EXPERTS ON EXPERT: Jonathan Haidt

[0] Oh, ho, ho, Reilly's.

[1] You've got to make it a little more, you know.

[2] Santa like?

[3] No, like scratchy.

[4] Okay.

[5] Ho ho, ho, ho, Riley.

[6] Yeah, that was great.

[7] So what we're doing there if you didn't put two and two together is it's the holiday season.

[8] We got a little Santa Claus, ho, ho, ho.

[9] And then, of course, we went right back to O 'Reilly's where we like to end up at all times.

[10] Today we have a very, very interesting guest on I fell in love with his verbiage on Sam Harris's podcast, so did Monica, Jonathan Haidt.

[11] It was really the first time we, well, we say that about cereal too, but we really bonded over his episode of Sam Harris.

[12] Well, and in fact, he was our introduction to Sam Harris.

[13] That was the very first episode of waking up that I listened to per Jedediah Jenkins suggestion.

[14] Yep.

[15] Well, you guys are going to meet Jedediah Jenkins, a very special friend of ours.

[16] We don't need to tease that yet.

[17] No, not just, not that.

[18] Oh, just in general?

[19] He'll be in here.

[20] Yeah.

[21] He's a very interesting guy, and he seems to have his finger on the pulse of all things intellectually stimulating.

[22] A lot of things I've found my way to have come through Jedediah.

[23] So anyways, he steered us to Jonathan Haight and Sam Harris arguing ostensibly, and it was a very fascinating debate.

[24] We both kind of fell in love with Jonathan.

[25] It's very exciting for us to have him on the podcast today.

[26] Jonathan is an American moral psychologist and professor of ethical leadership at New York University's Stern School of Business.

[27] He's a smarty pants and he gets into it.

[28] Jonathan's written several books, flourishing the positive psychology and the life well lived.

[29] He's also written the happiness hypothesis, the righteous mind, and he is here currently promoting the book, The Coddling of the American Mind.

[30] So please enjoy Jonathan Haidt.

[31] Wondry Plus subscribers can listen to Armchair Expert early and ad free right now.

[32] Join Wondry Plus in the Wondry app or on Apple Podcasts.

[33] Or you can listen for free wherever you get your podcasts.

[34] I use your name often.

[35] This may shock you or hopefully flatter you, but I am quoting you pretty regularly at dinner parties and stuff.

[36] And every time I get to your last name, just panic sets in.

[37] It's height.

[38] I'm tall.

[39] I'm not full of hatred.

[40] It's height.

[41] I'm a dyslexic and it's scary.

[42] So Jonathan Haidt is here.

[43] And I just want to set you up by saying, Monica and I, who talk a lot about Sam Harris' podcast, the reason I even discovered his podcast was someone told me you have to listen to this episode.

[44] And it was your first appearance on his show.

[45] Oh, excellent.

[46] Where you guys attempt to bury a half.

[47] hatch it or figure out what it succeeded yeah yeah i shouldn't say attempt but it was such a thrilling conversation i recommend everybody listen to that it is it got there were moments where i was driving i thought oh just hang on keep up keep up keep up because when you guys kind of start arguing about whether or not there's morals that would apply intergalactically yeah and whether some an animal would procreate asexually what that would do to individualism all these things it was mental candy times 10.

[48] Just what a delicious interview that was.

[49] And it turned me on to Sam.

[50] Something more like nuts.

[51] Like why candy?

[52] I don't want it to be canned.

[53] I want it to be like a protein bar.

[54] Oh, healthy.

[55] Oh, you're right.

[56] Yes.

[57] Yes.

[58] It was a very low carbohydrate, high protein shake, but plant based.

[59] Moody.

[60] Of course.

[61] P protein.

[62] It was the pea protein of debates.

[63] But I have then since senior TED Talk, I've read much of righteous mind.

[64] You've written and also the Happiness Hypothesis.

[65] Righteous Mind made it under the New York Times bestseller list.

[66] You have a PhD in psychology.

[67] And you are currently a professor in ethical leadership at NYU's Stern School of Business.

[68] And you just have the most incredible take on so many things we care about on this show.

[69] And it comes up a lot.

[70] So you have written a new book called The Coddling of the American Mind.

[71] And you wrote it with Greg.

[72] Greg Lukianoff.

[73] Another scary name for me. Tell me quickly what it was about this topic that drew you to it.

[74] So I taught for 17 years at the University of Virginia.

[75] I love teaching.

[76] Students were great.

[77] I moved to NYU in 2011 to the business school.

[78] I didn't know anything about business at the time.

[79] I was really just studying moral and political psychology.

[80] But I had the great fortune to land a one -year temporary position at NYU Stern when my last book, when the righteous mind was coming out, and I loved it there.

[81] They offered me a job.

[82] And while I was teaching, just some weird stuff started happening in my teaching, students taking offense to things that seemed completely inoffensive.

[83] And at the same time, we started hearing the first, this is 2014, the first article started coming out about trigger warnings and safe spaces.

[84] These are terms, I mean, we all heard of safe spaces, like in Srebrenica, in, you know, in Bosnia in the 90s.

[85] But the idea that a classroom should be a safe space, safe from, critique or criticism.

[86] These were new and strange ideas.

[87] And Greg Lukianoff, who is the president of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Entertainment, my God, here I'm in housing.

[88] Yeah, you're in fact.

[89] We got you already.

[90] The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education.

[91] I'd met him through a mutual friend at a party, and he invited me to lunch to share an idea that he'd had.

[92] Here he was for about, you know, for 14 years he'd been fighting for free speech rights on campus, and that mostly meant pushing back against administrators who kept trying to restrict students' free speech rights in order to protect themselves of the university from lawsuits, from bad publicity.

[93] And the students generally want free speech.

[94] The students don't want to be told what they can and can't say.

[95] But suddenly in 2013 -2014, Greg started noticing that students were asking for protection from words.

[96] They were saying, you know, if this speaker comes to campus, it'll be traumatizing.

[97] Somebody has to block this speaker.

[98] We can't have this go forward.

[99] And students were asking for trigger warnings applied to certain books.

[100] You can't just teach Greek myths.

[101] You know, there are myths that involve rape.

[102] And you can't tell a story about rape in a classroom.

[103] What if this traumatizes someone or retramatizes them?

[104] And so this was brand new.

[105] And Greg's idea was that students were using the exact cognitive distortions that he had learned not to do in learning cognitive behavioral therapy.

[106] So Greg is prone to depression.

[107] and he had a suicidal, a horrible depression in 2007, and he credits learning CBT the next year with saving his life.

[108] And in CBT, for those listeners who don't know, it's a technique of cleaning up your thinking because we all do this stupid stuff.

[109] We all do catastrophizing.

[110] You know, oh, no, I'm late for the interview.

[111] And no, now they're going to hate me and they're not going to give me the job.

[112] And then I'm going to die poor and a lot.

[113] So we all do catastrophizing, discounting the positives.

[114] Like, you know, there's good and bad things, but we only focus on the bad.

[115] mind reading, labeling, we do all these distortions.

[116] Some people do them a lot.

[117] Most of us do them occasionally.

[118] And often just biochemically driven, right?

[119] You're lacking enough serotonin or dopamine to keep you focused on the gratitude list.

[120] Well, I would never say that some psychological thing is just explained by a biological imbalance.

[121] But what I would say is it is clear that when the mind is in a depressed state, when the mind is more focused on threats and its low energy and all the symptoms and feelings of being depressed, then it's much more prone to do this disorder thinking.

[122] And the amazing discovery that Aaron Beck made, he's one of the founders of cognitive therapy at the University of Pennsylvania in the 1960s, the amazing discoveries he made is that while depressed people think this all the time, think this way all the time, if you can even briefly get them to stop doing that, if you can briefly get them to question their catastrophizing assumptions, they get a moment of relief.

[123] And maybe just for a few minutes, but suddenly things feel less gloomy, more hopeful.

[124] And in those few minutes, then you can talk about other things.

[125] And so Beck's discovery was that it's a two -way street between the depressed state and the disordered thinking.

[126] And if you clean up the thinking, you cure the depression.

[127] That was the amazing discovery.

[128] And this was back in the Hedia Freudianism.

[129] So in the 1960s, everyone thought, well, if someone's depressed, it must be because they, you know, they wanted to sleep with their mother and kill their father or whatever.

[130] Some, you know, unresolved edible conflict.

[131] And what showed is that all you have to do is change the thinking and you can solve the depression.

[132] And that works for anxiety.

[133] It works for eating disorders.

[134] It works for a broad variety of psychological problems.

[135] So Greg was a big fan.

[136] He'd read my book The Happiness Hypothesis where I talked about CBT.

[137] So he wanted to talk to me about his idea that somehow or other universities seem to be teaching cognitive distortions to students and they were therefore demanding protections from books.

[138] Imagine college students saying, don't expose me to a book or a speaker.

[139] This was brand new.

[140] The millennials were not like this.

[141] This is a very important point.

[142] People think, oh, those millennials on college campuses, they're, you know, coddled and snowflin.

[143] No, first of all, it's not millennials.

[144] The millennials are fine.

[145] It begins with birth year in 1995.

[146] It's students who are born in 1995 and after.

[147] There's a sharp generational ship.

[148] And we'll talk about that later, why that is.

[149] But when they show up on college campuses around 2013, 2014, that's when all these new ideas come in.

[150] You also make a distinction, which is useful just because people will be screaming until we acknowledge it, that, Say, certain publications have pointed out that this isn't a ubiquitous situation.

[151] This is actually affecting primarily universities, elite universities on the coast and whatnot, right?

[152] That's right.

[153] So we're in the middle of an age of moral panic.

[154] That is, we're in a culture war.

[155] There's left -wing media and right -wing media.

[156] And each side really wins by putting forth a catastrophizing diagnosis.

[157] And the right is Nazis.

[158] and they're going to take over.

[159] Now, the left is, you know, commie, you know, whatever it is these days.

[160] So the way, the left is Snowflake students who, you know, can't stand free speech.

[161] And the reality is that there are problems all over the place, but neither panic is correct.

[162] And so there are big changes on college campuses in the dynamics around speech, but there are 4 ,500 college campuses in this country.

[163] Most of them are non -selective, non -residential.

[164] And most of them, nothing is happening.

[165] If you map out where the, shout downs, the really dramatic stuff is happening.

[166] It's mostly at elite schools in the northeast and along the coastal strip of the west coast.

[167] So you had a few events here at Claremont McKenna in Los Angeles, Berkeley at Evergreen up near Seattle.

[168] Some of your listeners will be very familiar with these stories.

[169] Others will be like, what are they talking about?

[170] Well, that's what's relevant.

[171] Unless you follow this stuff, unless you've seen some of these like at Evergreen or some of these different times it's happened to been caught on video, if you don't see it, it's hard to imagine, especially if you went to college like I didn't graduate in 2000.

[172] I didn't witness anything like that.

[173] I could have never imagined that this would be happening.

[174] That's right.

[175] If you graduated before in 2012 or earlier, then you didn't see any of this.

[176] None of this stuff was on campus.

[177] You probably never heard microaggression, safe space, trigger warnings, bias response teams, walking through one case.

[178] This, I think, it's a really revealing, what's an interesting one.

[179] So there was a student, we changed her name.

[180] We called her Olivia in the book.

[181] Could you call her Dax in this telling of it?

[182] Believe me, you don't want to.

[183] Let me make clear.

[184] So this is the coddling of the American mind.

[185] But really, Greg and I don't like the title that was made up for us.

[186] We got to make up the subtitle.

[187] The subtitle is how good intentions and bad ideas are setting up a generation for failure.

[188] That's what the book is about.

[189] All right.

[190] So there was a Latino student.

[191] Her parents had emigrated from Mexico.

[192] She was born in California.

[193] And she wrote an essay in a student publication.

[194] She wrote an essay about how marginalized she feels.

[195] She doesn't fit in.

[196] She says, our campus climate and institutional culture are primarily grounded in Western white, cis heteronormative upper to upper middle class values.

[197] So she's having a bad time at Claremont McKinness.

[198] She feels she doesn't fit in.

[199] The Dean of students, a woman named Mary Spellman, reads the article online, and then writes a private email to her, and I'll read you the entire text of Spellman's email.

[200] Olivia, thank you for writing and sharing this article with me. We have a lot to do as a college and community.

[201] Would you be willing to talk with me sometime about these issues?

[202] They are important to me and the Dean of Students.

[203] staff.

[204] And we're working on how we can better serve students, especially those who don't fit our CMC mold.

[205] I would love to talk with you more, best Dean Spelman.

[206] Well, as you'd imagine, the campus erupted in protest.

[207] The woman who got this email, she put it up on her Facebook page.

[208] I wouldn't imagine.

[209] Yeah.

[210] I can't imagine.

[211] Yeah.

[212] So the woman who Olivia posted it on her Facebook page and said, and here's the kicker, she says, I guess I just don't fit that CMC mold.

[213] Feel free to share.

[214] And so people shared it.

[215] They were outraged, outraged that the dean would suggest that she didn't fit in, that she didn't belong.

[216] Now, so the entire controversy was over the use of the word mold.

[217] One single word.

[218] One single word.

[219] That's right.

[220] And it's clear from the context that because Olivia had said, I don't fit this white heterocyst, you know, normative, I don't fit this mold is what she basically said.

[221] And so Dean Spelman is clearly empathizing whether she's trying to say, yes, we're trying to help students who feel they don't fit in.

[222] In the new callout culture that burst onto the scene because of social media, so it was really, you know, by 2014, 2015, it was really intense at some places.

[223] Olivia was in a callout culture and she could get stated.

[224] Well, this is our analysis.

[225] Of course, we don't know what's going on in her mind.

[226] But the way a callout culture works is if you can find some way to say that somebody else is racist, sexist, cis heteronormative, marginalizing.

[227] you call them out.

[228] And then you get credit for calling out that kind of bigotry.

[229] And so there were protests.

[230] There were some students went on hunger strike until you get elevated, right?

[231] If you're someone who has pointed out, someone who's infringed on these rules, then your prestige, right, is, you get something from it.

[232] You get a cultural capital from it.

[233] That's right.

[234] And that's the key to this whole thing.

[235] Olivia's not a bad person, but she's a young woman in a prestige economy, as it were, in a social culture in which you get points, you get status, you people look up to you if you get these points.

[236] And she was playing the game as she found.

[237] At least that's our analysis of it.

[238] So ultimately, of course, the university couldn't possibly fire spellment.

[239] I mean, it was clear she'd done nothing wrong.

[240] She was trying to be helpful.

[241] The university couldn't fire her, but they did nothing to defend her.

[242] With students going on hunger strike, we will not eat until she's fired.

[243] Well, and point out, because I've heard you talk about this before, but a new element in this is also there's a pattern which is call out, but then also state some demands.

[244] Right.

[245] So sensitivity training.

[246] Always diversity training.

[247] There's always, you must always demand diversity training.

[248] And then ultimately someone must be fired for this transgression, yeah?

[249] Right.

[250] Well, that's right.

[251] Because you can't, what's most psychologically satisfying is to burn them to death at a state.

[252] That's what we really do.

[253] Yeah.

[254] Well, that's really what we want to do.

[255] Yeah.

[256] There's some finality and some closure to that.

[257] Yeah.

[258] That's right.

[259] The two traditional punishments are banishment.

[260] You have to get them out of your community and then they're dead to everybody or burning by fire.

[261] So shooting with a gun isn't satisfying.

[262] Finding them isn't satisfying.

[263] You want them to either disappear or burn to a crisp.

[264] And fortunately, there's been almost no actual violence.

[265] That's important to say.

[266] But yes, there is a kind of an auto -defei quality.

[267] These sorts of moral panics, these sorts of witch trials basically crop up throughout history.

[268] And that's part of our analysis in Chapter 6.

[269] we come back to this episode and we say it's the psychology of a witch trial.

[270] Yes, and I don't want to derail your momentum, but I want to say what's scary to me is that under this kind of paradigm, there's zero room for anyone to acknowledge that they've erred, correct their behavior, get redemption.

[271] No, that's right.

[272] That's right.

[273] So I think it's very important to think about what game are we playing in anything we do.

[274] where there's often a kind of an implicit game that we're playing.

[275] And so one game is the truth -seeking game.

[276] You can have a discussion and you're trying to figure something out together.

[277] And this is what we try to do in seminar classes especially.

[278] Another game that you might have is the war game.

[279] I hate you.

[280] I'm trying to defeat you.

[281] It's a contest.

[282] And I would never grant that you're right about anything.

[283] My job is to humiliate you or defeat you.

[284] Another game that we might play is the let's help him game.

[285] Like there's some problem and we're going to cooperate.

[286] and figuring out how to best help something.

[287] So there's all kinds of games that we could be playing.

[288] And, you know, if you have goals of reforming an institution, let's say, a college campus, because a lot of these protests are taking place, these issues are taking place in college campuses, if your goal is to solve a problem, you'd be open to all kinds of evidence, you'd be open to evidence about what works, you would not write people off forever, you would be open to people making mistakes.

[289] But unfortunately, the game that is becoming dominant on many campuses is exactly this prestige economy where my goal is to call out sinners.

[290] And then it uses, I believe, it uses a deep and ancient religious psychology.

[291] We create something is sacred.

[292] And we all circle around this sacred thing.

[293] We're all very vigilantly looking for sinners.

[294] We're looking for sacrilege and blasphemy.

[295] I think you can't understand what's been going on on college campuses since 2015 without the concept of blasphemy.

[296] People who say blasphemous things who question diversity policies in particular, that is the most dangerous thing you can do in a college campus today.

[297] If you question diversity policies, question whether they work, question whether we should have this kind of training.

[298] You really run a risk of a very, very powerful reaction against you, which might demand that you be fired.

[299] Yes, it can quite easily get you just labeled permanently as a racist.

[300] But I think we should step back four steps and just in a nutshell explain or at least why I think, The world of academia has worked.

[301] The institution has some theories.

[302] It's always being refined.

[303] It's always open to critique.

[304] Everyone has an opportunity to voice a complaint.

[305] And then it just grows and evolves and gets better.

[306] But in a zero -sum win -lose game, as you point out, that's not the goal now.

[307] The goal isn't to help perfect the message.

[308] It's not to get victory.

[309] That's right.

[310] The key is what we might call institutionalized disconfirmation.

[311] that means we all have ideas, we all have hypotheses, a very well -known effect in psychology is called the confirmation bias.

[312] If I believe that eating, you know, eating oranges will cure my cold faster, which is what my mother always told me that vitamin C will cure colds.

[313] So whenever I have a cold, I would take vitamin C. And lo and behold, the cold would go away.

[314] And therefore I confirmed that it works.

[315] Yeah.

[316] Now that's really stupid because, you know, it turns out it actually doesn't make any difference.

[317] But I didn't seek disconfirmation.

[318] It's only if I tried to disconfirm it, like by saying, okay, this time I won't take vitamin C and let's see if it...

[319] Actually, measure how long it takes you, yeah.

[320] So in any scientific community, and this goes back to the early days of the Enlightenment when there were coffee shops at which men would get, men of science or men of, you know, they would gather and they would put forth their ideas and someone would criticize them.

[321] That's the crucial thing.

[322] Criticizing, yeah, it's imperative.

[323] That's right.

[324] So we all have a confirmation bias.

[325] We all want to believe what we currently believe and other people do us the favor of criticizing it.

[326] This is one of my favorite things you talked about.

[327] Your explanation of confirmation bias is the one that resonated the most with me. And you just point out quite simply, we are almost incapable individually of being objective.

[328] Our brain is not wired to help us be objective, but that the beauty of systems and of groups is that systems can be objective, right?

[329] That's right.

[330] That's what I really want people to keep their eye on.

[331] as we go through this culture war, as our society is coming apart in a lot of ways, our success is not based on how smart we are.

[332] It's based on how good our systems are.

[333] And the best systems are those that bring out what's great about human beings and that temper what's bad about us.

[334] So in my second book, The Righteous Mind, I go deeply into our evolution, how we evolved as social creatures to paint our bodies, dance around a fire, worship rocks and trees, The sort of the proto -religious form, the early religious forms are very similar all around the world.

[335] And it's only fairly recently, only a few thousand years ago, that after agriculture, after large -scale society, it's only for, it's only them that we start to get large -scale, religions and big gods.

[336] But religion is really, the natural form of it is much more animistic, small -scale, binding a group together with rituals.

[337] And I think this is important to keep in mind because certain systems take us out of that.

[338] Certain systems allow us to interact with strangers.

[339] They allow us to create these vast, open, secular societies that are diverse and that leave room for people to live lives they want.

[340] But the tribalism and the ancient religious psychology can come roaring back very quickly.

[341] We allow that to happen with sports in a controlled way.

[342] And that's fun.

[343] That's just great.

[344] That's just like fake tribalism.

[345] So I have a chapter in the righteous mind where I, you know, I'm not a football.

[346] I'm not a sports fan.

[347] But, you know, the couple times I went to a UVA football game, it was really three.

[348] It was a real tribal thing.

[349] I love UVA.

[350] I love the community.

[351] And, you know, singing in unison, getting drunk together, you know, cheering, exulting, lamenting when you lose.

[352] Those are tribal practices and they're deeply satisfying.

[353] Unfortunately, a lot of these tribal practices are coming back, not just in our political life where they've never really gone, but in many more aspects of our daily life.

[354] And this is, we'll get into identity politics later.

[355] There are various forms of it.

[356] But to the extent that we're dividing up, we have a, we have a diverse society.

[357] society, to the extent that we're encouraging more divisions among people and more tribal identities, I think it's overall a bad thing.

[358] Well, yes.

[359] And so something I'm always on my soapbox about is that we seem to have a pretty broad understanding that our brains and our bodies evolved in an environment.

[360] We no longer inhabit.

[361] And we seem to recognize that our brain has bad wiring for eating.

[362] We are encouraged to eat as many calories as human.

[363] possible when it tastes good because at one time that served us quite well because food was scarce.

[364] It has very good wiring for eating in the environment of evolutionary adaptation, the EEA.

[365] Yes.

[366] We don't live there anymore.

[367] We don't.

[368] As I say, my brain thinks that Snickers will only be in bloom this week and I should eat as many as I can.

[369] I'm going to take that line.

[370] That's wonderful.

[371] Yeah.

[372] So, but what I think people don't, so they've made that connection.

[373] They go, you know what, our biology is working against us.

[374] At this moment, where you can go to 7 -Eleven at any time a day and eat too much food.

[375] And I think it's really, I call these vestigial, you know, benefits that no longer help us.

[376] But I don't think people recognize the power of being a group animal.

[377] But now these things, we need to be aware of them at all time.

[378] Our tribalism, our in -group, out -group, predilections, we have to monitor them as rigorously as we would monitor what we're eating.

[379] I want to ask you this, because I floated this by my wife the other night and she hated it.

[380] but I do think I'm on to something, which is, and let me first acknowledge that I am a white man. I have all the opportunity in the world.

[381] I have a ton of privilege that a lot of people don't have.

[382] I recognize that.

[383] I also recognize that the whole system is pretty much run by white men, and I don't deny the lopsidedness of the power structure.

[384] My fear, though, is that a lot of people think that if we remove the white male from these systems, that somehow the systems are going to work magically all of it.

[385] a sudden and my argument to my wife was the systems are inherently flawed the the power structure when you put anyone in power like this what you're really seeing is a bad outcome of anyone being entrusted with power and if you could look at any ethnicity throughout history when they were in power they were still shitting on some other group it's it's not unique to just the white male so sure let's definitely without saying let's get the diversity definitely proportional to the country as much as we can, but also recognize the outcome might not be what you think.

[386] The system itself might need some perfecting.

[387] I guess the example I was thinking to most explicitly when I was talking to her about it is, yes, most police forces could benefit for more diversity, but also black cops in the black community are disliked by the black citizens.

[388] So the job itself, for whatever reason, by its current design or in practice, somehow that makes them assume the same thing they hated about the white cop.

[389] And there's still going to be a problem.

[390] We haven't addressed something else that's happening.

[391] Okay, perfect.

[392] That is exactly the great insight of social psychology.

[393] That when you look around the world and you see bad things happening, if it's one person who does a terrible thing, maybe it's that person.

[394] But if it's a whole group of people who are doing something over and over again, it's probably something about the roles, institutions, and social structure of the situation.

[395] And this is the Stanley Milgram experiment, the classic experiment about would you shock someone to death If an experimenter tells you to, what Milgram found is that two -thirds of the people went all the way to the end of the experiment, and it didn't much matter about your personality.

[396] What mattered was little things he manipulated about the environment.

[397] If there was any disagreement among experimenters, then nobody went along.

[398] All sorts of little manipulations had a huge impact on behavior.

[399] So I think your point is that if you put people in the position of being a policeman, whether they're white or black, they're still going to do some of the same things that lead to hatred of police.

[400] Well, they're going to join a new in -group.

[401] And now the neighborhoods of the outgroup, and they're going to have their own little microcosm culture within there, and they're going to do all the things that any one of us primates would do as a social animal.

[402] So we need to look at those things, I guess, is my—that's at the base of all this.

[403] I completely agree.

[404] And this—we live in a time when we're choking on moral outrage.

[405] We have way too much moral outrage.

[406] And I think taking that kind of social psychological perspective, in which you don't see a world full of good and evil people, rather you see complicated social situations that have some negative externalities, And obviously, and we've all seen the videos of black men getting shot when they had their hands up.

[407] Yes.

[408] Terrible.

[409] There's something wrong.

[410] Clearly there's something wrong.

[411] And so for students to be focused on the injustices of the criminal justice system, that's great.

[412] I mean, there are reasons to do that.

[413] But I think a problem is that they've been taking that same mindset and they've applied it to universities and everywhere else where they find themselves.

[414] And often these are incredibly anti -racist, progressive institutions that are trying really, really hard to do what they can.

[415] And so to take this confrontational attitude into, as Olivia and her fellow students did at Claremont McKenna.

[416] Now again, I don't know what the, you know, there are all kinds of grievances.

[417] I can't judge too strongly because I wasn't there.

[418] I don't know what the exact grievances were.

[419] But from what we could find out, the grievances had nothing to do with Spellman.

[420] It's not as though she had said insensitive things and therefore they were targeting her.

[421] So at least we know that there was injustice in terms of them targeting this poor woman.

[422] And you can see her crying on the videos when you see the videos of her, you know, the students circling her and airing their grievances.

[423] Yeah.

[424] So anyway, yes, I like your social psychological approach.

[425] Stay tuned for more armchair expert, if you dare.

[426] We've all been there.

[427] Turning to the internet to self -diagnose our inexplicable pains, debilitating body aches, sudden fevers, and strange rashes.

[428] Though our minds tend to spiral to worst -case scenarios, it's usually nothing, but for an unlucky few, these unsuspecting symptoms can start the clock ticking on a terrifying medical mystery.

[429] like the unexplainable death of a retired firefighter, whose body was found at home by his son, except it looked like he had been cremated, or the time when an entire town started jumping from buildings and seeing tigers on their ceilings.

[430] Hey listeners, it's Mr. Ballin here, and I'm here to tell you about my podcast.

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[435] What's up, guys, this is your girl Kiki, and my podcast is back with a new season, and let me tell you, it's too good, and I'm diving into the brains of entertainment's best and brightest, okay?

[436] Every episode, I bring on a friend and have a real conversation, and I don't mean just friends, I mean the likes of Amy Polar, Kell Mitchell, Vivica Fox, the list goes on.

[437] So follow, watch, and listen to Baby.

[438] This is Kiki Palmer on the Wondery app, or wherever you get your podcast.

[439] Now, you said something in your TED talk.

[440] You talk about, let's see, lack of moral diversity makes it hard to understand how our world works.

[441] Shared moral values create teams, and the psychology of teams shuts down open -minded thinking.

[442] So you're in a moral matrix.

[443] And you give the five foundations of morality that we are probably born with.

[444] And I think these are very, very relevant for us to unravel what's happening with the outrage and what's happening.

[445] with all the topics you cover in this book.

[446] So can you just tell us quickly, you know, could you walk us through the five foundations of morality?

[447] Sure.

[448] So my research is on moral judgment, and I originally was looking at how it varies across cultures.

[449] And so I read very widely.

[450] I read religious texts.

[451] I read, I read ethnographic books, profiles of non -Western cultures.

[452] And what I found is that there are a lot of common themes, but yet there are a lot of differences.

[453] So my work has been trying to figure out how can it be the case that morality is kind of universal in some ways, but also really variable?

[454] And the theory that I came up with along with Craig Joseph and Jesse Graham and working on some ideas from my postdoc supervisor Richard Schwater at the University of Chicago was that just as we evolved, our tongues have five different receptors to pick up different properties of the world, chemical properties, the salt, sour, sweet, bitter, and umami, a kind of meat flavor.

[455] So we evolved so that we respond to the certain properties of things that are good for us nutritionally.

[456] In the same way, our brains, or I should say our minds, evolved to pick up certain properties of the social world that it behooves us to notice and care about.

[457] And so the five original foundations, there's more than five, but the five that we started studying originally are care and harm issues.

[458] That's one.

[459] Fairness versus cheating is two.

[460] In -group loyalty versus betrayal is three.

[461] authority versus subversion is four and sanctity versus degradation is five we also think now there's liberty you know liberty versus constraint there may be some issues about property and ownership there's all sorts of moral intuitions that human beings have but what's really fascinating about these five is that you chart these five concerns of morality on left and right liberal and conservative and you do it throughout several different countries so not just ours.

[462] And you find a pattern that emerges that conservatives seem to value three in particular and liberals seem to value two in particular.

[463] Well, it's close.

[464] It's slightly different than that.

[465] So the theory was originally constructed to study how cultures differ.

[466] Why is, you know, why is India, so in India, in traditional Hindu morality, issues of purity and pollution and sanctity are much more salient than they are in secular American culture.

[467] But while we were developing this around 2003, 2004.

[468] The American culture war was getting so bad, we began to apply this to left -right dimensions.

[469] And as soon as we started collecting data, as soon as we started doing service with large numbers of people, and listeners can go to your morals .org.

[470] If you go to your morals .org, register, you can take the Moral Foundation's questionnaire.

[471] You can find out your score on these five foundations.

[472] So immediately what we saw is that people on the left score very high on the care foundation and the fairness foundation.

[473] And people on the right score high on all the foundations.

[474] So it's not that they, you know, people on the right really also, you know, they value issues of care and fairness.

[475] Now, fairness is different on the left on the right.

[476] Fairness on the left is especially about equality.

[477] People on the left are very sensitive to inequality, including inequality of outcome.

[478] People on the right, when they say fairness, they mean proportionality.

[479] so do the crime do the time you know the karma actually the Hindu concept of karma is actually a very conservative notion if you do good you should be rewarded but if you do bad you should be punished and then even within these principles they manifest themselves differently within either side of the aisle which is for the purity one which I find very fascinating I'm glad you pointed this out for conservatives the the purity morality clause seems to center specifically on sexuality and then for liberals and I'm neck high high in this in Hollywood.

[480] It's food.

[481] We like fetishize food and the purity of what we're putting in our bodies and it has that same moral implication.

[482] Exactly.

[483] That's right.

[484] So one of the key insights that I got from anthropology is that it's very commonly believed around the world that the body is a temple or at least that the body has these properties that must be protected from contaminants and pollutants and especially before you go to God.

[485] So before you pray.

[486] So it's very clear in Islam and Judaism, before you pray, before you go into the temple, you have to cleanse yourself, menstruating women are often not allowed to approach sacred objects.

[487] So there's a logic to this.

[488] It's the logic of contagion or contamination.

[489] It's very deep in our minds.

[490] Most religions build on it.

[491] Protestantism, as Protestantism develops, they try to strip away a lot of that.

[492] Catholicism has more of the washing and the physical stuff.

[493] So it's always there in our minds, and some religions and some political systems build more on it.

[494] So as you say, at least in the American context, American conservatives were really heavily moralizing sexuality, you know, homosexuality, birth control, birth, abortion.

[495] So, sodomy laws.

[496] Exactly.

[497] That's right.

[498] That's the clearest example is sodomy laws.

[499] Whereas if you're on the left, you look at this and you say, okay, how are sodomy laws protecting people?

[500] How are they preventing harm?

[501] I mean, if, you know, people love other people, why can't they be together?

[502] It's consensual.

[503] It's consensual, yeah.

[504] So almost any cultural war issue you want to look at, flag burn.

[505] sodomy laws, abortion, drugs, anything.

[506] If you understand these foundations, you can understand why the left takes one position and the right takes another.

[507] Yes.

[508] And the reason I wanted you to bring that up is because I think it's so crucial that both sides first acknowledge the opposing point of view is themselves cemented in a foundation of morality.

[509] Everyone is really after a similar thing.

[510] And there's a lot of disagreement about what one's important or how to execute or whatnot.

[511] But first starting, again, to reject the notion of good and evil.

[512] That's right.

[513] And what you just said is, I think, the key to living with some equanimity in our insane current political climate.

[514] So I spent the entire Reagan administration angry.

[515] I was always on the left and I was just politically angry from the day Reagan won until, I guess, the day Clinton won, you know, in 1992, 93.

[516] and I was very moralistic and judgmental.

[517] But as I studied moral psychology and as I set for myself the task of understanding different political views, I found it really liberating.

[518] I found that it really, it released me from anger.

[519] It didn't mean that I agreed with everyone, but it meant now I saw that some people, and it was actually, you know what, it was only going to India and doing research in India that allowed me to take this more empathic perspective toward conservatives.

[520] because I could not have empathized with conservatives in the 1990s, but I did a postdoc trip.

[521] I spent three months in in Bhubaneshwar, India, in eastern India.

[522] And I was studying a very religious, traditional, sex -segregated hierarchical society.

[523] And it was only once I, you know, I was trying to pretend I was an anthropologist, and I was trying to understand them in their terms, not in my terms.

[524] And once I did that, I was, I came back to America.

[525] And suddenly, you know, the religious right was a thing, was a big thing back then.

[526] suddenly I could at least understand more traditional Christian Americans.

[527] Well, and let me just give the pragmatic reward for this, because this isn't just an exercise to entertain yourself.

[528] When people assemble into teams, all teams follow a pattern.

[529] And eventually the team will shut down ideas, right?

[530] And you'll get further and further away from what the truth is.

[531] So if you have the goal of knowing the truth or understanding how something works, it's incumbent upon you to physically make yourself leave your team and hear the other side, right?

[532] If we have any shot at getting to the truth or facts or anything like that, we just have to protect ourselves from what it's like to be siloed or to be inside of a system.

[533] Let's go a little further with that.

[534] I think the basic insight there is correct that teams shut down open -minded thinking.

[535] Let's push on that a little bit.

[536] So you can imagine a team formed in a company to solve some problems.

[537] and they can do a great job of being open -minded, especially if they assign people the task of looking for contrary evidence.

[538] So in the Catholic Church, they invented the idea of a devil's advocate.

[539] They appointed someone specifically to point out the flaws in our thinking, pretend you're the devil trying to confound us.

[540] What would you do?

[541] What would you say?

[542] So teams aren't necessarily close -minded.

[543] Now take a team in a company and put them in competition with another team in the company.

[544] And, you know, whichever one gets there first will get the bonus.

[545] Well, now there might be some competition.

[546] There might be some hostility.

[547] Now you have more a sense of us versus them.

[548] And if someone on the other team asks you for help, you might not want to give it to them because you don't want to be disloyal to your team.

[549] Well, now imagine that they're not even in the same company.

[550] Imagine it's two, you know, the fans of two soccer teams in Britain.

[551] And, you know, in American sports, we don't have much violence as far as I know between our fans.

[552] Just Raiders games.

[553] Okay.

[554] There's some stabbings every now and then.

[555] Oh my.

[556] Okay.

[557] Yeah.

[558] Yeah.

[559] But yeah, they're not the English hooligans.

[560] Yeah.

[561] Yeah.

[562] So I think, so, you know, so what I would say is teams don't have to be closed -minded.

[563] But to the extent that we now have political teams, to the extent that we, you're either on the right or the left, the battle is now so pitched that it does shut down open -minded thinking.

[564] And, you know, I'm, I'm a centrist.

[565] I'm not on our other team personally, but I do see, I mean, Donald Trump is beyond anything that we've had in this country.

[566] He is doing, I think, things that will damage us for a long time.

[567] So I'm not indifferent to what.

[568] what's happening in this country.

[569] And I certainly understand when people act like it's a life or death struggle, it really well could turn out to be that.

[570] I don't want to come down too heavily on one side of the other here, but just to say that our current political situation is such, that passions are so much higher now than they were two or three years ago.

[571] And that guarantees that teams will make a lot of mistakes in thinking about policy.

[572] Well, and here's where, in my opinion, perfectly parallels what you're talking about on college campuses, because there is now a binary opposition to it all, right?

[573] There's no gray, there's no nuance, there's no context.

[574] So even on this podcast, dare I point out a point of view from the right and try to be thoughtful and really make a good argument for them.

[575] The response I get is you shouldn't be doing that because the stakes are so high.

[576] Of course, you can say that as a white male because you're not separated from your family on the border.

[577] So it is all or nothing for them.

[578] And to that, I reject that.

[579] and I say, that is not unlike saying, well, cancer, we agree, is more important to cure than nail fungus.

[580] So we shouldn't have any doctors treating nail fungus.

[581] They should all be treating cancer.

[582] That's just not true.

[583] I can look at different perspectives.

[584] Also issue per issue stand up very strongly for the families on the border.

[585] It's not all in, all out, black and white.

[586] In fact, we're required to listen to all the sides.

[587] And the way we say, these systems can somehow approach objectivity, I don't think any of us liberals want to admit that we very much need the conservatives as they need us for the system to actually come up with anything beneficial.

[588] There's this checks and balances to it.

[589] I think a lot of people have this fantasy that, well, everyone was a Democrat, this place would be heaven.

[590] Yeah.

[591] And in one hand.

[592] One party countries tend not to work very well.

[593] So yes, what you're articulating there is a yin -yang conception of politics.

[594] And that's very much the one that I hold that each side becomes expert in certain moral intuitions.

[595] They notice certain problems, and they focus on them.

[596] But they tend to be blind to other concerns.

[597] So if your morality is based on care and compassion, you would say, let's help the poor.

[598] Let's help them as much as we can.

[599] Let's make welfare and other benefits available as much as we can.

[600] And America has obviously lagged behind Europe in creating a safety net.

[601] And so it has been, since the time, at Roosevelt, it clearly has been the Democrats in the left that have pushed for expanding the safety net.

[602] And without them, it wouldn't have happened.

[603] So you certainly need a left to be concerned, especially about the downtrod.

[604] And that's what the Democrats traditionally did.

[605] But at the same time, it's very easy to go way too far.

[606] And in the 1960s, the original form of welfare really did go too far in a lot of ways because it disincentivized work and marriage.

[607] And you needed conservatives to say, to scream from the rooftops, if you disincentivize work, you'll get more people not working.

[608] If you disincentivize marriage, you'll get more people not marrying.

[609] And what happened to the black family was that African Americans had very high marriage rates.

[610] They had very stable marriages up until the 1960s.

[611] And then the rate of non -marital birth skyrocketed.

[612] Because in practice, you could be in love with a woman.

[613] You have two kids.

[614] If you get married, the benefits disappear.

[615] And if you stay single, then...

[616] Exactly.

[617] Right?

[618] So that's a very clear incentive.

[619] That's right.

[620] So if the goal is actually to help the poor, and especially the African -American inner city poor, which were obviously victims of Jim Crow laws, of all kinds of racial discrimination.

[621] So if the game was, let's figure out the truth.

[622] And then the other game is let's do what we can to help.

[623] We could have solved the problem much better.

[624] But since everything has politicized, part of the game, was ideology.

[625] It took people like Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who was a sociologist.

[626] He later became a senator, of course, but he was a sociologist commissioned in the Johnson administration to write a report on the black family.

[627] It's a very, very important report in which he wrote about all the problems when marriage disappears.

[628] All the, that you really, really hurt kids.

[629] Kids have much less chance of success if they're raised in an unstable family environment with men cycling through.

[630] And so Moynihan wrote this, and he was savaged.

[631] He was.

[632] He was a persona non grata.

[633] The story is about that time.

[634] Other professors at Harvard wouldn't let their kids play with his kids.

[635] When in fact, 30, 40 years later, finally sociologists began to admit in the 1990s, he was right.

[636] He was absolutely right.

[637] If you really want to help any group in this country, one of the important ways is to stabilize family structures and do what you can to stabilize marriage.

[638] I go into this in detail just to make the point that while the law, left was correct about the need to have welfare policies and to have a safety net, if you just leave it to the left to implement, they're going to implement it in ways that have all kinds of negative policy implications that they're not going to see.

[639] You need the critics.

[640] You need people to disconfirm your presuppositions in order to get a better policy.

[641] But there are things to me as a liberal that are very counterintuitive.

[642] So one of the examples you gave was this experiment where you could put money back into a pool.

[643] And then that would be shared collectively among everyone and then just say what happened in that scenario yeah so um this is a very famous experiment i'm blocking on the authors now maybe there's this fair and gactor i'm trying to remember which one this was i think it was monica and padman so there's a whole series of of experiments done by economists and psychologists called the social coordination or there's or a commons dilemma problems and so the way they generally work is the experimenter gives everybody some money and you can keep your money, or you can put some or all of it into a common pool and the experimental double or triple it.

[644] And so if everybody, suppose there's six people playing the game, if everybody puts in all their money and then they share the pool after the experimenter triples it, everybody is better off.

[645] Each individual is best off putting nothing in and hoping that everybody else puts in.

[646] That's the free rider in biology.

[647] Exactly.

[648] So there's been a lot of experiments on free riding and what it takes to reduce it.

[649] And the one of the most effective ways to reduce it is to allow people to punish.

[650] So if one of your options is you can pay money on the current round to punish whoever cheated or defected in the last round.

[651] The interesting variation is in one of these games, you can choose whether to join a game that allows punishment or to join a game that allows no punishment.

[652] And a lot of people think, wow, I don't want to be punished.

[653] I'll go to the game that is no punishment.

[654] And then you play the game for a while and you quickly realize, oh my God, everyone's cheating.

[655] And then if you give people the option, they often choose to switch over to the game where there is punishment because in those games, everyone's cooperating.

[656] And so this, I take it to be one of the conservative insights that you really have to be vigilant about free riders.

[657] You have to punish cheaters because people are, people will co - It gives them belief in the overall system weird thing.

[658] That's right.

[659] And you have to buy in.

[660] This is, this is, we had a lawyer on who pointed out this.

[661] It's, it was a quote from Adam, John Adams, that was, you can't incarcerate an innocent person in this country.

[662] Because if you do, now we know the whole system's flawed.

[663] And if I can go to jail for doing nothing, then I might as well do something.

[664] Like, it's very counterintuitive in that way as well.

[665] But you have to make everyone know the system works and that people will be punished, as you say, so that they can buy in and do their part.

[666] There's like a certain belief in the system required.

[667] That's right.

[668] I think that there are incredible gains that happen in a democracy, in a diverse democracy such as ours.

[669] If you can basically trust that others are basically playing by the rules, then you'll put forth more effort.

[670] There are just many efficiencies.

[671] I remember reading an article about how in Moscow, when an ambulance siren sounds, nobody gets out of the way because corrupt officials put a siren on their car all the time.

[672] If you hear a siren, there's probably nobody's sick.

[673] It's just some corrupt officials.

[674] So to hell with him.

[675] Yeah, late for happy hour.

[676] Yeah, exactly.

[677] So if people don't trust the system, things descend very quickly.

[678] And so I think this is a very important for us to think about.

[679] As we are experiencing a rapid decline in trust in our institutions and in each other, this is very dangerous for the future of our country.

[680] Now, this is happening all over the world.

[681] It's in part due to social media, making it very easy to expose true corruption, and making it also easy for people to amplify things and to even make up stuff.

[682] So we're all facing problems.

[683] There is a decline in the vigor and health of democracies around the world.

[684] But man, ours is really in trouble.

[685] Yes.

[686] Now, my fear with what I hear my party doing is that they try to explain the other and reduce it down to a single thing.

[687] So it's very popular for people on the left to just say, everyone who voted for Trump's a racist, or everyone's a homophobic, or everyone's xenophobic, or everyone's a misogynist.

[688] Right.

[689] And in doing that, you've just said goodbye to possibly understanding what really is the difference or what really is the solution or what really we can learn or build or better, right?

[690] So there's a danger in us labeling each other.

[691] Would you agree that once we've labeled the other person as this, that, or another thing, it's a permanent condition, it's total contempt.

[692] And then there's nowhere up from there, is there?

[693] That's right.

[694] So an important change in our politics happened possibly in 2004.

[695] It used to be that you won an election by, you got the nomination for president by moving to the extreme.

[696] And then as soon as you won the nomination, you'd move to the middle, because there was a, you know, most Americans are not very extreme.

[697] But gradually the middle has shrunk.

[698] And Carl Rove correctly calculated in 2004 that the middle had shrunk so much that the way you win is by really, angering your base so that, you know, if conservative turnout goes from 60 % to 65%, you win.

[699] And that's why they seized on gay marriage in 2004.

[700] It was a very strategic calculation, and it worked.

[701] So we, around then, is also roughly when we transitioned from what's called positive politics, which is where people vote for the candidate they like to what is now called negative politics, which is people vote against the candidate that they most hate.

[702] And this is very dangerous for us, because it means.

[703] that the election wasn't necessarily.

[704] So people voted for Trump.

[705] Some of them loved him, I'm sure.

[706] But the dominant dynamic was that some people really, really hated Hillary Clinton and some people really, really hated Donald Trump.

[707] And so to understand Trump voters as they must have been motivated by the worst things about Trump and his appeal.

[708] Well, that is just not true.

[709] A lot of people voted against Hillary Clinton.

[710] You know, that was the only way the next morning.

[711] I was having such cognitive dissonance.

[712] I was the one with the mosaic on my face.

[713] I'm like, oh, she's going to win.

[714] X amount.

[715] I mean, it couldn't have been more wrong.

[716] And at the end of it, I thought, how on earth am I going to now explain what happened?

[717] It's just so disjointed from what I thought would happen.

[718] And my explanation was basically exactly what you just said.

[719] It's easier for me to accept that that many people hated Hillary Clinton than it is for me to accept that that many people loved Donald Trump.

[720] Right.

[721] That's how I kind of made peace with that whole thing.

[722] That's right.

[723] The enemy of my enemy is my friend.

[724] A really interesting analysis came from, I think his name is Ivan Krastave.

[725] I think he's Bulgarian by origin, but he writes sometimes to the New York Times.

[726] He had this brilliant column which he talked about why the meritocracy all around the world now in many countries, not just America, why the meritocracy is so destructive, so bad.

[727] And what he pointed out is that since in America and also in a lot of Asian countries, the meritocracy is based on test taking.

[728] So the American elite are those who did really, really well in the SAT.

[729] and then they got into the top school or they did it really well in the MCATs or the GRE or whatever and so if you have this kind of meritocracy which is not based on did you do something amazing did you start an amazing company I mean obviously those things do matter overall but if we have a meritocracy based on test taking it's not just that we have an elite that's like pointy -headed people that people love to hate it's that the people at the top believe they deserved it like of course I deserve to be on the top I got the highest score in the SAT Yes, yes.

[730] So you get this self -satisfied elite that looks down its nose at the less educated, at those in the heartland, at those who don't share its hyper -progressive values, and that basically, you know, the elite in America, in the UK and elsewhere, the elite spends much of its time competing with each other to call more and more people racist.

[731] That's how you get prestige in the cosmopolitan elite is by bashing racist, sexist, homophobic Islamophobes.

[732] And most people don't want to be called that.

[733] And they, many of them vote for Trump or join the all right.

[734] Yes.

[735] And it's very weird.

[736] And I feel like you talked about this on Sam Harris, but there's something unique too about the conversations we would have if this microphone was off.

[737] And then the conversations we have when we know we have an audience.

[738] Because that changes us dramatically, right?

[739] In general, sure.

[740] Yeah.

[741] I mean, I'd like to believe that I would say exactly the same thing to you if this was over a beer.

[742] And of course, I know in some sense that that can't be true.

[743] Yes, but it's necessary, though.

[744] Let's just say that sociologically, it's quite necessary for us to have a public and a private persona.

[745] Absolutely.

[746] Yeah.

[747] It's imperative, right?

[748] I need to be able to talk to my wife about stuff in bed and throw some very dodgy stuff up on the wall and see what sticks.

[749] And she bats me down and I realize I've gone too far.

[750] And if I can't do that there, how on earth am I to find out or to evolve or to perfect or to refine?

[751] And what's gotten very, blurry is this social media platform is neither and yet it dips into both and it's it's confusing right so yeah a lot of sociological theory there's a wonderful book by irving goffman the presentation of self in everyday life and you know so you come to appreciate how much we are programmed to be skillful at behaving in the right way in the right context and we're very concerned about our public presentation of face and so we can be very inauthentic at times but then in private moments we're much more authentic.

[752] Well, I think life is good when there are lots of different environments, different games we're playing, different salons, maybe, you might say, in which we're talking.

[753] And what social media has done, unfortunately, is it's knocked down all the walls so that everything is in a sense behavior in public.

[754] And this is not so much true for people, you know, all right, I guess I'm older than you, but you're, but for, I'm 54, but I'm right behind you.

[755] Okay.

[756] But for people, you know, for young people.

[757] So, and this is why Jen's, you know, Z, or Igen, kids born in 1995 and after, they have only known growing up with social media.

[758] And so if most of your social life is such that one slip, one word, and you can be shamed with no end, this really, it deprives you of the opportunity to throw things at the wall and see if they stick.

[759] Yeah, if I had to stand by every idea I had at 18 years old, there's no way.

[760] You know, I've learned so much, thank God, in 30, you know, whatever.

[761] years.

[762] Yet, there would be a historical record in writing had I been born in 1995 because I would have written it and it exists.

[763] And I have to imagine it disincentivizes anyone with a kind of progressive thought, you know, the stakes are just so high.

[764] Are we not, you know, that aren't we killing what could be probably great ideas or solutions?

[765] Because it's just who wants to stick their neck out?

[766] Exactly.

[767] So people learn best by feedback.

[768] People learn best by trying something and either it succeeds or it fails.

[769] We learn faster when it fails.

[770] We learn faster from negative, you know, you burn your hand once on a stove and you learn not to touch the stove without gently checking whether it was just on.

[771] And again, that's biochemical evolution.

[772] Oxytocin is 10 times as strong as dopamine.

[773] So if you eat a poisonous apple, you better fucking remember that was poisonous versus a yummy strawberry.

[774] There's a whole, system upstairs to govern that.

[775] This is behaviorism.

[776] This is learning theory.

[777] This is Pavlov and Watson and all the classic psychologists.

[778] So kids need a lot of negative feedback.

[779] They need to try things and then they fail or they get hurt and then they learn often in a single trial.

[780] And so if you think about behavior in school and if you can try things and you get feedback and then you don't do it again, what you learned.

[781] But if you try something and then the feedback is that you're destroyed socially, what does it do to you?

[782] It means you're not going to try much stuff.

[783] You're going to be very careful.

[784] Ever again, probably.

[785] Ever again.

[786] Well, yeah.

[787] If you talk to college professors now, and maybe it's happening in high school too, college professors about what's going on in seminar classes and a lot of them tell me, I can't get discussion going anymore.

[788] I mean, if it's about some that nobody cares about, they'll talk.

[789] But if it has anything to do with race, gender, politics, you know, nobody dares to disagree with the party line.

[790] Well, I have a question or a thought, because I fully agree with all of this.

[791] panic being over the top and exaggerated.

[792] But I guess my only issue is I feel like we're telling that group that you're being too sensitive, which I think they are, but we're telling one group you're being too sensitive.

[793] And then we take this group of conservative white men who are, you know, voting for Trump and who feel not heard or not this or being, we're calling them racist and they don't like it.

[794] We're saying we need to be more sensitive to those people, but we have to tell this other marginalized group that they're acting too sensitive.

[795] And to me, it's like, well, it needs to be a little more.

[796] I have an answer for that.

[797] Mine, quite simply, is no one on the rights listening to me. There's no way I can enact self -improvement on the right, because I'm not in that group.

[798] But I hope I have enough trust within the liberal community that they might listen to me. And I also think in my own life experience, I am the only variable in every equation that I can alter.

[799] I can't alter how Jonathan's going to react to anything.

[800] I can only adjust my own behavior.

[801] So I'm trying to fix my side or as much as I can be self -reflective and think how we can improve.

[802] I like to think I'm speaking for academia.

[803] I worship it.

[804] You know, I think it's one of the greatest things for us humans to have created.

[805] So I'm trying to protect something I love.

[806] I don't think I could influence someone on the right who's not even listening to me. By the way, liberals, no one on the right is listening to you.

[807] They're only listening to themselves and we're only listening to ourselves.

[808] So it's such wasted talk, in my opinion.

[809] So I'm trying to clean up my side of the street.

[810] I pray there's people on the right that are trying to clean up their side of the street.

[811] And that would be my defense for why I'm critical of my side and not the other.

[812] But I think Monica's pointing out that I'm talking about how we should structure our universities and also by extension our companies and any kind of group.

[813] And so I think Monica's right to say, you know, John, are you saying that one side has to suck it up and stop being so sensitive?

[814] That's a very fair question.

[815] And if that's what I was saying, yeah, I'd be embarrassed to say that.

[816] And while conceivably it would still be good advice, it certainly is kind of offensive and I don't think it's good advice.

[817] So I think about it very differently.

[818] As we are trying to increase diversity and in every organization I'm in, we're trying to increase diversity.

[819] this always is going to increase the risk of misunderstandings and conflicts, always.

[820] So what are we going to do?

[821] We have to do two things at the same time.

[822] We all have to learn to give less offense.

[823] And we're doing this.

[824] I think about the kinds of jokes, like when I was in college in the 80s, nobody made race jokes.

[825] I mean, that was totally taboo by then.

[826] But gay jokes, sure, you could make gay jokes.

[827] And that's what it was in the 80s.

[828] And then by the 90s or 2000s, you know, in prestigious.

[829] or elite colleges, or maybe everywhere, I don't know.

[830] You know, then gay jokes were out.

[831] So there is social progress.

[832] People get shamed for making these jokes.

[833] In other words, people have to learn to be more, to be less offensive, to be more sensitive.

[834] And that's been happening steadily.

[835] And perhaps that's mostly advice to the white men.

[836] I don't know.

[837] So we do have to educate incoming classes about what's a kind of a question, which even if it isn't badly intentioned, ends up being annoying.

[838] you know, Asian students who are asked over and over and over again, where are you from?

[839] No, where are you really from?

[840] Like, okay, don't do that.

[841] And you gave the example, yeah, like a lot of black students will complain about people touch their hair.

[842] Exactly.

[843] So we've got to teach people to give less offense.

[844] And that's mostly going to be, if you want to put it in the language of privilege, fine.

[845] That's going to be mostly talking to the more privileged groups.

[846] But at the same time, suppose we do that.

[847] And suppose we are over the decades, we've been actually quite successful at that.

[848] Not perfect, but we're making a lot of progress.

[849] At the same time, suppose we steadily shift the goalposts, that what counts as offensive, we keep moving that.

[850] And suppose we move the goalposts even faster than we make progress.

[851] Suppose we start saying, all right, there's no more violence, like physical violence, and people aren't using, you know, people are hardly ever using, you know, racial pejoratives.

[852] Yeah.

[853] I mean, you hardly ever hear such words anymore.

[854] Let's focus on microaggressions.

[855] let's define what is offensive at a lower and lower level.

[856] It's possible then that we can make progress decade after decade, and I think we have on every front, and you think about how quickly gay rights came in, gay marriage, and then from, you know, hardly anyone was thinking about transgender issues seven or eight years ago.

[857] So the progress, by any objective sense, the progress is extraordinary.

[858] But at the same time, if we keep moving the goalposts, and teaching students to be more and more sensitive, we might actually be hurting everyone.

[859] So this is what I'm saying, that we have to deal with all the problems at the same time.

[860] We have to have a sense that this is a common project, that if you want diversity, then you have to teach people to be more forgiving, to judge by intent, not by impact alone.

[861] The common idea now on campus is intent does not matter, it's only impact.

[862] And that's our second grade on truth, is always trust your feelings.

[863] And we then try to teach students to find harm, to find offense at things that would not have offended people a few years ago, that were not malintentioned.

[864] So I'm saying that if we want to do the diversity project, we have to think very carefully about it.

[865] And a lot of the things we do as part of the diversity project are making things worse, especially for those in historically marginalized groups.

[866] Well, and intentions are very, very relevant.

[867] And you make a great example.

[868] Just take getting bumped into on the street.

[869] Now, if it was an accident, there is no moral implication.

[870] The person went out of their way to shove you.

[871] There's a huge moral implication.

[872] And so this is crucial for understanding the concept of microaggressions.

[873] The concept is if you just think about the idea of a microaggression, you might think it's a perfectly legitimate concept that you can have aggression.

[874] You could, you know, somebody could yell a racial slur, somebody could yell an insult.

[875] That's aggressive.

[876] It's verbal.

[877] It's not physical, but it's aggression.

[878] And so it might be useful to have a concept of small aggressions, microaggression.

[879] Somebody says something subtle.

[880] It's a little dig that they can deny.

[881] So it could be a useful concept.

[882] The problem is that when it was defined in a paper by Daryl Wing Sue, the professor at Teachers College, he specifically defined it in such a way that intention is not necessary, that it doesn't matter what was intended.

[883] What matters is what was felt.

[884] He said that racial microaggressions can even be unintentional.

[885] In fact, they can even result from efforts to be helpful or nice.

[886] So a lot of mischief, a lot of problems come about by calling such events aggression.

[887] If he had simply called them faux pa or clumsy gestures, there are all kinds of things that people can do that are well -meaning that end up being annoying to members of various groups.

[888] It's great to educate members of a new community about those things.

[889] 100%.

[890] But if you call them aggression.

[891] So imagine, imagine being an Asian student.

[892] Imagine you were born in America.

[893] Your parents came from China.

[894] So far, until now, Asians have been moving up, you know, as fast as Jews ever did.

[895] Asian immigrants come to America.

[896] They have incredibly high rates of marriage.

[897] Their families are very focused on achievement.

[898] So the Asians said, my wife is Korean.

[899] You know, her family story, it's different from my family story, but the Korean experience in America is very similar to the Jewish experience in a lot of ways.

[900] So very rapid progress.

[901] Imagine that you tell Asian American.

[902] to perceive the environment around them as full of not just aggression, but violence.

[903] Words are violence.

[904] Everyone, you know, you are a member of a marginalized group.

[905] What a good way to block their progress.

[906] What a good way to prevent them from throwing themselves into things.

[907] What a good way to prevent them from forming friendships.

[908] And what a good way to make them see the world is threatening.

[909] So this is what we mean by saying our subtitle, how good intentions and bad ideas are setting up a generation for failure.

[910] So much of what we do to make progress on issues of identity ends up, I believe, ends up harming the very students we're trying to help.

[911] Well, and also, doesn't it give victimhood itself some prestige?

[912] Isn't it, isn't it incentivized to be at the center to be the victim of one of these atrocities?

[913] That's right.

[914] That's the clearest way of identifying what's wrong here.

[915] everybody is engaged in the search for prestige.

[916] Everybody wants to understand.

[917] I want it, yeah.

[918] We all want it.

[919] And so if you look at any system and you think, what do people do to get prestige in that system?

[920] And that's why we in New York love to look down on you in L .A. Because we think you guys are also obsessed with beauty and fame, you think that's it.

[921] And of course, you can then look down on us because you probably think, you know, with our Wall Street culture, all we care about is money.

[922] I don't know.

[923] What is it that you hate about us?

[924] Every time someone from New York starts telling me why L .A. sucks.

[925] I always tell them the same thing.

[926] Which is true.

[927] We love New York.

[928] You guys are in a one -sided fight.

[929] You guys, it's like LA versus New York.

[930] Not for us.

[931] We love New York.

[932] We love going there.

[933] We love all New Yorkers.

[934] It's all you guys.

[935] So that leads me to believe we're triggering some inferiority complex.

[936] It's probably the fucking weather.

[937] I don't know what it is, but we are not in a war with you.

[938] You have better weather and more beautiful people.

[939] And we even have it intra -state where the northern California is fighting, but we're not fighting with them.

[940] We love San Francisco.

[941] You guys are all so mellow and well.

[942] adjusted.

[943] No, we dig it.

[944] Yeah.

[945] It's like, oh, okay, why do we suck?

[946] Oh, our pizza sucks.

[947] Oh, cool, whatever.

[948] Yeah, I love your pizza.

[949] So if you imagine that teenagers or college students are competing based on who's more successful.

[950] Well, if you're in such an economy, you'll be more successful.

[951] Imagine they're competing on who's a better athlete.

[952] Well, people will throw themselves into athletics.

[953] If you imagine them competing on who is more victimized, on who can tell a better story about how they've been victimized by the system, by the man, by oppressive power structures.

[954] If that's what you're incentivizing, then people will go for that.

[955] And boy, is that a good way to set them up for failure.

[956] If you want, America's a wide open society compared to Europe, compared to other places, the upside is unlimited.

[957] This is what European immigrants tell us.

[958] This is what young people in Europe tell us.

[959] If you really want to be successful, you have to go to America.

[960] Now, I don't know if that's still true in the last couple years.

[961] Things are changing here.

[962] But The larger point is just that in a really threatening closed environment, it is often adaptive to be defensive, to be paranoid.

[963] But in a wide open society with unlimited upside, it really doesn't pay to be paranoid.

[964] It pays to take chances, put yourself out there, try, try again.

[965] If you fall down, try again.

[966] And what we're doing in a victimhood culture is we are teaching students to not do that.

[967] Well, and what I'm nervous for them in is that while it may be incentive, on Twitter and Facebook and your college campus, going to General Motors as an engineer and being the biggest victim there, that is not going to get you promoted.

[968] It's not going to result in more money or anything you would want, more opportunity.

[969] No one wants to work with the person who is a perpetual victim.

[970] That's right.

[971] And I hear this.

[972] So I teach in a business school.

[973] So I hear business leaders and executives saying this now, like they read about and they hear about what's happening on college campus and they say, who would want to employ such a person?

[974] and now it's beginning to happen.

[975] So the campus culture really kind of broke out in 2015.

[976] At the time, people said when Greg Lukianoff and I published our article in the Atlantic, a lot of people said, oh, that's just college students, you know, being, you know, they're being political, they're being whatever.

[977] As soon as they join the real world, they're going to have to give that up and get to work.

[978] Well, it turns out that in industries that hire from elite schools, They're hiring a lot of elite college students.

[979] So just in the last year, I'm hearing from journalists and people in tech, that this victimhood culture, this safety culture, this idea that people are fragile and that the boss has to protect them from each other, has to protect them from people writing a memo that is so threatening to me that it is essentially violence against me. This culture is creeping in rapidly, and if anyone stands up to it, they will be called out for being insensitive.

[980] So I am concerned that this victimhood -based safetyism culture is creeping out into certain areas of corporate life.

[981] And I think ultimately it's going to sap the vitality and the creativity of those industries.

[982] Now let me ask you this.

[983] This is going to be very provocative.

[984] Part of me wants to zoom way, way out, you know, outside of our atmosphere and recognize perhaps, let's take vaccines as an example.

[985] Vaccines end up being a victim of their own.

[986] success, right?

[987] So anyone that grew up when my grandparents did saw the effects of polio.

[988] It was everywhere.

[989] I don't know what that.

[990] There's 30 % of people had polio.

[991] Something outrageous, right?

[992] So there were many kids at your school on crutches and whatnot.

[993] So you saw it firsthand.

[994] Now we get this polio vaccine and it works like crazy.

[995] It's so effective.

[996] It works.

[997] Now you have people in Oregon who've never seen polio.

[998] And now they're evaluating something they've never seen against the notion of putting something foreign in their baby's body and it becomes a hard decision for them to make solely based on how great this vaccine worked.

[999] I just want to question, this may be too taboo, but don't young people just need something?

[1000] And is it maybe in place of that there isn't a Vietnam war to protest or that there isn't?

[1001] You know, like as we get better, because I am of Stephen Pinker, I believe, and I had a great anthropology teacher that said, you know what, just zoom out and look how long we've been here and look how much we've accomplished.

[1002] This is a new experiment.

[1003] Civilization, it's so new.

[1004] And look where we were at.

[1005] Even in our own country, you had ferry boat captains smashing into each other and killing all the passengers.

[1006] I mean, that's the shit that was happening 200 years ago.

[1007] So we've made this incredible progress.

[1008] Now, as we get closer and closer to an even more utopian existence, we're not going to unplug the wiring that wants us to prove ourselves to our tribe and to fight for something and to stand for something.

[1009] And when we have nothing to stand for, what happens then?

[1010] Is that too big of a question or does that cross your mind?

[1011] Yeah, no, I think it draws to get a few different trend.

[1012] I'm not trivializing the things that they care about currently younger people, but it does beg the question.

[1013] So Greg and I talk, we opened the book up with a discussion of problems of progress, is a useful term.

[1014] So, you know, as we solve one problem, we then focus on smaller and smaller problems.

[1015] And so in one sense, that's progress.

[1016] In another sense, we're kind of neurotic, over -concerned focus on little things.

[1017] Our grandparents, our great -grandparents, had much less comfortable physical environments.

[1018] In a lot of ways, we're spoiled.

[1019] We, you know, we couldn't, you know, it would be hard for us even to survive in houses from the 19th century that lacked...

[1020] If I had to use an out -house, I don't know.

[1021] I might end it.

[1022] So one kind of progress that we've made is as we get wealthier and safer, and as technology has made it possible to have a family without a woman spending her entire life doing laundry and cooking.

[1023] As women enter the workforce, we have smaller and smaller families.

[1024] And in many ways, this is good.

[1025] It's certainly good for the planet in terms of, you know, it's unsustainable for everybody to have five kids.

[1026] So it's progress to have smaller families.

[1027] But then what happens is we invest far more in each child and we worry a lot more.

[1028] If you have one child, you're really overprotective.

[1029] You know, if you have five, I mean, I don't want to quite say, you know, what the hell you lose one or two.

[1030] I don't to be insensitive in that way.

[1031] But that was more of the ethos.

[1032] One child, you overprotect them.

[1033] If you just read history, we've just till recently had any president who hadn't lost a kid or two.

[1034] Like you look at President Lincoln, like they're dealing with having lost a son while they're going through all that other stuff.

[1035] I mean, that was commonplace to lose a child.

[1036] That's right.

[1037] So obviously this is gigantic progress that we've gotten infant mortality down.

[1038] The accident rate for kids is way down.

[1039] We have safer consumer products.

[1040] Our cars are safe.

[1041] This is all good.

[1042] But an unforeseen side effect of it is that it's easier to accept the idea that we should protect our kids from all bad experiences, that our playgrounds should be perfectly safe.

[1043] And what we're just beginning to realize in the last couple of year is that there's such a thing as risk deprivation syndrome.

[1044] And the idea here is that adults have learned to navigate through the world and judge risk for themselves.

[1045] And so we can judge whether to cross the street, we can judge whether to start of business.

[1046] We can judge all sorts of things.

[1047] But we only can judge that because we were allowed to take risk on for ourselves when we were kids.

[1048] Maybe there's a tree and you decide to climb the tree.

[1049] And at one point, you're scared out of your mind because you realize, oh my God, how am I going to get down?

[1050] Or maybe this branch will break.

[1051] And it almost never does break.

[1052] But you do something scary.

[1053] You go too far and you discover your limits.

[1054] Well, what began to happen in the 1980s and 90s, especially in America, where we had a litigation, a liability crisis, and everybody, you know, was at risk of being sued.

[1055] And so schools had to get rid of anything that could be at all dangerous.

[1056] Go buy long darts.

[1057] That's right.

[1058] That's right.

[1059] And so playgrounds became incredibly safe.

[1060] Childs play became incredibly safe.

[1061] And also it became very heavily supervised.

[1062] So once kids always have a safety net, once there's always an adult who will tell them, they don't learn to judge for themselves.

[1063] And so in Britain, where they're having a lot of the same problems as us, in Britain, they have actually begun introducing risk to playgrounds.

[1064] There's a wonderful playground on Governor's Island.

[1065] So in New York City, there's Governor's Island, is a little island just south of Wall Street.

[1066] And there's what's called the Junkyard Playground.

[1067] And I had to sign all kinds, like a five -page liability waiver to let my kids onto it.

[1068] But they have construction material.

[1069] They have hammers and nails.

[1070] And I watch, and they have all kinds of signs on the fence.

[1071] telling the parents stop supervising, just let your kids play.

[1072] Yeah.

[1073] And I watched as some, it looked like they were about 10 or 11 years old, some boys, they were pounding nails.

[1074] There's like, you know, nails and lumber.

[1075] And they're hammers.

[1076] And I don't know if they have saws, they have hammers.

[1077] And I watched as a kid pounded a nail.

[1078] He was pounding, pounding, pounding.

[1079] And then I could see him.

[1080] He obviously hit his thumb.

[1081] Sure.

[1082] And he pulled his thumb and he shakes it out.

[1083] It's inevitable.

[1084] And you might think, oh my God, is he okay?

[1085] He hit his thumb.

[1086] And what does the kid do?

[1087] He shakes at his thumb.

[1088] and he goes back to pounding.

[1089] Yeah.

[1090] And then he hits it again.

[1091] And he shakes it out.

[1092] And he goes back to pounding.

[1093] And then he doesn't hit it again.

[1094] Yeah.

[1095] Eventually, he gets good at hammering.

[1096] That's right.

[1097] My son has no idea how to hammer nails.

[1098] Now I live in an apartment.

[1099] I do own a hammer, but I have no lumber.

[1100] Sure.

[1101] The point is in Britain, they've begun to realize that kids need small risks.

[1102] And if you watch kids play, you know, when kids learn to skateboard, what do they do?

[1103] Just go down the hill all the time?

[1104] No, they start going down the staircase.

[1105] Yeah.

[1106] The railings.

[1107] The kids need risk.

[1108] Not risk that they're going to fall off the 13th floor and do.

[1109] but risk that they're going to fall off a fence and bang their head.

[1110] Yes, they need risk, and we've deprived them of it.

[1111] This might be one reason why the anxiety, depression, and suicide rates are going up so quickly.

[1112] Well, because kids have not learned any coping skills under the helicopter paradigm, right?

[1113] That's right.

[1114] And I think Dr. Drew makes a great point, too, is like all these parents are shocked, their kids go away to college, and they're immediately addicted to benzos and opiates.

[1115] And it's like, well, what did you think?

[1116] You didn't give them a single tool in the toolbox to deal with the deal with this.

[1117] disappointment and heartbreak.

[1118] That's right.

[1119] The job of a parent.

[1120] It's too painful if you wait till 20 to do it.

[1121] Exactly.

[1122] The job of a parent is to work him or herself out of a job.

[1123] And that's the way my parents looked at it.

[1124] You know, they said when you go off to college, we'll pay for college.

[1125] And that's it.

[1126] You're on your own.

[1127] And I, you know, I learned how to travel by myself.

[1128] But now, for a lot of reasons, parents stay in very close touch all the way through college.

[1129] So a thought experiment that I like to do is, you know, ask people, we just decided that, you know, reading, there are some risks to reading.

[1130] You might read something upsetting.

[1131] So what if we said, no reading until you're 15.

[1132] Nobody gets to read to their 15, and then you can start reading because you're old enough.

[1133] Do we think that there might be any lasting damage?

[1134] Do we think that kids might end up as adults being less good as readers?

[1135] And of course, the answer is yes.

[1136] Okay.

[1137] If you believe that, then what if we don't let kids have any true independence till they're 15.

[1138] What if we say, you can't walk seven blocks to a store and buy something and come home?

[1139] You can't go out with your friends and hang out by the river, throwing rocks in the river.

[1140] You can't do that until you're 14 or 15.

[1141] And now you're old enough, now you can do that.

[1142] Do we think that there might be any lasting hit to their ability to live independently out in the world?

[1143] Of course.

[1144] Of course there is.

[1145] You look at every kid's story practically.

[1146] It involves kids between the age of eight and 12, leaving the protection of parents and flying off on a magical turtle to a land of rainbows and fire, whatever.

[1147] You know, there's always some, some adventure.

[1148] Walking through a wardrobe.

[1149] Yeah, exactly.

[1150] That's right.

[1151] You know, I'm reading these stories with my kids, and I'm thinking, my God, my kids have never had an adventure.

[1152] Well, and you read a great book written by a woman, what was it called?

[1153] The North Skenazi Free Range Kids.

[1154] There you go.

[1155] That's the book.

[1156] And she didn't, she famously, I learned this from you, but apparently it caused a big uproar.

[1157] She let her nine -year -old or something ride the subway and people thought it was child abuse.

[1158] That's right.

[1159] Yeah, in 2009.

[1160] So the crime, the crime rate had already plummeted in New York.

[1161] New York is now as safe as it was when my parents were growing up in the 30s, the 1930s.

[1162] And my parents would ride the subway at the age of, you know, 9, 10.

[1163] They would go all over the city.

[1164] Just as me and my friends rode our bicycle all over, all over our town, beginning of the age of 8.

[1165] Kids at the 8, I studied street kids for a while.

[1166] All over the world, the street kid phenomenon starts at age 8.

[1167] A six -year -old, if you have a bunch of six -year -olds, they can't survive on their own.

[1168] If a bunch of eight -year -olds, they can steal food, run from the cops, find a place to sleep at night.

[1169] Eight -year -olds are ready to explore the world.

[1170] And they always did explore the world until the 1990s.

[1171] We stopped them from exploring the world.

[1172] Later on, and of course, video - Ironically, when it got safe enough to really love you, yes.

[1173] That's right.

[1174] Just as the crime was plummeting, we had a huge crime wave beginning in the 60s, and it ended in the 90s.

[1175] And just as ending, we cracked down on kids.

[1176] Now, I need to find out when were the first stories of parents being arrested because their kids were caught playing in a park.

[1177] That began happening in the early, you know, early 2008, 2010, we started hearing stories.

[1178] I don't know whether it was happening in the 90s, but by 2010, those kinds of stories were getting more common.

[1179] So now parents are really afraid to let their kids out because they could be arrested.

[1180] We have these pandemic freakouts, right?

[1181] That's right.

[1182] Yeah.

[1183] I learned this in Anthro.

[1184] I had a witchcraft class.

[1185] and the teacher said, you know that there's never ever been someone who put razor blades in the Halloween candy.

[1186] It's never, ever happened.

[1187] That's right.

[1188] I was like, no, wait, that's impossible.

[1189] Not what happened in my town.

[1190] And you have fire departments scanning x -raying candy all across the country, the power of that.

[1191] Exactly.

[1192] So one of the, when we try to explain why did the culture on campus change so rapidly around 2015, where did this idea is that we're fragile, the world is dangerous, we have to be protected from books and ideas.

[1193] Where did this come from?

[1194] So we have a whole chapter on what we call paranoid parenting.

[1195] And again, this happened to us in the 80s and 90s, in part because of cable TV and all sorts of other things.

[1196] For any listeners who remember the Michael Moore movie Bowling for Columbine, great.

[1197] He documents how, or he argues at least, that part of the American freak out is that we've been exposed constantly to news stories about crime, whereas in Canada they're much calmer, they're not as afraid.

[1198] They often leave their doors unlocked.

[1199] At least when they're home, Why lock your door if you're home?

[1200] But Americans generally wouldn't do that.

[1201] So as the media environment changes, it puts in our faces stories of risk that are vastly out of proportion to reality, but it sells.

[1202] And so back to your point about how our brains are adapted for the environment of evolutionary adaptation.

[1203] We don't live in that environment anymore.

[1204] It makes sense to be on a hair trigger and to learn about new kinds of danger if there's a new kind of predator in your environment.

[1205] But we live in an incredibly safe times.

[1206] And I think it's really tragic when I think about what it was like growing up in the 70s when we'd be out, you know, exploring, we'd be out somewhere.

[1207] And if you got lost, you would ask someone for help.

[1208] You had no choice.

[1209] You didn't have a cell phone or Uber.

[1210] That's right.

[1211] Strangers used to be useful.

[1212] Yes, yes.

[1213] And so you had to cultivate the skill of talking to a stranger.

[1214] Excuse me, sir, which way is Bright Avenue or, you know, or, you know, in extreme, you know, excuse me, can I use your phone to call my mother?

[1215] Yeah.

[1216] And nobody would do that today because kids are taught, stranger danger.

[1217] And they often have cell phones with us.

[1218] You don't need strangers.

[1219] So the point is kids nowadays, I believe, are much more fearful of strangers.

[1220] The world seems more threatening, even though it's much safer.

[1221] And this is part of the reason that we see one of the contributors to why we see people freaking out about the world being dangerous when it isn't really.

[1222] So you've implemented a little bit of this in your own, right?

[1223] Yeah.

[1224] So your own son, you will send to the store?

[1225] Yeah.

[1226] So in part because I read Lenora Skenezi's book Free Range Kids, it's a wonderful book.

[1227] I recommend it to everybody who has kids.

[1228] And because she lives in New York and I've been working with her.

[1229] And we started an organization.

[1230] She runs it called Let Grow.

[1231] I urge everybody to go to let grow .org.

[1232] So I've tried to encourage my kids to go outside.

[1233] And it's difficult because they say there's no one else out there without a parent.

[1234] But now I live right on Washington Square Park.

[1235] It's a beautiful park in New York City.

[1236] And there are two or there are three playgrounds in it.

[1237] And my daughter who, you know, she actually started reading, she's eight, she actually started reading free range kids.

[1238] She loves to, she's very independent mind and she's, that's part of her identity.

[1239] She's very proud of that.

[1240] She's really taken it upon herself to just go out into the park and play.

[1241] And even though all the other kids out to have a parent nearby, there are at least kids for her to play with at the playgrounds.

[1242] And my hope is, and as I tore around with this book, I'm trying to encourage this, is that everyone who is a parent, everybody out there listening, If you have kids between the ages of, let's say, six and 12, go to letgrow .org, find other parents in your neighborhood, find a place, designate a place.

[1243] It might be in a park or a playground or it might be somebody's backyard.

[1244] Maybe it's just, let's call it free -range Fridays.

[1245] Maybe you and some other, you know, the parents of your kids' friends, you agree to have free -range Fridays.

[1246] No piano lessons, no soccer lessons.

[1247] On Fridays, the kids hang out at such and such a place or in somebody's backyard.

[1248] And it's very important that they not be supervised.

[1249] So there can be an adult nearby.

[1250] If there's a problem, they can go get them.

[1251] But it's very important that the kids decide what to do.

[1252] No adult is there saying, oh, don't do that.

[1253] You have to let them try out some small risks.

[1254] And it's scary.

[1255] It is scary.

[1256] But what's the alternative?

[1257] A kid who is more prone to depression, anxiety, and suicide, and who goes off to college, you get him into college, and then he or she flanders and fails.

[1258] So if you keep that, the stakes are pretty high.

[1259] Yeah, that's right.

[1260] And in your own experience, did you take baby steps?

[1261] Like the first time you let your son go to the store across the street, I imagine you stared out the window.

[1262] So with each kid, when they first went out on their solo missions, I actually followed them from a distance.

[1263] Sure, sure.

[1264] Because ever since I heard you say this, I've been kind of plotting how I'm going to do this with my five and a half year old because she is incredibly competent.

[1265] I could actually just tell her to go to school and she'd pack her lunch and do it.

[1266] Like I know she can.

[1267] But I have been thinking of like, okay, I got to tail her in a way.

[1268] She has no idea.

[1269] Yeah.

[1270] So you can do that.

[1271] That's mostly for your benefit the first time.

[1272] Now, with my daughter, she has no sense of direction whatsoever.

[1273] So I've been trying to get her to get to the point where she can walk from our apartment in the northwest corner of the park to my office in the southeast corner.

[1274] And we did the big, you know, the big experiment two months ago.

[1275] She was going to do it.

[1276] And she didn't show up.

[1277] And because she has no sense of direction.

[1278] So she went down the wrong street and then she was crying.

[1279] But she did at least make it back home.

[1280] Oh, wow.

[1281] So that one failed.

[1282] Sure.

[1283] Well, but more did it.

[1284] That's right.

[1285] That's right.

[1286] How did she get?

[1287] Did she ask a stranger?

[1288] No, she will never ask a stranger.

[1289] I'm working with her on this.

[1290] She's too shy.

[1291] Okay.

[1292] And so she wants to walk to school by herself and I say, no way, until you can walk around our neighborhood and ask a stranger to call me until you pass that test, I'm not letting you walk to school.

[1293] Yeah.

[1294] And she's too, she doesn't want to do that.

[1295] But it's not that she's afraid of risk.

[1296] It's that she's shy socially.

[1297] And I'm going to, I'm going to negate everything I said about the white male right now and just say that I tell my own kids to go find a woman.

[1298] I say to go find a woman and ask for help.

[1299] I trust them way more.

[1300] That's right.

[1301] That's right.

[1302] Yeah, certainly in terms of sexual abuse.

[1303] They're not a lot of women out there sexually abusing anybody.

[1304] They're not shooting up places.

[1305] They're not sexually.

[1306] They're nicer in a lot of ways.

[1307] So I just want to ask you one last question.

[1308] I'm curious, do you ask yourself like epistemologically, what about your personal story?

[1309] I've heard you talk a million times.

[1310] I know nothing about your personal story.

[1311] What is it about your childhood that led you to this?

[1312] Have you even asked yourself why you would even want?

[1313] What riddle are you trying to solve?

[1314] So, no, a couple of things.

[1315] I mean, so first let's start by saying whatever explanations we give of our own behavior.

[1316] We have no real privileged access.

[1317] I'm going to make up a story.

[1318] It's not more reliable than any story that, you know, you could make up about me if you knew a little bit more about me. But I'm happy to speculate.

[1319] It's always fun to do.

[1320] So one thing, there was a wonderful show.

[1321] What's His Name?

[1322] the hero with a thousand faces, Joseph Campbell, a man who studied mythology.

[1323] And I watched his series on PBS in the 1990s, and he said, figure out what mythological character you are.

[1324] If you were a character in a myth, what would it be?

[1325] And for me, it was really clear.

[1326] It was the explorer.

[1327] I didn't want to be the king or the magician or the, you know, I wanted to be the explorer.

[1328] I've always been very high on openness to experience, curiosity.

[1329] I love being a professor.

[1330] I love being a social scientist.

[1331] So I'm really, really motivated to know and learn not to have power.

[1332] That's one thing.

[1333] Another, and this is, again, very speculative.

[1334] But can I ask you a quick question?

[1335] Sure.

[1336] What is it about exploration?

[1337] Do you think was the medicine you needed?

[1338] Was there, did you feel a bored in your town?

[1339] Did you feel?

[1340] No, it's just, you know, temperament is very heritable.

[1341] So if I had an identical to him, he would probably be very much like me. You know, he'd probably be a bad athlete who, you know, was, so I've just, that's always been my thing is I just, I just, I just love to learn.

[1342] So I have the perfect job.

[1343] for me. Another thing is that I'm the middle child, and my older and younger sisters have never ever ganged up on me. They never really got along, and so I was always very good at both siding with one or the other, but also at mediating.

[1344] It was very good at seeing both sides of a story and media.

[1345] That might be relevant.

[1346] I don't know.

[1347] But I think the real moment, what really led me down the path to all the work I'm doing now, is that I set out to write a book to help the Democrats win.

[1348] I set out to use moral psychology to help my side win.

[1349] And because I did that, I committed to understanding conservatives on their own terms and in their own language, just as I had done in India trying to understand traditional Hindu morality.

[1350] And so because my professional work was to understand morality and I committed to understanding conservative morality and then later libertarian morality, I think I was able to really see the value in multiple perspectives.

[1351] I was able to really see just how limited every team is.

[1352] And that is what allowed me to step out and say I'm not on any team.

[1353] And I think as a social scientist, it's been really good for me. I feel as though I'm a better social scientist now that I'm not trying to help one side win.

[1354] I love some of your thought experiments you've given, though, about morality and the things we think are, you know, we know in our gut it's wrong to sleep with your sister on vacation, but we can't really explain why other than just in our gut we do.

[1355] Like, I love all those things.

[1356] Anyway, such a pleasure to talk to you.

[1357] Your book, which you don't like the title, you were given the title.

[1358] The codling of the American eye.

[1359] Yeah, that's the part you don't like.

[1360] It's catchy and we could not come up with a better one, even though we didn't like the, yeah.

[1361] It's provocative, I like it.

[1362] It implies we need to fix this immediately or we're going to perish somehow in a big fire.

[1363] But Jonathan Haidt, it's a real honor to have you here.

[1364] I hope you'll come back when you write your next book.

[1365] I'm sure you're not done right.

[1366] Yeah.

[1367] If I could just put in a closing plug for the book.

[1368] Please do.

[1369] Because so many of these problems are social coordination problems.

[1370] That is, a lot of the problems young people are having are not ones that you can solve by yourself or that a parent can solve by him or herself.

[1371] We have to get schools working better to give kids more freedom, more autonomy, more self -governance.

[1372] So my closing request is if you're listening to this, okay, this will sound like a blatant plug, but give a copy of the book, the coddling the American mind.

[1373] Give it to the principle of your school.

[1374] or if you're in a university, if you're a student, give it to anybody in administration, we have to get a common vocabulary for talking about these problems and for reforming social systems to be better suited to children's developmental needs.

[1375] Yeah.

[1376] So that's my closing place.

[1377] And we also probably need an agreed upon approach to dealing with, because quite often people do need to get fired.

[1378] There are racist working among us and they probably shouldn't hold positions of educating students.

[1379] And there are many different variables and how we should deal with it.

[1380] But there's no course of action, right?

[1381] It's just per each university, some people are firing people.

[1382] I think you applaud University of Chicago.

[1383] Don't you like how they deal with?

[1384] Well, yeah, the key thing about the University of Chicago is they have a statement saying, the university provides a platform on which people, and which the members of the community are free to air their views, the university does not take sides.

[1385] and it is committed to vigorous intellectual debate.

[1386] Even if someone says something promotes an idea that others find offensive, it's up to the rest of the community to argue it down, not to shut it down.

[1387] Okay.

[1388] Well, I like that.

[1389] Jonathan Haid, thank you so much for coming, and I hope I get to talk to you again.

[1390] My pleasure, Dax.

[1391] I'd love to talk to you again, too.

[1392] And now my favorite part of the show, the fact check with my soulmate Monica Padman.

[1393] My anacana don't want none unless you got facts.

[1394] You can do side bends or sit -ups, but please don't lose those facts.

[1395] Baby got facts.

[1396] That was great.

[1397] I'm a little worried we did that before.

[1398] Oh, Rob said no. I love it.

[1399] Do you know that I was obsessed with Nikki Minaj's anaconda?

[1400] Wait, she owned an anaconda?

[1401] No, no, no. She had a song called Anaconda.

[1402] Okay.

[1403] And it sampled.

[1404] Was it a penis reference?

[1405] Uh -huh.

[1406] And it sampled Baby Got Back.

[1407] Ooh.

[1408] And I loved it.

[1409] You loved it.

[1410] I love Nikki Minaj.

[1411] You do?

[1412] Is she sane?

[1413] Oh, I don't know.

[1414] Okay.

[1415] I've only kind of seen maybe a clip or two of her.

[1416] I only choose my words carefully because I'd love to have her on this program.

[1417] But has she been in some beefs?

[1418] Oh, for sure.

[1419] Okay.

[1420] All right.

[1421] She's been in beefs.

[1422] I think it's really fascinating when people are in beefs.

[1423] I mean, because it seems like I'd have to talk myself.

[1424] into being in a beef like I'd have to really get my head right so I didn't sound like a bozo and I felt heartfelt who could care about anything that's true I'm surprised I bet you've been in well I bet you've been in some beef I wouldn't be surprised if you've been in a beef like a public beef well yeah fights are different that's something real Evan Rachel would okay so that's probably as close to a beef as I've gotten and it was simply that I made a joke on Twitter about, I think, a guy killing a, you know, a rhinoceros or something, saying that he was compensating.

[1425] A rare animal.

[1426] Suggesting that he was compensating for a teeny -beenie.

[1427] Right.

[1428] And she said that I was penis shaming.

[1429] Yeah.

[1430] Which I understand she feels passionate about.

[1431] But again, this becomes one of my issues where it's like, we can't take away all insults that are good that should shame someone who killed.

[1432] of white rhino that's true now we can't even make fun of penises tic -tok you don't stop well the reason you can't make fun of penises now is because now we know it just um contributes to this culture well if you have a um a smaller penis sure that would i would never well first of all if i knew someone at a smaller sized penis part i would never make fun of them i know i would never actually call out someone that i knew to have a small penis but I do I will call it someone who's compensating of course but then the problem is when other people with small penises they're reading it and they're like laughing ha ha oh and then they get sad because the punchline is also something that they have um that's not a significant beef no it wasn't because I like her very much still and I think she likes me still yeah and she just said she raised her concern and I see it as valid doesn't mean I won't still say guys in like you know orange and yellow Lamborghinis aren't compensating because I don't know how else to shame them it's just also that to me is funny that you that you think that I mean I know what like most people think that about people driving fancy cars and crazy cars not just fancy flat ostentatious cars yeah a car were really the sole objection of the cars to get attention with it.

[1433] Like, it's not mechanically superior to any other car.

[1434] Sure, sure.

[1435] But they are good cars, like Ferraris, right?

[1436] Lamborghini is a good car too.

[1437] It's just been hijacked by guys who need a lot of attention.

[1438] Sure.

[1439] I feel bad for Lamborghini, to be honest.

[1440] Oh, for the car company?

[1441] I don't think any car manufacturers had more of its vehicles turned into like a mirror wrap or a camouflage wrap than their cars.

[1442] And they can't like that.

[1443] They're engineering those things, you know, in Italy and Germany.

[1444] Yeah, they don't want.

[1445] Here there's one parked in front of a Gucci store in London with like, you know.

[1446] You do see them all over rodeo.

[1447] Mm -hmm.

[1448] Rodeo drive.

[1449] And in front of Jerry's deli.

[1450] In front of Jerry's.

[1451] Yeah, and it's like the person's in their valet parking, but they have no intention of leaving that valet stand.

[1452] They've got like all of a sudden as soon as the car arrives, they've got so much business to.

[1453] tend to in their pockets, in the trunk, which is up front.

[1454] And it's really just an excuse to stay in that spotlight as long as possible.

[1455] Oh, I see.

[1456] And so generally there's an inconvenience associated with it as well.

[1457] And I should have compassion for these people who think the only thing that could be attractive about them is checking their wallet and trunk at the valet stand in front of jerry's but I'm I'm not there yet that's a masculine trope it is nice car nice watch yeah yeah yeah I have a nice watch and a nice car it's like I'm 90 % to the person I hate I'm 90 % there but I decided that the line I drew was the line right which everyone does yeah so I'm sure so many guys in LA look at me on my motorcycle at a stoplight and they're like get over yourself bud we get it you're fucking renegade you know yeah yeah if they only knew how much pleasure i derived from it and then i really don't even i want to be invisible on it i don't want any attention yeah that's true but who am i kidding i wanted tons of attention that's why i went into comedy and stand up in the performing arts i wanted all the attention and when you drive crazy that's for me i know it's for you but you know that you're getting a tent right when that happens yeah but i'm going so fast they can't attribute the attention to me. Okay, sure.

[1458] And as you know, I do most of my stunt driving with a Nixon mask on.

[1459] Oh, sure, sure.

[1460] Or a Jason from Friday the 13th.

[1461] But I mean crazy and like driving to the movie theater.

[1462] Can we just choose a different adjective?

[1463] Oh, I'm sorry.

[1464] I'm sorry.

[1465] Yeah, because crazy sounds reckless and out of control.

[1466] No, you're definitely not out of control.

[1467] No. I'll say that.

[1468] But it's definitely violating some of the posted speed limits, some of the...

[1469] Some of the lights.

[1470] Some of the stop sign, the standard practice at a stop sign, yeah.

[1471] Objectively, some people might call that reckless.

[1472] Yeah, absolutely.

[1473] So I do not think you're out of control, though.

[1474] It's not an ethical move of mine that I make.

[1475] There's several things that I do that I know I'm violating some ethics.

[1476] One is I consume all this factory farmed meat.

[1477] I know that that's wrong.

[1478] Yeah.

[1479] I know it.

[1480] And when I hit 95 on Los Felis Boulevard, that's not cool.

[1481] But if it's nice and empty, I think, who cares?

[1482] Who cares?

[1483] You know?

[1484] Well, I also agree who cares.

[1485] It's only if you're making other people feel unsafe.

[1486] Well, that's what Bell is good at reminding me of.

[1487] It's not that you're endangering them because you're clearly in control, but it scares them.

[1488] It's scared to get passed by somebody.

[1489] And it could endanger them not because, not because of anything you're doing, but because they're not in very much control of their vehicle.

[1490] and then they might freak out and try to adjust and then they might crash.

[1491] Or they might look up so quickly from the text message they were sending that they get vertigo.

[1492] Yeah.

[1493] I had vertigo once.

[1494] I know.

[1495] You bring it up a lot.

[1496] I brought it up once earlier today.

[1497] That's it.

[1498] That's the first time you've ever heard me say that.

[1499] No. No, you said it yesterday on the couch as well.

[1500] No, today this morning on the couch.

[1501] Oh my goodness.

[1502] People are going to get the sense that we're on the couch all the time.

[1503] Well, we watch a lot of TV.

[1504] We do.

[1505] Our hobby is watching TV.

[1506] We do.

[1507] Is that unethical?

[1508] To watch TV?

[1509] Yeah, to be given this wonderful, glorious life and this crazy planet that's so beautiful and to sit on a couch and stare at a square.

[1510] Is that ethical?

[1511] If it brings you joy, no, and it's not harming others, so no. Okay, you won me over.

[1512] Okay, great, let's watch TV.

[1513] Okay, Jonathan Haidt.

[1514] Wait, I want to say one more thing before we get into it about penises.

[1515] Oh, yeah.

[1516] Okay.

[1517] It's so interesting because that thing, the thing about having a big dick, is mainly for guys with guys.

[1518] 100%.

[1519] Just, yes.

[1520] And I may, yeah.

[1521] And they, and it's, it's, I don't know what you guys are saying to each other when you're talking about the size of your dick.

[1522] But I think the implication is it's because women like it when it's bigger.

[1523] Well, I think ostensibly that's it.

[1524] But it is very much a. like an outward pecking order thing.

[1525] It's a status.

[1526] It's an alpha thing.

[1527] It's a who's biggest?

[1528] Just like whoever's got the biggest muscles.

[1529] We like the biggest of all things guys.

[1530] But the underlying rationale is like it's better because it's more pleasure.

[1531] That's the lie we tell ourselves.

[1532] That's the lie.

[1533] Exactly.

[1534] Because really it's just about us.

[1535] Exactly.

[1536] But I would make the exact same argument to women.

[1537] Women who will complain about the unrealistic standard set for them.

[1538] by magazines and stuff.

[1539] Guys don't even read those magazines.

[1540] They don't know about those.

[1541] Guys don't know supermodels as much as women know super models.

[1542] Sure, that's true.

[1543] And so that's all perpetuated as well with between you guys.

[1544] Girls for sure are perpetuating the body image stuff.

[1545] Big time.

[1546] And guys are perpetuating.

[1547] Why are guys getting ripped?

[1548] Yeah.

[1549] As we found out, as I've found out the hard way, very few ladies care.

[1550] Yeah.

[1551] But the dudes all care.

[1552] It's almost universal.

[1553] Now, back to penises really quick.

[1554] Also, some women do like bigger penises.

[1555] I don't want to deny that.

[1556] There are size queens.

[1557] Some of our male gay friends are sized queens, you know?

[1558] Yeah.

[1559] Of course, that works for males.

[1560] They already are obsessed with it.

[1561] But I do surely some girls like bigger penises.

[1562] But what's even funnier about that is generally when guys are comparing penises, they're not actually comparing girth.

[1563] They're not like, oh, Mike's the girtiest.

[1564] Right.

[1565] And that's actually more of the point what women who like size like, but no guys actually comparing girth.

[1566] Yeah.

[1567] And then this other, I think, thing that we all think, guys, is that women want you to pound them for an hour.

[1568] And in my research, that's what they think.

[1569] That's what guys think.

[1570] Guys are mostly modeling after pornography, I believe.

[1571] Oh, sure.

[1572] Actually, yeah.

[1573] And you think you're supposed to have like a baby arm and last.

[1574] That's why this is so dangerous.

[1575] But they think that a woman wants them to be jackhammering on them for an hour.

[1576] And no lady wants that.

[1577] No, no. No. No, it's a, you know, it's a physically stressful.

[1578] It's a sensitive area.

[1579] And that's a harsh thing to endure, yeah.

[1580] For an hour.

[1581] Yeah.

[1582] Yeah.

[1583] But you hear guys like going, I'm tantric.

[1584] Oh, but are they pounding?

[1585] Well, even if they're not pounding, if they're, if they're, if they're, if they're, If there's a reciprocal motion that's going on for 90 plus minutes.

[1586] Yeah.

[1587] I don't know if the ladies stoked your tantric at that point.

[1588] What do I know?

[1589] I'm not tantric.

[1590] Jonathan Haidt.

[1591] Yeah.

[1592] Okay.

[1593] I love Jonathan Haidt.

[1594] Mm -hmm.

[1595] One smart cookie.

[1596] Very smart.

[1597] Veil.

[1598] Very, very smart.

[1599] He said that vitamin C doesn't cure colds.

[1600] Okay.

[1601] Now, the most convincing evidence to do.

[1602] date about colds and vitamin C comes from a 2013 review of 29 randomized trials with more than 11 ,000 participants.

[1603] Researchers found that among extremely active people, such as marathon runners, skiers, and army troops doing heavy exercise in sub -arctic conditions, taking at least 200 milligrams of vitamin C every day, appeared to cut the risk of getting a cold in half.

[1604] But for the general population, taking daily vitamin C did not reduce the risk of getting a cold.

[1605] Yeah, to me, the explanation there sounds like heavy exertion depletes vitamin C. So if you're completely depleted, then it's going to impact your likelihood to get a cold, but your average person's caring enough to deal with it.

[1606] So it did say taking at least 200 milligrams of vitamin C per day did appear to reduce the duration of cold symptoms by an average of 8 % in adults and 14 % in children.

[1607] which translated to about one less day of illness.

[1608] That's kind of good.

[1609] Yeah.

[1610] One less day is better than that.

[1611] Still 8 % is not that.

[1612] No, it's not very persuasive.

[1613] But one less day.

[1614] You can change your habits.

[1615] Right.

[1616] So you said, and I quote, my fear is that a lot of people think that if we remove the white male from these systems, that somehow the systems are going to work magically all of a sudden.

[1617] Uh -huh.

[1618] So I just want to be clear.

[1619] I mean, I obviously can't speak for every person, but most people having this argument are not saying remove all the white males.

[1620] I don't think they are.

[1621] Okay.

[1622] But I do think that some people, my wife included, we've had this debate, thinks it's a white male problem and I think it's a majority problem.

[1623] You think, I think anything you're attributing to the white males, you could just as accurately say that's how the majority is.

[1624] There's majority privilege in countries.

[1625] There's, you know, any group that occupies the majority in a company.

[1626] Right.

[1627] Or a country and a company will have the most amount of benefits likely.

[1628] Sure.

[1629] Yeah, I'm just saying that when you say that as if like the left is saying that we're trying to remove all the white men, that's not what's being said.

[1630] And it is just, it's saying more quality, more diversity.

[1631] but not take everyone out and replace them with ethnic people.

[1632] Right.

[1633] That's not what people are saying.

[1634] Just being clear.

[1635] Thanks for clarifying.

[1636] My Jewish friend was supposed to call me this morning to give me...

[1637] The inside scoop on Judaism?

[1638] Because he said that it's widely believed around the world that the body is a temple or at least susceptible to contaminants and must be cleaned, especially if you're approaching God.

[1639] And he said you see in religions such as Islam and Judaism where you have to like clean yourself or that a woman who is menstruating can't go near godly objects.

[1640] And I was wondering because I was like, I don't remember ever hearing that about Judaism.

[1641] It is real and Hinduism.

[1642] That's a real thing.

[1643] And so I thought maybe he was just accidentally said Judaism instead of Hinduism.

[1644] So I asked my Jewish friend.

[1645] Right.

[1646] It was very knowledgeable.

[1647] Up on all that?

[1648] Yes, because she works.

[1649] She's very, yes.

[1650] and she said could be in orthodoxy.

[1651] She said definitely not in reformed.

[1652] But she said it could be the case.

[1653] She was going to ask her rabbi and she didn't.

[1654] Oh my God.

[1655] I thought you were going to say that.

[1656] But he passed.

[1657] The way you said, you went on such a low note that I was like, oh, no, we lost him.

[1658] No, no. He's alive.

[1659] Well, kind of related.

[1660] Okay.

[1661] You really can't be around a bear when you're menstruating.

[1662] I know that that's been a joke in a lot of movies.

[1663] And I always thought it was just a joke.

[1664] But when I was working with Bart the bear in New Zealand Yeah Of the many rules that were given to us You know don't don't eat a dagwood around him or chicken wings And they said if you're menstruating don't don't come to set Because Bart will smell the blood and then Bart will get activated Yeah I'm not surprised I was like well Bart will get sexual Oh Like he'll get horny But no he just blood gets his motor running He gets hungry Sure because it's almost like an animal just killed they smell blow when they smell blood because they eat carrion they eat dead animals yeah so I don't know if that's you know we're not park rangers but I don't know if I was on my period I don't know that I'd hike around bears well I'm not gonna don't well first of all I don't want to do that ever hike around bears yeah and then either also but how do you know you can't if you're on your period and then you're walking down the street and you don't know if there's going to be a bear.

[1665] Oh, like a suburban bear?

[1666] Yeah.

[1667] That you're not going to be able to avoid, but you can probably avoid going hiking on Codiac Island.

[1668] That sucks.

[1669] If you're on your men's.

[1670] What if you're planning a spring break trip and you plan it to go to Yellowstone?

[1671] Are there bears in Yellowstone?

[1672] I think so.

[1673] Most importantly, if you've planned your spring break trip to Yellowstone.

[1674] Speak for yourself one time.

[1675] You're never going to get late on spring break.

[1676] Oh, well, yeah, that's not everyone's goal.

[1677] I went to Yellowstone on a spring break.

[1678] You did?

[1679] Well, we went skiing, but the first, before that, we went to Yellowstone for a day.

[1680] Another ski trip.

[1681] It was the, well, I told, not another one of the four ski trips I went on.

[1682] Right, but you told me places in Colorado where Yellowstone is not.

[1683] Yeah, so we must have.

[1684] You must have been like in Jackson Hole.

[1685] No, no, no. Is it Yosemite?

[1686] Oh, Yosemite.

[1687] Yes.

[1688] So you probably went to...

[1689] Maybe we went to Yosemite.

[1690] Okay.

[1691] Yeah, so you then either went to Mammoth or, like, Tahoe, to ski.

[1692] No, we didn't.

[1693] I've never been to either of those places.

[1694] I'll find out.

[1695] Yeah, call your Jewish friend and ask her.

[1696] She's not the one.

[1697] Okay.

[1698] So I went to Yellowstone or Yosemite.

[1699] Who can remember?

[1700] Just give some backstory.

[1701] Today, I said, did you ever ski growing up?

[1702] Because you grew up in Georgia.

[1703] And you said, yeah, I used to ski on trips.

[1704] And I said, well, where did you ski if you lived in Georgia?

[1705] And you said, oh, Killington, Breckenridge, Vail.

[1706] I did not say Vail.

[1707] No. And I was like, what a fucking brat.

[1708] You skied at, the only time you skied, you skied at the best places in the country.

[1709] Yes, I was with, I surround myself with experts on the field.

[1710] A fluent expert skiers.

[1711] Yes.

[1712] And she, they skied their whole life.

[1713] And so they went to nice places.

[1714] So I went to nice places.

[1715] We did not go to Vail or Aspen.

[1716] Okay.

[1717] Anywho, went to Yellowstone.

[1718] But I'm saying if you're planning a spring break to a fancy ski resort and the day before you decide to do it a little small trip to Yellowstone and then you have to cancel because you're accidentally on your period?

[1719] Well, no, you have to not go hiking.

[1720] But also, let's look into the hibernation schedule because if you were on a ski trip, makes me think those bears are still snoozing.

[1721] Maybe there's no problem.

[1722] Maybe, but it's just a lot of effort just because a period.

[1723] It's not fair.

[1724] No. It's a silly sister.

[1725] It's real in Hinduism.

[1726] You can't go if you're on your period.

[1727] You can't go to the temple.

[1728] Right.

[1729] You shouldn't.

[1730] God is grossed out by menstrual cycles.

[1731] The God that invented the menstrual cycle is also grossed out by it.

[1732] Right.

[1733] You know I went a couple times.

[1734] To the Hindu temple?

[1735] Mm -hmm.

[1736] I really didn't like going.

[1737] You didn't.

[1738] Too many people?

[1739] Well, there were so many reasons why I didn't like going, obviously.

[1740] Mainly I was like, yeah, big time triggering.

[1741] You were trying to be L. Wood.

[1742] I was trying to be Lwood.

[1743] I was trying to be L. Woods.

[1744] Trying to be legally blonde.

[1745] And here I was the only white person with all amongst all these Indians at the temple.

[1746] Yeah, it was uncomfortable.

[1747] It was really uncomfortable for me. And I just, it was far away, didn't like the drive.

[1748] I didn't speak any of the languages that the priests spoke.

[1749] So they're saying something in a language and I don't know it.

[1750] Well, even a lot of the people there don't, right?

[1751] Yeah.

[1752] Well, I don't know.

[1753] Some might.

[1754] Okay.

[1755] I don't know what the language is they were speaking.

[1756] Spanish, probably.

[1757] Anyway, and so I was just like pretending to do, like pretending to pray.

[1758] I mean, I guess I was praying, but I didn't know to what.

[1759] And then it was, and I just didn't.

[1760] But, you know, I find that that's fine.

[1761] I used to have a big chip on my shoulder about having to, like either at an A. meeting back in Michigan, they want you to, like, bow your head and do something.

[1762] some prayer.

[1763] We just did this at Thanksgiving.

[1764] Yeah, we did at Thanksgiving.

[1765] And now I'm over it.

[1766] Yeah.

[1767] Thank God.

[1768] I'm like, oh, who cares?

[1769] I can close my eyes and join everyone in this and just share the moment and think about it more as all of us doing something that's unified.

[1770] Yeah.

[1771] Yeah.

[1772] I think that.

[1773] I'm over it.

[1774] But I did for a while.

[1775] I was irritated by it.

[1776] Right.

[1777] We had a beautiful Thanksgiving at Ryan and Amy's.

[1778] Yeah.

[1779] And they hosted a bunch of us, like 30 plus people, 50.

[1780] A Bachna.

[1781] it was so wonderful and fun um and and we did a prayer and it just it took me back so quickly to so many instances when i was younger and i was at friends houses and they we had to do a prayer before dinner yes and i was always like i felt like such a fraud yeah a pa imposter but yeah i don't care now but it was just funny it just reminded me at that.

[1782] Anywho, I dealt with a lot.

[1783] I know.

[1784] But here you are.

[1785] A successful young woman living in Los Angeles.

[1786] It all worked out.

[1787] Successful young white woman living in L .A. Living amongst the other white people.

[1788] Okay.

[1789] So you're going to have to do some fast math and I didn't do the math so I can't check you.

[1790] Okay.

[1791] Okay.

[1792] You said you thought 30 % of people had polio at your grandparents time.

[1793] Okay.

[1794] So when is that?

[1795] Well, when my grandfather was a kid, he must have been born in 1920.

[1796] There's been a couple outbreaks, 1916.

[1797] Okay, let's say that's when he was born.

[1798] Okay.

[1799] On Saturday, June 17th, 1916, an official announcement of the existence of an epidemic polio infection was made in Brooklyn, New York.

[1800] That year, there were over 27 ,000 cases.

[1801] Okay.

[1802] And more than 6 ,000 deaths due to polio in the U .S. with over 2 ,000 deaths in New York City alone.

[1803] Okay, so 27 ,000 cases.

[1804] The population in 1916 was 1001 ,961 ,000.

[1805] Oh, in the U .S. In the U .S. But you just gave me the epidemic in New York.

[1806] No, no, no. 27 ,000 cases in the country.

[1807] Nationally?

[1808] Yeah.

[1809] Yeah.

[1810] And then six, and then, um, two thousand deaths in New York.

[1811] Okay, that's extraneous information.

[1812] So I was just throwing that out of it.

[1813] I was doing an SAT thing.

[1814] Did you say there's a hundred million America?

[1815] 101 million.

[1816] All right.

[1817] So I'm throwing out that one million.

[1818] I'm also rounding up.

[1819] Um, so 30 ,000 would be three percent of a million.

[1820] Is that right?

[1821] Yeah, so it would be three percent of a million.

[1822] Oh, so this is like down in the .0.

[1823] 0 .00, yeah.

[1824] Right.

[1825] You said 30.

[1826] God, was I off.

[1827] You were off.

[1828] It's okay.

[1829] Anyhow.

[1830] So.

[1831] Wow.

[1832] That might be my biggest blunder to date.

[1833] I mean, I'm off by a factor of like 10 ,000.

[1834] Right.

[1835] Okay.

[1836] So Jonathan was talking about parents getting arrested for leaving their kids in the park.

[1837] And he was like, I need to figure out when the first case was.

[1838] So I did some research.

[1839] The earliest case I could find that was like publicized on the news was 2014.

[1840] It's not that long ago.

[1841] No, four years ago.

[1842] Only four short years ago.

[1843] And I think we were saying it was much earlier than that.

[1844] But anyhow, 2014, a case of South Carolina mother arrested for allegedly leaving her nine -year -old daughter at a park for hours.

[1845] while she worked at a nearby McDonald's, a park that was about a six -minute walk from their home and about a seven -minute drive from where she worked.

[1846] She could have gone home at any time.

[1847] She has a key, and she also has a cell phone, is what her mom said.

[1848] Ah, and she was arrested.

[1849] Yeah.

[1850] But I think I don't remember if she won the case or not.

[1851] So, like, some lawyer really jumped on this.

[1852] Yeah, to make a name for herself.

[1853] Right.

[1854] So not that long ago It's a newer phenomenon Newer phenomenon Yeah phenomenon Phenomenon Okay Oh at the very end You sort of referred to Something we didn't go into with Jonathan But you were like I really like a lot of your experiments Like the one with the brother And the sister and the sleeping together But then that's all you say Oh really?

[1855] Yeah and that's my favorite thing I've ever gleaned from Jonathan Haidt At all Being challenged to think about that.

[1856] Well, yeah, the concept of moral dumbfounding.

[1857] That's what it's called.

[1858] Right.

[1859] So, break it down, girl.

[1860] Okay.

[1861] So the philosophical question at hand is if a brother and sister go on spring break to Yellowstone or Yosemite and no one's on their period.

[1862] No, his example is like south of France.

[1863] Okay, wherever.

[1864] They go somewhere.

[1865] I think South of Friends is relevant because somehow like no one will know.

[1866] It's just more proof than no one will know.

[1867] It's just going.

[1868] away together.

[1869] And if you're camping in a tent, no one knows.

[1870] That's true.

[1871] So anyway, they're off together somewhere and they decide that they want to have sex.

[1872] On that trip.

[1873] Yeah.

[1874] One time they just want to do it.

[1875] And then the question is he asked to his students, is that wrong?

[1876] Yeah.

[1877] And everyone says, yes, that's completely wrong.

[1878] Immoral.

[1879] He says why.

[1880] And so they start giving reasons.

[1881] Like, well, what if they have a baby?

[1882] and it's deformed and he says okay so take away that factor they use a condom she's on birth control it's not it's not a factor right then they say well what if they fall in love or something I think so there was like people would just bring up the point is they would endlessly bring up points that really weren't possible yes but and really it's just their stomach told them this was immoral and then logically they just couldn't connect the dot right Yeah, so it's called moral dumbfounding where you're just looking for reasons to corroborate your moral intuition.

[1883] Yeah, yes, support it.

[1884] And there's no logic behind it.

[1885] Right.

[1886] Yeah, it's interesting.

[1887] Mm -hmm.

[1888] Very interesting.

[1889] You know, I think when we played that game, I was like, it's fine.

[1890] Yeah, I said that too.

[1891] I, of course, would never have sex with my sister.

[1892] I'd rather cut my head off my shoulders.

[1893] but if someone else wanted to on a vacation in France I actually can't tell you why it's wrong Yeah I feel that way too weirdly Yeah and you have a sibling It's not like we can't understand the repugnancy of Right Coitus with a sibling right Yeah I mean right Yeah there's nothing fowler No there isn't But I don't think you can make a moral argument Yeah It's just two human beings on planet earth Yeah Yeah And no one's getting harmed.

[1894] And you could go like, well, this is going to lead to blank.

[1895] But that's not a part of the thing.

[1896] No, this is a one -off.

[1897] It's not going to lead to anything.

[1898] What would it lead to?

[1899] What are they saying?

[1900] You're just evaluating, evaluating the event itself.

[1901] Oh, you're saying it could lead to like everyone starts marrying.

[1902] They go home and it, you know, it turns into something.

[1903] Well, no, that's not part of it.

[1904] It doesn't turn into something in this scenario.

[1905] Okay.

[1906] So, okay.

[1907] But if it did...

[1908] Turn into something.

[1909] If they fell in love, let's say.

[1910] So grody.

[1911] I know.

[1912] It is grooty.

[1913] But what if they fell in love, but they decided we won't have children?

[1914] Right.

[1915] Because we know this would not...

[1916] She gets a vasectomy on the flight home.

[1917] Is that immoral?

[1918] I mean, no. I mean, no. I mean, it's obviously bizarre.

[1919] It's bizarre and gross.

[1920] But there's no ramifications of it.

[1921] It's only gross because you're picturing your...

[1922] own sister and you know that that would not like work yeah but it's not gross if you just but here's what it boils down to to me is is there's zero victim nobody's being hurt yeah these two people somehow are driving pleasure and fulfillment out of this and no one's getting hurt yeah well I guess you could argue the parents are probably very bummed out okay let's say they're deceased.

[1923] Okay.

[1924] They're out.

[1925] Great.

[1926] Great.

[1927] Great addendum.

[1928] Yeah.

[1929] And they moved to a town where no one knows of their brother and sister.

[1930] No, no, no. I think it's okay people.

[1931] So the only people getting quote harmed would be them because of a social stigma.

[1932] Yeah.

[1933] But that's the whole thing that we're saying.

[1934] I have friends with siblings and I would not want to be around them like playing kissy face with their sibling.

[1935] Yeah, it would ruin my enjoyment of whatever activity we were doing.

[1936] I just wouldn't be able to get past it.

[1937] Now, you can say that's my issue.

[1938] That is your issue.

[1939] But I'm going to own the issue.

[1940] There's no way I could, you know, watch my best friend Aaron Weekly and his sister Jenny on a double date with me and Kristen.

[1941] It would just be, I couldn't enjoy it.

[1942] So they'd be harming my trip.

[1943] Well, they're not.

[1944] They're not harming any.

[1945] You're just a little sensitive.

[1946] Yeah, yeah.

[1947] I'm old -fashioned that way.

[1948] I don't like when brothers and sisters are kissing in front of me. See, you sound like all these people.

[1949] Well, no, I don't like it.

[1950] That doesn't mean it's moral or immoral.

[1951] I'm fine with it.

[1952] Yeah.

[1953] You would hang out with one of your friends if they were dating their brother.

[1954] If you were dating Carly.

[1955] Oh, my God.

[1956] I mean, even you saying that sentence, I almost lost.

[1957] Conscious.

[1958] Consciousness, yes.

[1959] I mean, oh my God.

[1960] Yeah, okay.

[1961] Hey, are you trying to say that you could handle being around me and Carly as a couple?

[1962] Yes, I could.

[1963] I would be like, ah, it would take, it would take a second to adjust.

[1964] But I would.

[1965] If you guys loved, if you were in love, I mean, what can I, what can I possibly have a problem with that?

[1966] Love is love.

[1967] For real.

[1968] I feel that way, for real.

[1969] For real.

[1970] For real.

[1971] Yeah.

[1972] You know that someone who's appalled by this will say, then what about Beastie?

[1973] But then again, I think the animal is a victim.

[1974] That's also not fair.

[1975] Yeah, the animal isn't reciprocating anything.

[1976] No, the animal doesn't want to have sex with a woman.

[1977] Except for a dolphin.

[1978] If a girl was dating a dolphin, I'd be very pleased for them.

[1979] No, no, no, no. Wouldn't you?

[1980] No. If a girl loved a dolphin and they had a real connection and they both enjoyed having sex, who cares?

[1981] No. Because there's all these stories of dolphins having sex with or attempting to have sex with scuba divers.

[1982] Yeah.

[1983] But I think it's very, I think they're playing with a dolphin and they like turn around and then that penis is out.

[1984] Oh.

[1985] Yeah.

[1986] That could really spook you.

[1987] Yeah, they're kind of rapy.

[1988] Yeah, that's what I've heard is they're rapy.

[1989] Yeah, me too.

[1990] But again, so if the dolphin and the beautiful woman were in love.

[1991] How could they be in love?

[1992] See, now this is getting, this is getting out of control.

[1993] Why?

[1994] How could, there's, that dolphin isn't reciprocating any emotional, anything for that person.

[1995] No, when she looks into the dolphin's eyes, she feels whole.

[1996] So do you think you can be in love with the corpse?

[1997] Ooh, now that's a great one.

[1998] That's even more on point.

[1999] So what's wrong with necrophilia?

[2000] Because the person's deceased.

[2001] They're not suffering.

[2002] They're not suffering.

[2003] I mean, the person who's having sex with the corpse is clearly suffering, but I guess it's their choice to suffer.

[2004] Oh.

[2005] Well, see, the reason this gets because clearly that person is not psychologically well.

[2006] So to allow it, I would argue that someone who wants to make love to their sisters not psychologically well.

[2007] Correct.

[2008] In all of these circumstances.

[2009] That's true.

[2010] That they're probably not healthy.

[2011] So to allow it is to perpetuate some really, really mentally unhealthy behavior for those people.

[2012] It's bad for them.

[2013] Yeah.

[2014] It's just do we live in a country where we protect people from themselves?

[2015] We let them eat however.

[2016] they'd like we let them smoke cigarettes and drink alcohol you know we generally say no we you know if you're hurting yourself that's up to you i know but interesting did he say anything else you show your computer i'm done with my back check oh you are because you've quit or you're out tvd no i i finished oh okay all right that's it all right i love you that was fun yeah i like i like talking to folks like that that really demand that we rise to the challenge.

[2017] Yeah.

[2018] Yeah.

[2019] Yeah.

[2020] All right.

[2021] Well, Merry Christmas.

[2022] We're getting closer and you know how I feel about the holiday.

[2023] Love it.

[2024] I also want to add that we're juggling a couple ideas.

[2025] We can't agree on them.

[2026] But I definitely want to have a Christmas.

[2027] We are.

[2028] Well, we're going to have some Christmas -y stuff happen in our last episode of the year.

[2029] Right.

[2030] On Christmas Eve.

[2031] Christmas Eve.

[2032] And I want there to be sleigh bells.

[2033] I want to bring in some singers.

[2034] I'm going to dress up, I don't know, either as St. Nick or Elf or Who knows, Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer.

[2035] Yep.

[2036] And try to really launch us in.

[2037] And we're going to light a menorah.

[2038] And we'll probably throw some Kwanza decorations up and try to make it all very inclusive.

[2039] Yeah, diverse holiday spectacular.

[2040] It'll just be all of us white people, the whitest among them.

[2041] Yep.

[2042] And we will celebrate all the diversity in the world.

[2043] So I love you and Merry Christmas.

[2044] And Merry Christmas.

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