Hi, I'm Jesse Hirsch, and welcome to another episode of Metaview, recorded live at the Academy of the Impossible, where these goats call themselves home.

And today we've got our radical American wackadoo coming back to ask, WTF is free speech?

And as many folks know here at Metaviews, that is a deliberate double entendre.

What the fuck is free speech?

Or it could be, what's the future of free speech?

Or maybe both.

We don't know.

This is a spontaneous conversation, and we have now shift into not yet season three.

I'm still calling this season two of Metaviews, but we're now in phase three of Metaviews, partly because the weather here today, for the first time, we are hitting double digits in Celsius over 50 in Fahrenheit.

So the farm is coming alive and this podcast will be shifting from.

Phase two is all about quantity.

Phase three is all about quality.

And that's really why our good buddy Mike has returned.

But I do have to warn you, good friend, we are on a fucking hot streak.

The last couple, last few episodes we've had, if I include yourself, have been stellar.

And as part of this new quality phase of Meta Views, I want to maintain that kind of.

We're also into spring training from baseball.

I want to be hitting 1000 or 800 or 750, you know, really high up there.

So without any further delay to the news that I don't even have loaded up, Mike and I were talking right before we started, and I was thinking about all the things that I need to set up before I go.

And the one thing I forgot, lo and behold, was the metaviews.

And today's issue of Metaviews looks at the end of the five eyes.

And the five is is the Anglo intelligence alliance that has existed between the United States, Canada, uk, Australia, New Zealand.

And I'm declaring it dead, or if not dead, in palliative care.

It's entered the hospice.

Coincidentally, we have Mike here, as always.

But of course, as you know, this is where we turn to our guest and say, what news have you been paying attention to?

Well, what is it you think that our audience needs to know?

What have you come packing when it comes to deciphering this crazy world we find ourselves in?

Yes, well, the news today is actually that the news is still no longer the news.

And I cite the following article.

The the headline article on my favorite source of news, which is not important, was totally important.

Trump.

Trump doesn't think the stock market resembles a reflection of his good or bad presidency anymore.

And so the article was not about the stock market and the article was not about like whether the stock market is a reflection of a good or bad economy.

The article was about how Trump is now saying that what he said before is no longer true.

So the article was just about Trump talking.

And it's mind blowing because I don't, I went there for news and again, I don't think the site I went to, Yahoo News is bad or good.

I think Yahoo News, the reason I go there is to see what people will be talking about.

I already knew the stock market dropped.

I have my own ways of finding out the news.

I need to know or want to know, but I want to see what the news is every day.

So the news today is we still don't have news.

And to your point, I think the biggest reason we still don't have news is there are rare, I have to statistically assume there must be some or one.

But most news organizations are interested in what gets them attention rather than what is news rather than what is necessary for, you know, a democratic society to be properly informed.

And unfortunately, what we've all known over the last, what is it, eight, nine, ten years now, that if the word Trump is in the title, if it is repeated in the article, it will get hits.

And that is why to your point, the non news is the news.

Tangentially though, I was relatedly thinking, while he cannot control the stock market, at least not yet, I think he is gonna come up with new metrics of measurement, like new ways of measuring what's happening so that he could say the stock market's fake news.

Look at the Trump index.

And the Trump index is going up and up and up.

And he could statistically count the Trump index as every time the word Trump is mentioned in any self described news outlet and then just say, look at how that number keeps going up.

Clearly I'm doing good things.

Feels good to be me.

And then just like the cpi, they can just trade the basket of goods on a daily basis.

So like, oh, Nvidia went up.

So we're going to put that in the Trump index just today.

If tomorrow it goes down, it won't be.

And I am actually wondering, I'm counting down the weeks, months, years until I actually see a headline.

Freedom is slavery.

Like we're so close to just using those words.

But they keep saying like, you'll like a smaller place, you'll like renting everything, you don't want to own anything.

So it's like, like you're just you called it like the Trump index is 100% going to be a thing and yeah, and freedom is slavery.

Now I think relatedly, you know, to the point of the stock market, because I don't own any stocks at all.

I've never owned any stocks for two reasons.

A poor and B I just think the game is rigged.

And where lately in the last 10 or 15 years I've argued to consumer investors like people who have stocks and come to me and go what should I invest in?

And if I tell them don't, they'll ignore me.

So I always have to give them a reason why they shouldn't.

And the reason is you're never going to be faster than the algorithm and unless you have your own high frequency trading software, you're always going to lose.

The house is always going to win.

And I think that is true 99.9% of the time.

But in a crisis, this is when it is actually pretty easy to make a sure bet.

And the one example today that I noted when I was in advance for our conversation checking out my news sources, Lockheed Martin, their stock is shooting through the roof, right?

So there are moments in history like this where the stock market might be in flux, but when, you know, wars are coming, there are some stocks that are easy picks and that a lot of people are putting their money in.

And regardless, that stock is going up.

And I can tell you today, while I have no money in the market at all, Lockheed Martin is up for the obvious reasons that you would expect.

Any final thoughts before we go to our WTF segment?

Actually, surprisingly no.

I think I really just was step in step with you on all that.

So yeah, right on.

So of course we have to have our second segment after we dissect the present.

We must look forward into the fucked, AKA the future in our WTF segment.

And this is always a fun part because there's a lot of flexibility when we think about the future.

It could be short term, it could be long term, it could be fictional.

That is the beauty of being a futurist.

And now that you too are a futurist, Mike, since you've done this repeatedly and you have active practice in the field, what do you got for us today?

Yeah, I think in the future is a lot of people making inappropriate, emotionally coercive actions towards each other based on who they voted for in America in the year 2024.

So I have already seen it starting to bubble and get its rear its nasty heads, plural.

And I think it's nasty no matter which side is doing it.

And I actually really wanted to address whatever audience I have through your audience to just say it is detestable to cut off communication with someone and emotionally coerce them to try to get them to say something.

You want to actually reach people.

So it's very important in this time to not be bombastic and mean towards the people who you oppose.

You need to find a way to unite.

And.

And it's not saying, I'm okay, you're okay.

I'm not in any way endorsing that silly approach.

What I am endorsing is always leave the door open.

Always leave the nightlight on.

Why would you tell your children you can never come home?

Like, there's no point to that?

So.

So that's what I see is in the future is a lot of very.

And I want to call it this emotional coercion.

Like, if you don't apologize for voting for Kamala or for.

But you know, I don't care who it is, then I won't talk to you and I won't associate with you.

And I refuse like that.

That does nothing positive, and that's really just more of the same.

So I.

I want to double down on that.

And before I do, I want to take a tangent.

But before I take the tangent, I think you're absolutely right.

And I think we should not just look at emotional coercion, which I think is very specific.

I think we should scale it up to emotional abuse, because emotional abuse could involve coercion and other forms of abuse within the larger emotional relationships.

And the way in which people, for political, like we are still within the context of political differences, could and will use that as a lever.

And I agree with you that it'll happen for reasons of desperation.

It'll happen for reasons of mental health.

Untreated and unaddressed mental health issues.

But allow me to take a tangent to reinforce what you're saying.

I hate Facebook.

Facebook just really makes me sick.

But I have to use it because it is where the local.

It is the local parliament.

It's the local community, our community dysfunctionally comes together on Facebook to talk about issues.

So to your point, if I want to get a sense of how my local neighbors, how my local world feels about this issue of conflict with the US It's Facebook.

And today, the big drama was someone getting upset that American grown strawberries were in the supermarket and it erupted.

This is one of those 300 comment posts, right?

Huge fucking war on all sides because American strawberries in Canadian winter were in the supermarket on sale for two bucks.

So to your point, I think there's gonna be a lot of nastiness moving forward.

And this nastiness is gonna come over all sorts of little, small, big traumatic fault lines.

And where I wanna take difference though is I think the cutting off is okay.

And the reason I think the cutting off is okay is it's very subjective.

And the person being abused, often the only thing they can do is, is cut off the abuser.

So I agree with everything you say except the cutoff part.

I think the cutoff is a fuck around and find out, like if the abuser wants to cut off, then you may not be able to reconnect that because the abused may think twice.

But the reason I wanted to scale it up to emotional abuse is I think it is very pervasive.

And I think it's very pervasive in family dynamics when it comes to political differences.

And this is where I think there's a righteousness right across the political spectrum that somehow it is acceptable when I think we would both agree it's counterproductive.

So that's a lot of reaction to your, I think, astute vision.

Care to respond or take the thread anywhere you'd like?

Yeah.

So I think first of all, I'm glad you declared these like two mini terms within the argument, which is the abuser and the abusee.

And I think it's confusing for everyone to know which is which and whom is who.

Especially as someone who went through a divorce, I can tell you that my real time opinion and assessment of those terms versus during the divorce versus eight years later, it changes.

And to our section on the future, it changes moment by moment by moment.

And generally anyone who has had one of those identities almost certainly has both.

Yes, but it really comes down to context and when things are happening, which is why I can't rule off the cutting off part.

But yeah, that's gone.

Yeah, so that's what I, what I want to reiterate is I use the word detach and not cut off.

So I should have said this in the beginning, which is you detach and you detach with no explanation, with no threats, and with no I'm on a soapbox in Hyde park and you need to listen to me.

So it's like those are the three rules for detachment.

So I don't use the word cut off because to me cut off implies I've slammed the door, I've deadbolted it, the lights off, don't ever come here again.

And so that's the only thing I want to make clear to people is whether you feel abused or someone is calling you abusive and whether you feel emotionally coerced or emotionally abused about politics, even religion.

This also extends to Ukraine, Russia, Palestine, Israel, everything.

It's not helpful to punitively to make someone feel punished because they usually will drink and double down and join the team that still accepts them.

Because we are primates, we are dogs, we are both and we want a pack.

And I will flag for a future conversation, which could be today, that punishment in general is something we got to get rid of and it's difficult, difficult to do.

I have animals, it's tough for me not to quote, unquote, punish them.

But punishment in general is something we need to be moving away from, generally speaking.

I do feel, however, this is an excellent segue to us talking about free speech, because I think free speech ends up being a cover for abusive language, for emotional abuse, for abusive behavior.

At the same time, though, I want to allude to something that you inspired to me when you were saying that we have entered a world in which, whether the right wants to acknowledge this or not, the personal is political.

Like if they are trying to legislate what women can do with their bodies, if they're trying to deny trans people's existence, right?

They are literally going at the core of people's identity, of people's sense of self, of people's sexuality.

So everything is now politics, right?

So what we would traditionally think of as disagreements within the family, they are no, fundamentally political disagreements because of the way in which the regime has politicized everything.

And I think.

Go ahead.

I don't like to talk about this, but I actually want to say this as often as possible to people because I think a lot of people go online and they do podcasts and talk shows and they talk a lot about what people should do.

So I just want to point out, as much as I hate to say it this way, eight years ago, my ex wife abducted my son illegally.

I did everything you're allowed to do legally to contest it.

Nothing worked.

I had one option left, which was to punish her and her parents for what they did to our son.

And I elected not to do that so that I could specifically the rest of my life, not only live with that, but be a beacon of hope to other people, of someone has to say, I won't take revenge.

And so it doesn't matter whether you think I'm a bad, shitty dad or not or any of your other thoughts.

I don't Care.

I just want to point out that I did it and I live with it every day.

And I can honestly tell you the feeling inside is not good.

But the feeling inside when I was contemplating revenge and punishment, as people like to call it, which really is just revenge, that feeling was worse.

So I'm.

I hate talking about this.

I didn't want to bring it up today, but it seems especially poignant because I'm not just saying to people, don't do this.

I'm saying like, I left the door open and the light on with people who took my son.

And to finish the trifecta of previewing our feature conversation where we talked about freedom of speech as a cover for abusive language, the futility of the rule of law when you've been wronged, which you just previewed.

And then finally why we need to push back against toxic masculine culture is it actually makes you shittier.

The people, especially young men, who fall prey to that and fall prey to that world, they do so because they think it will empower them.

They do so because they think it will insulate them against harm or insulate them against being hurt, when instead it's just self inflicted harm and will end up making you feel shittier, let alone if you do act on those instincts, you're probably just going to end up in a much shittier situation.

So that brings us of course to our feature conversation.

And this is where I should give some context that, you know, Mike and I, generally speaking, are committed to spontaneous conversations, but we'll often have threads that will occur to us either after we've chatted or upon reflecting or listening to the conversation again.

Because as any of my listeners would know, I would never put freedom of speech on the menu.

It's just something I've historically paid like not zero attention to because you gotta pay attention to it in this political fucking climate.

But if Jordan fucking Peterson goes right, I'm going left.

If he says yes, I'm saying no, right?

If that motherfucker jumps, I duck.

Um, so I'm declaring my prejudice out front, but I still think that Mike and I are able to have an excellent conversation on this.

So I'm throwing to you without any further intro, cuz you wanted to talk about free speech in the comparative difference that Canada and United States have completely different conceptions of this, even if most Canadians and Americans don't realize that.

Yeah, so the origin story of this is actually all the way back in 2003 when I actually went to the Toronto American Embassy or Canadian, whatever it was And I said, I want to apply to be a citizen of Canada.

And they said, what are your serviceable skills?

And I told them about how I play a mean electric guitar.

My solos are wicked.

I can cover every song by Slash from Guns and Roses.

They kept saying.

I said, serviceable skills.

And I kept telling them about my songwriting and my poetry.

Also, you didn't quote Rush or like, you know, other Canadian bands, like, that would have made the difference, but please continue.

I.

I actually might have even said I'm not a huge fan of the Tragically Hip, and that probably, yeah, there you go.

Coughed, deported country R.I.P.

by the way, I actually respect the hell out of that guy.

Anyway, so the origin story is that at the time, though, I assumed I was moving to America Part two, because that's what all Americans think Canada is.

It's just like, oh, you were loyalist.

You sided with Britain.

You made a huge mistake.

Now you have the coldest place on earth, but, you know, we'll give you a pass.

We'll sell stuff to you.

And.

But, but what I didn't realize is they don't.

You.

They don't have free speech, which doesn't actually matter to me, but also is a conceptually hard thing to wrap my mind around.

Now here's why, though.

It's because in 2016, I am a huge, huge, huge fan of stand up comedy.

It is like, preposterously dumb how much I care about it.

I care about it as much as people care about sports.

So if you love, like your.

But stop.

I have to since, you know, we are on my podcast and I feel a certain amount of responsibility for the broader editorial message.

I would argue that in a early fascist, it's no longer pre fascist.

In an early fascist society, there is nothing more important than comedy.

Like, comedy is arguably over at least the last 10 years of American politics, one of the most important political spaces.

I wish it wasn't.

I wish there were more important political spaces, but no.

Comedy is fucking essential.

Please continue.

Yeah, and two of the biggest comedians in America, Joe Rogan and Theo Vaughn, tipped the election.

I would argue.

I would not say that they're responsible, but they tipped it.

And I'll just.

I'll throw it in.

Joe Rogan was actually really legitimately trying to have Kamala Harris on his podcast.

And the fact that she said no caused a huge flip in his culture, his society.

He has 7 million adherents.

If, if she had gone on his podcast, Trump probably would have won by a larger margin.

But please continue.

That is interesting, but I will say this in Joe Rogan's defense, and it's rare that I do this, he would have given Kamala a fair shake.

He is a.

Yeah.

Oh, no.

It would have been her shooting herself in the foot.

But my point is, you are treating Joe Rogan as if he's Dan Rather and Joe Rogan isn't Dan Rather.

Joe Rogan's Joe Rogan.

And you are quite right to note the power of a comedian.

Please continue.

So with that said, I don't know how many Canadians know the name Mike Ward, and I know no Americans know his name.

No one here knows who he is, but he was.

He made headlines in my world.

I mean, it literally got on the BBC.

So it's not like this was a small thing, but it went to your Supreme Court that he told jokes about a young singer who at the time was like, I don't.

I could try to find the joke.

But what's important is he was fined $42,000.

So all I saw as an American was this headline, comedian fined $42,000 in Canada.

And then I was like, well, how did that happen?

And when I read it, I was like, they don't have free speech.

And then I felt really dumb because, I don't know, I consider myself a citizen of the world, and I'm not.

And.

And so that's.

That's the precursor of why I brought this up today.

The other reason I'm bringing it up, though, is that it's a weird.

It's a sticky, wicked.

It's a real tough subject because I don't think it's a good idea to go online and say, I'm going to say this because I'm Jewish, so I feel safe saying it.

Kill all the Jews, like, blah, blah, blah.

But I also would rather that be allowed simultaneous to, Trump is ruining our country.

We need to stop him.

Because I don't trust courts, the way they're even working right now to defend my right to be, like, stating my opinion.

So I just would like, after all of that, to ask you.

I know you said you rarely think about it or care about it, but in this time, like, if America takes you over, would you want the free speech aspect so you could be like, don't take us over?

Well, you just contradicted yourself there.

And I will answer your question before I respond, because my response would have nothing to do with the question, but it really depends on the tense.

If America has already invaded us, would I care about freedom of speech?

Absolutely not.

If America is about to Invade us?

Would I care about freedom of speech?

Again, not particularly, but that's irrelevant to what we're talking about now.

But if you want, we can come back to that.

But allow me to more.

Okay, yeah, but real quick, I just.

I want to say, I don't picture America invading you and getting Canada that way.

I think your government would capitulate out of an oligarchy.

I'm gonna.

I'm gonna.

I'm gonna shelve that.

We can talk about that in that episode, but that'll take us way too far off track.

So I'm not going to acknowledge that yet, but I am going to shelve it.

I would say that I know more and follow more about the state of speech in Canada than the vast majority of Canadians and certainly all fucking Americans, except for some lawyers.

There has not been anyone in Canada charged with any speech laws who is anyone of merit, which is to say, in my lifetime, you are able to pretty much say whatever the fuck you want in this country without any repercussions.

The legal definition of freedom of speech is not what people think it is.

Right?

It is not commercial speech.

It is what you are able to say in the town square.

And if a bunch of Nazis come and beat you the fuck up, they are not infringing upon your freedom of speech.

They're infringing upon your right to have a physical body without harm.

And we'll come back to whether that's actually fucking enforceable.

But most so what?

Canada.

And before I answer the Canadian question, I have to retreat to the British question.

Because the Canadian legal system, except in Quebec, is a descendant of the British legal system, the way that the Quebec legal system is a descendant of the French legal system.

And that's why there are two distinct legal systems in the country we call Canada.

One common one called civil, I believe.

Although I'm probably getting that wrong.

No, I'm definitely getting that wrong.

Anyway, Britain has way less speech than us.

In Britain, you really do not have a lot of freedom of speech.

There's a lot of things you cannot say.

The government can and will come after you for saying just about anything they don't like.

We have been far more influenced by America here in Canada, especially in terms of court precedent and the way in which common law gets reinforced by previous judgments.

Where we draw the line is hate speech.

To your point about kill all the Jews.

And where that has been potentially abused lately is the synonymization of antisemitism and anti Zionism.

Right?

The way that a lot of powerful Jews will try to argue that criticizing Israel is anti Semitic and therefore you should be subject to hate laws.

They had not been successful.

There were some notorious attempts.

An old anarchist comrade of mine was imprisoned actually just after like a month after October 7 happened, for writing on a bookstore, free Palestinian prisoners or something like that, or Stop Arming Israel.

And they kept her in jail for 21 days on hate speech charges.

But they ended up being dropped because they never would have made it through court.

Like no one would have been.

So to your point, it's not America and it can be and has been abused, but it generally speaking, like the comedian you're talking about was just a fucking idiot.

Real quick, your Supreme Court found in his favor, just by the way.

I just want.

I know, but I still remember the case, not his name, because how do you remember a name like Mike Ward, he's that guy.

To change his name to something a little more memorable like Mike Oppenheim, that.

That I would remember.

But again, it like, I've always seen it as a non issue because.

And I don't want to segue prematurely because I think we have much to talk about in terms of free speech, but the rule of law is a little bit of a myth.

And the example, the other area that Canada is much more strict on speech than America is what's called tort law.

And tort law includes libel and slander and defamation.

Right.

I think libel is when it's printed, slander is when it's on TV or when it's spoken.

And we are way stricter than in America in the sense that rich people, if they want to, can successfully use these laws to pick on journalists.

And we have this particular Canadian arch villain, although he's technically no longer Canadian.

Conrad Black, who was a newspaper baron here in North America, renounced his Canadian citizenship so he could become Lord Black of Crossharbour in the UK House of Lords.

Because the Canadian.

We do not allow Canadians to become British lords.

That's against our Constitution.

And then Conrad Black was convicted, found guilty by the United States of fraud, became a felon, and he kind of fell out of a fortune, but not out of power.

He was at Trump's Mar a Lago for the inauguration parties, but he used to sue people left, right and center.

Anyone who said anything about him, he sued.

And he effectively created a chill in the land where for a long time no one said shit about Conrad Black, fat tubby fuckhead that he is.

Cause you couldn't use to say that.

So now that's me exercising Some freedom of speech, but really it's not freedom of speech.

I just am like, come at me, bro, cuz he no longer has the money to really come at me.

But he used to.

Oh boy, did he used to.

Does that answer some of your questions?

And after some.

And I think the part.

I really want to talk to you specifically, Jesse Hirsch, my friend, because I.

Want to come back to comedy too.

Right.

But anyway, please continue.

I mean, there's so much that you brought up that I like and so much that I want to comment on, but the part I really want to get to is the philosophy of sticks and stones can break my bones, but words will never hurt me.

It's really just this, this reaction I have to like, I'm not going to name names, but I have many people in my life who have no tact, none, zero.

They say things rudely, they say things at the inappropriate time.

They don't know how to say it, but what they're saying.

If a person with my personality and my ability to read the room said it, I'd get away with it every time.

And people would probably even say, oh, that was a good thing to say.

So that's why I want like carte blanche free speech, is that I want to protect shitty communicators.

I want to protect people.

Okay, so let's go back to where you started, because I disagree with you.

I don't want to protect shitty communicators.

And there's a reason I don't want to protect shitty communicators is there's no fucking reason they got to be shitty.

We live in a society of convenience where so many aspects of our world, rather than learn competence, we excuse our incompetence, perhaps because everyone else is incompetent and there's a commercial industry designed to exploit our incompetence.

The one you're describing is television.

Right?

Television and later social media exploits people's incompetence when they come to communicate.

But if we are to have a democracy, that incompetence must be eradicated.

That's a crazy statement.

And I'll go back to where you started.

I rejected your premise based on your own logic that you started this episode with that there's no such thing as sticks and stones and blah, blah, blah, blah, that names hurt people, words fucking hurt people.

Emotional abuse is real.

Verbal abuse is real.

Emotional coercion is real, and it should not be tolerated.

I do fundamentally believe in a kind of freedom of speech that we can get into, which is essentially kind of Similar to what you're talking about, but same way that I do kind of also believe in the second Amendment and the right to bear arms, but I don't believe in anyone's right to use their arms.

Same way I don't believe in anyone's right to weaponize language, to use language as a weapon to hurt people.

And I do believe that you can hurt people with language.

And I say this as a Jew who at certain points in my life people did try to weaponize their language against me.

And I'm like, yeah, the fuck that sucks.

Right?

The same way I can consciously say I don't want to do that to other people.

Right?

So that's where I have to go back to the beginning and say freedom of speech should exist, weaponization of speech should not.

And that you are able to.

Let me finish.

You are free to say whatever you want as long as you are not employing violence to do so.

The same way that in a democratic society you can pursue any political idea you want as long as you are not pursuing violence to do so.

Go ahead.

So I agree with all that and I think where I.

I'm not a shitty communicator normally, but I feel like I'm being a shitty communicator on the subject specifically because what I am trying to say, and I like to give personal examples because I think it helps for people to understand my vulnerabilities.

I was a fat kid and I was made fun of relentlessly in a sophomore PE class with 50 boys for being fat every day.

Every single day.

I faked being sick often to get out of PE class specifically because I could not take the emotional abuse.

It was horrendous.

To this day I suffer still from a bunch of 15 year old assholes making fun of my body meanwhile making fun of other kids bodies.

And for the record, I will assume that 95% of that class has similar trauma from that era.

Yes, because everyone did it to everyone.

But please continue.

And that's precisely what I'm trying to get at is it is not about whether it was inciting violence or not inciting violence.

It's not about whether it did or didn't hurt me.

What it's about is our next topic enforceability.

This is, this is my issue with all of this is I used to be a libertarian.

I used to use that term the way classic liberals used it all the way until about 1996.

I would say I felt comfortable saying I'm a libertarian.

I felt comfortable saying that most young.

People enjoy being A libertarian because they don't have responsibilities.

Yep.

No health care, no health issues.

Very few.

At least.

The older you get, the more you realize collective sensibilities are required for the human race.

I digress.

There's a lot here I want to respond to, but I'll let you finish.

So the only thing that lingers from that libertarian era of my life is the ludicrousity of enforceability.

So, like this idea that, like, oh, what, you're going to send the.

The Minority Report police?

And by the way, I've read every Phil K.

Dick book, Love guy, But like you, you can't enforce it.

Like, you can't go into a high.

School and tell boys, so I'll cut you off there.

Yeah.

Why are you approaching this from enforceability?

Because enforceability is how you got into this mess.

They were trying to enforce upon you a body standard that, quite frankly, you were not on your position and age able to conform to.

And so you are in the problem, you are in because of enforceability.

And my point, about 95% of those people were traumatized.

They were traumatized because someone tried to enforce something upon them.

So I'm not talking about enforceability.

Right.

I'm talking about something completely different.

And this is the problem, quite frankly, with American politics, that American politics starts from such a core.

What's the word?

An abundance of negative core imagery.

The assumptions around words like freedom, the assumptions around things like violence are so embedded into the individual and collective trauma of the American identity that your response to trauma is to traumatize.

Right.

And you see almost every solution where the response to that solution is actually exacerbating the problem.

So I'm in, talking about that we should have freedom of speech, but a ban on violent speech.

What we're talking about is not enforceability.

What we're talking about is self defense.

Because what did little Mike want in that moment?

Yes, part of little Mike would have wanted vengeance.

So yes, part of little Mike would have wanted those other fuckers in the class to be mocked the way you were mocked.

But I think in the Hallmark movie version, if you had three or four people say, shut the fuck up.

I like Mike.

Yeah, Mike's my man.

I like him, man.

He shares his food with me.

He's not fat, he's just friendly.

That would have changed everything.

That's not enforceability.

That's solidarity.

Right.

That you can reframe this in a different.

And you don't even need everyone.

Like, you don't have to get everyone to consent.

You just need Enough people to say, fuck Donald Trump, right?

You just need enough people to say, Fuck J.D.

vance, right?

You need enough people to say, I don't want to buy a Tesla.

And all of a sudden Tesla stock starts crashing, right?

So that's where it's not enforceability.

It's the opposite, right?

It's.

It's saying, we will not tolerate people disrespecting us.

We will not tolerate violence against us.

For most communities, that means we are not going to tolerate police, because it's police who are going to disrespect us.

It's police who are going to bring violence on us, right?

So that's where it ends up becoming a completely different conversation when we unwrap these things from the right wing rhetoric.

So to bring us back to comedy, because I fucking love comedy, right?

And I love George Carlin and I love Lenny Bruce, right?

To me, the vulgarity.

And I have been on and off like a big Howard Stern fan my entire life, even though I politically don't fucking agree with the guy.

And often.

But I like that kind of freedom of speech stuff because it's not the comedy that a lot of the right wing comics say that they can't do anymore, right?

The way that Elon Musk says, make comedy legal.

He doesn't mean make comedy legal.

What he means is make bullying legal.

Right?

What they want to do is like, and even Don Rickles, right?

Don Rickles.

Why?

I don't know if you know Don Rickles as a comedian.

Yeah, yeah, Very well.

Oh, very well.

I'm a huge fan of Don Rickles.

Not so much because of what he's saying, but because of how he's saying it.

The way he's working a room.

If he were our age today, he wouldn't be as prejudiced as his act was because he was deliberate.

But my point is, even him, I never saw his offensive.

Because these are people who are not using the power of the comedian as a bully pulpit.

But in America, there are a lot of comedians who, for reasons of quick money, quick success and laziness, are using comedy as a bully pulpit.

And I say, fuck em.

They're not entitled to anything.

Well, and I think I like a lot of what you're saying.

And I see.

Still think there's a.

I think we're coming back to something I've started using recently.

When I talk to other intellectual people who do care about quality of words.

Articulation is, we are bonobos.

Like, we are just monkeys who are jealous of other monkeys having sex with the better monkey or the monkey who has more bananas behind them and a bigger body.

So, like, there's something to everything you're saying, but there's also, like, this.

Well, okay, let me throw out the.

Term, but if you're a monkey, why are you wearing headphones?

Yeah, yeah.

Well, but I'm asking.

I'm seriously asking, why are you wearing those headphones today?

Because compared to the headphones you were wearing when you first connected.

Oh, we're talking.

I'm sorry.

Now I understand I'm being very literal on a podcast.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Why are you wearing the headphones you're wearing right now compared to the headphones you're wearing when you first connected before we started recording?

My heart loves you, Jesse.

And when you said that you felt like a jilted lover, it actually affected me, and it made me feel bad, and it made me feel bad in all the good ways, like, oh, this person cares about me, and I can do more to make him feel better and show how much I can do.

That's why you're not a monkey.

That's what makes you human.

That is fundamentally what makes you human, is that I could express an emotion.

You.

You could feel that emotion.

You could respond emotionally, and you could change your behavior without second thought.

Right?

Yeah.

And I agree.

And that is a version of humanity that Republicans cannot and do not acknowledge.

That is a version of humanity that libertarians cannot and do not acknowledge.

They do not believe that not only can humans cooperate, but that humans could find joy from cooperating.

But let me, like.

Okay, I'm gonna get specific and.

Yeah, no, I mean, my problem is.

Well, there's.

I'm living in America.

I have experienced too many times to count moments in which bullies said, you can't call me racist because only a certain race can be racist.

And I'm gonna go there on this podcast at the incredible risk of friendships and everything else, because, you know, they're wrong.

Yeah.

Anyway, go on.

Yeah.

So to me, free speech has become in the eye of the beholder.

It's not really about, like.

And so even when you're talking about it, you denigrated Republicans and libertarians as a swath in a group, and I don't mind that, but it.

No, no, no, no.

I denigrated them as an ideology.

Okay.

Because I had a similar reaction.

I made a post on my substack a few days ago where I talked about there is no center.

Right?

And talked about values.

And whenever I say that this is the end of liberalism, or the center is collapsing.

There is no.

It's remarkable how many liberals either post, like, nasty comments or send nasty notes like they're taking it personally.

And I'm like, I ain't talking about you as a human being.

I'm talking about this ideology.

Whether you choose to believe in that ideology or not, it's your fucking business.

But I'm talking about you, right?

And that, to your point, to where your.

Your vision of the future, I think, is.

Is.

Is really spot on, is we have personalized politics in a way that is never meant to be personalized, right?

Because we are just talking about ideas, and we should be able to talk about these ideas without coming to bl.

Right?

Without feeling like we're insulting each other.

And that is very, very difficult.

But to your point, there are a lot of people in America, less so in Canada, but they do exist, who are trying to police speech, right?

Who are doing everything they can to police speech.

And I would say that's a futile exercise.

Like, I really don't think, even the way Orwell envisioned it, I don't actually think it's possible.

I think speech is a virus where people just make up words if they have to, to mean other words.

If you try to police them on some word, they'll make up a dog whistle so that they can say that word otherwise.

So I think that's entirely futile.

And I think that that's actually not related to freedom of speech.

I think that there's understandable that people who defend freedom of speech would revile or repulse or reject that.

Totally get it.

But to conflate that as a threat to freedom of speech, no, this is just thuggery, right?

This is just the same kind of thuggery that is part of politics forever, right?

Because if you are a Black person in 1920s trying to promote the enfranchisement of black voters, you're probably gonna get beat the fuck up, right?

And that's not freedom of speech.

That's thuggery.

And thuggery has always kind of been, I'm digressing, sorry.

And no, no.

And I think.

I mean, you've made a lot of great points.

And I.

I think part of what I like about talking to you and what I like about talking about these kind of things is I am not attached to any ideology, but I am an ideologue.

And I am not attached to any of my intellectual opinions, but I consider myself intellectual.

And so I think that that's the biggest problem I have with either side who Pushes hard on this issue is that they don't seem to be able to unmarry and detach themselves enough to see areas of hypocrisy, wishy washy, faulty logic, logical fallacies that I brought up on your website the other day.

And.

But I do want to say, like, even the phrase toxic masculinity is incredibly damaging.

I have a son and before he was even able to crawl, people were talking about toxic masculinity.

And what are you going to do to stop that in him?

And like.

Well, but stop.

There's, you're, you're conflating a few things here.

Sure.

And let me back up a step because train off the track.

I'll focus on it.

Anyway, I think you are conflating external voices and influence, internal voices and influence, and valued voices and influence.

Right.

The way that I understand the third.

Yeah, explain.

Your son would be in the third category, right?

Your son is not you, but your son is not external either.

Yeah, right.

That's what I mean.

Like, that's why I'm drawing the third category because like I put like my parents in that category.

Right.

That there are certain people who, they're not internal, but we want to differentiate them from the strangers.

Yeah.

And this is where to your point about my language, the policing, right.

This is where America's really toxic right now.

Because right across the political spectrum, people are really trying to enforce.

Right.

They're really trying to use emotional coercion to get other people to either validate their political position or adopt their political position.

And it's a fool's game, right.

For everyone involved.

Because that is not how politics happens.

And before I get to my point about the three different categories, I'm going to jump back to my other point, which is you are exceptionally rare, not just amongst Americans, but amongst human beings.

And this is why you and I get along so well.

You intrinsically accept that humans are dynamic entities, that we are not the same as when we were born.

Fuck it.

We're not the same as yesterday.

Right.

That we are constantly evolving, we are constantly changing.

Very few people understand that.

Very few people embrace that.

Most people are terrified of that.

And to your point about political rigidity, there are, I would say, here's my own prejudice.

The majority of people who belong to political parties actually believe that if you don't believe what you believed at birth till death, there's something wrong with you.

Wow.

And that's fucked up because it's just scientifically not true.

We are always changing.

We are always that's why there's no center, because we're constantly moving around all over the place.

We're contradictory, we're oxymoronic or all that shit.

That is why I say, generally speaking, ignore what anyone in the external category has the fuck to say, right?

Unless they can make it into the valued group.

And in my world, you are now in the valued group.

Pretty much.

Anyone who I have back on this podcast twice, let alone more than twice, is not a stranger anymore, right?

They are part of the pack.

They are someone who I'm gonna trust.

They're someone who, by default, I'm gonna assume the best.

That, to me, is the better way of looking at the world, rather than having to distrust everybody.

So that's why I'm like, create that.

Not you, not the world.

Inner trusted pack.

Fill that up with reasonable, interesting people who you can kick out at any time.

But that's who you want to be listening to, not everyone else.

Because your kids, Right, plural.

Because I say that both in the sense that you have multiple.

But they will change.

So whoever your children are today are not going to be who they're going to be tomorrow.

They're going to be exposed to crazy fucking shit, crazy words, crazy imagery, crazy everything.

That's the world we live in.

Better that they come to you and trust you to help you figure it out.

And in that regard, there is no one in this world as prepared as you are, my good friend.

And fuck, it doesn't matter otherwise.

Yeah, masculinity is a thing and young boys should learn it.

Sorry, I digress.

No, no, go ahead.

I.

Yeah, I just think, why call it toxic masculinity?

Why not call it something that actually helps people hear it and understand it?

Why?

But let's talk about that.

Why do you think people can't hear it?

Because I heard it made sense to me.

Well, did you hear it as all men are toxic?

Or why would I.

No, no, I'm asking, have you heard it phrased that way?

Like literally, the phrase all men are toxic?

I.

I've already come to my conclusion that all men are misogynist, that all men are patriarchal.

So to hear that all men are toxic does not bother me the least.

I know that within me there is the devil.

Not that I believe in a devil, the same way that the Christians tell me Jesus is within me too, so I don't worry about.

Again, this may be the difference between America and not America.

I don't worry about absolutes that way.

And because my mom's a feminist, because all the women I've ever loved are feminists.

I am very confident in my own masculinity, in my own relationship to the women in my life.

That while I certainly do have elements of toxic masculinity that I need to hold in check whatever consequences any man thinks will face him because people think he might have toxic masculinity, I do not fear those consequences and I do not see those consequences for these other men.

So I would tell them, bro, relax.

Well, let me.

Worried about.

So do you believe all women are inherently misandrists?

Which is the word for a.

I.

Don'T actually believe in.

I don't actually believe in misandry.

Okay.

Do I believe that all women are capable of evil?

Sure, absolutely.

Do I believe all women are capable of abuse?

Of course.

Absolutely.

I believe that all humans are capable of these things.

Look, I believe all women are capable of becoming men.

I believe all men are capable of becoming women.

That's why I support trans identities.

Right.

Like, but I don't understand your premise that all men are.

I actually am pushing back.

Like, for sure, I don't understand.

So I'll answer your question as rapidly as I can, but if you need to, by all means.

Well, let me add double down.

But here I'll give you the short answer.

Insofar as we live in a patriarchal society that courses patriarchal culture, it requires a high level of mindfulness to not internalize that misogyny, patriarchy and toxicity.

There are many men like myself who do try to actively counter it.

But I must acknowledge my own shortcomings and recognize that there will be moments when I succumb to the culture and be a dick.

And that if I acknowledge that and recognize that, it can allow me to lead a life in which the vast majority of my time, I'm not a patriarch.

I'm not toxic, I'm not misogynist, I'm not those things.

Do I believe if we lived in a non patriarchal society that was not misogynistic, that we could be free of those things?

Fucking right.

But I haven't lived there yet, so I can't tell you.

But what I.

But what I don't understand is that you're linking a Y chromosome to.

To a product of your environment, whereas a person transitions.

No, wait, wait.

I'm linking the Y chromosome.

We're talking about gender, we're not talking about sex.

But I'm asking.

But, but as someone who transitions at 30, a dynamic human being who 30 realizes I am no longer a man, But I was.

Do they instantly now rid themselves of the very quality.

So you just, you just changed subjects?

No, no, no.

You just, you just change subjects.

Hold on, Jesse.

But let me clarify, Let me clarify why you just change subjects.

We are talking about gender, not sex.

Okay?

They are two completely different things.

I don't.

Gender, Gender is a social construct.

I agree.

Sex is biological.

So to your question, we are talking about something cultural as we transition here, jump around between our pillars.

And no, culture is not clean cut.

So I would say that it is by my theoretical frame that I have offered today for our discussion.

I would argue that the individual, the man who grows up as a man who transitions to become a woman, could absolutely still struggle with toxic masculinity after they had transitioned.

Because we are talking about culture, and biology does not cancel culture.

But I would premise that they, as part of that larger cultural process, would probably position themselves in cultural environments that would be far more nurturing and, or potentially punishing.

That might counter said tendencies.

Because it's all relative, right?

There is no perfection.

The beauty of the spectrum, language is there is no zero, there is no 100.

So there's no one who's 100% misogynistic and there's no one who's zero percent.

Right.

We are all on that spectrum.

And we are all, at least for me, trying to get away from the 100 and get as close as I can to the single digits.

But like golf, it's really hard to be a single digit handicap.

Like, you gotta practice all the time, you gotta be playing all the time.

But I still think I have a very valid point that I haven't been allowed to, to say slowly.

It's not that you haven't been allowed.

You haven't been enabled.

Well, I don't understand, but I, I.

No, you'll get the chance.

You'll get the chance.

It's just, this is a game show, my friend.

It doesn't always work the way you want.

Please try.

I'm not even.

Yeah, I'm not worked up about that.

What I'm worked up about is getting clipped.

That's honestly my fear is that people, you're not segments.

And I don't want to get clipped.

No, no, because let's, let's start there.

How?

What would you worry about?

Who, who has the power to take anything from you?

And I.

Well, I don't know about you, but I have a lot to lose.

I have children.

What do you have to lose?

How are you gonna lose your family over something you Say we're.

Now we're back on the freedom of speech thing.

This is not.

You just told me that you believe freedom of speech, and now you're telling me that you're worried about what you're gonna say.

No, no.

I'm worried about getting clipped, which means I'm gonna be like, here's my point.

When I said, wait.

When I said, wait, let me.

And you said, no, this is the only thing I'm pushing back on.

That wasn't giving me a chance in the moment to further clarify a point that I didn't clarify.

Fair enough.

That is why I was upset.

That is fair enough to me.

Fair enough.

I validate your concern.

I don't.

That's all.

Agree with your concern, because I fear that that concern is within this larger cancel culture in America, which I think deliberately inhibits speech and deliberately inhibits speech that we need to have.

I interrupt a lot that doesn't bother me, and I find reasons to justify it.

And I acknowledge the consequence of me doing so does leave you vulnerable to being misinterpreted.

That's all.

Yeah.

But I don't believe that that vulnerability could ever be mitigated because people can clip shit whether you said it or not, and they're not going to care what you really said in the end anyway.

That's the point.

That's where I personally would.

And I'll regret this when it happens.

Part of me almost wants that to happen because I think I could monetize any of that negative attention and be able to benefit from it knowing full well that I believe what I believe and I know what I believe, and that's why I'm good.

So I am going to come back to a different point that I wanted to make, but I actually care so little about that point because what I really care about is what you just talked about, which is I actually want to get in just for a second with you, like, whether we are on this podcast or not.

I am dying to see a therapist, but there is no therapist who can help me about this subject, which is, why do I fear being misunderstood?

It's not that I fear being understood.

It's that I fear being misunderstood.

And it's my whole life.

It has plagued me my whole life because.

Yeah, well, one quick, quick finish.

What I fear being misunderstood about is that I love everyone.

And that's the conflict with talking about anything.

So now, please.

So I.

My Jewish friend, I would love to be your therapist, especially because I am thoroughly unqualified and arguably dangerous and My only condition, of course, would be that our therapy is public and recorded for the record.

So if you're down with that, Mike, I'm happy to help you with your problems once a week in perpetuity, because it helps me, too.

I started with the Jewish friend because I think your fear of being misunderstood is, on some level, intrinsically part of Jewish culture.

I think it gets into both the intellectual side of Jewish culture, that going right back to the early days of rabbinical and Talmudic studies, it was always about debating, and in particular, debating taboo subjects, like debating shit that otherwise would never be allowed in a religious setting.

And then you combine that with the culture of persecution that we tell our children, they're gonna come for you eventually, they're gonna come for you.

They came for us.

They came for our peoples.

They're coming for you.

So I do think there's part of that.

Cause I share that same fear.

I would like to believe that I've gotten over it.

I've done a lot of personal work to try to get over it.

But I share that fear and to where we started this conversation.

In my lifetime, there has never been a moment in which being misunderstood is so pervasive, so common, so like the norm.

And it's funny that you tied that to your desire to love everybody.

Cause my response to being misunderstood is a similar.

Similar kind of universal of, I wish everybody had a chance to be understood.

Right.

And I say this because we are kind of running out of time.

And I want to flag this for future conversations.

But when I say I want to abolish prisons or I want to abolish police, I do want to see a more restorative justice in which the victim and the perpetrator, because they are often the same person at different times, gets love, gets attention, gets to be heard, gets to perform, you know, gets to do whatever their heart needs them to do so that they don't have to attack, so that they don't have to be violent, so that they don't have to hurt people.

That's simplistic.

Hopefully, through this podcast, I'll be able to flesh that out and explore that in detail.

But that is certainly a vision of a society that I would desire.

But I think fundamentally, and we are today, in our session, not, of course, going to be able to address your legitimate anxiety, but we'll come back to it, although I have something to say about that in a moment.

But I think the larger issue here around being misunderstood is not just you.

I think it is pervasive.

I Think it is something that we can and we should address.

I think it gets into the consequences of this speech.

But there is something that I think about almost every day which is self evident, yet contrary to our society's logic, and that is that trust is a byproduct of vulnerability, that we have to be vulnerable if we want people to trust us.

We have to be vulnerable if we want people to listen to us.

And our conversation today is both you and I kind of lamenting that people are doing the opposite, that they think that they are going to change political minds by badgering people, by mocking people, by denigrating people, when instead it requires vulnerability, it requires finding common ground, it involves opening up, which may open yourself up to attack, which may open yourself up to disrespect.

Again, it's not easy.

The reason I think about it every day is I think about how do we translate this to society, to community, to institutions, so that rather than trust being something we try to enforce through violence, through weapons, through threats, that we try to find trust through vulnerability, through loving each other, through being nice to each other and spreading joy, right?

And trying to be even with people we disagree with, helping them be happy, helping them laugh.

And that's why I do think comedy is perhaps one of the most powerful political forces.

Because I was at the local cannabis shop yesterday and I was saying there's three ways to open someone's mind.

There's food, right?

You feed them, there's laughter, you give them a good belly laugh.

And then of course there's cannabis, which is complicated legalities, different people react to it in different ways.

But I stand by that.

So we are kind of running out of time.

But Mike, I'd love to hear your thoughts, a on culture in general, but on the kind of culture that I'm trying to describe here, which is a counterculture to the North American, both American and Canadian, that currently has us in the grip of what seems like an escalating conflict.

Yeah.

And I think first of all, I learned something very good today from our discussion specifically about toxic masculinity, which is it would be a shortcut and a quicker way to get my point across if I were to tell people toxic masculinity is real.

It's also as real as any other social construct, meaning as long as that term is a social construct term, I have not only no problems with it, but I would own it to the nth degree and I would own it in my son.

So I'm very thankful that you phrased it that way.

I'll flag this for the future.

But you know that reality is a social construct, right?

Exactly.

And that's it.

And that's, and that's, and that's why I'm like breathing a sigh of relief.

Because I think my fear of being misunderstood is like any fear, it's a fear of twice the same thing.

Because the fear is just living through something twice and you can fear it all you want, but then when it happens, you have to live it again.

So the misunderstood, like it's funny because I don't fear getting lynched.

I don't fear getting like mob attacked.

And I don't fear what you said.

Like, how is it going to affect your family?

It's their dignity.

It's that if I am a pariah, they live with a pariah.

That's the thing I care about is like, I've read, like I wouldn't want to be.

I'm going to throw this, a very random name out, but like Mel Gibson son.

Like that must be a weird identity.

Elon Musk's children.

I mean, yeah, yeah.

All 13, all 15, all 25.

Like, yeah, who knows?

Yeah, bleep blop, Lord and 26 are going to be very angry at their dad.

So back to culture.

Let's, let's, let's do this.

Let's rock it.

I am a huge fan of this topic.

I think what we talked about is the counterculture I want, which is a counterculture that says, look, patriarchy has to exist as long as patriarchy has to exist.

So let's work on this.

Let's as a team, let's like butcher this tree.

Let's, let's eradicate this.

But as we all know, if you don't eradicate the roots, the tree grows back.

So what I really think the new culture that's going to sprout from the ashes of this one.

And I do think this is going to happen.

This would be another WTF is it's going to be a culture that tries harder to look at roots of problems than this culture.

This culture does not, North American culture does not look at the roots of problems.

Or when it does, it dismisses them as unsolvable humanity based problems that we'll never get to the bottom of.

Well then what's the point?

Why?

I don't want to spend all day hacking at the tree trunk, you know, so that's my opening for this.

And I think, you know, there's this concept that I learned when I got my motorcycle license called target fixation.

Which is you will go where you look.

And I think right across the political spectrum, people suffer from that, right, that, you know, it's like George Latkoff's line of don't think of an elephant.

The moment you say don't think of an elephant, you think of an elephant.

And so much, and this is true on the left, but it's also true on the right.

So much of political discourse is people kvetching about what they don't want.

And in kvetching about what they don't want, it's what they're gonna get.

And I think that is why, in spite of all this, we have to be role models to our children, role models to each other, and constantly try to not take the vengeance against the people who harm us.

Although I do often find joy in saying death to my enemies.

But again, we are not perfect.

And I think it's important that we find ways to try to model a better society, focus on a better society.

That's part of why I love farming, that's part of why I love living in the country.

Because I am trying to, for my own self, for my own health and sanity, be that person.

It is difficult, but that's where to the point of dignity, to the point of being a pariah, you have no control over that.

What you do have control over is how your family loves you.

What you do have control over is how your community respects you.

And that is the point of target fixation, is not just focusing on where you can make a difference, but focus on the people you love.

Focus on the people who matter most to you, because that's where you're going to make the most difference.

And they're the people who are going to come to your defense.

When everyone says that you're a pedophile, that you were not only on Epstein's island, you were the coat check or whatever.

There's so many ways in this make believe fucking world that there's nothing we can do about it.

And that's why there's a post I've been wanting to write, but I haven't been able to really write it because I need to substantiate it.

Because it's kind of right now just a line and it's a self evident line.

But the line goes, if your response to anxiety is control, you're not only going to get no control, you're going to get more anxiety.

And it's remarkable how many people, and this is, I think a consequence of our North American culture, have both a lot of Anxiety and a desire for control.

And they don't realize that the two are feeding each other and that they will have less anxiety the more that they not so much give up control, because I'm not too fond of that metaphor.

But just stop focusing on control and instead focus on the shit that you.

That makes you feel good, that makes you feel happy, that makes you feel empowered, and that is loved ones and community.

The more we engage with other people, the more we feel good about that shit.

Although the point about culture is I feel that we are still in the early stages of articulating that this.

And that's why I look forward to our conversations and tend to come to them packed with all sorts of crazy ideas to share and concepts to get into any final thoughts before we segue to our shout outs.

Yeah, I think I just want to bring up One of my favorite thinkers ever was Daniel Kahneman.

And he passed away very sadly.

I mean, he was older, but he's.

He's no longer with us.

But he wrote many good books.

One of them is Thinking Fast, Thinking Slow, which I love.

And I'm currently halfway through his last book ever, Noise.

And it's all about the things we can't see when we make bad judgments and bad decisions.

And I would say that all of this segues into what he says, which is if you hear what the group thinks before you establish what you think, you will be so heavily influenced by the group.

It's gross and disgusting and awful.

And so this is where social media and all this stuff is just truly actually awful.

It's not like in theory it's really a problem to see what other people think and then start thinking what you think.

And so I just, I don't know how the hell to get out of this.

But I did want to ask you a very direct question.

What is worse for you?

Being vulnerable or feeling vulnerable?

That's a great question.

Let me contemplate on that for a moment.

Yeah.

I'm not sure I have an answer.

If I'm to be honest, I think they are distinct.

And I'll delay on my answer as a politician would by offering my own shout out here in that I really liked Daniel Kahneman's books, but I was already kind of past.

I was in the post Kahneman world in that a lot of his research is decades old and he was really writing about it kind of in his heyday because he was an active researcher.

So he only really had time to write about it when he was semi retired.

But there's this Guy Gerd Gerzinger, German researcher who wrote a lot of critiques of Kahneman.

Because I love, A, I love smart people, and then B, I really love the people who critique the smart people.

Yeah, yeah.

And that was Gerd Gerzinger with ecological rationality and.

And he likes a lot of Kahneman stuff.

But his core contribution, or addition, which I've completely internalized, is that reason and emotion are inseparable and that we do our best thinking when our emotions are at their peak, are at their best, are harmonious.

And I think that's where.

When I feel vulnerable, I partly know that I'm not vulnerable and it's not too bad, versus when I am vulnerable, my adrenaline kicks in and I tend to be in pretty good shape.

So I'm gonna say it's just different situations.

I think I found ways of coping with either.

I think we all deal with vulnerability in difficult ways.

And I think the danger to flag this for a future conversation is vulnerability is adjacent to trauma.

And it's very easy to have triggers when vulnerable or contemplating vulnerability.

And that's why, for a lot of people working on yourself, engaging in some form of therapy, whatever it might be, is necessary really to be vulnerable and to embrace vulnerability.

Again, flag that for future conversation.

But that's a good question.

And I think my core answer is I think it's important to distinguish kinds of vulnerability.

So that way, instead of treating it as a binary, we are vulnerable or we're not.

It's like learning how to swim.

You slowly get into the deep end, you slowly start taking greater risks.

You slowly start trying different strokes or different ways of pushing yourself in what is a very risky situation, because water is historically death.

So that's a great question, and I'm not really sure how to answer it, which is why I'm babbling.

But I think it speaks to again, future threads for us to pull.

Because you gave that shout out before I hit the shout outs.

You are still entitled if you want to another shout out.

Who would you like our audience to know about?

Yeah, I want our audience to know I planned this all day, so I'm so glad you gave that to me.

And I'm being serious.

My shout out goes to the other article I read today, very briefly, which is Mark Zuckerberg considers one of the historically most vehemently awful US Presidents to be a hero.

And he was a populist, and his name is Andrew Jackson, for those of you who don't know who I'm alluding to.

And he literally said it to his biographer and it's in his new whatever stupid book that I will never read or buy.

But I hate Mark Zuckerberg.

If you're listening, Mark Zuckerberg, yes, I just said this.

Peaceful loving hippie.

I cannot believe you admire Andrew Jackson.

Except I do.

Totally believe it because Facebook is incredibly the worst shit show ever and we already talked about it and I cannot wait to quit your shitty platform and never support you again.

Amen, brother.

I unfortunately am not going to be able to quit it.

I hope that it is destroyed.

I hope that it is a casualty of the collapse of the American empire or whatever new rises amongst the ashes that you and I no doubt will be part of.

This has been another fantastic chat, Mike.

And yeah, I love this.

This is where I tell the audience Mike is going to be regularly appearing, especially as we phase into our quality version of the podcast.

Cuz I am insisting that we stick with the spontaneous conversation because I want each and every one of our episodes to end where the moment that that we disconnect and go take a leak or have a drink, we think of five things that we forgot to say so that we're always ready to go the next time.

Mike's available at mikeyop.com he runs a fantastic substack which I've been referring people to sign up for.

I think we got 15 or so now via the substack recommendations.

Highly recommended.

Very creative, very interesting.

At some point, Mike, we are gonna have to talk about making films together.

Oh hell yeah.

I suspect that that is another way that we can collaborate and do this YouTube thing.

Metaviews is available on YouTube on all the audio podcast platforms, although as I mentioned, with reduced frequency unless I start recording outside because I need to be spending as much outside over the next two months until bug season starts.

Which is exactly why the United States will fail in their invasion of Canada.

Because our bugs will eat those soldiers alive.

Until then, thanks everybody.

We'll see you soon.

Stay fresh until next time.