel like I was kind of primed by the time I arrived at NYU. Um, my freshman year of high school was the first time that I realized I just did not agree with the, the prevailing viewpoint. Um, when they, on Martin Luther King Day, as- put all the kids in different buildings based on their race to talk about their racial experience. (laughs) And I remember being like, "This is kind of the opposite of how I've been taught to, uh, internalize the, the lessons of Martin Luther King Jr." And, um, yeah, so that was ... I knew by the time I arrived at NYU that I was, uh, kind of going against the grain. And when I did get there, I was c- understandably, I think, in retrospect, concerned for my social standing. And so I was hiding Thomas Sowell books and Jordan Peterson books under my bed, which is really embarrassing in retrospect. And like, now I've been on Jordan's podcast and I'm super canceled, and, you know, booted from every group chat that I was in, basically, at NYU. But, um, it was generally a- an ideologically oppressive environment, I would say. I, I rarely heard dissenting viewpoints. Um, I took ... I, I did a two years of a humanities degree before dropping out, despite having a 4.0 GPA because, you know, full tuition for Zoom school was not going to happen. Um, but I would say that generally it was one way or the highway. Kids would even try occasionally to pop into philosophical conversations and say ... you know, to play devil's advocate and then present some unpopular opinion. And they would literally be scoffed and hissed at, consistently. So, um, I would j- It just, it made me self-censor. And I realized once I started writing for the New York Post and being outspoken finally in the pandemic that so many people around me reached out to me privately and said, "You know, I, I completely agree with you." And I'd been in a classroom with them, and I would never have known because, you know, cancel culture and illiberalism thrives by making everyone feel alone. But even at a school like NYU, there, there were a considerable number of kids who actually did feel similarly oppressed but ... um, or ideologically oppressed, but didn't feel that they could speak out and, and didn't have any examples around them.

   5. CWChris Williamson10:49

      It's

3. 10:50 – 14:17

   The Motivations Behind Cancelers

   1. CWChris Williamson10:50

      strange to think, if that's the case, 66% of students are self-censoring in some form or another on campus, but that there will be a good chunk of those students that will hiss and, and mock if you try to even steel man, let alone actually have a different opinion. I don't know. It seems like it's, it's ... I'm wondering what is motivating those people to be so vehement in their enforcement of a particular ideology that 66% of them don't agree with, or at least have criticisms of.

   2. RSRikki Schlott11:23

      Mm-hmm.

   3. CWChris Williamson11:23

      Like, what's the ... I, I'm trying to work out what's the incentive. What, what's in it for the canceler?

   4. RSRikki Schlott11:28

      Mm. Well, I think that the, the ... there's like a kind of cluster B personality type that's really been, um, empowered on campuses, I think, and, and people who are, I think, genuine believers. At a place like NYU, I- there are a considerable fraction of people who, who generally believe that if they step in on behalf of some, you know, oppressed theoretical group that might be offended by something that you say ... which, by the way, they're almost never the demographic of people that they're defending. But I think that there's a moral high ground to it and, um, and, and a sense of righteousness. And I, I would even go as far as to say, like, a bit of, like, a, a religious kind of-... attitude towards it. Like, I- I think of John McWhorter's book, Woke Racism, and-and the idea that, um, this is kind of supplanting. This... Like, this ideology in a, in a post-faith world is oftentimes occupying that same part of the, the human psyche, I would say. Um, but also it's so institutionalized at these colleges as well. I think that even, even if not every professor agrees with it, certainly the administrators are extremely disproportionately left-wing or left-leaning. And when I was at NYU, for example, we... On the back of our ID cards, it says, "Here's 911. Here's the phone number for the campus police," which you probably could theoretically need a- in New York City at any point in time. "And here's the, the student health center and all these emergency numbers." And then also the bias response hotline, where you could call if you felt aggrieved or offended by something that someone said. And it's, uh, literally an institutionalized snitch culture on these campuses. And it was literally on the back of the bathroom stalls too. They'd have, like, posters of, like, "Has something happened to you? Call the bias response hotline." And you're, you know, immediately on the phone with an administrator. So I... You're walking on eggshells, and even if it is just a small percentage of kids who will hiss or who will call you any sort of -ister, -ism, um, or a phobe at any, any opportunity, just one kid doing that is enough to shut an entire class down, I believe. And I-I saw it firsthand.

   5. CWChris Williamson13:42

      Yeah, it's a, a very effective leverage, one person that has that... What's that, um... Panopticon? It's kind of like the panopticon, right? That you have one person that's able to be in the middle and manipulate an awful lot of people around them's opinions.

   6. RSRikki Schlott14:00

      Mm-hmm.

   7. CWChris Williamson14:00

      And the fear... It's a race to the bottom in that regard. Like, whoever has the most, the highest purity level is the one whose opinion is, is gonna continue to be pushed forward. What was that analysis of mass Twitter bans that you guys looked at?

   8. RSRikki Schlott14:16

      Mm-hmm.

4. 14:17 – 18:16

   Researching Mass Twitter Bans

   1. RSRikki Schlott14:17

      Yeah, they found... Um, this is, this is data that we got from the National Contagion Research Institute, and they followed the growth of the platform Gab as Twitter did mass bans and purges of accounts that were, um, at various times, associated with, like, InfoWars or, um, there were, I think post-Charlottesville, there were groups of, um... That they'd identified as white supremacists and Proud Boys. And they would do these mass bans and purges of accounts starting around 2016, and then literally in lockstep, there would be a mass exodus to Gab every single time, and the, the percentage of, uh, of Gabs that included the word ban would go up by, like, a factor of 10. And so we-we analyzed that data basically to demonstrate that when we do fight ideas that could be very offensive and unsavory, and-and I-I understand why people are offended by white supremacist views and Proud Boy views. I'm not defending them. However, when you remove them from, from the, the common square in places where they might interact with other viewpoints or where they might get quote-tweeted and publicly shamed, you end up creating even deeper and more entrenched echo chambers. And so we were very fortunate to get this data from NCRI, because we now can provably say that censorship does not make these ideas go away. It just puts them into more obscure crevices of the internet, where people are more likely to agree and have a positive feedback loop. So, um, we-we were extremely fortunate that that had not been published before, um, we had done this book, and I think it's a demonstration of the importance of a platform actually tacking towards free speech, because those views are not gone. They're just somewhere else and none of us hear about them, but they very much exist in another, in another crevice of the internet.

   2. CWChris Williamson16:08

      What do you think cancellation is trying to achieve? Like, what... I- you just explained that it doesn't seem to work. It pushes these ideas underground in some regard. It can throw them into echo chambers where there are presumably no dissenting voices. What-what is it trying to achieve?

   3. RSRikki Schlott16:25

      I mean, I think it's just predicated on a, I think, a fundamental misunderstanding of how, how dialogue works and how minds are changed and hearts and minds are won over. I think... I think there's been such a, an alienation from the classical liberal values post-Enlightenment that, that made society free and, and made dialogue robust and made debate healthy and, um, in the realm of ideas and not ad hominem. And, you know, for, for example, I've, I've never learned John Stuart Mill's On Liberty. I never learned the importance of free speech, uh, growing up, even going to great schools and doing a philosophy degree at NYU. I didn't understand the importance and-and just how profound those post-Enlightenment ideals are, and how much they need to be bought into by the entire culture and community in order to thrive. And I think that those... Some people who engage in cancel culture are genuinely mean-spirited, but other people, I think, do believe that if they shut down and, I don't know, castigate anybody who has a bad belief, that that somehow actually does expunge it from society, which is provably untrue. I think it's, it's polarized us even further. Um, but I, I do think that it's just because people are, are no longer taught the, the importance of, you know, "He who knows only his side of the argument knows little of that," and, and the importance of being able to exist in the realm of ideas. And then frankly, it's just an easy, cheap tactic to win arguments without winning arguments. Because if I can attack you for being a cishet white male, I don't actually have to deal with the fact that you might have an ideological argument that, that corners me or makes me uncomfortable in my own predispositions.

   4. CWChris Williamson18:15

      What are some

5. 18:16 – 24:51

   Cancellation Enforcement Mechanisms

   1. CWChris Williamson18:16

      of the mechanisms for enforcing cancellation that people might not realize are part of the cancellation machine?

   2. RSRikki Schlott18:24

      I would say one thing that people seem not to talk enough about is how early it's starting. And especially in the, in the social media age. I grew up, I had an iPhone when I was 10 or maybe 11. I was on Instagram by the time I was 11 surely. And I am now, like, the human receptacle for every parents' horror stories about what's happening to their middle schoolers getting canceled for, like, a two-second Snapchat video, or someone screenshotted something and now everyone's seen it. And I think that one of the enforcement mechanisms going forward in the age of everybody having this insanely excessive digital footprint and all of their adolescent blunders being forever immortalized in a way that I think any older person should shudder at the thought of. Um, that's one way that it's being enforced is that there's an entire generation of young people who are coming up just surrounded by trip wires, even in their teenage years, that they're arriving on campus in college already primed for the fact that they have to self-censor or that they could be called out in any point in time. And I think that that's self-perpetuating, because that's making less and less people even want to stick their neck out in the first place. But then I also think that cancel culture is, is so dangerous and so powerful, not just for the people whose lives are torn down and completely ruined, but also for all the people around them that see that and see them having been made an example of, and then will refuse, and understandably so, to tread that same territory.

   3. CWChris Williamson19:51

      What's that? What's it called? Like, a, a, a, some kind of ideological bias test that people get asked. Uh, and it's almost like the culpably deniable shit test of, of becoming a, a, working out where your politics are. It's not part of some, uh, induction. It's not even part of a code of conduct. But people just sometimes throw a little question like, "What do you think about Jordan Peterson? Have you ever listened to Ben Shapiro?"

   4. RSRikki Schlott20:18

      Mm-hmm.

   5. CWChris Williamson20:18

      "Have you done this thing?" And that's one of the more sort of soft introduction ways to this that slowly, over time, results in you being denigrated or, or disparaged or made to feel other. And, um, yeah. It, it's not just people calling for removal of accounts and bans and protests. It's, there seems to be sort of a softer kind of alienation of people that have different views, which importantly is culpably deniable, right? There's no point at which-

   6. RSRikki Schlott20:49

      Mm-hmm.

   7. CWChris Williamson20:49

      ... you've done the thing. 'Cause I think that people who are seduced by the prospect of being a white knight, or who like the idea of performative empathy because it makes them look moral whilst having to do nothing moral, or people who just want to enact power and-

   8. RSRikki Schlott21:03

      Mm-hmm.

   9. CWChris Williamson21:03

      ... enforce this over other people, the game is beginning to evolve in the way that memes often do, where if you, i- it's now low status to be seen as someone that calls for cancellation, because cancellation itself has become a meme. So now, the methods of cancellation need to become increasingly subtle.

   10. RSRikki Schlott21:20

       Mm-hmm.

   11. CWChris Williamson21:20

       They need to develop as the defense mechanisms develop as well.

   12. RSRikki Schlott21:24

       Yeah. I mean, I think it's, it's ... I think we've seen less coordinated sort of Twitter mob teardowns. Although I would say that 2020 was kind of a, a, an exception to that. But to your, to your example, um, or to your point, an example of that would be in 2020 and after the death of George Floyd, if you didn't post the black square, then that was a, a moral, uh, judgment.

   13. CWChris Williamson21:46

       The ideological Rorschach test.

   14. RSRikki Schlott21:48

       Yeah, exactly. And I mean, there are people who I, I have friends who were completely castigated and, and, and unfollowed and blocked for not having done so. I, I mean, I didn't do it, and that wasn't ... Didn't go over too well at NYU. Um, but that would be the perfect example of like a, a soft, like, "Do you buy into the prevailing ideology at that point in time?" Um, and I would also say, to that point, there's definitely, like, a, a slow and subtle quarantining that I saw of, when I was in, um, in classes at NYU and in my more philosophy-oriented courses, where it would kind of become clear that maybe one or two people are a little more heterodox. And it was just, like, a slow, people are gonna start kind of sitting on the other side of the classroom when they come in if that person's over there. Um, to the point where it was, like, this kind of bubble as though we were ill or there was something wrong with us. (laughs) Um, and I, I've also watched how growing up that way has, I think, polarized young people even more. Because if you grow u- if you're being racially segregated when you're 14 on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, and you're having political ideo- ideologies shoved down your throat from pretty much day one, it's understandable why some people, especially young people, become the reactionary opposite or can go down some rabbit hole on the internet. Um, and like, I, I'm fascinated to see. I'm sure you saw that statistic that, um, girls and boys are, like, forking politically right now. And I think there's-

   15. CWChris Williamson23:16

       What do you make of that?

   16. RSRikki Schlott23:18

       Um, I, (sighs) you know, I think it's ... I think part of it is a little bit of a reactionary thing for boys, and understandably so. I think that I, I tacked right when I saw how weird the left was around me when I was in school. But I also feel like politics are ... Like, there's almost a feminization of the left a little bit. And a lot of, um, a- I think a lot of even cancel culture or, or attitudes about free speech and, and needing to protect other people from harmful speech almost hijack the, the female proclivity to be more empathetic or, or to, um, you know, emotionally reason more than rationally reason, which is obviously, you know, you do all, the whole, like, on average, and of course there are exceptions to that rule. But I mean, even if you look at students' attitude in f- on free speech and the percentages of students at various schools who will say that it's sometimes acceptable to respond to speech with violence, consistently-...like, the top five schools are all all-women's schools, with the highest percentage of people saying that they would respond with violence to speech. And so I do think that our political binary is taking on a little bit of a gendered tone. And then you also just have the, the reality of growing up on the internet and ending up down rabbit holes, which happened to me politically, and I was, like, all the way on the right one year and then all the way on the left one year, and it's, it's understandable how, how that could cause a polarization, I think, for sure.

   17. CWChris Williamson24:50

       Have

6. 24:51 – 34:40

   The Subjects You Can’t Touch on Campuses

   1. CWChris Williamson24:51

      you looked at Cori Clark's work? Do you know who she is?

   2. RSRikki Schlott24:54

      Name sounds familiar and ... but-

   3. CWChris Williamson24:56

      Evolutionary psychologist, phenomenal, and she sent an email to every psychology lecturer in America. She contacted them all to ask about-

   4. RSRikki Schlott25:07

      Mm-hmm.

   5. CWChris Williamson25:07

      ... uh, trends around self-censorship, uh, specifically looking at what sorts of topics. This, put it in the second book. It's so, she's so great. Uh, she was on the show a couple of months ago. And, um, consistently female teachers skew towards there are certain things that shouldn't be spoken about, there are harsher judgments that should be for the lecturers that do talk about this sort of stuff, and shock, horror, the two areas that were the most, uh, derogated, the ones that you shouldn't talk about, behavioral genetics and evolutionary psychology. Why?

   6. RSRikki Schlott25:38

      Mm-hmm.

   7. CWChris Williamson25:38

      Well, because there are immutable facts, or it posits that there, there are immutable facts, and sex denialism or sex difference denialism has no place to slot in, in either of those worldviews.

   8. RSRikki Schlott25:51

      Mm-hmm. Mm. Yeah. That's interesting. And, uh, uh, also to that, um, effect, FIRE will ask students what issues are, like, the touchiest on campus that they feel that they can't speak about, and consistently they're the most important political issues of the day, which is super disturbing. Like, in 2020, all of a sudden it was racial issues, and then this year, um, affirmative action was, like, all the way at the top, and the Israel-Palestine conflict is always up there. And it's like the things that you would most want a college campus to be the forum of different ideas colliding in a, in a, an intellectual and robust and, and healthy way, it's, the ideas that are the m- the most touchy, transgender issues are always at the very top, or post-Roe was, uh, the issue of abortion, and it's, it's, it's super disturbing to see that the things that you'd most want is to have kids hash out, or at least hear and understand competing viewpoints on, are consistently the ones at the bottom of the barrel in terms of what they're actually willing to touch as well.

   9. CWChris Williamson26:51

      Well, forget the fact that this is important to the development of a brain that's trying to work out what's true in the world, they're the most interesting things.

   10. RSRikki Schlott26:58

       Mm-hmm.

   11. CWChris Williamson26:58

       They're the ones that, that, that are actually interesting to talk about. You decide to hermetically seal off a bunch of different things and you're left with stuff that no one has a really strong opinion on or that no one can become offended by, and you go, well, by definition those things aren't very passion inducing. They're not exciting to talk about.

   12. RSRikki Schlott27:16

       Mm-hmm.

   13. CWChris Williamson27:17

       So I think back to, you know, I went to uni 2006 and I was at Newcastle, uh, for five years, so I did two degrees while I was there. There wasn't a single point while I was there where politics even came in. I was doing a business degree, I was regularly in lecture theaters with 250 or 300 students, and there wasn't a single time when it came in. Wh- it was pre Me Too, so I guess, you know, there were some reckonings kind of around social justice and male behavior and male/female sex dynamics and, and, and politics as well. You know, it's, it's pre-Trump, it's pre, largely pre-social media. Facebook was available the year that I went if you only had a, a university email address. That was when it was still gatekept-

   14. RSRikki Schlott28:02

       Hmm.

   15. CWChris Williamson28:02

       ...by having a university email address, so it was only for people that attended, like, uh, accredited institutions or whatever. But that i- m- my experience at university, despite being mostly boring, was completely bereft of any, uh, control. Like, we were degenerate club promoters and, and, like, gym bros, so I guess we may have disregarded them had they been there in any case. But I didn't notice any of this, and it makes me, it makes me sad. It makes me sad to think that... I, I still have faith and I still believe that university is a very good formative experience, because I look at the transformation that I went through, absolutely 100% of it outside of the lecture theater, but I look at all of the changes that I went through, and I think, if I hadn't had that, I would've, it would've taken me significantly longer to have got to the stage where I was socially, uh-

   16. RSRikki Schlott28:55

       Mm-hmm.

   17. CWChris Williamson28:55

       ...in terms, in terms of my life experience, in terms of my networking ability, in terms of how much business experience I got, all of those things. It was like a, you know, a, a crash course, a Navy SEAL hell week of just learning to be around other people and losing your keys and getting drunk and having an argument with a friend at 3:00 in the morning. All of the experiences outside of the university thing were important-

   18. RSRikki Schlott29:13

       Yeah.

   19. CWChris Williamson29:13

       ...but if every single one of them is colored with this, like, Sword of Damocles that's hanging over your head in case you say the wrong thing, and now the fact that you do have a gullible surveillance state co-opted by volunteers that don't realize they're doing it, like, someone has CCTV footage at all times. We had this idea-

   20. RSRikki Schlott29:34

       Mm-hmm.

   21. CWChris Williamson29:34

       (laughs) This is, like, (laughs) the least academic insight into, uh, uh, the proliferation of smartphones. Back in the day, we used to do a t-shirt bar crawl called Carnage, and this was 2007, 2008, 2009. It was a license to print money. You'd put one of these things out and it just sold out immediately, and there was tasks on the back, things like pull da pig, got off with three randoms, shopped, swapped shoes with somebody. People would write the first half of the alphabet down the, the right side of their arm and the second half down the left side of their arm, and they'd try and kiss one person from each letter of the alphabet. Like, this is classic mid-noughties American Pie style, like, university behavior.

   22. RSRikki Schlott30:13

       Mm-hmm.

   23. CWChris Williamson30:13

       But one of the questions I asked a friend was like, "Where did that sort of lairy British sort of student culture go?" And he said as soon as the smartphone came around, no one could make mistakes on a night out without fearing that it would define them for the rest of their life, that you have, you know-

   24. RSRikki Schlott30:28

       Mm-hmm.

   25. CWChris Williamson30:29

       You kiss some person that's, like, uncool or embarrassing or whatever. You do it in 2006, people laugh about it, and then it's either forgotten about or you can deny it outright and do whatever. But in the age of the internet, it's, you know, cemented online for the rest of time, and it defines you.

   26. RSRikki Schlott30:50

       Absolutely. I mean, and I think that the impacts on young people are so much more profound than we've even really started to talk about. I mean, I'm 23, and I'm just at, like, the- the beginning of, uh, th- just burgeoning into adulthood and being the first cohort of people who are able to reflect back on what it means to have an- a smartphone when you're 10, and to have the threat of anything popping up at any point in time. And any- anyone born post-2000 who tells you that they don't have something unsavory somewhere, that they would rather not have come back to haunt them, is absolutely lying to you. I think we're ultimately going to have a ceasefire on this front, because it's going to get so bad. We're never gonna have a- a politician who, um, can survive oppo research for the rest of time now that we've been so overly online. And I think the- the sad thing to me is that young people demonstrably know this. Like, I- the amount of- of concern that I've heard from my peers and- and from- from people reaching out to me about their own children, um, and also the- the polling. If you ask generations what their view is of cancel culture, positive or negative, the most positive view is Millennials, and then it gets more negative as- as you get older, except for Gen Z completely reverses that trend. So, even though Millennials have the most positive view of cancel culture, Gen Z has the most negative view, even more negative than Boomers, because we grew up with it. Like, we grew up looking behind our shoulders. But the problem is, it's a very small, squeaky whee- wheel minority of our generation that is at the helm of these cancel campaigns and will, like, Twitter shame their boss, but the rest of us have not been given the- the restorative kind of free speech-oriented, classical liberal set of values to supplant cancel culture. We just know we don't like this, but we're not quite sure how to fix it or put our finger on it or stop attacking people ad hominem and- and living in the realm of ideas. So, I think there's a- a tremendous amount of anxiety and unrest in being a young person who grows up unable to make social faux pas, as everyone does when they're an adolescent, or, you know, have their Marxist phase and then realize a couple months later that that wasn't for them, but that's part of growing up and exploring. And, you know, I think, um, young people just really have not been taught the- the values required to, um, interact in the intellectual world with the- the epistemic humility of realizing that you might be wrong at any point in time, and that anyone that you talk to knows something that you don't know, um, and that your opinions aren't part of your personhood, and- and extending that same, um, generosity and grace to somebody who you might be disagreeing with. Um, and I think that's really profound. And I also, um, just to go back to what you were saying on the- on the university front, like, I'm- I dropped out of NYU with a 4.0 GPA, not because I have some sort of disdain for education and learning, but the really sad reality at that point in time, in such an ideologically homogenous environment, was that I had to drop out for my love of learning, in defense of it. And it's not because I don't believe in the importance of education, but I think in its current form, it is so distorted, and these institutions of- of higher education have just appointed themselves the sole gatekeepers to success and polite society, and have had absolutely no market pressure placed upon them. And it's going to require more young people proving that it's not the only pathway to success to actually, I think, shake, um, society from its complacency and challenge these institutions to actually be better, and to serve people who are their patrons.

   27. CWChris Williamson34:38

       Talk to me about

7. 34:40 – 40:03

   Free Speech Law Vs Free Speech Culture

   1. CWChris Williamson34:40

      the relationship between free speech laws and free speech culture.

   2. RSRikki Schlott34:44

      Mm. Yeah. I think that this is one of, um, the most interesting insights from the book, where, you know, there are three countries with extremely robust free speech laws on the books, which, aside from the US, almost to if you were to read them, you might think that it's the First Amendment, and they are Turkey, North Korea, and Russia. So, having a free speech law on the books means absolutely nothing if your culture and practice does not abide by them. Whereas on the flip side, one of the most vibrant points in intellectual history was the French Enlightenment at a point in time where there was absolutely no legal protection for free speech on the books at all whatsoever. But because there was a- a salon culture and, uh, a culture in which elites were interested in the free exchange of ideas and leaning into int- intellectual society, free speech was able to flourish. And I think that it's really important to realize that merely having the First Amendment on the books or merely having its equivalent on the books in another country is not adequate to actually fostering a culture that operates in a free speech way. Um, and there's a- a great quote by a judge named Learned Hand, which does not really sound like a real name to me, but... And I'll- I'll bungle it, but roughly (laughs) , um, roughly, the quote is that, you know, liberty lives in the- in the hearts and minds of- of every man and woman, and if it lies there, it doesn't need a court or a law to protect it, but if it dies there, no court or law can save it. And I think that we're seeing this slow and subtle cultural shift away from free speech norms, that all of a sudden, f- like, throw social media in the mix, and you can burn any heretic at the stake, and it'll happen like that, because it's- it's...... really hard to grow up in the West today and realize just how crazy it is that we don't burn our heretics at the stake in the scheme of human history. We live in, like, the teeny, tiniest little sliver of time where we actually don't do that. But all of a sudden now, we're doing it in the digital sphere because that is mankind's instinct. And so just having a law on the books doesn't really matter unless everyone buys in and actually abides by the, the cultural code that, that it r- is really required.

   3. CWChris Williamson37:00

      Mm. There was a really interesting insight I saw from the New York Post article that you guys did, where it was talking about how free speech culture and ideological diversity can make the world more chaotic. And because most humans don't like this, a good contingent of those people will happily trade their freedom for increased predictability, that if you're-

   4. RSRikki Schlott37:21

      Mm-hmm.

   5. CWChris Williamson37:21

      ... exposed to new opinions and ideas that don't conform with you, you have to confront the fact that maybe you're wrong. And, you know-

   6. RSRikki Schlott37:28

      Mm-hmm.

   7. CWChris Williamson37:28

      ... accepting that you are wrong, to the ego, is tantamount to destruction. It's almost a- an invalidation of you entirely, "Oh my God, if I'm wrong about this, what else might I be wrong about?" And this denial of ever having to admit that we're wrong, especially in a world where everything that we do and say is permanently cemented on the internet for all of time, for people to-

   8. RSRikki Schlott37:49

      Yeah.

   9. CWChris Williamson37:49

      ... scrutinize, I thought that was very interesting and I, I think, from my perspective, that seems to be right. A more chaotic world with a multiplicity of ideological viewpoints and diversity of opinion is unsettling in many ways to people and they will happily trade the accuracy and the truthfulness, uh, and the freedom that they have in order to increase the reliability and predictability that they have about the world going forward.

   10. RSRikki Schlott38:18

       Yeah, absolutely. And I think that that's made even worse by the fact that polarization has, I think, made politics so much more tied to individual identity than it has been in the past as well, so an assault on your ideas feels like an assault on you as a person. And I think also to the, the point of chaos, I mean, if we, if we look back historically, we're in the very beginning ages of what it means to now have billions of people in the cultural conversation thanks to social media. It's, you know, been roughly a decade since it's been massly adopt- or mass adopted, and if we look back historically, the- I think the best analogy is the inv- invention of the printing press. And when the printing press was invented, Henry VIII was trying to license who can print a, a pamphlet, and there were hundreds of years of religious wars as a result. And that was a really chaotic and uncomfortable time where I think it's actually pretty understandable why the powers that be and the people that were beholden to them wanted to squash out all the new voices that entered the cultural conversation and challenged the norms. And we look back and we think, "Well, that was a great thing when literacy rates rose and that created the Enlightenment and the world as we know it," but we're still in that early kind of chaos days of social media, and I think the fact that things haven't gotten worse than they are at the moment is actually kind of amazing, um, and, and a testament to the fact that there are still some people who do believe in, in free speech and, and the wisdom of the populous. But, um, I, I think, like, the Twitter files just go to demonstrate how, how threatening new voices in a cultural conversation can be to the social fabric and to, um, the kind of levers of society.

8. 40:03 – 47:29

   Is Cancellation Just Accountability?

   1. RSRikki Schlott40:03

   2. CWChris Williamson40:03

      What do you say to the people who claim this isn't cancellation culture, this is consequence culture, this is just people being brought to account for having heinous, reprehensible views?

   3. RSRikki Schlott40:16

      I mean, I think that the, the swath of views that have become cancelable offenses has grown so considerably. I mean, we just have, like, case after case in our book of, um, there's, there's one woman, Carole Hooven, who was a Harvard professor, who God forbid-

   4. CWChris Williamson40:29

      She's a good friend of ours.

   5. RSRikki Schlott40:29

      ... went on Fox News. And she, and she's lovely and she's tactful and she's careful with her words, and she went on Fox News, um, to discuss some issue of gender. She wrote the book T, um, about testosterone, and she extremely tactfully said, "You know, we can respect people's gender identity and use their pronouns. However, we have to also acknowledge the fact that biological sex is real and on a, on a fundamental level." And for that, she was effectively squeezed out of her job to the point where, and I know you know this story, but to the point where she, she told us, um, in an interview for the book that she was actually, um, suicidal for the first time in her life. And so if the, the group of cancelable offenses is now including acknowledging biological reality as a professor in your own field, um, or, you know, going all the way down to now middle schoolers that, whose parents call me constantly and, and reach out to me or email me, um, to say that their seventh grader has now been canceled for something, which, I mean, at sev- in seventh grade, that just shouldn't even, you shouldn't even be politically aware. You're worried about boys and acne and not politics at that point in time. Um, and just the sheer number as well, but if it really were about accountability culture, I think the truth that a lot of people who've witnessed these cancel mobs form, um, can attest to is the fact that apologies do not make it better. It's not about saying, "Oh, I, I did tweet that 10 years ago, but I completely disagree with it now and I apologize for offending you," because that doesn't fix it. It's not actually about making people account for the, any error that they might have made or any misstep.

   6. CWChris Williamson42:08

      Mm.

   7. RSRikki Schlott42:08

      It's about making an example of them and shaming them.

   8. CWChris Williamson42:12

      Yeah, it's having your morality stand on the shoulders of someone that you can easily accuse. I mean, the Carole thing, we went for breakfast, me, her, uh, uh, William Costello a couple of months ago, and, uh-That woman cries more easily than anyone I've ever met. She's like the most empathetic... I think she cried six times on Rogan-

   9. RSRikki Schlott42:31

      Yeah.

   10. CWChris Williamson42:31

       ... like four times on my show. She's just such a touchy-feely, lovely person, that's really-

   11. RSRikki Schlott42:35

       She is.

   12. CWChris Williamson42:35

       ... delicately trying to move through this. She's a really perfect example of whatever we wanna call it, like, um, soft mechanisms of cancellation. Because at no point did anyone come to her and say, "You can't teach anymore," but every teaching assistant that she was supposed to be working with refused to help in her class. So if you don't have a teaching assistant, like how are you gonna... you can't do your class.

   13. RSRikki Schlott42:59

       Mm-hmm.

   14. CWChris Williamson42:59

       And I think she had one of the most popular... it was like quite a well-attended class-

   15. RSRikki Schlott43:03

       Yep.

   16. CWChris Williamson43:03

       ... at- at Harvard. So it's like, "Okay, well, I guess I'm kind of, like, on the bench for now." And then when you're on the bench for that-

   17. RSRikki Schlott43:10

       Yep.

   18. CWChris Williamson43:10

       ... so long, you just end up kind of falling away. So... And i- it's so interesting to think that the- the apology doesn't make any difference, because if that was what you were after, then the apology would fix the problem. It's like, hey-

   19. RSRikki Schlott43:23

       Mm-hmm.

   20. CWChris Williamson43:24

       ... look, interesting. How interesting. I didn't know about this particular statistic about this thing. Because no one from an ideologically pure- purity spiral-spiral driven world can believe that someone would be sufficiently, epistemically humble to actually ever be able to say that. It's like, no, no, no, no, this is you. Your identity and your opinions and your ideology are one and the same. You know, we saw this with (clears throat) Rogan, uh, the (clears throat) variety of cancellations that he went through a couple of years ago, and what people do, I thought it was really formative, people try and say, "Here is an individual instance or a collection of instances that may seem small here, but we know that they are representative of this big iceberg that lies below the surface."

   21. RSRikki Schlott44:12

       Mm-hmm.

   22. CWChris Williamson44:13

       This is the- the smoking gun that tells you that this person is the bigoted, racist, transphobic, homophobic, whatever thing that we always knew that they were, and this is- this is finally the crack, the fissure has shown through this façade that they've created. So, all right, well, what you had with Joe, and what, you know, increasingly I would like to think people will see with other online content creators or writers or- or- or anybody, all right, well, that might be true, but I also have 5,000 hours of him talking to people on podcasts, and it didn't come up then. So he's either the best liar and- and deflector of his bigoted, racist views in history, or that's unrepresentative overall.

   23. RSRikki Schlott44:58

       Mm-hmm.

   24. CWChris Williamson44:58

       And i- I don't know, it seems to me like... I would like to think people give what used to be called the benefit of the doubt, but I- I don't know, that- that seems to be increasingly rare now.

   25. RSRikki Schlott45:09

       Yeah, I mean, I think that also, to that point, the benefit of the doubt is often given to anybody's, like, ideological friends, but then it's precisely the opposite if they just don't like someone instinctively. Um, and I- I think, you know, it's been instructive to see, like, Rogan survive cancellation attempts and- and Bari Weiss to make a career out of it, basically, with The Free Press and the awesome stuff that she's doing there. Um, or Chappelle and- and seeing Netflix finally actually toughen up and- and, um, say no to their employees that were trying to wreak havoc over a single joke. I mean, I do think that there have been examples of- of cancellation going so far that there is a band of people who are willing to come around and actually support you and champion you as a result, and I think that- that Joe Rogan's a perfect example of that. Um, but I, you know, I worry that those are only people who are in a powerful enough position when it first happens to them that people know. Um, and there's so many just, like, unheard stories or even... I- I think that one of the problems is, like, on a college campus, it's much easier to quantify how often this is happening because people often have legal recourse, but in- in the private spheres, it's impossible for us to tally how many people have been canceled, not only because some people will just shut down and never say anything, but also because there are so many examples of people who will talk to you off the record about it, but they've signed an NDA because that was their- their severance agreement with whatever company they were squeezed out of.

   26. CWChris Williamson46:41

       Yeah.

   27. RSRikki Schlott46:41

       Um, and, you know, um, Jennifer Sey, who left Levi's, she refused, uh, to sign an NDA and- and turned away $1 million of payout to... um, because she had criticized COVID policies and school lockdowns, which apparently means that you can no longer be an executive at Levi's. Um, but, you know, she- she refused to sign an NDA, and we only know that that even happened because she- she had the spine to actually say, "No, I wanna maintain my intellectual autonomy." But, um, yeah, I mean, I think that there's- there's so many high-profile teardowns that thankfully people are starting to land on their feet and support one another, but, um, you know, I fear that the 2024 election will be another wave of all of the same stuff, and I- (laughs) I'm not feeling great about the future of cancel culture in the near future,

9. 47:29 – 52:36

   Predicting the Future of Cancel Culture

   1. RSRikki Schlott47:29

      so...

   2. CWChris Williamson47:29

      Oh, yeah.

   3. RSRikki Schlott47:30

      Yeah.

   4. CWChris Williamson47:30

      What- what are your predictions? Give me- give me the weather report moving forward for the storm front of cancellation.

   5. RSRikki Schlott47:38

      Yeah, I think... I am hugely concerned about 2024, as is my co-author. (laughs) Um, I- I... especially considering that we have such polarizing options on both sides of the aisle, I am- I am very concerned that 2020 and 2016 ha- were just, like, little trial runs for how- how polarized and how ad hominem we're about to get, um, at least in the US. And I think that, you know, the- the ripple effects of American politics are really felt across at least the English-speaking world, and often just the cultural West in general. So I am not feeling fabulous about the near future, I'm extremely nervous as we seem to be, um, kind of just powering ahead towards an election between two historically unpopular incumbents. So, (laughs) um, I don't know, I'm not feeling great. But what- what are your predictions on- on that front? Do you think that the social unrest is going to continue?

   6. CWChris Williamson48:38

      It's a difficult one. I would guess yes, because...The memes of production for creating trends online and going completely super viral have become more sophisticated. Like, this is one of the things that's interesting. People look at the algorithms on social media as if they are the things that give us the content, but they also train the content creators. So, if you think that the memes that came out in 2016 were sophisticated and built to limbically hijack you, and if you thought that the things that happened in 2020 were, "Oh my God, like, look at all of this stuff," wait until 2024. Each time that it comes back around, there is a new iteration of people, and sometimes AI, now, creating stuff-

   7. RSRikki Schlott49:21

      Mm-hmm.

   8. CWChris Williamson49:21

      ... that is even more compelling, that's even more outrage-inducing. So, I don't know. I'm in Texas, so I feel a little bit like I'm insulated from anything sort of too crazy, even being in Austin. People call it a blue dot in a red ocean. I've never seen any of the blue dots here. It just seems to be-

   9. RSRikki Schlott49:38

      (laughs)

   10. CWChris Williamson49:38

       ... like, just a red ocean. But, um, yeah. It's, it's gonna be, it's gonna be very interesting. And I don't know. You, you... It's so right to say that most of the people that survived their cancellations were people who already had tons of momentum. You know, Chappelle, Rogan-

   11. RSRikki Schlott49:54

       S-

   12. CWChris Williamson49:54

       ... JK Rowling, etc. Um...

   13. RSRikki Schlott49:57

       Mm-hmm.

   14. CWChris Williamson49:58

       And there's definitely a part of some sides of the cancel mob picking fights with people that they know can't fully defend themselves. You know, like, Carrell Hooven, again, is a good example of that. Like, she's so kind, it was obviously going to emotionally impact her. If you're someone-

   15. RSRikki Schlott50:16

       Mm-hmm.

   16. CWChris Williamson50:16

       ... that even knows, has even seen five minutes of her on a podcast, you know that this isn't someone that's gonna come out of the gates swinging like Dave Portnoy. Right? It's someone-

   17. RSRikki Schlott50:25

       Yeah.

   18. CWChris Williamson50:25

       ... who's going to be very, uh, I- impacted by this, and also doesn't have a million-person Twitter where they can wrangle a huge-

   19. RSRikki Schlott50:34

       Mm-hmm.

   20. CWChris Williamson50:34

       ... audience of people that come around. And also, like, (laughs) what's the lesson to take away from that? Everybody should have a huge mailing list of email address... Everyone should build up a massive Substack as like a-

   21. RSRikki Schlott50:45

       Yeah. (laughs)

   22. CWChris Williamson50:45

       ... great blasting case of cancellation thing? That's not realistic.

   23. RSRikki Schlott50:49

       Yeah. No, absolutely. I mean, and I think that, um, I think that we're only seeing just the beginning of, of how profound that's going to get. I, I worry about '24. I worry about every single moment of cultural unrest that we have going forward. Unless we actually return to the values that make a diverse soc- a diverse democracy possible, I think that, um, that's pretty much impossible, and we will end up going towards a Marxist sort of divide and conquer situation, which makes enemies of everyone unless we actually can start looking at viewpoints and, and living in the realm of ideas and the realm of, of personhood in two separate planes. Um, and so, I think until w- until we really have a cultural reckoning and it gets really ugly, which I think it's coming in the near future, um, I don't think that, that things will get much better. But, I'm curious. You... So, Austin is not as blue as, as they say it is.

   24. CWChris Williamson51:48

       I don't know if it's me just spending time with lots of bigoted, reprehensible people, uh, like neurodivergent degenerates-

   25. RSRikki Schlott51:56

       (laughs)

   26. CWChris Williamson51:56

       ... but they seem to be, they all seem to be, like, you know, relatively free speech, relatively open to new ideas. Um, I mean- yeah. I, I, I haven't seen... I mean, there's, like, some stuff. StopHavingKids.org does, like, this goth parade every year down Broadway. There was some stuff to do with, like, pro-lify things. But that's not, that's not because it's blue. That's just a, a, a variety of opinions being shown via street protest. Um, what else have I seen? There was a pro-natalism conference here two weeks ago. Uh, you know, they... There's a, a lot of different stuff go- it doesn't seem to be very heavily controlled. Um,

10. 52:36 – 57:29

    Potential Solutions for Cancel Culture

    1. CWChris Williamson52:36

       thinking about that, though, in the complete unlikeliness of people building up some huge online platform so that they can then deploy it to protect themselves in case-

    2. RSRikki Schlott52:45

       (laughs)

    3. CWChris Williamson52:45

       ... of being canceled, what are the potential solutions to this beyond, "Make it worse so everyone hates it more and then it gets better?" Are there any more-

    4. RSRikki Schlott52:56

       Yeah. (laughs)

    5. CWChris Williamson52:56

       ... fluffy solutions than that? Any less apocalyptic ones?

    6. RSRikki Schlott53:01

       Of course. Um, yeah. So, we... The, the final s- section of our book is solutions-oriented, and I think, um, a lot of it is just throwing everything at the wall and hoping that something sticks. But we think that parenting is a large portion of it, um, especially with young people, and that a lot of the, um... The, the sense that words can be violence and wound you are the result of helicopter parenting and, and a, um, just complete abandonment of the sort of ideas of anti-fragility that prior generations were raised with. Gen Z was very coddled and protected and made to be anxious and feel as though they're feeble and, um, endangered by the world around them. And my co-author, um, his previous book is The Coddling of the American Mind, which, um, concentrated quite a lot on parenting and its impact on politics and Gen Z. Um, and so we think that there's a lot about leading by example as a parent and raising kids who will not be cancelers and understand their own vulnerability as well as the vulnerability of their friends. Um, and I, I do f- find a tremendous amount of hope in the fact that young people are so put off by cancel culture that if they were just given the positive restorative framework to fight back against it and, um, kind of a social pact that would be mutually protective, that there's, there's some hope there going forward. Um, we also think that divesting away from the u- the elite university system just being the only way that people end up in, in positions of power in society is a, a healthy thing. Um, and that people who are hiring, um, should consider kids coming from large state schools and kids from different backgrounds or people who didn't finish college or people who went down a different path, and that we shouldn't just have this funnel of kids coming from consistently the s- the most elite schools or the schools with the worst attitudes towards free speech, which I think it's no surprise that we're seeing, uh-... absolute chaos, uh, erupting on campuses like Harvard right now. Because if you abdicate free speech and you s- suppress students and, and send bad ideas underground for decades on end, all of a sudden in the moment of cultural unrest, they're going to explode. And that's precisely what we're seeing right now. Um, and so we believe that, you know, opening our minds to alternative education systems and not allowing these schools that seem to breed cancel culture and cancellers to, you know, take the reins of society consistently with every graduating class, that's a positive. Um, and also even people who are running corporations, uh, can, I think, take one note out of Netflix's book after the Ja- Dave Chappelle controversy where they said, "You know, if you can't tolerate the fact that we are going to publish viewpoints that you disagree with as, as a platform for ideas and expression, then you can leave." Um, I think that's, that was a remarkably unique and brave stance to take. And actually, Coinbase did that, um, a while ago. Their CEO, Brian Armstrong, was like, "We're just not going to t- make any institutional statements. And if that's a problem for you, you can go." And, like, 10% of their employee base did actually go. But, like, that's not the 10% of people that you want to work for you. So I think, um, on the, the level of corporations, we can, um... I think there are a lot of... We hear frequently, Greg and I both, from corporate leaders who are terrified of their, like, 23-year-old hires. And that's just such a bizarre power imbalance. And it's very fixable if you just create a free speech culture from the get-go. But I also think, weirdly, um, after October 7th, there's a lot of people rediscovering the importance of institutional neutrality and of free speech and free expression. And, you know, it's- I think it's a really revealing moment for schools to suddenly say, "Oh, you know, we've had a statement about Kyle Rittenhouse's acquittal and BLM and all these completely irrelevant things to the interworkings of a university, but we can't make a statement on this." Of course, I think it's, it's shocking that this is the moment that they fin- finally discovered that institutions are full of people with viewpoints and do not have viewpoints themselves. But maybe there's a silver lining that this moment of just absolute chaos in, in institutions where free speech was not valued for so long, where they're suddenly hiding behind the valence of free speech, like, maybe this is where we actually buy in and we realize that we're all vulnerable in a world where illiberalism is allowed to reign supreme.

11. 57:29 – 59:44

    Advice to People Threatened With Cancellation

    1. RSRikki Schlott57:29

    2. CWChris Williamson57:29

       What would you say is a piece of advice to someone who is threatened with cancellation or is going through it? Have you got a, a to-do and not-to-do checklist for those people?

    3. RSRikki Schlott57:43

       Yeah. I think, um, obviously it's- it's so dependent on the level of support of people around you. But I think the most important thing for everyone who is concerned about cancel culture to say now, as, as an individual, before anything happens to them or anyone that they know, is that if someone that you know and care about and like is attacked, you commit that you will stand up for them. It's not that I, I agree with their viewpoint, but they're a good person and tearing them down is not the right thing to do. And I think that if we afford that to other people, that, um... and hopefully expect that in return from them if the, the mob comes for us, that's one way to fight back. I think the power of someone else standing up for you is really profound. And unfortunately, cancel culture thrives because everyone else is scared to stick their neck out there. And, like, when I was writing about free speech at NYU for the New York Post, which is not really the most popular thing to do, surprisingly, um, you know, I have so many people messaging me and saying, "Oh, I completely support you and I completely agree with you, but just don't tell anyone that we had this conversation." And that, that's gotta stop and we have to short-circuit this. But on the front of if you actually are targeted with a cancel culture attempt, it's funny, this is actually a point where my co-author and I have- have a little bit of disagreement where he says never apologize under any circumstances, period, and I don't fully agree with that. I think if it's something that you would apologize to a friend for or something that you genuinely didn't mean, I don't think you apologize and try to placate the individual who's treating you unfairly. But if you genuinely don't agree with the tweet that you sent when you were 14, because who does, then I think you say, "That's not me." But I don't think that you ever try to placate the mob. That's the number one thing is if someone is attacking you unfairly, you don't try to respond to that with, with undue rationality when- or ever compromise and apologize for something that you don't actually feel any remorse for, for sure.

12. 59:44 – 1:00:31

    Where to Find Rikki

    1. RSRikki Schlott59:44

    2. CWChris Williamson59:44

       Ricky Schlott, ladies and gentlemen. Where should people go if they wanna keep up to date with the things that you're doing? Where should they go on the internet?

    3. RSRikki Schlott59:50

       (laughs) Um, my Twitter is just my name, Ricky Schlott, and rickyschlott.com. And, um, I think probably by the time this comes out, I'll be launching a new podcast, um, under Bill Maher's umbrella at Club Random. So, um, that will be forthcoming in 2024.

    4. CWChris Williamson1:00:05

       Very cool. I enjoy the prospect of you joining me in the muck and the mire of the podcasting world.

    5. RSRikki Schlott1:00:13

       I am super excited to. I've been learning from you, doing all my homework, uh, waking up to Modern Wisdom, so thank you.

    6. CWChris Williamson1:00:20

       My pleasure. I really appreciate you. Thank you for today. If you enjoyed that episode, then press here for a selection of the best clips from the podcast over the last few weeks. And don't forget to subscribe.

Episode duration: 1:00:31