In the episode, Konstantin Kisin delves into societal dynamics, particularly the harmful notion of adversarial relationships between groups, such as men versus women, minorities versus majorities, or various other divides like LGBT versus non-LGBT. Konstantin condemns this divisive mindset, asserting that cooperation and mutual support have historically been essential for human survival and progress.
He attributes the "versus" mentality to a deep-rooted human need for belonging and community.
Konstantin emphasizes that experiencing trauma and realizing the imperfections of the world are universal aspects of life.
He also opens up about his marriage, and the importance of doing the work in order to keep a relationship afloat. He shares many reasonable takes which appear to be controversial in today’s society, but hey, someone needs to say it.
[00:00:00] People are obsessed with race, they're obsessed with, well, I'm a woman, I'm a man, I'm an
[00:00:04] American, I'm an American. And I'm like, why don't we just treat each other as individuals?
[00:00:08] I thought that was the point, right? I don't particularly care what your background is,
[00:00:12] it doesn't really matter that much to me. What matters is what kind of human being are you,
[00:00:16] what are you saying, what are your ideas, how do you treat me, how do you treat other people around you.
[00:00:20] That's what matters.
[00:00:23] do. That's what matters. Constantine Kisson, welcome to Beyond. How do I describe you? Political satirist, social
[00:00:32] commentator, comedian, podcast host. Is there anything else?
[00:00:38] I don't do comedy anymore, so not comedian. I just hear other people introduce you that
[00:00:43] way. I know. I used to do stand up.
[00:00:45] Yeah, I used to do stand up and
[00:00:46] orthophsunday times best selling book.
[00:00:49] Oh, yes.
[00:00:49] Did I give you a copy of my book?
[00:00:50] No, but you should.
[00:00:51] An immigrant's letter to the West.
[00:00:53] Love letter to the West.
[00:00:54] Love letter.
[00:00:54] Yeah. An immigrant's letter to the West is kind of like ambivalent.
[00:00:57] That could be like, f*** you guys was, I'm not like that.
[00:00:59] I'm like, the West is good.
[00:01:01] Why specifically to the West?
[00:01:03] Because that's where I am. And I also think the West is good. Why specifically to the West? Because that's where I am.
[00:01:06] And I also think the West is very, very good.
[00:01:10] The West is where,
[00:01:13] it's the pinnacle of human achievement today
[00:01:15] in terms of the way we see the world
[00:01:18] and in terms of culture,
[00:01:19] in terms of all the things that we claim to care about.
[00:01:22] Women's right to quality, et cetera.
[00:01:24] Like we've done the best on that. Claim to care about, you know, women's rights equality, etc.
[00:01:25] Like we've done the best on that.
[00:01:26] Claim to care about.
[00:01:28] Yeah, yeah.
[00:01:29] Okay.
[00:01:30] I heard you on Tomville use podcast.
[00:01:35] Yeah.
[00:01:36] And you're like, I know my mission and that's to make people more aware.
[00:01:40] Aware of what? That our society is being dragged off in a direction of weaponized empathy and a kind
[00:01:51] of toxic compassion.
[00:01:54] And because of that, instead of doing the right thing, we say the right thing, and we've confused
[00:01:59] the two.
[00:02:00] So you have people saying something that sounds good, but the end product is bad outcomes in the real world.
[00:02:07] LA is a very good example of this. It's like you have a crap ton of people on the street who are addicted to drugs,
[00:02:16] who are being sexually assaulted, who terrible mental health issues.
[00:02:20] And the reason there isn't, because you don't have enough money, you're the richest country in the world,
[00:02:24] you can really, really afford to take care of those people. The reason is,
[00:02:27] at some point, people decided that mental health hospitals, which were bad, they were
[00:02:33] bad, they were terrible, are unkind, uncompassionate, etc. And the compassionate thing to do is
[00:02:40] to let people, you know, be free. And so they're free to be sexually assaulted and take fentanyl.
[00:02:48] And that is just one out of a billion examples I could give you where instead of doing the
[00:02:52] right thing, which means looking at what works and what doesn't work, instead of that what
[00:02:58] we're doing is what sounds good. What sounds good. And that's the same in every area of life. BLM is a very good
[00:03:07] example. I don't mean to make this controversial, but there's lots and lots.
[00:03:10] Well, BLM defund the police, right? Yeah. That single idea has hurt more black people
[00:03:19] than the entire American police force combined throughout the history of the United States,
[00:03:24] right? Because the moment you defund the police, the neighborhoods where there's most crime,
[00:03:28] which happens to be minority neighborhoods, they are the ones that suffer the most, because
[00:03:33] it's the areas that have the highest amount of crime that need the highest amount of police.
[00:03:39] And all sorts of other things.
[00:03:40] There's a friend of mine called Rob Henderson, he calls it luxury beliefs, which is beliefs that people like to have, but quite often don't live to themselves.
[00:03:51] Ideas about sexual freedom and marriage and stuff like that. Very often will come from
[00:03:55] people who are happily married with kids, but they'll be very comfortably telling other
[00:04:00] people, don't do this, don't do that, just be free, just have fun, just do this, just
[00:04:04] do that. While themselves have a family of fun, just do this, just do that.
[00:04:05] While themselves have a family of three kids and look after them and teach them the right
[00:04:09] values.
[00:04:10] Why are they the ones that are saying that you think?
[00:04:12] It makes them feel good.
[00:04:14] It gives them an idea in the head of having status and having being clever and being compassionate
[00:04:19] and being, you know, because it feels bad to imply that people should do something this way and
[00:04:25] not that way, right? Because live and let live, which I believe. However, we've confused
[00:04:32] the fact that people should be free to do whatever they want with the idea that choices
[00:04:38] don't matter. Like, you can do this or you can do that. Yes, that's true. But if you
[00:04:44] do this, these are the consequences. And if you do this, these are the consequences.
[00:04:46] And if you do this, these are the consequences.
[00:04:48] And we've forgotten that.
[00:04:49] Or we've decided to say, you can't say that.
[00:04:52] You can't say that if you do this, this will happen.
[00:04:55] And if you do that, that will happen.
[00:04:56] And on the subject of marriage, I don't think we should be telling people to get married.
[00:05:02] I also don't think we should lie to people about the idea that various forms of relationships
[00:05:08] are all equal, they're not.
[00:05:11] Statistics on this are very clear.
[00:05:12] Married people are much happier, live longer, etc, etc.
[00:05:15] It doesn't mean you shouldn't run out and marry the first guy you see on the street,
[00:05:19] but we shouldn't pretend that that isn't a reality that exists.
[00:05:24] It's the same with any other issue.
[00:05:26] And so for me, the interesting thing is,
[00:05:28] it's weird being me because all I do
[00:05:33] is say some really obvious things, right?
[00:05:37] In a quite uncontroversial way, in my opinion,
[00:05:40] and people freak out and lose their shit
[00:05:43] and therefore give me attention and therefore I have a big couple.
[00:05:45] But what are they freak out about the most?
[00:05:48] Like what have you received the most backlash on that you feel like is obviously true and
[00:05:55] helpful to society but people are freaking out over and you know getting emotional and
[00:05:59] being like well you can't say that.
[00:06:03] If there's a few things that you've observed some of them.
[00:06:05] Okay.
[00:06:06] But I suppose the number one thing is I'm a first generation immigrant in England.
[00:06:11] And the thing that I always try to make the point of saying to people is there is racism
[00:06:18] in Western societies.
[00:06:22] But where else would you rather be a minority?
[00:06:25] Where?
[00:06:26] I mean, what's it like in other places?
[00:06:30] I don't know.
[00:06:31] Well, let's go down the list, shall we?
[00:06:34] In China, only a few years ago they had a commercial where a Chinese girl is being hit
[00:06:41] on by a black guy, she shoves him into a washing machine, puts the product that
[00:06:45] is being advertised in the washing machine and he comes out Chinese and she's really
[00:06:49] happy.
[00:06:50] Wow.
[00:06:51] Right?
[00:06:52] Japan, notoriously, very kind of exclusionary culture.
[00:06:57] Russia where I come from, brown people and Jews and whoever, quite often when I was growing
[00:07:03] up in the 90s, beaten in the street, gay people
[00:07:07] attacked in the street for being gay, etc.
[00:07:10] What are the other... India has its own situation going on.
[00:07:15] Iran, where are these places that we are supposed to be comparing ourselves to?
[00:07:23] Where are these places? And so the point that I'm always making
[00:07:26] is, yes, we do have problems in our societies, but we are the most tolerant, the most open
[00:07:32] minded, the most progressive, the most welcoming people in the history of the world. Let's
[00:07:38] stop dividing ourselves along racial lines and go, you're this and you're that and whatever.
[00:07:43] I thought that was the dream. I thought that was what we were told we're supposed to be working towards. And instead,
[00:07:50] we've regressed into, well, as a black person, or as a Jew, and as a Jew. I find that conversation
[00:07:58] incredibly boring, incredibly boring. For some reason, people are obsessed with it now. People
[00:08:04] are obsessed with race now. People are
[00:08:05] obsessed with race, they're obsessed with, well I'm a woman, I'm a man, I'm
[00:08:08] a man that. And I'm like why don't we just treat each other as individuals? I
[00:08:13] thought that was the point, right? I don't particularly care what your
[00:08:16] background is. It doesn't really matter that much to me. What matters is what
[00:08:19] kind of human being are you, what are you saying, what are your ideas, how do you
[00:08:23] treat me, how do you treat other people around you. That's what matters. I've heard you say, talk about victimhood
[00:08:30] a lot and you said that people get rewarded for being victims by our society the way that
[00:08:39] it operates now. How are they getting rewarded? With attention. And that's why, you know, it started out being something that these kind of like woke
[00:08:50] progressive people did.
[00:08:51] Now the right is doing the same thing.
[00:08:52] Look at us.
[00:08:53] Look at what they've done to us.
[00:08:54] Look at what it, you know, because it's how you get attention.
[00:08:58] Social media where a lot of this stuff is coming from rewards people complaining or rewards
[00:09:03] outrage, rewards people presenting
[00:09:06] themselves as the victims of some evil oppressive force. Whereas if you go on
[00:09:11] social media and go like, hey guys, I just think you know your life's your
[00:09:14] responsibility, go out there and crush it as best you can. It's not as popular.
[00:09:18] That's, well, you know, right? It's not gonna get anything like the same response.
[00:09:24] So we've created a communication system that rewards people with attention and So it's not going to get anything like the same response.
[00:09:25] So we've created a communication system that rewards people with attention and we live
[00:09:29] in an attention economy.
[00:09:32] So how do we change that?
[00:09:33] Because I think you and I both want to change that.
[00:09:37] My experience is that once I started focusing less on our political figures
[00:09:46] and more on entrepreneurs, the VC world.
[00:09:50] My life got a lot better and I started making more money
[00:09:54] and I was like, holy shit.
[00:09:56] And the realization I had was it's because
[00:09:59] these people are problem solvers.
[00:10:01] All day, these entrepreneurs are sitting there
[00:10:03] trying to solve problems and they see life as their responsibility. So what's your take?
[00:10:09] Well my take is A, to spread that message. And B, my, with trigonometry, which is now,
[00:10:16] you know, moving from being a YouTube show to being a media organization, we're going
[00:10:19] to have other people come under our umbrella, et cetera, trigon media is essentially where
[00:10:23] we're going, is to change the culture through the way we have conversations.
[00:10:28] And long-form discussions like this don't reward.
[00:10:31] If I sat here crying about how blah, blah, blah,
[00:10:34] I mean, it wouldn't really work, right?
[00:10:37] And so I think it's a, the medium is the message.
[00:10:41] You heard that phrase?
[00:10:43] The medium is the message.
[00:10:44] What does it mean?
[00:10:45] It means that where you have a discussion matters almost
[00:10:50] as much as what you're saying,
[00:10:51] because it determines what you're going to say.
[00:10:54] If you are operating on Twitter,
[00:10:57] that will force the conversation to be a particular way.
[00:11:01] If you're having a conversation on a three hour podcast,
[00:11:04] that will force the conversation to be a different way. Do you're having a conversation on a three hour podcast, that will force the
[00:11:05] conversation to be a different way. Do you see what I mean?
[00:11:08] And the three hour podcast is more effective, you feel like.
[00:11:10] I don't. But it doesn't get as much attention.
[00:11:12] No, it doesn't get as much attention. However, that is what people really want, right? Like
[00:11:17] it's social media is junk food. Long form conversation is the real thing.
[00:11:25] It's actual food, it's real food.
[00:11:27] But I don't know if that's what people want.
[00:11:29] It's what's better for them, but I think they want
[00:11:32] to find people that believe what they believe,
[00:11:34] follow them and be like, that's the right way.
[00:11:37] That's what I see on social media where it's like,
[00:11:39] I understand that people are so happy about,
[00:11:42] some people are really happy about Elon Musk
[00:11:46] and what he has done with X and free speech
[00:11:49] and community notes and all of that.
[00:11:51] And in a way, I think it's really good too.
[00:11:53] But we're not having these kinds of conversations
[00:11:57] unless like, I don't know if you know Mario on a fall
[00:12:00] is like moderating a discussion on X.
[00:12:03] And I don't know if he's even the right person to do that.
[00:12:05] I don't know.
[00:12:06] I haven't listened to any of his discussions, but I see him popping up right now and again.
[00:12:11] I think I was actually told something interesting by a friend of mine who's she's kind of on
[00:12:16] the work side of things, but she's a very good person.
[00:12:19] And she said that when Elon took over and made the changes. What actually happened is it's not that we are now having
[00:12:27] a more in the center, balanced conversation. It's that all those people who didn't like
[00:12:32] what he did left and went to Instagram and now Instagram is full of political conversations
[00:12:37] to the left of where they used to be on Twitter, which I didn't know, which was actually,
[00:12:44] it would back up your point. And look, of course, there's nothing more, there's nothing people want more than
[00:12:50] a robot that you can go, you're absolutely right. Right? Like people love to hear that
[00:12:55] they're right. And especially, I think as a woman, you kind of know that with guys, you
[00:12:58] just have to go, yeah, oh my God, that was such a good point. And like they instantly, you know. Melt.
[00:13:05] They melt.
[00:13:08] And at the same time, I think there are a lot of people
[00:13:12] who are starting to realize the impact it has on them.
[00:13:15] Like you open Twitter and you spend a couple of hours on Twitter,
[00:13:17] how do you feel at the end of that?
[00:13:19] I feel horrible.
[00:13:20] Right.
[00:13:20] So ultimately people do not want to feel horrible
[00:13:27] at the end of the day. So we have to create things that make people feel better.
[00:13:32] What are you planning on creating? Well, trigger media is the idea of creating
[00:13:36] long-form conversations about various topics that are attempting to be informed and entertaining and funny and at the same time
[00:13:46] Do not go down the rabbit hole of outrage and whatever, but it's actually a real conversation
[00:13:51] I mean yesterday we recorded the biggest episode in the history of our show with Sam Harris and Eric Weinstein talking about Israel and Palestine
[00:13:59] over three and a half hours
[00:14:01] I can't wait to listen to it. It's gonna be incredible and
[00:14:02] over three and a half hours. I can't wait to listen to it.
[00:14:03] It's gonna be incredible.
[00:14:04] And nobody in that is, you know,
[00:14:08] frothing at the mouth and screaming and shouting.
[00:14:11] There's disagreement, people have a different view.
[00:14:14] That's, I think, how you start to address some of this.
[00:14:17] You know, on the flight in here from Austin,
[00:14:21] because we spent a few days in Austin,
[00:14:23] I was being a bit cheap and I didn't to pay for the Wi-Fi on the plane.
[00:14:29] So I was like, let's watch the free TV.
[00:14:32] And I went and I watched MSNBC and Fox, every switching over five minutes.
[00:14:37] It's impossible to watch.
[00:14:40] If you want to be informed about the world, that is not the way you get informed about
[00:14:44] the world. What is the way you get informed about the world.
[00:14:45] What is the way you get informed about the world?
[00:14:47] Well that is very difficult.
[00:14:49] It's a very difficult question because it's one of the, so new media is definitely helpful.
[00:14:56] New media is what we do.
[00:14:58] However, it also has its pitfalls where it's like you don't really know who to believe
[00:15:02] exactly.
[00:15:03] Right. The way I inform myself is I kind of observe over time people who do not pander to their
[00:15:10] own side.
[00:15:12] That's how you...
[00:15:13] Yeah, and that's what drew me to your work because not only did I see you not doing that,
[00:15:20] also when I got to know you personally, I was like, oh, he's willing to be wrong and
[00:15:26] curious and all of these things that we've lost as a society.
[00:15:30] Yeah, curiosity to me is the number one thing.
[00:15:33] It's why Joe Rogan's the biggest podcast in the world because he has curiosity at an
[00:15:38] incredible level.
[00:15:41] But the way I can kind of tell when somebody is someone who thinks well is when they're
[00:15:48] not agreeing with their own side on everything and are prepared to challenge their own side,
[00:15:54] that's when I go, okay, this person is willing to be honest and public.
[00:15:57] If your opinion is the exact same opinion as everybody on your side, if I can predict
[00:16:02] your opinion about Israel and Palestine because
[00:16:05] of what flag you've got and you know what I mean?
[00:16:08] I know exactly what you mean.
[00:16:10] Then you're probably not, it doesn't mean you're wrong about everything. You'll probably
[00:16:13] be right a lot at a time and you might be funny and creative or whatever. But chances
[00:16:17] are you're going to be wrong on a lot of stuff because you're not really thinking you are
[00:16:21] in a tribe and the tribe is dragging you in whatever direction you're supposed to go in.
[00:16:25] So here's my issue.
[00:16:27] Why do our tribes have to be political?
[00:16:30] Why do we have to choose a side?
[00:16:33] Because I think the best way to come together is through our own humanity and that's what
[00:16:37] we've lost.
[00:16:39] I don't think we lost that.
[00:16:40] I don't know that we ever really truly had that.
[00:16:42] I mean, there's a lot of research on this.
[00:16:46] Oxytocin, the hormone which binds, the hormone a woman releases when she's giving birth,
[00:16:51] etc.
[00:16:52] The hormone that binds groups together, it's also the hormone that it causes us to be wary
[00:16:58] of other groups.
[00:17:00] We are tribal apes.
[00:17:01] That's what we are. And the question is, what is the right size and scale of the tribe
[00:17:08] in order for us to function well?
[00:17:11] And my worry with Western society is that
[00:17:15] instead of seeing our country as our tribe, right,
[00:17:19] Americans, British people, Westerners, whatever that is, it's like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, we're going to break it down into tiny
[00:17:25] little groups in America who are supposed to all be fighting each other, who are supposed
[00:17:30] to all be hating each other.
[00:17:31] What other groups that you see?
[00:17:32] Oh, I mean, and you can slice it a hundred different ways.
[00:17:36] Men versus women.
[00:17:38] Whatever moron came up with the idea that the relationship between men and women is a versus, right? Worse.
[00:17:46] Whoever did that needs to be taken off and shot somewhere.
[00:17:52] That is not the nature of the relationship between men and women.
[00:17:55] Men and women have needed each other to survive and to thrive and to raise children and to
[00:18:00] reproduce society and to do anything, anything for the entire history of the human
[00:18:05] race and without that sacred bond between men and women, nothing happens. We're not
[00:18:11] even here, right? So whoever wants to define the relationship between, it's like, you know,
[00:18:17] men versus women, look at what the men are doing, look at what the women, that is the
[00:18:20] most toxic approach to the whole thing ever. And then you can go down the list, black people versus white people,
[00:18:27] minorities versus the majority.
[00:18:32] There's a hundred other ways you can define it.
[00:18:35] LGBT versus... You can go down the list, right?
[00:18:39] Yeah. Do you know where I think that came from?
[00:18:41] Tell me.
[00:18:42] I think the number one thing people need to have in their lives
[00:18:48] is a sense of belonging.
[00:18:49] And you hear this word community a lot, right?
[00:18:52] But if you talk to people about their childhoods,
[00:18:55] for example, a lot of people will give you a story
[00:18:59] about a community that they grew up in that rejected them.
[00:19:04] For example, someone who is gay, who
[00:19:07] felt incredibly ashamed of it because they grew up in a religious organization that said,
[00:19:13] you can't be gay. Or, you know, someone who was any religion who grew up feeling like they
[00:19:21] couldn't be themselves in whatever capacity. And so then as you grow up, you realize,
[00:19:27] oh, these people didn't accept me,
[00:19:29] and then the world convinces you that they are your enemy,
[00:19:32] whether it's men, women, whatever it is.
[00:19:36] And then we start breaking off in those ways.
[00:19:39] Here's the thing though.
[00:19:41] Trauma is a part of life.
[00:19:44] Everybody grows up and at some point early in your childhood, somewhere around five or
[00:19:48] six, usually something happens and it can be major, it can be minor where you go, oh,
[00:19:54] the world isn't perfect.
[00:19:57] Because as a child, you think it is, especially if you've been fortunate to have a loving
[00:20:02] family environment, et cetera.
[00:20:04] And then you see your parents argue for the first time or something else happens.
[00:20:09] Your dad gets angry, you know, whatever.
[00:20:12] And then you go, oh, and that moment happens and you have to adjust, right?
[00:20:17] So we all go through childhood and then adolescence, experiencing some really disturbing disruptive
[00:20:23] things to the way that we see, including the type of things that you're talking about.
[00:20:28] The question is, do you want to be living out your trauma for the rest of your life?
[00:20:34] Do you want to be living through your trauma?
[00:20:36] Because have you ever heard this phrase, perception is projection.
[00:20:40] What does it mean?
[00:20:41] So perception is you receiving information.
[00:20:44] Projection is what you put out, that you like a project, that you project things onto the
[00:20:47] wall, right?
[00:20:48] The way we see the world is not like, oh, I see reality.
[00:20:53] You project things into the world, and then you experience the consequences of the things
[00:20:58] that you're putting out there.
[00:21:00] Right.
[00:21:01] So for example, if you think all women are bitches,
[00:21:10] it's going to be your experience that women are bitches to you because you're bringing that energy into the room and women look at you and go, that guy's a douche.
[00:21:13] And they treat you as if they are bitches, even though it's not true.
[00:21:17] If you think all men are pigs, right, you're going to have that experience drive everything that you experience in life, right? And the truth is some women are bitches and some guys are pigs, but not all on either side and
[00:21:31] how you see that is gonna determine what your experiences are.
[00:21:35] And so you have to actually look at reality. The reality is
[00:21:39] men and women are all spectrum of various kinds of behaviors. There are some good people, there are some bad people in every group.
[00:21:46] And you have to learn to operate from that basis.
[00:21:50] You have to see reality for what is this is what our friend Tom Billy always talks about,
[00:21:54] right?
[00:21:55] It's about what works, not what sounds good and not what makes you feel good in your head.
[00:21:59] And so if you look out into the world and you clean those glasses through which you're
[00:22:04] looking at things with which you're looking
[00:22:05] at things with, you're going to have a better experience of life.
[00:22:09] I agree.
[00:22:10] I mean, you told me that even personally when I've talked to you about my own experiences
[00:22:15] where you're like, you're losing your power by seeing stuff that way.
[00:22:20] I like that a lot.
[00:22:21] We lose our power when we don't clean the glasses.
[00:22:25] And also, I think it's useful to have, I call them useful beliefs. See, not everything you
[00:22:33] believe is true. And actually one of the ways to be a happier human being, in my experience,
[00:22:38] is not to believe everything you think. Yeah. Right? Oh, that person hates me. Really?
[00:22:44] Do they? How do you know? Yeah,
[00:22:45] they're having a bad day. Yeah, they're having a bad day. Whatever. And useful beliefs are
[00:22:51] beliefs that are helpful, but not always true. Right? It's useful to believe that you can
[00:22:55] do anything. However, I think it's pretty clear that at 40 years old and five foot nine,
[00:23:01] I'm never going to play in the NBA.
[00:23:06] But when I was a kid, it was useful for me to dream of that and to think that I one day
[00:23:10] could because it meant that I worked harder basketball and I learned to work with other
[00:23:14] people, I learned to work hard, I learned to grind, you see what I'm saying?
[00:23:18] So one of those things is a useful belief and a useful belief is, you know, in relation
[00:23:26] to men and women or making money or whatever, is something that makes you better, makes
[00:23:31] you more receptive to good things happening to you.
[00:23:35] It doesn't mean that you're naive and you're running around, oh, everyone's fine.
[00:23:41] But believing the, you know, the vast majority of the opposite sex are good people with good intentions,
[00:23:47] in my opinion, is a good strategy.
[00:23:49] That doesn't mean you ignore signals, right?
[00:23:54] But if your starting position is the person I'm talking to is likely to be a good person,
[00:23:59] you will much faster get to finding out how they really are.
[00:24:02] And I learned this from my wife.
[00:24:04] I used to have a very negative and pessimistic mindset
[00:24:07] about everything.
[00:24:08] Really?
[00:24:09] Especially about other people.
[00:24:10] What was the mindset in which?
[00:24:11] Very cynical.
[00:24:13] You can't trust anyone.
[00:24:14] Everyone's out for themselves.
[00:24:15] Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
[00:24:17] I think I grew up with that too, because everyone around me
[00:24:20] was always suspicious of each other.
[00:24:22] And also, I don't know if you've heard
[00:24:25] in Iranian culture, it's something called
[00:24:28] Chesh Evil Eye.
[00:24:30] And you see it in American culture too,
[00:24:33] where like you sage the room.
[00:24:35] Have you ever seen that?
[00:24:36] You sage the room.
[00:24:38] You haven't heard of sage?
[00:24:39] So...
[00:24:40] Sage the hub.
[00:24:41] Sage the...
[00:24:42] Yeah, but you like burn it to get the evil eye and the bad energy out,
[00:24:47] or like we Iranians have something called S-Vand,
[00:24:52] which you burn, which gets rid of the evil eye too.
[00:24:55] It's like a really, it's a really big thing
[00:24:57] that people believe in, that people are out to get you,
[00:25:00] they can't stand to see you happy, shot and froid.
[00:25:04] Yeah.
[00:25:04] You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah. It's everywhere. Yeah. stand to see you happy, shot and Freud. Yeah. You know what I mean?
[00:25:05] Yeah.
[00:25:05] It's everywhere.
[00:25:06] Yeah.
[00:25:06] So what, what made you change your wife had an impact on you?
[00:25:10] But what?
[00:25:11] Well, what I noticed is that my wife, she thought everyone was wonderful.
[00:25:16] And they put her in difficulties too, because it was an unrefined world view.
[00:25:20] It was like, oh, everyone, everyone's being nice to me.
[00:25:22] Because they're just really nice.
[00:25:23] And I was like, no, it's because you're a hot girl, you know, and they want something from you.
[00:25:28] Yeah. So she had to adjust that to understand that some people aren't being nice because they're
[00:25:34] nice, right? But what I learned was that she gave people a lot of, she had a lot of faith in people.
[00:25:42] She believed that people are generally speaking good.
[00:25:46] Everyone has something inside of them that is worth exploring, etc.
[00:25:50] And when she approached people that way, people who had a guard up would lower the guard and
[00:25:56] they would become much more amenable to a healthy conversation, a healthy friendship,
[00:26:02] whatever.
[00:26:04] And that's really the thing.
[00:26:05] We're all walking around with that suspicion, but when you show trust in the other person,
[00:26:11] they will trust you as well, a lot of the time.
[00:26:15] So, yeah, I think it's a useful, there are useful beliefs about how to treat other people
[00:26:21] and how you think about other people that change your experience of life.
[00:26:25] And I think you and I have talked about this a lot, obviously, about the mutual suspicion and resentment between men and women.
[00:26:33] I think a lot of it comes from the fact that women go online and they see what guys are saying,
[00:26:40] and they go, oh guys are all like this, And then they take that out into the real world.
[00:26:45] And therefore, the guys that they experience
[00:26:47] in the real world are already being seen
[00:26:50] through that filter and they end up meeting
[00:26:52] those expectations.
[00:26:53] And likewise with guys, they see what women say online.
[00:26:57] And they go, oh, women, you know, what?
[00:26:59] Our gold diggers and yeah.
[00:27:01] And then when they talk to a girl in real life
[00:27:04] and she mentions anything about money,
[00:27:06] they're like, oh, so yeah, I told you.
[00:27:07] Yeah.
[00:27:08] Right.
[00:27:09] So everybody's wearing these shit-stained glasses when they're looking at people on the
[00:27:13] other side.
[00:27:16] And you know, you've got to clean the glasses.
[00:27:18] You've got to clean the glasses.
[00:27:19] Yeah, I totally agree.
[00:27:22] One thing that I have a serious problem with going back
[00:27:27] to what we were saying before is these political tribes
[00:27:30] that we've created, because I think they both contribute
[00:27:34] negatively to what we're talking about.
[00:27:37] You know what I mean?
[00:27:38] Like criticizing modern feminism,
[00:27:41] and it's making people boss babes and blah, blah, blah,
[00:27:44] and then
[00:27:45] you know resenting women in that way and trying to bring them back to like
[00:27:48] trad life you know and then women see that on the other side and they're like
[00:27:52] oh the patriarchy misogyny all of these words are triggers to people on both
[00:27:59] sides and then it creates the men versus women fight and I don't think it's
[00:28:04] helpful to look at it that way.
[00:28:06] And I find that, for example, when I talk to you,
[00:28:10] I think we're both able to let go of that
[00:28:12] and talk as humans, but online, no one's able to do that.
[00:28:16] And I sort of resent these political conversations
[00:28:20] that people have.
[00:28:22] And by the way, they're being had by like one,
[00:28:25] a lot of intellectuals, and then a lot of people
[00:28:29] with lower IQ, I'd say, are consuming this,
[00:28:34] and that's their reality now, what these people are saying.
[00:28:38] And that's why I watch people like you who I think
[00:28:42] are really brilliant, and I think to myself, what are you doing
[00:28:46] in this political world?
[00:28:49] That's interesting.
[00:28:50] I think that, look, we're always going to have to have a conversation about how we run
[00:28:56] our society.
[00:28:59] And the tribes politically exist because there's a debate about how a society should run, what
[00:29:08] our values should be, what our policy should be, should we have a border or not, right?
[00:29:15] Should we defund the police or not?
[00:29:16] These are important conversations.
[00:29:19] And the tribes will always exist not only because people are tribal but also because left and right
[00:29:25] tend to map onto people's psychological profiles. There are things that will make you be in
[00:29:32] the left wing tribe and there are things that will make you be in the right wing tribe.
[00:29:36] Just come from just how you see the world, your psychology. Jonathan Haid talks a lot
[00:29:42] about this in...
[00:29:43] What's the book?
[00:29:46] Yeah, well, he's written several.
[00:29:47] What's the one in which he talks about the different moral values,
[00:29:50] not the coddling of the American mind, or is it?
[00:29:52] Maybe it is. Maybe it is.
[00:29:56] So, the tribes exist because people see the world differently
[00:30:00] and they have different opinions about how we should run our society.
[00:30:05] But in terms of me, what I see is as the biggest threat and which is why I am interested in
[00:30:12] changing the way we talk about this stuff is, you know, my book, An Immigrants Love Letter
[00:30:16] to the West is really about the fact that what we have in the West is very important
[00:30:21] and it's precious. And we do not exist in a vacuum.
[00:30:26] There are other societies, other cultures, other nations,
[00:30:29] other superpowers in the world who
[00:30:32] would love to throw America and the rest of the West off
[00:30:35] our pedestal.
[00:30:36] In fact, that is to some extent what they're attempting
[00:30:39] to do right now.
[00:30:41] And if we are internally divided,
[00:30:44] if we are bitching and moaning about each other all the
[00:30:47] time, if you have this, you know, I know this is a political thing that people shy away
[00:30:52] from, but wokeness and this woke ideology is incredibly dangerous to the West.
[00:30:58] I didn't get into talking about it and criticizing it and saying this isn't the way to go because
[00:31:04] I've got nothing
[00:31:05] better to do or because I want to be talking about politics. I really don't. I mean, when
[00:31:10] we started my show six years ago, we were two comedians. That's what we did, right?
[00:31:18] But I see the undermining of Western confidence, of undermining of Western self-belief, as an
[00:31:26] existential threat to everything that we have here. The average American consumes about five
[00:31:32] times as many resources as the rest of the world, the average person in the rest of the world.
[00:31:38] That's Western privilege. Of all the privileges that we always talk about, we have Western privilege and your family knows this too, right? If we do not continue to be strong and confident and be willing
[00:31:54] to be the greatest nation in the world, we will lose that. And that is going to hurt
[00:31:59] a lot of people very, very badly and not just financially but in every other way. So, undermining how we see ourselves saying we're the worst people ever.
[00:32:09] You know, we did slavery, we did race and we did this, we did that.
[00:32:11] Not untrue and our history is important to learn properly.
[00:32:15] But we have to remain convinced that we are good people,
[00:32:21] that we're good people who are doing good things. Otherwise,
[00:32:27] if you thought your country was bad, why would you defend it?
[00:32:30] And also why are you here?
[00:32:33] Well, that, as you may know, is a very controversial statement.
[00:32:36] I haven't said it before.
[00:32:39] Why are you here? That's exactly right. If you hate this country, why are you here?
[00:32:46] Why are you here? That's exactly right. If you hate this country, why are you here? The problem with this work ideology is that it's infiltrated schools, it's infiltrated
[00:32:50] colleges, and so generations and generations of young people are being taught that their
[00:32:57] country is bad, and they're being taught to see their country is bad, and not to value
[00:33:02] what we have here and to take it for granted. That is not a recipe for a good outcome at all.
[00:33:07] So it's not that I am political because I like to be team left, team red or team blue
[00:33:13] or whatever.
[00:33:14] I really don't.
[00:33:15] I think both tribes are really dumb and do really and say really dumb things all the
[00:33:18] time.
[00:33:20] And they're both right about some things and that creative tension between the two of
[00:33:23] them is what's necessary.
[00:33:25] What's happened in the last 20 years,
[00:33:27] well, it's happened in the last many years,
[00:33:29] but particularly since social media became big is,
[00:33:31] one side is just run away with the ball.
[00:33:35] They've got the ball and they're hogging it
[00:33:37] and no one else is getting it.
[00:33:39] Who hasn't?
[00:33:40] It's the progressive left.
[00:33:42] They have a massively disproportionate impact
[00:33:45] on how we see ourselves.
[00:33:46] Because social media rewards ideas that sound good
[00:33:50] but don't work.
[00:33:51] The other.
[00:33:52] And punishes ideas that work but sound bad.
[00:33:54] The other thing, the distinction that you brought up to me
[00:33:58] over the phone once was you said,
[00:34:02] and I know you denounced both when they're saying something
[00:34:06] you don't believe in, but you said something like,
[00:34:10] conservatives think they can just get up
[00:34:13] and make a speech and that the whole world
[00:34:15] will listen to them, and the left makes good movies
[00:34:20] and infiltrates culture, and that's part of the reason
[00:34:24] they have more of an impact.
[00:34:25] Well, all right, I can't remember what the exact words of the MIMA, but like, you know,
[00:34:30] the Republicans just want to grill, you know.
[00:34:33] Yeah, but also you got really big because of a speech that you made.
[00:34:38] I did, and I'm not a conservative.
[00:34:41] I know.
[00:34:42] So, but I think the thing with conservatives, they tend to focus on practical things, doing
[00:34:47] something small at the local level, whatever, which is great.
[00:34:50] You need people like that in society.
[00:34:52] People are just going to run the factory, whatever, right?
[00:34:56] They're really important.
[00:34:58] But in terms of the cultural conversation, it's like we all swim in this soup that is
[00:35:04] cooked for us by the people in this area, the Hollywood, right?
[00:35:08] And the picture they present to you of the world, I'll give you this example, we'll maybe make it clearer.
[00:35:16] I've been to the US now seven or eight times.
[00:35:20] Before I came here, I had all sorts of ideas about what people in the American South are like,
[00:35:25] what people in New York are like, what people in LA are like, what people here are people there.
[00:35:30] And it's all BS.
[00:35:32] It's all completely not the experience that I actually have when I come here.
[00:35:37] But the reason I'm so confident being like, oh, Americans are like this,
[00:35:41] is because we all watch your movies, we all listen to your music, we all consume
[00:35:46] American culture, and who controls American culture?
[00:35:50] What's mostly people on the left side of the political spectrum?
[00:35:54] And so when they're making movies that paint American in a particular light or paint,
[00:36:00] you know, Republicans or Democrats or whoever in a particular light, the rest of the world and most people who haven't traveled to every state, I mean how
[00:36:08] many Americans have been to every state in the US?
[00:36:12] Probably not a lot, right?
[00:36:14] So how do you then know, if you've never been to California, how do you know what California
[00:36:20] is like by watching cultural content?
[00:36:23] If you've never been to New York, how do you know what New York is like by watching cultural content. If you've never been to New York, how do you know what New York is like
[00:36:25] by watching cultural content?
[00:36:27] So the people who make that content
[00:36:29] are the people who are shaping your reality, right?
[00:36:32] So this is the point that I always make is like,
[00:36:37] part of the pushback and getting us
[00:36:40] to a balanced conversation is making comedy, entertainment, culture that offers a different
[00:36:47] view on the world, that offers a balance view on the world.
[00:36:50] We just interviewed comedian Neil Brennan.
[00:36:52] Oh, yeah, I know him.
[00:36:54] And he just, his last special is called Blox, and he makes fun of both sides, and that's
[00:37:00] how it should be.
[00:37:01] That's how it should be, because neither the Republicans or the Democrats have all the
[00:37:04] answers.
[00:37:06] Oh, I totally agree.
[00:37:07] And that's why I do think comedians are so crucial
[00:37:10] to all of this because they point out
[00:37:12] all the absurdities of everything.
[00:37:17] I guess the right comedians.
[00:37:18] The right comedian.
[00:37:19] Yeah, yeah.
[00:37:21] Absolutely.
[00:37:22] And humor is a very powerful tool.
[00:37:23] I mean, Francis and I was talking about this with what we do, like when we interview people,
[00:37:28] even though I don't do stand-up anymore, I write a lot of satirical stuff and whatever.
[00:37:32] We always crack jokes to diffuse the tension, but also it's kind of like the sugar that
[00:37:38] makes the medicine go down as we say.
[00:37:40] Your phone fell off.
[00:37:41] Did it?
[00:37:42] I was wondering what that was. I heard a noise and I'm like, well, what, because it wasn't my coffee.
[00:37:49] All right, that's fine. We'll just edit that out. Okay. Yeah. So comedy. Yeah. Well, comedy is
[00:37:56] awesome. It's entertainment, but it also is a way to open people's minds, you know. And
[00:38:01] that's actually how I started being aware of the stuff that was going on because
[00:38:05] to me, the funniest comedy is when I disagree with what the person is saying and I'm laughing
[00:38:12] anyway.
[00:38:13] It's when they're basically making fun of me.
[00:38:14] Do you know what I mean?
[00:38:15] Yes, yes.
[00:38:16] That to me is the funniest.
[00:38:18] Yes.
[00:38:19] But over recent years, a lot of comedy, less so in the the US and the US, you have lots of great comics
[00:38:27] who are doing this. But in Britain, it's mostly people just going, ah, look at the other side,
[00:38:32] they're all dumb. Which is not helpful or funny. Or funny. Yeah. Most importantly, it's not a
[00:38:38] comedy doesn't always have to be helpful, but it should be funny. What do you guys think of
[00:38:42] Ricky Gervais? Because when he made that golden globe speech over here,
[00:38:47] I mean, I was dying.
[00:38:49] Yeah.
[00:38:51] He's amazing.
[00:38:52] He's amazing in the fact that him and a few other people
[00:38:57] really important because they're too big to cancel.
[00:39:01] You can't cancel Ricky Gervais.
[00:39:03] You can't cancel someone who's too big to cancel or too rich.
[00:39:06] Yeah, I think once you get to a certain level of wealth and
[00:39:11] enough people respect you, you're free to be more courageous.
[00:39:14] And that bothers me too because I think there are some really smart people with incredible things to say that don't say them.
[00:39:21] Because of this whole, oh you're gonna get
[00:39:23] that don't say them because of this whole, oh, you're going to get canceled.
[00:39:25] And I don't like when people say that canceled culture
[00:39:28] isn't a real thing.
[00:39:29] I've seen it a million times.
[00:39:30] I've experienced it myself.
[00:39:31] Yeah.
[00:39:32] And it completely is true.
[00:39:34] I am hopeful that it's not true of everybody,
[00:39:37] in particular, at the lower levels.
[00:39:39] You know, people who aren't big,
[00:39:40] who haven't got a big audience, whatever.
[00:39:43] It is still there and it's still dangerous
[00:39:45] to them.
[00:39:46] But I sort of feel like we've maybe got to a point where it's becoming counterproductive
[00:39:52] to cancel people.
[00:39:53] And this is what I said from day one.
[00:39:54] The way to end cancel culture is to support the people who get canceled and to make sure
[00:40:00] that if you come after somebody and try and cancel them, all that's going to do is make
[00:40:04] them bigger and stronger.
[00:40:05] Yeah, I have a question.
[00:40:07] Okay, to get controversial.
[00:40:09] Okay.
[00:40:10] Okay.
[00:40:11] So the Israel Palestine stuff.
[00:40:14] Okay.
[00:40:15] Did you see what Mia Khalifa tweeted and then?
[00:40:18] I did.
[00:40:19] What happened with Playboy?
[00:40:21] So they, they refused to work with her now? Yeah, they removed her from the
[00:40:27] network. Yeah, she's done. Yeah. And then there was also a response. I'm Jewish and
[00:40:32] I know I'm biased. This guy Bill Ackman, there was an organization at Harvard or some students on Harvard signed a letter that
[00:40:46] was highly offensive to the situation that happened in Israel, the Hamas attack.
[00:40:53] And he's like, I want to know who they are, so I never hire them. And then a
[00:40:59] bunch of CEOs came on and was like, yeah, release their names. And then
[00:41:03] apparently there was like a truck that drove around and put their names all
[00:41:09] over at Harvard.
[00:41:14] What do you think of that?
[00:41:16] So the distinction that I've always made when it comes to speech is that there's a difference
[00:41:21] between freedom of speech and the freedom to incite or support or celebrate
[00:41:27] violence.
[00:41:28] These are different things.
[00:41:30] For example, in the UK, Hamas is what we call a prescribed terrorist organization.
[00:41:34] That means it is illegal to support them.
[00:41:38] It is illegal to make public statements of support in favor of them.
[00:41:42] It is illegal to give them money.
[00:41:44] It's illegal to celebrate the money. It's illegal
[00:41:45] to celebrate their attack essentially, right? In the US, I don't think that's the case.
[00:41:51] You have a first member, which means you absolutely have the right to say whatever the whole you
[00:41:55] think. So, to me, there is a difference between
[00:42:00] the inside of into violence and the support of violence and people who celebrate mass murder.
[00:42:06] Do you want those people working at your company? I don't. No. I don't think anybody does.
[00:42:12] But equally, people have a right to express their opinion. Here's my thing.
[00:42:20] And I stand with Israel as you know. I look at those people just, you know, taking a step back and they think they're defending,
[00:42:32] you know, innocent children and civilians on the other side.
[00:42:36] So what do we have to say there?
[00:42:40] That's the thing that's so confusing here with the Israel-Palestine conflict in particular,
[00:42:45] but it represents a lot of conflicts that we have anyway.
[00:42:49] No, see, that's a category error because, and this is what these people often do, is
[00:42:55] there's a difference between saying Palestinians are oppressed by Israelis or being badly treated
[00:43:02] by Israelis or whatever, and celebrating the murder of innocent
[00:43:06] people. These are completely different issues. So this is one of the things that has happened
[00:43:13] in the modern world, or maybe it was always like this, I suppose, is people feel entitled to apply
[00:43:22] rules to other people that they do not apply to themselves, right?
[00:43:27] So, people feel entitled to do terrible things to other people because they disagree with
[00:43:34] those people.
[00:43:35] And my thing is, why don't we all just agree on a set of rules by which we play irrespective
[00:43:40] of who's on your team and who isn't.
[00:43:43] It's like, you couldn't have a game of American football if
[00:43:45] The two teams didn't agree what the rules of work like if if if what if the quarterback like could get a gun out and shoot somebody
[00:43:53] That wouldn't work right and so
[00:43:56] When we talk about all these contentious issues
[00:43:59] We have to agree a kind of code of conduct and one of them to me is you
[00:44:04] Just you attack what
[00:44:06] people say you don't attack them you know you don't try to discredit people
[00:44:11] you don't try to cancel them I mean I'm not gonna watch anymore Mia Khalifa
[00:44:14] video I don't think you ever know she's not my type but you see what I'm saying
[00:44:21] right like people are free to see what you said and go okay that's not a good person or that's a person who's not behaving in a good way what I'm saying, right? Like people are free to see what you said and go, okay, that's not a good person.
[00:44:26] Or that's a person who's not behaving in a good way.
[00:44:29] And I'm therefore going to act accordingly.
[00:44:31] But should there be a boycott to take her content down
[00:44:36] from every platform?
[00:44:38] In my opinion, no.
[00:44:39] She's allowed to express her opinion.
[00:44:41] Her opinion is fucking horrible.
[00:44:43] And people can make their own decisions
[00:44:45] as a result of that.
[00:44:46] And in terms of hiring and not hiring people, again,
[00:44:49] it depends on what people have said.
[00:44:50] Did they celebrate that attack?
[00:44:52] Or did they just say, I stand with Palestine,
[00:44:54] which people are, of course, allowed to do?
[00:44:56] Yeah, these are difficult things to unravel,
[00:45:01] but people like to collapse them into one conversation
[00:45:03] because it makes it easier to make a political point. But there's a difference, fundamentally, the point I'm
[00:45:08] making, Nicole, is the difference between celebrating or inciting violence and having
[00:45:13] the wrong opinion.
[00:45:14] I'm with you there. Do you think it would be fair to say that we're living in an increasingly
[00:45:20] intolerant society? Because that's what I think I'm seeing.
[00:45:26] For example, I see the narrative on both sides.
[00:45:31] And something that I've noticed is that
[00:45:34] we're looking at different maps.
[00:45:37] We're reading different history books.
[00:45:39] Straight up, the textbooks say different things.
[00:45:42] And when it's that way, we're never going to agree
[00:45:46] on the truth. So how do you make progress there? Like even when I'm thinking, you just
[00:45:51] had, you know, an interview with Eric and Sam Harris. And I think I know we're both of
[00:45:59] them stand and where you stand here. Is there another side that we're missing?
[00:46:08] Well, I don't know where I stand exactly.
[00:46:14] Um, I think they didn't entirely agree either.
[00:46:14] Okay. The other side that we're missing, you mean the, the pro-Palestine view?
[00:46:20] Not just the pro-Palestine view, but their entire historical account of that land belongs to them.
[00:46:28] Yeah. No, I'm someone who we release a clip of an interview we did with a British Jewish journalist
[00:46:36] called Melanie Phillips, in which I actually challenge her on what she's saying. And I'm not
[00:46:40] entirely convinced by what she's saying. If you watch that clip, you can kind of tell. I'm not entirely convinced by what she's saying. As you, if you watch that clip, you can kind of tell.
[00:46:45] I'm going, hold on, I'm going, what about this?
[00:46:46] Yeah.
[00:46:47] You know, so I'm, I'm fully aware that there are different aspects to this situation.
[00:46:55] And it's not as simple as people like to, I'm sorry, I'm not, it's not as simple as people like to make it out to be.
[00:47:03] It's not a thing you can get a clear read on in five minutes or some people. I just watched this video. It's not as simple as people like to make it out to be. It's not a thing you can get a clear read on in five minutes or some people are, just
[00:47:07] watch this video.
[00:47:08] It's not like that.
[00:47:10] However, we are in the current situation in which ultimately somebody at some point is
[00:47:20] going to have to accept that we are in the present day and we have to start sorting
[00:47:25] the situation that we have in the present day. The history of it, look, yeah, the Palestinians,
[00:47:33] well, it's not Palestinians because they didn't really exist until a few decades ago, but the
[00:47:38] Arab nations around feel that this is Arab land, which Israel has occupied, and the Israelis
[00:47:44] feel that it's their land
[00:47:45] and that they're being killed and attacked
[00:47:48] for being in the Jewish state.
[00:47:51] That is not a thing that is gonna,
[00:47:52] it's not like someone is gonna come out
[00:47:54] and read a book and go,
[00:47:55] actually here's the truth and everyone's gonna agree
[00:47:58] because the reality on the ground is
[00:48:00] there's millions of people living there
[00:48:02] who are not gonna move, okay?
[00:48:04] So the history of it is actually not that relevant. I agree with you. It's about how do you move
[00:48:10] forward from the situation you currently have. And that is very, very difficult. I certainly
[00:48:16] don't have an answer to how to do that. I don't even... If I did, that would be very worrying.
[00:48:21] Yeah. Well, after having the conversation with Melanie and with
[00:48:26] Eric Weins, Simon Sim, Harris, has anything changed in your mind about
[00:48:32] about this issue at all?
[00:48:51] The truth is, I can't say in public what the truth is. Because?
[00:48:52] Because it's too controversial.
[00:48:56] But the reality is that a conflict of this kind is not going to be resolved without a
[00:49:03] physical separation between the two sides.
[00:49:07] Fair. And you don't have to say the controversial thing. Yeah. But what makes you hesitate in
[00:49:13] terms of saying it? Because if anything, I've heard you in several interviews say the controversial
[00:49:18] thing, yet you won't say it here. Okay. This is going to take a little while. Okay, I said this in our conversation
[00:49:26] with Simon Eric, but I mostly wanted them to talk. So let me explain it like this. The
[00:49:32] United States dropped two nuclear bombs on Japan. Okay, killing civilians in the most
[00:49:42] horrific ways possible. After one of the bombs was dropped, a crew of, I think, US Army engineers or some American
[00:49:48] experts, they went through the place where the bomb dropped and they measured the blast
[00:49:56] impact of those weapons.
[00:49:59] Not the energy released from the nuclear bomb.
[00:50:01] They say it's this many megatons or whatever, but the actual blast, the destructive impact. And they calculated how many conventional
[00:50:10] munitions, normal bombs, you'd have to drop to cause that same amount of blast impact.
[00:50:17] In the last year and a half of World War II, the Allies dropped 50 Hiroshima's a month on Germany.
[00:50:27] 50 Hiroshima's a month.
[00:50:30] The Soviets and the Americans and the British flattened Germany.
[00:50:36] They flattened German city after German city after German city.
[00:50:40] Hundreds of thousands of innocent German civilians burnt
[00:50:44] and bomb shelters and in their homes
[00:50:46] and whatever. And the reason the Allies did that, I mean some people argue it's you know
[00:50:52] indefensible and whatever, but the reason the Allies did that is that the people who ran
[00:50:57] Germany, Hitler and his gang, decided that they wanted to make a final stand. It was a death call.
[00:51:06] They didn't want to spare their own surveillance.
[00:51:08] They said, we're going to stand to the last man and we're going to defend every German
[00:51:11] city.
[00:51:12] And the World War II was lost in 1941 at the Battle of Moscow.
[00:51:17] All right.
[00:51:18] When the Germans ran out of steam and didn't take Moscow, from that moment on, it was very
[00:51:24] clear that the Germans were going to lose.
[00:51:26] When the Americans did the D-Day landings and the Canadians and a few others,
[00:51:33] the war was over. Everybody knew it was over. But the people who ran Germany didn't want it to be
[00:51:39] over. They decided to make a stand. And because of that that the allies ended up killing millions of innocent people.
[00:51:47] Okay?
[00:51:49] I don't want a single innocent person to die, but this is war and in war innocent people
[00:51:56] die.
[00:51:57] Always.
[00:51:58] Always.
[00:51:59] So we are not willing to have a known conversation about that because it's a horrific conversation, which is how many innocent civilians are we prepared to kill to eliminate Hamas? We're
[00:52:11] not willing to have that conversation, at least not publicly, because nobody wants to be the
[00:52:15] guy who's like, yeah, I think we should kill no more than half a million people. I don't
[00:52:21] want to have that conversation. It's not how I think about it. I think it's a terrible tragedy what's happening.
[00:52:27] But the problem is that I know exactly the right thing to say on Twitter.
[00:52:32] The terrible tragedy committed by Hamas and Israel just shows the cycle of violence in
[00:52:37] the Middle East.
[00:52:38] Until we all come together and learn to love each other as people, no progress will ever
[00:52:42] be made.
[00:52:43] 40,000 likes. But that's
[00:52:46] not the case. That's not true. That's not the truth.
[00:52:49] But Constantine, even more likes if you take a stand with one side.
[00:52:53] Yeah, yeah. From the river to the sea or whatever, you know, bomb Gaza, you know, those are
[00:52:58] going to get likes too. But none of those perspectives are true. None of them, right? And given that you have a terrorist
[00:53:08] organization like Hamas, which deliberately places their military facilities underneath hospitals
[00:53:16] inside schools, they use, and they're preventing civilians from leaving the area, even those
[00:53:22] Israelis are saying, please leave, we have to take out Hamas.
[00:53:31] So the bottom line is to what I'm saying is a lot of innocent people are going to die.
[00:53:48] And I am not comfortable being like, yeah, that's fine. But it is what's going to happen. It is what happens in war. And so, you know, historically, how do you stop to tribes that hate each other from fighting? You find a way that there's a physical border
[00:53:55] between them that makes geographical sense. You reinforce that border and you just try
[00:54:03] and preserve peace between those two countries, those two nations states.
[00:54:07] We don't have that situation at the moment.
[00:54:09] And one of the reasons we don't have it, by the way, is that the Arab countries which
[00:54:14] talk so much about how supportive they are of Palestine, they won't take a single Palestinian
[00:54:18] refugee.
[00:54:19] Egypt hasn't?
[00:54:20] Well, Egypt, what Trump said America should do they built a wall
[00:54:29] So people say well guys is an open air prison and maybe
[00:54:34] But one of the reasons is that the entire southern border of the Gaza Strip is
[00:54:37] closed off by Egypt so
[00:54:45] It but look ultimately the point the point I'm trying to make is this isn't going to get solved on a podcast. And the controversial thing is that a lot of civilians are going to die.
[00:54:49] I don't want them to.
[00:54:50] I don't either.
[00:54:51] I don't.
[00:54:52] I don't.
[00:54:53] I know you don't.
[00:54:54] And none of us do, but they will.
[00:54:56] But they will because if you Israel, you can't have the thing that happened happen again.
[00:55:04] America went after Al-Qaeda after 9-11, had to be done.
[00:55:07] Even though, you know, the war in Iraq was an abomination,
[00:55:10] but dealing with Al-Qaeda, that had to be done.
[00:55:12] Taking Al-Qaeda and Laden had to be done.
[00:55:14] You have to kill the people who want to kill you.
[00:55:16] You have to.
[00:55:18] So it's a bloody and messy conflict
[00:55:21] that there is no easy solution to.
[00:55:24] That's the controversial, unsayable thing.
[00:55:27] And the ultimate conclusion that you reached?
[00:55:31] The ultimate conclusion, I think, is that Israel is going to do what Israel is doing,
[00:55:36] because they have to, and that is going to be really bad for everybody,
[00:55:40] including for Israel. And both Israel and Israel's allies and Israel's enemies.
[00:55:49] They're all locked in just its bad choice after bad choice after bad choice.
[00:55:55] There are no good choices here.
[00:55:56] No.
[00:55:57] And then on a macro level, you have one side claiming this is causing Islamophobia and the other side claiming and it is this
[00:56:07] is causing extreme anti-Semitism and we're seeing it everywhere.
[00:56:11] Well, no McDonald have this brilliant joke. You said imagine if ISIS got hold of a nuclear
[00:56:16] weapon and killed 50 million Americans, just imagine how many innocent Muslims would suffer
[00:56:22] from Islamophobia. Sometimes we kind of focus on the wrong thing.
[00:56:27] But you're right. The Western countries, and you see this, if you see videos from London now,
[00:56:35] we have imported this conflict from the Middle East because the people that we have welcomed to our shores have not bought into the idea of the West.
[00:56:48] They have not bought into the idea that
[00:56:50] you become an American first.
[00:56:53] You become a British person first.
[00:56:55] People have these very strong attachments to the places
[00:56:57] from which they came and they think that
[00:56:59] that is what matters more than being here and living
[00:57:03] according to the values of this place.
[00:57:05] It sounds like we have identity issues.
[00:57:08] Yeah.
[00:57:09] Well, not just with that, but going back to our last conversation, identifying more with
[00:57:15] being, for example, gay or black or any of these things before we identify with, I think,
[00:57:23] forget just American.
[00:57:24] That's, you know, forget just American.
[00:57:25] That's important too.
[00:57:27] But just with I am a human being, I belong to the human race.
[00:57:31] You know what I'm saying?
[00:57:32] Yeah.
[00:57:33] That's how I see it.
[00:57:34] Yeah, yeah, completely.
[00:57:35] And this is coming back to the conversation we had about world culture.
[00:57:37] This is what it encourages.
[00:57:39] It encourages people to retreat into the narrowest sliver of their identity instead of seeing
[00:57:43] the big picture.
[00:57:44] Yeah. to retreat into the narrowest sliver of their identity instead of seeing the big picture. Yeah, one thing I liked about this speech that you gave at Oxford, which you received
[00:57:51] a standing ovation for, which we, I think we haven't, you did know?
[00:57:56] No.
[00:57:57] I thought that was the headline.
[00:58:00] It wasn't a standing ovation, no.
[00:58:03] It was just people clapping?
[00:58:05] Yeah.
[00:58:06] And that was enough, because that was in some of the headlines when I read about it.
[00:58:11] It was something that tells you about the authenticity of the media.
[00:58:15] Right.
[00:58:16] Yeah.
[00:58:17] Because this is the first time someone went into one of these institutions, talked about
[00:58:22] woke culture and it was well received.
[00:58:25] Yeah. That was the message that we got. Yeah. It was well received. Yeah, for sure. But
[00:58:29] I didn't get a stand. But it was an astounding vision. No. Interesting. Yeah. Okay. So it
[00:58:35] was well received. But it was one of the first times we've seen that at a university. Yeah.
[00:58:42] And so you know, you went on all these different outlets talking about it. When I
[00:58:48] watched it, I was like, what's different about the way he is communicating about this topic,
[00:58:54] then the way other people are communicating about this topic. And the one thing that I
[00:58:59] noticed that was different about you is that you were not talking to the other side like they were
[00:59:05] idiots. I think that distinction made all the difference. You even began by
[00:59:11] saying I know you're rational people. Some of you. Yeah. Well even the humor.
[00:59:18] I made fun. Yeah but even the humor of it brought levity to the topic which I
[00:59:22] don't think many people are able to do.
[00:59:25] So I also see here a communication issue, which politicians can't solve because they're so
[00:59:32] married to their views.
[00:59:34] And you're somewhere in the middle, where you're like, I can see where it's going wrong
[00:59:38] here.
[00:59:39] Politicians also can't solve it because they have to pander to their base.
[00:59:42] They have to. So politicians don't have the luxury that I do of being perfectly happy to alienate portions
[00:59:51] of the people who are quote unquote my audience frequently.
[00:59:55] They can't do that because then they're going to get voted out.
[01:00:00] But yeah, the answer to people who have ideas you disagree with is to try and persuade them
[01:00:09] or that there's a better way to look at the world.
[01:00:13] It's like you and I talk.
[01:00:16] And if you say something and I don't agree, I'll try and offer you what I think is a more
[01:00:20] useful perspective.
[01:00:22] And if you don't think I'm criticizing you or saying you're an
[01:00:25] idiot, it's going to be a lot easier for you to hear. Likewise with you, right? You'll say,
[01:00:29] well, have you thought about this? Or, you know, for me, this is how this came across on blah,
[01:00:33] blah, blah. And then it's easier for me to receive. But what happens on, particularly online is
[01:00:40] people aren't actually trying to persuade each other. What are you trying to do?
[01:00:43] They're trying to get clicks from their base. Yeah. That's what's happening. So it's not about persuading the
[01:00:51] other side. It's about dunking on the other side because it's a spectator sport, right? It's a sport.
[01:01:00] You want your team to win and when your quarterback throws a nice pass, that's what you like and
[01:01:05] when he crack, you know, when the tackle crashes into somebody and takes them out, that's what
[01:01:11] you want to see. Boom. Which is why if you look at the YouTube videos with some of the most clips
[01:01:16] and I've even seen your name with these kinds of titles, Ben Shapiro destroys blah, blah, blah.
[01:01:29] titles. Ben Shapiro destroys blah blah blah. Bill Maher destroys blah blah blah. And that's what people want to see. So it's not just politicians. Exactly what you're saying. It's the media too.
[01:01:35] So I think I think there needs to be a complete shift in what people are paying attention to
[01:01:43] shift in what people are paying attention to, and there needs to be a lot of us who do that.
[01:01:48] So I like what you're saying with trigger media.
[01:01:52] You know what I mean?
[01:01:53] I don't think that you have any interest
[01:01:56] in making someone be more political,
[01:01:59] more conservative, more liberal by any means.
[01:02:02] You're just like, here's a better perspective of the world,
[01:02:05] here's a different perspective of the world, here's what might be more helpful. And I think if we
[01:02:11] all think like that, instead of politically, then we win. I agree. I think it's a little bit more
[01:02:19] complex than that. Okay. I mean, I agree with that, definitely. But it's a little bit more complex
[01:02:23] than that, because we're not starting a little bit more complex than that because
[01:02:31] we're not starting from a blank slate. We are in a position where a lot of dangerous narratives are already out there that do have to be counted, maybe not destroyed, but certainly counted.
[01:02:38] For example, when people post a clip of me, or a Kishan destroys the BBC with facts and logic, it's because
[01:02:45] the BBC is pushing a narrative that does have to be challenged robustly.
[01:02:52] And when I go and do a TV interview and it's a seven-minute interview and they're trying
[01:02:56] to impose a whole set of crazy ideas, I don't have the time like this or the good faith
[01:03:04] like this to be like, well, have you
[01:03:06] thought about it like that?
[01:03:08] Because that's not what that game is about.
[01:03:11] So when I go on TV and it's a seven minute or a three minute hit, I'm going to go in
[01:03:16] there.
[01:03:17] I'm going to go, this is your argument.
[01:03:18] This is why it's ridiculous.
[01:03:19] And I'm going to make you look dumb.
[01:03:21] And you have to make the title when you release that, you have to change the title
[01:03:26] in your own favor too. Yeah. Well, you have to, right? You have to. Because that is that
[01:03:34] game. What I'm saying is we can play a better game to the one we're playing now, which is
[01:03:39] communication, connection, mutual understanding, mutual enrichment, etc.
[01:03:45] That's a more interesting game.
[01:03:47] But to the extent that that game exists, that game also has to be played because a lot of
[01:03:52] people will watch that and go, oh, okay, I didn't realize why that argument didn't
[01:03:56] make sense, but now I do.
[01:03:59] You know, when we just interviewed Tom Billieux from Impact Theory and he was talking about how he's not on
[01:04:07] the left on the right, but he thinks that the creative tension between those two is what you need.
[01:04:13] I heard him say that too.
[01:04:18] I hadn't realized that that is why we started Trigonometry six years ago.
[01:04:23] In this entire time, nobody has had it like that.
[01:04:25] And I kept looking for a word that's like,
[01:04:27] am I a centrist?
[01:04:28] Well, I'm not because on a lot of things,
[01:04:30] I'm either quite to the left or quite to the right politically,
[01:04:34] on a lot of my views.
[01:04:36] Am I a moderate?
[01:04:37] Well, I don't think I am a moderate
[01:04:38] because I feel strongly about certain things.
[01:04:40] And I'm not like in the middle.
[01:04:42] I think I'm very like pro legalizing
[01:04:47] weed and psychedelics, for example, right? That's a very like left progressive type
[01:04:51] of idea. But I also think we need to border. And some people tell me that's racist now
[01:04:57] or whatever, you know what I mean. So I'm a moderate, I don't know that I am. And actually
[01:05:02] what I realized is I'm just someone who thinks that both sides have good ideas
[01:05:05] and both sides have terrible ideas
[01:05:07] and we need to take the good ones and use them
[01:05:09] and to reject the bad ones.
[01:05:11] And that's what Tom was really saying.
[01:05:12] Let's go with what works.
[01:05:15] Yeah, let's go with what works.
[01:05:17] Yeah.
[01:05:18] I wanna get into your personal life for a little bit
[01:05:20] because I know people are curious about it
[01:05:23] and I know very little about it, but let's go back to how you met your wife
[01:05:29] Okay, how long have you got we got time we've got time so this is a this is why I'm a bit of a romantic and
[01:05:40] While not necessarily being religious I
[01:05:48] while not necessarily being religious, I believe in destiny. I don't believe that your choices are entirely predetermined,
[01:05:52] but it's like you have a spectrum of options from which you can choose,
[01:05:57] but it's only narrow, broadly speaking.
[01:06:01] Now, over decades you can take yourself in a completely different direction direction right. If you just sit at home and play computer games you are going
[01:06:08] to take yourself in a particular direction no matter what your destiny is.
[01:06:13] So I was at 18 years old at school boarding school in the UK and I just
[01:06:21] my parents live in Armenia.
[01:06:29] And I'd flown to Armenia and on the last day
[01:06:34] of my time with my family, they were like, okay, let's go to our friend's dinner party.
[01:06:37] Okay.
[01:06:39] And there was, in Armenia, they have these women
[01:06:42] like coffee bean readers, I don't know
[01:06:43] if you have this in Iran. Yeah, we do. So for people who don't know, you know, I mean, if they have these women, like coffee bean readers, I don't know if you have this in Iran.
[01:06:45] Yeah, we do.
[01:06:46] So for people who don't know, you take Turkish coffee,
[01:06:49] is that what you call it here, Turkish coffee?
[01:06:50] Yeah, yeah, and then you turn it around.
[01:06:53] Yeah, there's the sediment in the bottom of the cup.
[01:06:55] Yeah.
[01:06:56] You put that onto an abkin, and then like a wide.
[01:06:59] You eat it, yeah, it's like a psychic thing.
[01:07:01] A wise old woman looks at it and goes,
[01:07:03] oh, here's what I see.
[01:07:05] So just to understand the context, I'm 18 years old. I'm about to go to university college.
[01:07:12] And you know how college is like everyone's, you know, kind of having fun, whatever.
[01:07:18] At school, I hadn't really had like a serious girlfriend up to this point at all.
[01:07:23] Have you had fun?
[01:07:25] Not in that way.
[01:07:26] Okay.
[01:07:27] Yeah.
[01:07:28] So we go to this place and I'm like this super arrogant cocky 18 year old dickhead.
[01:07:35] I can imagine.
[01:07:36] Yeah.
[01:07:37] Oh yeah.
[01:07:38] Oh yeah.
[01:07:39] It's not that hard to imagine.
[01:07:40] I'm not that different now.
[01:07:41] And I'm like, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, and I'm like hardcore atheist.
[01:07:45] I've read my Richard Dawkins, you know, all that.
[01:07:48] And I'm like, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, coffee bin.
[01:07:50] Yeah.
[01:07:50] Yeah.
[01:07:50] Sure.
[01:07:51] Coffee bin read.
[01:07:51] Yeah.
[01:07:51] And I'm sure this is, yeah, go on.
[01:07:53] Fine.
[01:07:53] Do it with me.
[01:07:54] Do it with me.
[01:07:55] And she's like, OK, so I drink the coffee.
[01:07:57] I tip the thing and she's like, goes, she looks at it, goes, I see in your future
[01:08:03] a very serious woman.
[01:08:05] And I'm like, what the hell are you talking about? looks at it goes, I see in your future a very serious woman.
[01:08:10] And I'm like, what the hell are you talking about? I'm 18 years old, I've never had a serious girlfriend,
[01:08:13] I'm about to go to university.
[01:08:16] What serious woman, what on earth are you talking about?
[01:08:19] And she's like, I see in the future a very serious woman.
[01:08:23] No, okay.
[01:08:24] And I instantly dismiss it.
[01:08:27] Forgot all about it.
[01:08:27] And I go home and I had a 3am flight
[01:08:31] because to fly west from Armenia you have to leave early.
[01:08:33] So 3am flight.
[01:08:34] So no point going to bed.
[01:08:36] So I stay up and there used to be this program
[01:08:39] which you probably wouldn't know called ICQ.
[01:08:40] It was kind of like MSN messenger.
[01:08:42] This is before Facebook, before any social media, before Skype, before anything. And I had this program installed on my computer
[01:08:50] because I used to play computer game where it was helpful. And I was like, well, you
[01:08:54] know, I've got a couple of hours. My family's gone to bed. I've got nothing to do. Let's
[01:08:59] find someone to talk to. And you know, being 18 years old, obviously, if it's a girl, that's
[01:09:05] a benefit, right? Yeah. Don't want to talk to another guy. That's weird. So I was looking
[01:09:10] through the list of like people who were there. I can't remember how the search function worked.
[01:09:16] And everybody was all the girls were like, I like parties, I like shopping, I like parties,
[01:09:22] I like shopping, I like discos, I like parties, I like shopping. And then there was this one girl who was like, I like philosophy and history and politics.
[01:09:29] I was like, ah, let's talk to you.
[01:09:31] So I said hello, and we talked for an hour, just chat, like text.
[01:09:40] And then I went and got my flight, arrived, wrote her an email, she wrote back, I wrote back, she wrote back, then called her, she got me.
[01:09:51] And we wrote emails for about a year before we saw a photo, before we...
[01:09:58] Even a photo.
[01:09:59] Yeah, it was months before we saw each other photos, yeah.
[01:10:01] It's almost like love is blind.
[01:10:03] Not blind. months before we sent each other photos yeah it's almost like love is blind not
[01:10:05] blind I mean that you haven't seen each other in that yeah in that respect we
[01:10:10] were very lucky that we got to know each other as human beings before we got to
[01:10:13] know each other as physical beings yeah and after a few weeks of writing emails
[01:10:20] we pretty much knew we were gonna get get married. You didn't care what she looked like?
[01:10:26] After the photo.
[01:10:29] After the photo.
[01:10:30] I mean, look, it wasn't like that.
[01:10:32] It wasn't like, oh, your heart, okay, cool, let's do it.
[01:10:35] It was more like, I already knew how I felt about her.
[01:10:40] And then it was like, okay, and we're on each other's level, physically.
[01:10:44] Great. Right. And then he was like, okay, and we're on each other's level, physically, great.
[01:10:45] Right.
[01:10:46] I think this story is so interesting to me
[01:10:49] because the way that most of us filter now,
[01:10:54] it strictly looks and what does this person do?
[01:10:59] Can they afford the lifestyle I want?
[01:11:02] Things like that.
[01:11:03] So what you're saying is so different from that.
[01:11:08] And it's the benefit of youth because, you know,
[01:11:12] my wife, she's not working now, she's with our son.
[01:11:15] She absolutely loves it,
[01:11:16] even though she was obsessed with her career before.
[01:11:20] And when we first got together,
[01:11:21] we got married by the time we were 20.
[01:11:23] So two years out from those emails, we were already married.
[01:11:26] And we were living in different countries at the time.
[01:11:28] So we got together, lived together, got married within two years after that.
[01:11:34] And you never look back and say, oh, I wish I had more fun.
[01:11:38] Oh, I wish I did this.
[01:11:40] No, I had a great fun with my wife.
[01:11:42] This is the bit that no one tells you, life isn't all about having fun.
[01:11:46] Yeah, what is it about then?
[01:11:48] It's about building the life you want.
[01:11:52] That's what we spend our...
[01:11:54] The people who spend their 20s having fun,
[01:11:57] we spend our 20s working out how to be together,
[01:12:01] working out all the shit that was causing tension
[01:12:04] and conflict and whatever,
[01:12:06] so that we can have a great life now where, you know, when you get to the stage that we're at now
[01:12:13] where you have young children and elderly parents and there's lots of other stuff going on, it's a
[01:12:18] stressful time. And you get really tested and I'm someone who's always had a bit of a temper and my wife is,
[01:12:26] you know, everybody, every human being has their own flaws, right?
[01:12:29] These are things that have to be negotiated over time and worked out and your money worries
[01:12:33] and your money attitudes and how do you relate to each other and how do you have a healthy relationship
[01:12:37] and what are the books you read in order to understand the other person and all of that.
[01:12:42] We've had 20 years to do that.
[01:12:48] I didn't sleep with lots of random women, it's true. Do I feel like I missed out on that?
[01:12:50] No.
[01:12:52] Why do you think that's such a,
[01:12:55] you know, you see people like Andrew Tate
[01:12:57] and you know who Dan Bilzerian is?
[01:12:59] No.
[01:13:01] Another popular figure in LA who's just constantly seen
[01:13:04] on yachts with tons of, you know, women
[01:13:07] in bikinis and goes viral all the time.
[01:13:10] And a lot of men look at other men who are like that and hold them in a very high regard
[01:13:17] in terms of this is what masculinity is and this is what success is.
[01:13:24] But what you're saying is something very different than that.
[01:13:27] Most of them didn't have that.
[01:13:31] How do you know that?
[01:13:32] They talk about it.
[01:13:33] Do they?
[01:13:34] The divorce rate and single parenthood has gone...
[01:13:40] I don't have the exact numbers,
[01:13:42] but it also varies by demographic.
[01:13:46] There are some communities where it really hasn't changed that much.
[01:13:49] In some communities, the number of boys growing up with that at that is like 75%, 80%.
[01:13:57] Did you have a good dad?
[01:13:59] No. My dad is a very interesting, super-era diet, super-early successful.
[01:14:11] He was a millionaire by the time he was 30, bankrupt by the time he was 35.
[01:14:15] He was a senior minister in the Boris Yeltsin government in Russia, incredibly knowledgeable,
[01:14:23] etc. in Russia, incredibly knowledgeable, et cetera. But he was very focused on himself
[01:14:28] because they had me very young.
[01:14:30] And my parents, my mom had been 18 for four days
[01:14:33] when I was born.
[01:14:35] And my dad was 20.
[01:14:36] Yeah, I was an accident, as you can imagine.
[01:14:38] So they were very young and didn't really
[01:14:40] know what they were doing.
[01:14:42] But my dad grew up without a dad and the difference
[01:14:48] between the two of us is night and day. I didn't have a great dad but I had a dad and
[01:14:54] it made all the difference. It made all the difference. Being a man is not something
[01:15:01] you pick up from the ether. You have to see it, you have to watch it, you have to see your dad get up and go to work every morning.
[01:15:09] You have to see your parents working things out or not.
[01:15:13] You know, my parents, I always joke to my parents,
[01:15:16] finally after 40 years together, my parents finally formalised how they feel about each other and got divorced,
[01:15:24] or separated, whatever. Like they didn't have a healthy marriage. My parents finally formalized how they feel about each other and got divorced or separate
[01:15:25] or whatever.
[01:15:26] Like they didn't have a healthy marriage.
[01:15:28] But I looked at that and I was like, well, that's not how I want to live.
[01:15:33] I don't want to treat my wife the way my dad treats my mom.
[01:15:36] It's also interesting that you looked at that and instead of thinking, well marriage doesn't
[01:15:41] work, you thought, no, I'm going to do marriage this way the right way.
[01:15:46] Well, I'm like in the top 1 percentile for disagreeableness.
[01:15:49] So whenever I look at other people doing stuff, I'm just like, well, that's dumb.
[01:15:53] Why would I do that?
[01:15:54] Yeah.
[01:15:55] You know, and, you know, as you go through life, you meet people who have a different
[01:16:01] experience of all those things, of marriage, of life together, of raising
[01:16:05] children, parents, etc. So I try not to draw too many conclusions from individual traumatic
[01:16:14] experiences we talked about it earlier. Just because my parents didn't have a particularly
[01:16:21] happy marriage, it doesn't mean that that isn't available. It just means
[01:16:25] that I ought not to do the things that they did.
[01:16:29] Did you have examples of people that did have happy marriages where you were like, I aspire
[01:16:33] to be like that?
[01:16:34] Yeah.
[01:16:35] And then...
[01:16:36] Yeah, my mother's parents, so my grandparents, on my mother's side.
[01:16:39] So what did you learn from them?
[01:16:43] What I learned from them is that love is everything.
[01:16:49] You're going to make me cry here.
[01:16:51] That's what I do.
[01:16:53] That love is everything and kindness can overcome many things and it's important not to take yourself too seriously. And most of all, that kind of relationship where, you know, I remember my grandparents
[01:17:13] before he died, my grandmother is still alive, she's 95, lives in Ukraine.
[01:17:19] I'd go and visit them and, you know, they would have been together for 60 years by
[01:17:23] that point, they'd walk hand in hand.
[01:17:26] This is how they were.
[01:17:28] Just knowing that that was available meant that I was completely immune to all the negative
[01:17:34] examples and looking at them and going, oh, well, it's not possible.
[01:17:38] All marriages are like this.
[01:17:41] Another thing with my parents, I almost had it even tough, I would say, because when people have a bad experience, they want the world to justify it.
[01:17:52] And so they will say, well, this is what marriage is like, or, you know, well, yeah, you know,
[01:17:57] when you've been married 20 years, this is what your marriage will be like.
[01:18:00] I remember my dad literally saying this to me, and I remember thinking, no, I fucking
[01:18:03] won't.
[01:18:04] Fuck you for trying to get this into my head. And I have a great relationship with my dad literally saying this to me, and I remember thinking, no, I fucking what? Fuck you for trying to get this into my head.
[01:18:06] And I have a great relationship with my dad.
[01:18:08] I love my dad.
[01:18:09] And as I grow older, I need my dad more than ever.
[01:18:11] Like right now, when I'm building a business
[01:18:14] and doing lots of interesting things,
[01:18:16] I speak to him all the time
[01:18:17] and get really great advice from him.
[01:18:19] But he wasn't a perfect person.
[01:18:22] He was a young man back then.
[01:18:23] He didn't know what the hell he was talking about.
[01:18:25] I think that's an important thing for us to realize is that our parents are growing up
[01:18:28] as they raise us to.
[01:18:30] Totally.
[01:18:31] Totally.
[01:18:32] So, my next book is going to be about gratitude.
[01:18:35] It's going to be told through me for giving my dad.
[01:18:39] I love that.
[01:18:40] Yeah.
[01:18:41] So, negative examples don't have to determine how you see the world. You have
[01:18:48] to seek out the examples you want and then go, what is this person doing that the people
[01:18:55] in the negative example were not doing? And then, and that's how you build a happy relationship
[01:19:00] or successful business. You know this, you know. I know this. I think something that I've realized is I've been reading more and more and listening to
[01:19:09] more and more podcasts, experts, etc.
[01:19:14] I think it's really important for us to define words accurately.
[01:19:20] So for example, obviously if you define the word masculinity in a certain way and people
[01:19:29] look up to that definition and that's the definition that they accept, maybe they'll
[01:19:34] be led in a wrong direction or the word love.
[01:19:38] Like how would you, you are in what I'd say and you, a happy, fruitful marriage that teaches you a lot.
[01:19:48] How do you define love?
[01:19:52] Or what you get from it, or what you learn from it?
[01:19:55] And that includes the love you have for your son
[01:20:01] and what you get from being a father.
[01:20:03] Because that definition should
[01:20:05] by now should have changed so many times because of the roles that you have.
[01:20:09] Love is not a word that you can define. Interesting because Bell Hooks defines it.
[01:20:16] Okay, let me rephrase. Love is not a word that I can define. It's you either know it or you don't. You feel it or you don't.
[01:20:30] Yeah, it's an experience.
[01:20:34] It's an experience, but I don't know.
[01:20:37] I do feel like it's important to define it only because
[01:20:42] I think there have been so many times,
[01:20:44] like for example, people who stay in these toxic addictive relationships and they think that's love,
[01:20:50] but it's not. You know what I mean? Like you said, love is something you feel,
[01:20:57] but the feeling must be distinguished between lust for example or addiction,
[01:21:03] another example. That's why I think it's important
[01:21:06] to define it.
[01:21:07] So it's like, I'm not-
[01:21:09] I'm not arguing with the idea that-
[01:21:11] I'm only, yeah, I'm only asking you
[01:21:13] because if I have someone in front of me
[01:21:17] who's telling me their marriage is good
[01:21:19] and their love is great and their life is great,
[01:21:23] then maybe their definition can be helpful to someone else. Hmm
[01:21:28] I don't think it's about that I think
[01:21:33] What okay, here's another question. Yeah, what is it about your relationship with your wife and
[01:21:42] As a father that if you didn't have it you would be completely different.
[01:21:49] And that you'd see the world in a completely different way.
[01:21:52] What is it about your marriage that you love so much and shapes you as a man?
[01:22:03] That my wife is incredibly different to me. She's like the polar opposite to me in every
[01:22:09] way.
[01:22:10] How?
[01:22:11] I am hard, she's soft. I am aggressive, she's gentle. I am intellectual. She's spiritual. I am, I want to provide. She wants to care and nurture. These are different things, right?
[01:22:38] There's a difference between bringing home a bag of money and like wanting to feed people or look after them or be nice to them or think of them or whatever. She's much more up in mind than I am, which means that she's brought
[01:22:52] a lot of interesting books and experiences into our relationship. John Gray, I don't
[01:22:58] know if you're familiar. I think you and I have talked.
[01:23:00] Are you kidding? You've given me so many recommendations to read his stuff.
[01:23:04] Yeah. And I have. Yeah, you've given me so many recommendations to read his stuff. Yeah, and I have.
[01:23:05] Yeah, you have.
[01:23:06] Yeah.
[01:23:09] So John Gray, I mean, look, you talk about like toxic relationships, that definitely would have been a point in our
[01:23:12] relationship where somebody looking from the outside would have
[01:23:16] said, Oh, that's a toxic relationship.
[01:23:19] But we knew that we were meant to be together.
[01:23:24] And if we're meant to be together,
[01:23:25] that means if it's a toxic relationship, what does that mean?
[01:23:31] That means we have to find a way to change.
[01:23:32] To make it not toxic.
[01:23:33] Right, and that's what we did.
[01:23:35] By doing personal development, reading books, John Gray's
[01:23:39] like incredible for that.
[01:23:40] Men are from Mars and women from Venus here
[01:23:42] has an update for it as well.
[01:23:45] So first and foremost, a relationship is something that's supposed to force you to get better.
[01:23:52] A lot of people I think now are like, well, this is how I am, so I need to find someone
[01:23:56] who's like the right match.
[01:23:59] I don't think it works that way.
[01:24:00] I think what you're supposed to do is find somebody with whom you want to grow together and overcome whatever tensions you have, because every relationship is going
[01:24:09] to have tension. Every relationship is going to have disagreement. Everyone's going to
[01:24:12] fight at some point. Everyone's going to be chin argue and do things that they're not
[01:24:16] proud of, both man and woman, right? Everybody's going to do that. The question is, is your
[01:24:22] commitment to each other strong enough that you're going to work through all that?
[01:24:26] And if it is from both sides, then you found the right person.
[01:24:29] Because if you work on your relationship, you will always get it to a point where it
[01:24:33] is happy and good.
[01:24:34] If both sides are prepared to work on it.
[01:24:37] And that you get a better version of yourself?
[01:24:39] I wouldn't be a tenth of the man I am if I weren't from my wife.
[01:24:44] A tenth. I get that when't from my wife. A tenth.
[01:24:45] I get that when I talk to you.
[01:24:47] A tenth.
[01:24:48] Because when you describe yourself, when you're younger, it's always like douchebag,
[01:24:53] arrogant, blah blah blah.
[01:24:55] douchebag, no, but arrogant.
[01:24:57] Okay, yeah, maybe not that word.
[01:24:59] Yeah.
[01:25:00] But, you know, whatever.
[01:25:01] Aragon.
[01:25:02] And also, the arrogance was an attempt to cover up for a lack of confidence.
[01:25:07] That's what arrogance usually is.
[01:25:08] People who are arrogant are only arrogant
[01:25:10] because they're not confident.
[01:25:12] 100%.
[01:25:13] So how did you overcome that?
[01:25:15] What advice would you give to someone who expresses themselves
[01:25:20] in an arrogant way or who just feels insecure?
[01:25:24] How do you develop your own self-esteem, whether it is a man or a woman?
[01:25:30] How do you develop that?
[01:25:32] I think that almost all true confidence comes from seeing the result of the things that
[01:25:42] you're doing. In other words, I don't think you can fake confidence
[01:25:48] or think your way into confidence.
[01:25:50] The reason I'm confident talking to you
[01:25:53] is that I've built a giant YouTube channel from nothing,
[01:25:58] from nothing, from having no money, no connections,
[01:26:02] no social media profile, nothing.
[01:26:05] We started it in a room above a comedy club.
[01:26:09] And now we have, if you put together the podcast on YouTube over a million subscribers, we're
[01:26:14] about to launch a whole new thing.
[01:26:15] We have 14 people working for us that I'm managing the people that I have conversations
[01:26:21] with.
[01:26:22] Like, I have proven to myself that I am right
[01:26:26] to be confident about me.
[01:26:29] But before you even got there, what did you have that got you to start?
[01:26:35] Ambition.
[01:26:36] Ambition.
[01:26:37] Okay.
[01:26:38] That's right.
[01:26:39] Ambition and drive.
[01:26:40] Right.
[01:26:41] I wanted more than what I had and I wanted to prove to myself and to the world that I'm
[01:26:44] worthy of that.
[01:26:45] I think I have the same experience.
[01:26:47] Yeah.
[01:26:48] So I don't believe that you can think your way into confidence.
[01:26:51] I think you prove to yourself by doing, by achieving, by creating, by building that you
[01:26:59] merit that confidence.
[01:27:03] And confidence without that is delusion. If you're confident without
[01:27:07] having any evidence that you're right to be, that a lot of the people you meet like that,
[01:27:11] I'm just like, you're delusional. You know what's interesting and I've talked to you
[01:27:15] about this, and I'm not sure I've sent you the videos, but I told you it's very popular.
[01:27:20] This whole thing of manifestation and promoting,
[01:27:25] having delusion and stuff like that,
[01:27:28] so that you can get ahead.
[01:27:30] It is a very popular thing that's happening.
[01:27:34] What do you think of it?
[01:27:35] I think it can be used very well,
[01:27:39] which is, I think one of the things that people
[01:27:42] sometimes don't realize is to what extent
[01:27:44] they're limited by their own worldview.
[01:27:46] Like for me coming to America every time I come back, my vision gets ten times bigger.
[01:27:52] Because here everything is bigger.
[01:27:56] There's more room for your eye.
[01:27:58] Just like we're sitting in a building now where you look over the Hollywood Studios out of the
[01:28:06] window from a high-rise.
[01:28:08] We're literally in a STX as a movie production company.
[01:28:13] When you look out at that, your perspective for what's possible changes.
[01:28:18] A lot of people learn to see the possibilities for themselves to be very small. I always had the arrogance, to some extent, was not unhelpful because I always knew that
[01:28:31] I was destined, you know, in many ways it was actually, really until a couple of years
[01:28:36] ago, I was very, I was not that happy a human being because I was constantly somewhere else.
[01:28:47] I wasn't present because from a young age, I had very young age.
[01:28:52] I had this belief.
[01:28:53] It wasn't a belief.
[01:28:54] I just knew that I was supposed to do something special.
[01:28:59] And I wasn't doing it for most of my adult life.
[01:29:03] So that tension was like, well, I'm supposed to be,
[01:29:05] but I'm not there.
[01:29:06] Therefore, I have to think about this,
[01:29:07] how do I strategy the, and I was never actually present
[01:29:10] in the moment, you know?
[01:29:14] So you have to have,
[01:29:18] you have to be able to believe that bigger things
[01:29:21] are possible for you than what you have now.
[01:29:28] I've lost my train of thought a little bit. I was talking about manifestation and it was like what you think of that.
[01:29:31] So in some ways it's helpful.
[01:29:33] The idea that things can happen that don't make any logical sense for you is a very helpful tool.
[01:29:41] I think for me with the marriage thing I have to think that otherwise I'm hopeless.
[01:29:47] And not just me, I've talked with you about this,
[01:29:50] like all men and women who want to find their match.
[01:29:55] You kind of see it as like a miracle.
[01:29:58] Yeah, well, I don't know if it's a miracle,
[01:30:00] I just think you have to see as something as possible
[01:30:02] that's available.
[01:30:04] I'm just saying that you feel like, I don't know, I look at a lot of marriages and I don't
[01:30:10] think a lot of them are happy.
[01:30:12] But then I talk to some people like you who are just like this change my life and this
[01:30:18] person changed my life and the hope is reinstilled.
[01:30:23] And then we have the divorce rate and I don't know if you're seeing all of this content
[01:30:27] about red flags to avoid,
[01:30:30] how to avoid a narcissist, blah, blah, blah.
[01:30:33] It's like part of the reason our society
[01:30:35] back to the men and women conversation
[01:30:38] is so at war with each other
[01:30:40] is because of the things we're seeing on social media
[01:30:44] and sometimes in front of
[01:30:45] our own eyes where it's like, oh my God, it's horrible.
[01:30:49] But you have to look at what's possible and then believe that that's...
[01:30:52] Yeah, and also this idea of like, oh, you're gonna...
[01:30:57] One of the things that's happened is people now have certain ideas about what they're
[01:31:00] supposed to want and not.
[01:31:03] When they're not really... That's not how you actually are supposed to
[01:31:07] meet somebody.
[01:31:08] Like you, you don't really know the other person fully.
[01:31:10] Like, okay, let's say this is, this is what a narcissist looks like.
[01:31:15] Avoid them.
[01:31:15] Okay.
[01:31:15] I'm a bit of a narcissist.
[01:31:20] And then and some narcissism is good.
[01:31:24] Right.
[01:31:24] Have you ever read the laws of Human Nature by Robert Greene?
[01:31:27] No.
[01:31:28] He's the guy who wrote 48 Laws of Power, The Art of Seduction, et cetera.
[01:31:32] I actually think you'd like his work a lot.
[01:31:34] I'm sure.
[01:31:35] And he talks about how we're all narcissistic on a spectrum, and the only people that we
[01:31:40] should really avoid are the people that have evil narcissism,
[01:31:45] which is completely separate from this spectrum.
[01:31:47] Which by the way, if you're on the spectrum, if you're self-aware enough, you can toggle
[01:31:52] between sides.
[01:31:53] Right.
[01:31:54] So I thought that was interesting.
[01:31:55] But my point is, if you see a guy do one thing that makes you think he's a bit of an
[01:31:59] narcissist.
[01:32:00] And you avoid him completely.
[01:32:01] And you avoid him completely.
[01:32:02] That's dumb.
[01:32:03] Yeah.
[01:32:04] Right. It's like this thing about women on dating sites. And you avoid them completely? And you avoid them completely? That's dumb. Yeah. Right?
[01:32:05] It's like this thing about women on dating sites.
[01:32:07] They all say, oh, I don't want a man who's shorter than six foot or whatever the high
[01:32:12] is, right?
[01:32:13] That's dumb.
[01:32:15] That's dumb.
[01:32:16] I understand women, you know, for biological evolution, the reason is one, a man who's
[01:32:20] taller than them.
[01:32:21] Okay.
[01:32:22] Or the same high.
[01:32:23] Well, I'm five, nine. I'm slightly, I'm a couple of
[01:32:26] inches taller than my wife. The fact that I'm not six foot doesn't bother her, right?
[01:32:33] Yeah, but also you're able to give speeches like that. So that just puts you in it.
[01:32:38] Yeah, but when we got together, I was not the man that I am today.
[01:32:43] I know.
[01:32:43] Let me say something very controversial that everybody's known since forever, okay?
[01:32:48] It's the woman's job to help her man become what he's supposed to be.
[01:32:53] That's what, yeah, that is very controversial today because everyone's expecting a complete
[01:32:57] version of what they want.
[01:32:59] Uh-uh.
[01:33:00] I mean, I think, you know why I think it's hard?
[01:33:03] Women are very attracted to potential and ambition for that reason, right?
[01:33:06] Oh, 100%, 100%.
[01:33:07] So you can get together with somebody who is not got anything, but you know like this
[01:33:13] guy's got potential, he's got ambition and I'm gonna do that, I'm gonna get him together
[01:33:17] and you hear a car, I'm gonna help him.
[01:33:19] Can I tell you where I think it gets controversial?
[01:33:21] Well, I think we're already there, but carry on.
[01:33:23] Yeah, but I mean, I mean, when I hear you say that,
[01:33:26] because one, I agree with you, on the other side of it,
[01:33:30] I'm like, as a woman, once you reach a certain age,
[01:33:34] you feel like there's no time for that,
[01:33:36] because I need to bring a child into the world.
[01:33:39] The investment that I was able to make when I was 20,
[01:33:43] and I did, I was with a guy who had no money
[01:33:45] and was sleeping on his mom's couch.
[01:33:48] And I thought, oh, I'm gonna help him become this man.
[01:33:51] And that didn't happen as fast as I had hoped.
[01:33:57] And you are very driven and very ambitious.
[01:33:59] Thanks.
[01:34:00] But at this age, I don't think I would be able to date a guy in that situation because
[01:34:08] I know there is a biological clock fact and that there is no time to turn that man into
[01:34:17] the man who does this, provides this, brings in this much, is able to put me in a position
[01:34:24] where I can stop working, attend
[01:34:26] to my child, etc. That's the only place where I'm like, oh, no, I get it. I get it. I'm
[01:34:33] not, I wouldn't argue with that at all. This is why this stuff is better to do early, you
[01:34:39] know, in an ideal world. Like, and I understand it doesn't always work out.
[01:34:45] But yeah, but if we're talking about the ideal, that's the ideal.
[01:34:49] Two young people get together and make each other better over time.
[01:34:52] And by the time they're in the mid 30s, they're both crushing it in whatever
[01:34:55] way that they want to be, you know, like,
[01:34:57] you need to go into it with that mentality. Like the way, yeah,
[01:35:01] the way that you and your wife, you know,
[01:35:03] it's like we are meant to be together
[01:35:05] We're gonna make this fucking work. Yes. I like that mentality. I think I think there are some people who
[01:35:12] They don't go into it with that and they're like I want to become the per I want to discover the person
[01:35:17] I am and get to know myself better before I even make that decision. I think that's good, too
[01:35:22] but given everything you're saying, I also think
[01:35:26] we just need to have that happen a little earlier so everyone can...
[01:35:31] You know, the discovering who you are thing, I have some questions about that.
[01:35:36] Okay. What are those?
[01:35:37] Because I think that when you have another person who loves you and who wants you to be the best version of you, you're going to
[01:35:45] discover who you are a lot quicker and they will help you do that in a way that you yourself
[01:35:52] can't if it's the right person.
[01:35:54] I just think that, for example, I look at like the parent-child relationships and I feel that a lot of times the child realizes who they are and they try to set the boundary
[01:36:09] with the parent and the parent is already so the person that they are and they can't
[01:36:15] change and they cannot evolve and they refuse to go to therapy.
[01:36:18] And this is an experience that a lot of my friends have with their parents or I don't
[01:36:22] know if you've had with your dad.
[01:36:27] And so if that were the case in a relationship, why get into that relationship at all?
[01:36:30] It's a very different type of relationship
[01:36:32] between two people versus parent, child.
[01:36:34] True.
[01:36:35] Very, very different.
[01:36:36] True, but again, not everyone is mature enough
[01:36:40] to go into the marriage the way you and your wife did.
[01:36:43] I was really not very mature.
[01:36:48] Interesting. At all. And she and she helped you become that. Yes.
[01:36:54] Yes. How did you do that? We had the beliefs that were meant to be together and then quite quickly we started having various problems in our relationship. Yeah. This wasn't working. That
[01:37:00] wasn't working. She wasn't happy about this. I wasn't happy about that. Okay. So I'm thinking
[01:37:04] about the modern the modern experience that we're having. Sorry to't happy about this, I wasn't happy about that. Okay, so I'm thinking about the modern experience
[01:37:06] that we're having, sorry to cut you off.
[01:37:08] No, no, no, fine.
[01:37:10] Women's blame me.
[01:37:11] Women's blame you, I'm ready.
[01:37:13] I feel like most people I know in that situation
[01:37:17] and especially at that age would be like,
[01:37:21] okay, I'm just gonna go sleep with other girls then.
[01:37:23] Yeah, yeah, and they're dumb. sleep with other girls then. Yeah. Yeah.
[01:37:25] And they're dumb.
[01:37:26] And they're dumb.
[01:37:27] And they're dumb.
[01:37:28] Find the, look, I always say this again, controversial, whatever.
[01:37:32] I always saw dating as a single issue, single objective thing, to find your person and
[01:37:42] to get together with your person.
[01:37:44] And that's how my wife saw it.
[01:37:45] And when we found each other we were like, okay, we found the right person. Now we
[01:37:50] build a relationship. And there were lots of times when we could easily have got
[01:37:55] divorced and most people probably would have done. Arguments, fights,
[01:37:59] disagreements about money, disagreements about how to speak to each other, how to
[01:38:03] do this, how to do that.
[01:38:05] I've hurt my wife a shit ton with things that I've said. She's hurt me with a shit ton of the
[01:38:09] things that she said and done. That's relationships. But because we knew we were meant to be together,
[01:38:16] we knew it was our job to work it out. And so we did. And the amazing thing is we now live in
[01:38:23] a world in which if you want to work your relationship out,
[01:38:26] there is everything you need out there for that. There's courses, there's books, there's information,
[01:38:31] there's people who will give you good advice, there's things you can watch online.
[01:38:34] They'll be like, oh, the reason my wife says this is that, okay,
[01:38:38] this is what I need to do. And I love that. I think that where it gets dangerous
[01:38:42] is that there's also information in the other direction
[01:38:46] from like divorce lawyers and people who view the word exactly.
[01:38:50] Perfect.
[01:38:51] Here's the question for me.
[01:38:53] When I look at anyone online or anyone in person who's giving out advice, I ask the
[01:38:57] simple question, is this person happy?
[01:39:00] Are they fulfilled and would I want to live like them?
[01:39:04] That's it. That's the thing and when I look at some of these kind of like red pill influencers
[01:39:09] Yeah, I do not want their life
[01:39:13] One bit I always thought the way that you build your life is by looking at things you do what you want and then
[01:39:20] You
[01:39:21] Learn from them. That's why I became so obsessed with entrepreneurs. I told you they're all problem solvers.
[01:39:26] They see a problem and they're like,
[01:39:28] all right, let's figure out a solution.
[01:39:30] Whereas a lot of other people are trained to be like,
[01:39:33] oh my God, I have a problem, I'm a victim.
[01:39:35] I'm gonna identify with my trauma more than I identify
[01:39:39] with a human being who can problem solve their way
[01:39:43] out of this.
[01:39:44] So I like those questions.
[01:39:45] I think the questions that you asked
[01:39:48] are what everyone needs to be asking
[01:39:50] when looking for role models,
[01:39:52] especially on the internet,
[01:39:53] which is probably the most dangerous place
[01:39:55] to look for them.
[01:39:56] Right.
[01:39:57] So you have to be very discerning
[01:39:58] and you have to go,
[01:39:59] is this person living the life that I wanna live?
[01:40:02] Like, when I meet Tom Billy from Impacted,
[01:40:04] I know he's, we've mentioned about 50 times.
[01:40:06] Yeah.
[01:40:08] I go, this guy is an incredible mind.
[01:40:10] I want to learn from this guy.
[01:40:11] So every time I spend time with him,
[01:40:14] I'm like, Tom, how do I do this?
[01:40:16] Tell me about this?
[01:40:17] How do I do that?
[01:40:17] What about this?
[01:40:18] What if you think about,
[01:40:19] that's so funny cause that's how I feel about you.
[01:40:21] Okay.
[01:40:22] Which is great.
[01:40:23] Which is great.
[01:40:24] Well, because you have one of the things that I want. Yeah great. Well because you have one of the things that I want.
[01:40:25] Yeah, sure.
[01:40:26] And he has one of the things that I want.
[01:40:28] Which is what?
[01:40:29] Billions of dollars?
[01:40:30] No.
[01:40:31] Okay.
[01:40:32] He has an incredible amount of clarity about how he thinks and what he thinks and why he
[01:40:38] thinks it.
[01:40:39] And he's very, he's just like, I go, Tom, I was thinking about doing this with Triggy
[01:40:44] Media and he's like, oh yeah, that's a terrible idea. And the way he says it is, I don't feel
[01:40:49] judged. I'm just like, this is a friend of mine who's giving me useful information.
[01:40:53] Yeah, and by the way, I see him as an entrepreneur first. Yes.
[01:40:57] Problem solver. Yeah, he's a great guy to get advice from. Even when he was here,
[01:41:01] he was giving him and his wife. Yeah. Gave me tons of useful advice.
[01:41:05] I'm sure, I'm sure.
[01:41:07] So you look at, I remember the first time
[01:41:10] I did any kind of personal development.
[01:41:11] I went to see this guy who like,
[01:41:14] he does various, he does like hypnotherapy and NLP
[01:41:17] and a bunch of various other things.
[01:41:19] Yeah.
[01:41:21] And he said to me, you know, he said,
[01:41:23] there are some people who come to a party, you know,
[01:41:26] and they go, some people go to where the girls are.
[01:41:28] Some people go for the booze.
[01:41:29] Some people go and find a nerd to talk to.
[01:41:33] And there are some people who just turn up and look around and go, I wonder what I want
[01:41:39] to do?
[01:41:40] And they take the time and then they go to where they want to go
[01:41:50] And I was like I want that and it was okay. Well, this is how you get it. How?
[01:41:59] Ultimately, it's about confidence right so we talked about that that's what it's about
[01:42:05] But my point was broader than that specific issue, okay point was you want to follow and listen to people who do what you want to do and live
[01:42:14] the life that you want to live.
[01:42:16] So for example, I'm not interested in having lots of fast cars and having a big chest and
[01:42:24] sleep in with random women.
[01:42:27] So, influences you talk about that have absolutely no interest for me.
[01:42:31] I'm not saying they're right or wrong or whatever, it's just not the lifestyle that
[01:42:34] I want, right?
[01:42:37] And that's kind of my advice to everybody else is like look around and think is this
[01:42:41] the kind of person that I want to be or not and
[01:42:48] The thing that nobody tells young people these days is
[01:42:53] Fast cars Lots of women lots of guys even lots of money doesn't make you happy
[01:42:58] I'm not saying money is bad fame too. Oh fame makes people miserable because it's hard has
[01:43:04] As your profile has grown yeah, and you've gotten more recognizable?
[01:43:10] Do you think that's affected many things in your life?
[01:43:13] I am only recognizable by the people who like me, so no.
[01:43:19] Like, I get recognized a lot, but everyone who comes up to me
[01:43:25] likes me and is positive towards me.
[01:43:27] I wanna talk to you in a few years about this.
[01:43:29] Yeah, I've said this too, and everybody on my crew knows this.
[01:43:34] I don't wanna be Joe Rogan famous.
[01:43:37] It doesn't appeal to me at all.
[01:43:39] However, the problem is that if you want to make an impact,
[01:43:42] which I do, then the more famous you are,
[01:43:44] the bigger the impact you make.
[01:43:46] So maybe a trade-off that you take.
[01:43:49] But generally speaking, it's, for me, my life is great.
[01:43:54] And that, the level of fame I currently have is healthy.
[01:44:00] I agree with you.
[01:44:01] As I've gotten to know a lot of the people
[01:44:04] that I look up to, they say never meet your heroes, right?
[01:44:07] Some of them are incredible. I've gotten to know them and I look up to them even more than I did before
[01:44:15] others I've met and
[01:44:17] like I don't know kind of in like
[01:44:19] the billionaire elite camps and
[01:44:23] You get to know them and their marriages are a disaster.
[01:44:27] They're cheating on their wives with prostitutes on yachts.
[01:44:31] And it's so, the reality of who they are
[01:44:35] is so starkly different than what you saw on social media,
[01:44:39] or however, in whatever form they're famous.
[01:44:43] And sometimes it's dangerous to get advice
[01:44:46] from those people because they can give you advice
[01:44:50] about certain things and not others.
[01:44:52] And it's important to make that distinction.
[01:44:54] But you don't know.
[01:44:55] Like I wouldn't have known about some of these people
[01:44:58] until I got into their worlds.
[01:45:01] And that's kind of, I don't know,
[01:45:04] that just makes me hesitant even more about who I take
[01:45:07] advice from.
[01:45:08] But I think we just need to be better about who we elevate, especially like, I know you
[01:45:15] feel like you have a responsibility to point people in the right direction.
[01:45:22] But I think we need to be careful about who we take advice from in which arena.
[01:45:27] For example, someone may give really good investing advice and be a badass entrepreneur,
[01:45:37] but will give you shit advice on marriage.
[01:45:39] They'll tell you, don't do it.
[01:45:43] It's too hard. Maybe that was their experience and it won't be yours.
[01:45:48] So I think those three questions that you mentioned earlier
[01:45:52] are really powerful.
[01:45:54] Absolutely.
[01:45:56] So yeah, I think what the internet is doing
[01:45:58] is promoting a lot of people who are giving bad advice,
[01:46:04] but not enough people, particularly young people, have been told
[01:46:08] what to look for. And so they're like, oh, maybe cigars and hoses were attacked. And
[01:46:16] look, a friend of mine has got me into cigars. Cigars are pretty nice, but they're not the
[01:46:21] meaning of life. They're not what fulfills you. And not enough young people have been told
[01:46:25] that the thing that gives you life, meaning, and purpose,
[01:46:28] fond of fundamentally is the connections you make
[01:46:30] with other human beings.
[01:46:32] And the closest of those are always gonna be your family.
[01:46:36] And then your friends.
[01:46:37] And then your friends.
[01:46:39] How has fatherhood changed you?
[01:46:41] Makes me into a pussy.
[01:46:43] How?
[01:46:44] It softens a man a lot. Like, okay, how?
[01:46:47] Whenever I meet anybody now who's behaving in a way that I don't like, I always, once
[01:46:59] you see a baby in its purity and innocence. You go, everybody was that once.
[01:47:05] And then life and family and destiny and fate, whatever, came and knocked lumps out of them.
[01:47:12] And that's why they're fucked up now.
[01:47:14] So I have a lot more empathy for people as a result.
[01:47:19] But the other thing is it's really giving me a meaning and a drive and a purpose, even more
[01:47:27] than the one I had before.
[01:47:28] What was the one you had before?
[01:47:30] The one I had before was building trigger media, making an impact of the world, on the world,
[01:47:35] challenging toxic narratives, bringing healthier ways of thinking into the world.
[01:47:42] But now, the futures, I said this, somebody asked me about this before,
[01:47:46] the future is not an abstraction anymore. The future is my son. So when I think about
[01:47:52] the world and where it's going, I'm not thinking about it, kind of from a like intellectual
[01:47:58] perspective, it's like, it's real to me now, you know. And also, it's just such a source of joy that in the past I'd come home and
[01:48:08] I'd be tired and listen, whatever. And now I come home and he's just there smiling and
[01:48:14] happy and it changes how you see the world fundamentally. And also, it's made me a better
[01:48:22] leader for sure. It's made me a better leader because when you're communicating with the son of my wife is an
[01:48:28] incredible mother, she's very intuitive.
[01:48:31] She understands what he needs in whatever moment.
[01:48:35] When you're communicating with someone like that, you realize that most people are very
[01:48:41] well-intentioned, but it's just about finding out how to communicate
[01:48:45] with them, how to get them to see what you're trying to say in the way that works for them.
[01:48:52] Because with a 16-month-old, you have to be very, very simple about these things.
[01:49:00] So yeah, fatherhood is amazing. Absolutely amazing.
[01:49:08] And motherhood. I have no idea. I've heard. Yeah.
[01:49:12] My wife certainly loves it. I mean, three months into the pregnancy,
[01:49:16] like I said, she used to be obsessed with her career, like more driven than me, et cetera, just obsessive.
[01:49:20] And three months into the pregnancy, she came to me and she was like,
[01:49:24] yeah, I don't want to work.
[01:49:25] And I'm like, okay, cool, let's do it.
[01:49:30] I love it.
[01:49:31] And she now says, I mean, it won't be true of everybody and blah blah blah blah, exceptions,
[01:49:36] exceptions, exceptions.
[01:49:37] But she says the greatest give a man can give his wife is to provide for her the opportunity
[01:49:42] to be with her children. I would agree
[01:49:45] with that. I've talked to enough women that it's not that they all want to do
[01:49:51] that. It's that knowing that the option to do that fully is there makes a woman
[01:49:58] feel safe. It just does. Even now as I'm like dating, I do think about that. Given that there are so many insufficient
[01:50:11] role models out there who are going viral and affecting so many people, who do you think
[01:50:21] are people that are good role models that you wish society elevated?
[01:50:27] Well, I mean we talked about Tom a lot this podcast for a reason. Yeah definitely very good. Yeah
[01:50:32] I think I
[01:50:34] Thought there was a moment when Jordan Peterson really broke through
[01:50:39] And I thought the reason he broke through was that he was saying some very important things. Yeah, I
[01:50:45] Don't know that, you know, it's very difficult to have that level of negative attention that he's had.
[01:50:52] And so I think sometimes he can say things on Twitter that, you know, we all do sometimes say that wouldn't necessarily paint us in the best light.
[01:51:01] But I thought a lot of the advice that he was giving was very useful.
[01:51:04] necessarily pain us in the best light, but I thought a lot of the advice that he was giving was very useful.
[01:51:11] There's a woman called Louise Perry in the UK who I really like and she has some very interesting things to say. She's a book called The Case Against the Sexual Revolution and
[01:51:15] she's young, she's she's got a family, but she's also super smart,
[01:51:27] super interesting, she's got interesting ideas, incredible articulate, beautiful woman, blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah, incredible articulate, beautiful woman, blah, blah, blah, you know, like, I kind of think of her as like the female Jordan Peterson.
[01:51:32] Really? I'm going to look into her.
[01:51:33] Yeah, check out her work.
[01:51:38] I also think then beyond that, you have to look at, you know,
[01:51:43] we talked about looking at role models
[01:51:46] and going like, well, you're good at this thing.
[01:51:48] So I'm going to take that from you.
[01:51:50] I think that's a very important distinction.
[01:51:52] For example, like Dana White, to me, is a huge inspiration in terms of like building
[01:51:56] a thing from the ground up.
[01:51:59] You know, amazing.
[01:52:00] Does I mean, I would, I'm, we're very different people.
[01:52:03] I wouldn't emulate everything he does or says all the way,
[01:52:05] if you have, but in, in terms of business and drive and ambition and vision,
[01:52:10] incredible, incredible guy.
[01:52:13] Um, so I think it really fundamentally depends on what,
[01:52:17] in terms of relationships, John Gray, incredible.
[01:52:20] Like I read all his books and I think they're incredibly useful for,
[01:52:23] for relationships, for dating, for all of that. And then it just depends on I think
[01:52:33] sometimes people want a role model to be somebody public and it doesn't have to
[01:52:39] ideally ideally it's much better to have a role model that you know personally
[01:52:42] because you talk to them. Very good point.
[01:52:45] And ask them questions.
[01:52:46] See, if you have, you know, if your parents had a happy marriage, you can ask them how
[01:52:50] they did, you know?
[01:52:51] Yeah.
[01:52:52] Or if your cousins got a successful business, ask them how they do whatever.
[01:52:58] That's really cool.
[01:52:59] And also, you know, sports people for young people in particular, like for me, Michael
[01:53:02] Jordan was a great hero.
[01:53:04] Oh my God. Yeah. Because he had he had such drive and such
[01:53:08] ambition but he was also cool and collected with it. He was a gentleman as
[01:53:12] well. Yeah. Have you seen Deon Sanders recently blowing up? No. I'll send him to
[01:53:16] you. Please. Yeah he's incredible. Yeah. Yeah I totally agree with you and we need to find more of them. Yeah.
[01:53:25] I think in some ways, do you know what Elon Musk is a very controversial figure?
[01:53:31] Very.
[01:53:32] And I don't know him personally.
[01:53:35] I don't know what his personal life is like.
[01:53:37] But he's subscribed to your Twitter.
[01:53:39] He is subscribed to my Twitter therefore he's a role model for all of you. He, what I like about him is that he has vision on a scale that nobody else does.
[01:53:53] Whether you agree with that vision or not, I personally see a lot of value in what he's
[01:53:57] saying.
[01:53:58] And he's prepared to put his money where his mouth is and go for it.
[01:54:02] And most important of all, ignore the nay
[01:54:05] sayers and just be like, this is what I believe, this is what I'm going to do.
[01:54:09] It's going to work out. That's super important. That vision is super
[01:54:14] important. So in that respect, he is a massive role model, which is a guy who
[01:54:21] has a belief in something that's bigger than him and is prepared to go for it.
[01:54:27] You know, he didn't buy Twitter for $44 billion to look cool.
[01:54:32] I'm sure he actually didn't look cool to a lot of people.
[01:54:35] To a lot of people.
[01:54:36] When he did it.
[01:54:37] He may have thought that he doesn't look cool doing it.
[01:54:40] I have no idea, right?
[01:54:41] But that isn't the real reason.
[01:54:42] He bought it because he wants to change the way
[01:54:45] that the conversations happen.
[01:54:47] That, to me, is inspiring.
[01:54:48] People who have a vision of something that's bigger than them,
[01:54:51] bigger than just, oh, I want to make loads of money,
[01:54:53] bigger than just, you know,
[01:54:54] what is the impact you want to make on the world?
[01:54:56] People who think like that are incredibly inspiring to me
[01:54:59] because that's how I want to think.
[01:55:00] That's how I think.
[01:55:02] I mean, of course, as a byproduct, I care about money.
[01:55:05] You know that I don't have that.
[01:55:06] But it all comes.
[01:55:07] Yeah, you care about money.
[01:55:08] Yeah, but the primary thing that drives me
[01:55:12] is that I want to shift the attention.
[01:55:15] Always, that's what I'm looking to do.
[01:55:18] That's why I ask every single guest about their relationships.
[01:55:21] Every single person, if they're in a relationship or married,
[01:55:24] comes on this podcast, and I make them talk about how their
[01:55:27] relationship affects their lives, because it's very related. It's very relatable, and people can draw a lot from that.
[01:55:35] And do you think that people who have that, it's easier for them to do other things successfully in life?
[01:55:41] Yeah, I do. I do think so. Of course, there are people who are successful who,
[01:55:46] you know, they're not with one person.
[01:55:50] But I think in terms of general fulfillment and happiness,
[01:55:55] the people who have someone, they just
[01:55:59] have so much more of what, you know,
[01:56:01] the connection that we need to sustain ourselves and that they
[01:56:05] feel like they belong to someone and that gives them everything they need to
[01:56:09] move forward. If you have the right partner I've seen that the people who
[01:56:13] have that they thrive ten times more than the people who don't and I think
[01:56:19] that's one message I want everyone to take from like every episode which is
[01:56:22] why I could keep asking these questions.
[01:56:25] Because I can see it and you've told me privately
[01:56:27] how much your wife has affected your life.
[01:56:30] So I don't think you're Constantine,
[01:56:33] this voice without your wife behind you.
[01:56:35] I see you as Constantine, this man who's evolving
[01:56:39] over time in a positive way because you have that.
[01:56:41] That's true.
[01:56:43] Yeah.
[01:56:44] Okay, there's one question that I ask everybody on this podcast.
[01:56:49] The reason I ask it, and it's a hypothetical scenario, is because people have so many messages
[01:56:55] they want to share, but it's hard to prioritize.
[01:56:59] It's hard to prioritize the message that one matters to you most and two, you feel like needs to urgently be shared
[01:57:08] right now in this day and age. So here's the scenario. You're at the Oscars because
[01:57:18] you're nominated for, let's say, a documentary about wokism ruining our country, being the US.
[01:57:29] I mean, that is a real hypothetical.
[01:57:32] That's why I'm giving it to you.
[01:57:33] This is you personally.
[01:57:34] Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[01:57:35] You're nominated for this.
[01:57:37] And they announce all the other nominees.
[01:57:40] Finally, they announce the winner and it's you.
[01:57:43] Okay.
[01:57:44] You walk up to the stage, you
[01:57:46] think everybody you need to think. Your crew, Francis, your wife, your son.
[01:57:54] It doesn't tell anything. It doesn't matter. I just feel like you would
[01:57:57] mention him by that point. When this documentary is out. Because you've, you
[01:58:02] know, anyway. So after you think to everyone
[01:58:08] you need to think there's about 45 seconds to one minute where you can say
[01:58:13] whatever you want and there's gonna be headlines and it's gonna go viral and
[01:58:17] it'll be everywhere for days and permanently on YouTube and people are
[01:58:23] gonna go watch it over and over again.
[01:58:25] We see that with other speeches. What are you going to say? What message is so important
[01:58:30] to you that you're going to use that 45 seconds to get the word out?
[01:58:38] We said already today, let's do what works. That's it. Let's do what works.
[01:58:45] Let's look at reality and do what works.
[01:58:48] Let's stop pretending to be good and let's not be in good.
[01:58:52] Amen.
[01:58:53] All right. Well, thank you for being here.
[01:58:55] Thanks for having me.
[01:58:56] And this was a great conversation.
[01:58:57] This was awesome. Appreciate it.