Speaker 1: There's a profound naivete around the idea that censorship can
Speaker 1: somehow fix the problem of human evil. I think, ultimately,
Speaker 1: despite the fact that some ideas might make you uncomfortable,
Speaker 1: that ultimately it's a very good thing about human civilization
Speaker 1: that I ideas to a degree can't be stopped.
Speaker 2: Today, it's my great pleasure to welcome Greg Lukianoff and
Speaker 2: Ricky Schwatz to the podcast. Greg is an attorney and
Speaker 2: the president of FIRE, which stands for a Foundation for
Speaker 2: Individual Rights in education. Ricky is an author, journalist, and podcaster.
Speaker 2: Together Greg and Ricky wrote the new book The Canceling
Speaker 2: of the American Mind. Cancel culture undermines trust and threatens
Speaker 2: us all, but there is a solution. Personally, I've known
Speaker 2: Greg for quite some time. He first came on my
Speaker 2: radar when he co authored The Calming of the American
Speaker 2: Mind with Jonathan Heights. That book was seminole in showcasing
Speaker 2: how young people are essentially learning the opposite skills of
Speaker 2: cognitive behavioral therapy. For example, they're learning that it's good
Speaker 2: to catastrophize, have black and white thinking, and to jump
Speaker 2: to conclusions with emotional reasoning. Ricky came on my radar
Speaker 2: more recently when we all do an event together at
Speaker 2: the Comedy Cellar along with Greg and Jonathan, in which
Speaker 2: we discussed the role of truth telling in comedy. Greg
Speaker 2: and John hold Ricky in high esteem, and I see why.
Speaker 2: As you'll see in this interview, she is quite wise
Speaker 2: and nuanced in her thinking about such an important topic.
Speaker 2: And yes, this is a very important topic in America.
Speaker 2: At the moment, things seem to be getting worse and
Speaker 2: worse when it comes to cancel culture. And we're not
Speaker 2: just talking about canceling conservatives. Everyone seems to be stepping
Speaker 2: on Eggshelsey's days, scared to speak their mind or real opinion.
Speaker 2: As Greg and Ricky argue in their book and in
Speaker 2: which you'll see in this episode, they argue that cancel
Speaker 2: culture is not the right path forward for democracy. Thankfully,
Speaker 2: they offer solutions to get us back on track. So
Speaker 2: let's get into it. I bring you Greg Lukianov and
Speaker 2: Ricky Schwat Greg and Ricky, thank you so much for
Speaker 2: coming on the Psychology Podcast.
Speaker 1: Thanks for having me Scott John with you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it really is. Congratulations on this new book. First
Speaker 2: of all, how do you guys feel about.
Speaker 1: It real good, Like we were really pleased to see
Speaker 1: so many great endorsements kind of fled in, you know,
Speaker 1: over the past day. I mean, my co author John
Speaker 1: Heights had wonderful things about it. But it was also
Speaker 1: nice to see you know, every from everyone from John
Speaker 1: mcwarter too, counter feel John's, yeah, all the John's, you know,
Speaker 1: like it's it's it's been very heartwarming, you know, to
Speaker 1: see people come out to recommend it to people.
Speaker 3: What do you think, RG, It's just been really bizarre
Speaker 3: for me. It's like the first time that I opened
Speaker 3: up the box full of books in the flesh as
Speaker 3: a first time author. That was kind of insane. So
Speaker 3: I'm just I'm enjoying the ride. I'm thrilled. I'm really
Speaker 3: proud of the work that we did together and couldn't
Speaker 3: have a better co author to be on this journey with,
Speaker 3: so the same.
Speaker 2: That's I love that. Ricky. Let me double click on
Speaker 2: you for a second. You know, how did you come
Speaker 2: into this picture? From what I understand you, you wrote
Speaker 2: this article called the Crisis of self Censorship when you
Speaker 2: were what were you like nineteen years old or something
Speaker 2: like that.
Speaker 3: I was, I was a junior at n YU at
Speaker 3: that point in time, so I was probably like twenty,
Speaker 3: and I wrote an op ed about about n YU
Speaker 3: and my experience there and how I felt that there
Speaker 3: was just a lot of self censorship, that that free
Speaker 3: speech is not healthy, and that was something that I
Speaker 3: met John Hype through. But I actually met Greg through
Speaker 3: a separate article that I wrote for The Post, which
Speaker 3: was also one of my like first four there, where
Speaker 3: I thought, you know, maybe we could uncoddle gen Z
Speaker 3: with the pandemic and it would be a fortifying, generation
Speaker 3: defining event. And I contacted Greg and we talked about
Speaker 3: that possibility, and I still think it's wishful thinking. Greg's
Speaker 3: a little more optimistic that maybe some of us will
Speaker 3: come out for the better as a result. But yeah,
Speaker 3: so that was that was how we first crossed paths,
Speaker 3: and then that became a fellowship, and then the fellowship
Speaker 3: at Fire became writing a book together and really leaning
Speaker 3: into our intergenerational common values. And I think that's an
Speaker 3: interesting and unique perspective that we've been able to kind
Speaker 3: of like meld our minds into this book together.
Speaker 2: I love that. I love this origin story. And in
Speaker 2: Jonathan's forward to your book, he writes in writing this book,
Speaker 2: Greg has made a smart move in trading me and.
Speaker 1: Hardly Look.
Speaker 2: I love your modesty, Ricky, as long as I've known you,
Speaker 2: which has not been that long. But you are consistently
Speaker 2: self effacing.
Speaker 3: It's hard not to be.
Speaker 1: And and she's been perfect to work with the you know, like,
Speaker 1: I definitely got some funny looks when I told people
Speaker 1: I was, you know, writing a book and signing a
Speaker 1: contract with a twenty year old which by the way,
Speaker 1: I hadn't actually met in person until after we had
Speaker 1: the contract signed for months, you know. So, and I
Speaker 1: remember first seeing her and being like, oh my god,
Speaker 1: you really are a kid.
Speaker 2: Well, Ricky, are we You're twenty two years old now.
Speaker 3: I'm twenty three. And I think was the first time
Speaker 3: that we met Greg the night that we did the
Speaker 3: comedy Cellar.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, that's I.
Speaker 2: I got you guys together.
Speaker 1: I thought you were someone's daughter. Well I guess you are,
Speaker 1: she is.
Speaker 2: But did I bring you guys together in person for
Speaker 2: the first time?
Speaker 1: We Wow?
Speaker 2: Okay, Well, I just love this universe. Okay, So this
Speaker 2: idea of cancel culture, well, how do self censorship relate
Speaker 2: to the idea of cancel culture. Can you make a
Speaker 2: link between Ricky's original article and the definition of cancel
Speaker 2: culture you have in your book.
Speaker 1: Sure, and that our definition of cancel culture is the
Speaker 1: uptic of campaigns to get people fired, deplatformed, otherwise punished,
Speaker 1: et cetera since twenty fourteen and accelerating in twenty seventeen,
Speaker 1: and the culture of fear that results. Now people have
Speaker 1: always and this has been a frustrating part of the
Speaker 1: debate on self censorship. And there's all these sort of
Speaker 1: baked in ways of sort of rationalizing cancel culture. And
Speaker 1: when you see these questions coming out like are you
Speaker 1: self censoring your political point of view? And you know,
Speaker 1: sixty percent of Americans. I can't remember what the actual
Speaker 1: stat was, but the New York Times, you know, published
Speaker 1: this say yes in our article where they said, oh,
Speaker 1: by the way, cancel culture is real. All the data
Speaker 1: indicates that it is the sort of lazy response. And
Speaker 1: there's so many lazy responses to cancel culture, included kind
Speaker 1: of like well, self subship it's a good thing, you know,
Speaker 1: and it's like no, when fire asked this question, in particular,
Speaker 1: in most places, they're actually not asking like are you
Speaker 1: telling little white lives to not be rude. They're asking,
Speaker 1: are you withholding your authentic political opinion in a lot
Speaker 1: of these cases, And that's not very healthy for a democracy,
Speaker 1: and that existed already on campus, even just by social force.
Speaker 1: But when you add into it even the slightest possibility
Speaker 1: that you might lose your job or get expelled or
Speaker 1: otherwise just have a horrible, horrible year, you know, become
Speaker 1: a pariah. Have her heard, for example, or some nightmare
Speaker 1: stories about that. That leads to a situation where people
Speaker 1: are less authentic, less willing to say what they really think,
Speaker 1: less willing to engage in thought experimentation, devil's advocacy, all
Speaker 1: these things that make thinking better. And it's utterly toxic,
Speaker 1: particularly to academia. But it's also not good for democracy either.
Speaker 3: Yeah. And I would also add to that that I
Speaker 3: think there's a generational element to this as well, where
Speaker 3: a gen z I mean myself included. I pretty much
Speaker 3: only remember, in any advanced mature way, the post kind
Speaker 3: of twenty sixteen meltdown world where cancel culture was very
Speaker 3: very much on display. And when you're a young person
Speaker 3: growing up in that sort of context and you see
Speaker 3: people getting torn down for one off tweets or videos
Speaker 3: that emerge decades down the line, or even teenagers losing
Speaker 3: their college acceptances. That preemptively makes you self censor to
Speaker 3: the point where you never even were authentic in the
Speaker 3: first place, which is something that I experienced myself having
Speaker 3: gone to n YU, showed up there, was terrified by
Speaker 3: the concept of being canceled by the people that I
Speaker 3: needed to live with and in a new city, and
Speaker 3: nervous and socially anxious, and so I was hiding books
Speaker 3: under my bed, like quite literally because I was. I
Speaker 3: was self censoring and fearful of the potential consequences of
Speaker 3: being politically authentic.
Speaker 2: Usually, when I think of this, these charges of cancel culture,
Speaker 2: I think of people on the right who feel like
Speaker 2: they can't authentically express themselves in environments where it's predominantly
Speaker 2: people on the left. I guess I don't really hear
Speaker 2: two me instances of people on the left complaining about
Speaker 2: cancel culture, because tell me a little bit more about
Speaker 2: like about that, like, is there an asymmetry here?
Speaker 1: Sure? Well, I mean there is any symmetry, particularly because
Speaker 1: the institutions that we're talking about that are that where
Speaker 1: it's the worst are over Well, they're not just majority
Speaker 1: left leaning, they're super yeah, you know when it comes
Speaker 1: to administration, when it comes to professorate. So yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: like there is there is more of it on the left. However,
Speaker 1: we spend a lot of time talking about cancel culture
Speaker 1: on the right as well. And it's also very worthwhile
Speaker 1: to explain that a lot of the professors, a lot
Speaker 1: of those professors who are getting punished are on the left,
Speaker 1: and about one third of the of the punishments are
Speaker 1: initially encouraged by you know, Fox News, by off campus,
Speaker 1: you know, right wing institutions. A turning Point, USA is
Speaker 1: horrible professor watch list like this. This stuff actually does happen.
Speaker 1: But of course, when it comes to who actually does
Speaker 1: the firing on campus, it's usually someone who's more left leaning.
Speaker 1: But a lot of the professors who are targeted by
Speaker 1: the left are on the left. They're just not sufficiently
Speaker 1: so according to some of the activists. And most importantly,
Speaker 1: people miss this. Yes, one of the reasons why cancel
Speaker 1: culture got so intense and why so many professors have
Speaker 1: lost their jobs over the last ten years is partially
Speaker 1: because this big uptick around twenty seventeen of student petitions
Speaker 1: to get people to get professors fired. But your audience
Speaker 1: needs to understand a lot of times those are encouraged, by, facilitated,
Speaker 1: by cheered along by administrators. So a lot of the
Speaker 1: reason why it's gotten so bad on campus is not
Speaker 1: just that administrators were bad on free speech since my
Speaker 1: career started in two thousand and one, and suddenly students
Speaker 1: became bad on free speech in twenty fourteen, it said
Speaker 1: in a lot of cases that administrators are actually cheering
Speaker 1: some of the stuff on and making it possible to
Speaker 1: cancel people with things like bias related incident programs where
Speaker 1: you can literally report your professor and your friends for
Speaker 1: that matter, sometimes anonymously on a hotline.
Speaker 3: Yeah, at NYU, it was quite literally on the back
Speaker 3: of our ID cards right underneath like nine to one one,
Speaker 3: the student Health Center, the campus police, and like all
Speaker 3: the very important phone numbers that you might need as
Speaker 3: a person on campus, and then the Bias Respouts hotline
Speaker 3: for if your feelings are poked and prodded, which I mean,
Speaker 3: of course, perhaps there are limited instances of legitimate bias
Speaker 3: on campus, but I think the idea of a hotline
Speaker 3: and institutionalizing it demonstrates that there's an institutional apparatus that
Speaker 3: is willing to respond to speech, and apparently people are
Speaker 3: so aggrieved on campus that that's necessary, which I actually
Speaker 3: think sen's a really terrible message. It's one of the
Speaker 3: most progressive schools in the country, I think, where I've
Speaker 3: had an overwhelmingly welcoming and open minded class of peers
Speaker 3: and students around me. I don't think that bias is
Speaker 3: a mass issue at a place like NYU. Of course,
Speaker 3: if it pops up, I would I would hope that
Speaker 3: an administrator would respond to that adequately. But the idea
Speaker 3: of a hotline and that we need it plastered on
Speaker 3: the back where I d cards around the back of
Speaker 3: bathroom door stalls is really chilling, I think, in my opinion,
Speaker 3: because who knows what one person might think bias is.
Speaker 3: And internal reports from n YU showed that some of
Speaker 3: the examples of things that people had called in included
Speaker 3: someone saying that the photos of students used in promotional
Speaker 3: material for n YU did not reflect the diverse student
Speaker 3: body enough. Apparently that's something to call the hotline about.
Speaker 2: So I think that essential thing about this is that
Speaker 2: a lot of is the whole notion that ideas can
Speaker 2: make you can make you feel unsafe, right, I mean
Speaker 2: that seems to be what this is about, you know,
Speaker 2: and uh and and from a compassionate point of view,
Speaker 2: I mean, I actually that makes sense to have a
Speaker 2: hot line if something makes you feel unsafe. You of
Speaker 2: course you would call hotline if you feel physically unsafe.
Speaker 2: So now, if ideas can make you unsafe, then you know,
Speaker 2: that's obviously the extension that that that's their logic, that's
Speaker 2: their logic. But where do you this This is so
Speaker 2: tricky in trying to really logically and compassionately think through
Speaker 2: the lines. Where are the lines between ideas that can
Speaker 2: that can generally we devile against people like you, you know,
Speaker 2: whatever group you're part of, and ideas that make you
Speaker 2: feel unsafe, where everyone or out on the outside is
Speaker 2: like that is overreacting, but on the inside it doesn't
Speaker 2: feel like you're overacting. It really does make you distressed.
Speaker 2: How do you sort through that swamp?
Speaker 1: We should be thankful that there's no way to stop ideas. Really,
Speaker 1: I think ultimately, despite the fact that some ideas might
Speaker 1: make you uncomfortable, that ultimately it's a very good thing
Speaker 1: about human civilization that I ideas to a degree can't
Speaker 1: be stopped. And one thing that I think there's a
Speaker 1: there's a profound naivete around the idea that censorship can
Speaker 1: somehow fix the problem of human evil. And one thing
Speaker 1: that I really want people to understand. And this is
Speaker 1: where the combination of my First Amendment specialization and also
Speaker 1: my obvious intense interest in social psychology, you know, which
Speaker 1: you could see in Coddling the American Mind. I've I'm
Speaker 1: obsessed with that stuff really kind of come together because
Speaker 1: in First Amendment law there was this idea that you
Speaker 1: should allow even odious opinions to be aired, because otherwise
Speaker 1: they go underground, they fester. And the reason why I
Speaker 1: don't love that analogy is because it's not strong enough.
Speaker 1: Because we know about group polarization. We know about group polarization,
Speaker 1: you know through lots of studies that essentially if you
Speaker 1: tell people to go to places where because first of all,
Speaker 1: no censorship changes nobody's minds. Nobody's like, oh, you're saying
Speaker 1: it's illegal to have this opinion, Well, I guess I
Speaker 1: don't have that opinion anymore. Bs they realize that they
Speaker 1: should talk to people they agree with, but we all
Speaker 1: know and the research is strong on this. If you
Speaker 1: end up in a group of people who are all
Speaker 1: on your political fence, and I think we've had this
Speaker 1: experience too, that you know, you get together and you
Speaker 1: talk political issues and you leave much more radicalized in
Speaker 1: the direction of the opinion, and that this replicates. But
Speaker 1: one cool thing about the book that I probably should
Speaker 1: mention more we got some really interesting data from the
Speaker 1: National Contagion Research Institute about what happen when people were
Speaker 1: kicked off Twitter for being offensive or being pro Trump
Speaker 1: or whatever. All these different sort of mass expulsions from
Speaker 1: Twitter resulted in and it meant that they all went
Speaker 1: to GAB and the research also indicated they all got
Speaker 1: much more out of touch, much more radicalized. So there's
Speaker 1: an actual danger to society from the naive belief that
Speaker 1: we can actually deal with bad ideas by shutting people up.
Speaker 1: As I often say that you are, the most important
Speaker 1: thing about freedom of speech is that we're engaged in
Speaker 1: the project of human knowledge. And part of the project
Speaker 1: of human knowledge is knowing the world as it is.
Speaker 1: But you can't know what the world as it is
Speaker 1: unless you know what people really think and if you
Speaker 1: believe you're safer for knowing less about what people really think,
Speaker 1: you're deluding yourself.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I would say right now. I mean, I've
Speaker 3: just been thinking about this recently. Greg and I were
Speaker 3: talking about truth social today, and I mean, you couldn't
Speaker 3: have a more perfect example of how censorship does not
Speaker 3: actually remove bad ideas or ideas that someone might consider
Speaker 3: bad if you're not a fan of Trump's. I mean,
Speaker 3: all that that really did kicking him off of Twitter
Speaker 3: is gave him his own little echo chamber of people
Speaker 3: who only agree with him and the rest of us,
Speaker 3: I mean, or at least I can speak for myself.
Speaker 3: I don't really know what he's truth socialing unless I
Speaker 3: see a screenshot from somewhere else. And yet he's the
Speaker 3: front runner candidate of one of the two major political
Speaker 3: parties in this country, and the censorship did nothing to
Speaker 3: actually stop that. If anything, it just insulated him from
Speaker 3: criticism and insulated everyone else from actually understanding what a
Speaker 3: large faction of the country believes. At this point in time.
Speaker 2: It just bogs my mind. We don't need to go
Speaker 2: down their whole rabbit hole Trump, but it bogs my
Speaker 2: mind that he you know that literally the definition of
Speaker 2: speech that incites riots or violence, and he's like king
Speaker 2: of that. He's like king of speech that incites violence
Speaker 2: and riots and he doesn't get in trouble for it.
Speaker 2: So if he's not getting in trouble for it, who
Speaker 2: is who is going to get in trouble for it?
Speaker 1: That's interesting to be in the First Amendment field? Is
Speaker 1: was January sixth tech technically incitement? I think you know,
Speaker 1: I've discussed this a lot with David French about like
Speaker 1: if that's not it. I don't know exactly what it
Speaker 1: is exactly, but there are a lot of First Amendent
Speaker 1: lawyers and they didn't quite get there.
Speaker 4: And it's like because they're paid to argue that they're
Speaker 4: getting a fancy check to make that argument.
Speaker 2: I want to talk a little about Pandora's toolbox.
Speaker 4: Can we do that?
Speaker 2: Can you tell me a little about Pandor's toolbox?
Speaker 1: Oh? Thanks, yeah, No, I think the I've noticed that
Speaker 1: we've gotten some harsh reviews from London conservative British papers
Speaker 1: my mother's British that it hurts my feelings a little bit,
Speaker 1: But the main thing that they seem to not like
Speaker 1: are the allegories and literary devices that I love using,
Speaker 1: you know, Like, so we opened up Coddague the American Mind.
Speaker 1: The opening to Coddling the American Mind, it talks about
Speaker 1: going to a guru who gives us terrible advice. And
Speaker 1: this came out of a point when Height and I
Speaker 1: were working together and we're getting so in the weeds
Speaker 1: on hers actionality. I told them, we're starting to write
Speaker 1: a book that I don't want to read, and that's
Speaker 1: a bad story. So I like allegories, and I know
Speaker 1: that they don't always work, but in this case, I like,
Speaker 1: I help, but I think it helps bring people in,
Speaker 1: you know, by having a story that actually encapsulates the
Speaker 1: whole idea. So the idea is that there is a
Speaker 1: society in which the Sorceress Pandora, that that's that's dysfunctional.
Speaker 1: The sorces Sorceress Pandora takes away everybody's ability to make
Speaker 1: ad hominem arguments to to to to avoid the topic.
Speaker 1: Everybody actually has to be truthful and everybody has to
Speaker 1: be engaged in like the rules of argumentation where you address,
Speaker 1: you know, the actual topic. And this society absolutely explodes
Speaker 1: successfully like it becomes you know, the most innovative place
Speaker 1: in the country, in the world. All the scholars go there.
Speaker 1: It's able to solve problems because people don't dodge around,
Speaker 1: they just get right to the point. But after like
Speaker 1: a hundred years of this people her magic starts waning,
Speaker 1: which is our image of like that it kind of
Speaker 1: like people missing the point, you know, like to a degree,
Speaker 1: and the city starts to be divided against itself. We
Speaker 1: call it Nossopolis, which is city of knowledge because we're
Speaker 1: you know, and and on either. So her two granddaughters,
Speaker 1: you know, one represents like the east side when the
Speaker 1: the west side that are at each other's throats, and
Speaker 1: she tries to encourage them to bring the people together,
Speaker 1: and they're like, no way, Granny, Like, we we want
Speaker 1: those weapons back. We want we want the ad hominems,
Speaker 1: we want the things that let you win every argument,
Speaker 1: because I want to own you libtards, but I want
Speaker 1: to you know, get you groomers. And so we just
Speaker 1: like in in colleague in the American mind, we sort
Speaker 1: of like introduce a little bit of humor to it.
Speaker 1: But it's a way of saying that's kind of where
Speaker 1: I feel like we are. If you can't argue towards truth.
Speaker 1: You're wasting tremendous cognitive energy on cancel culture, cat videos
Speaker 1: and just figuring out a way to not actually hear
Speaker 1: what the other side saying.
Speaker 2: Ricky like cat videos though, well I love cat because
Speaker 2: we love cats. So cancel culture is Does you argue
Speaker 2: that cancel culture is part of a strategy to win
Speaker 2: arguments without actually winning arguments? Yeah, so can you explain
Speaker 2: what that means?
Speaker 1: You know why actually bother. One of the reasons why
Speaker 1: we have so many rules for like formal debate is
Speaker 1: because we want to actually, you know, get to the
Speaker 1: point of an argument, have substantive discussions, but it's much
Speaker 1: easier to engage. So we talk about rhetorical fortresses, and
Speaker 1: we talk about everything from logical fallacies to add hominem
Speaker 1: attacks to demographic dismissal. We call one the perfect rhetorical
Speaker 1: fortress and the other one the efficient rhetorical fortress on
Speaker 1: the right. But cancel culture is the most extreme version
Speaker 1: of of a dodge, because if you can scare someone
Speaker 1: out of saying what they really think, or get them
Speaker 1: punished for saying what they really think, you might not
Speaker 1: ever have to have that argument with anyone again because
Speaker 1: they don't. Actually, I don't want to be the next
Speaker 1: person who gets fired for that, So cancel culture. We
Speaker 1: try to make people understand that they should see it
Speaker 1: as part of only the most dysfunctional part of a
Speaker 1: dysfunctional way to argue that we've known is dysfunctional. Going
Speaker 1: back centuries, like we had rhetorical you know, ideas of
Speaker 1: what a good argument looks like, going back well before
Speaker 1: the ancient Greeks, probably but definitely you know, back with
Speaker 1: the ancient Greeks and Romans and cancel culture, you know,
Speaker 1: like what kind of like with the allegory of Nososopolis,
Speaker 1: kind of what what we're saying is we're regressing to
Speaker 1: these these habits that are very predictable in human nature,
Speaker 1: and if we let people use them, they'll use them
Speaker 1: like crazy. But they get you nowhere, they get you
Speaker 1: less than nowhere.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And I one thing that's interesting, having been on
Speaker 3: a college campus recently, when we talk about these ad
Speaker 3: hominem attacks of people's immutable carearacteristics and saying, oh, you
Speaker 3: can't or you have no right to say that because
Speaker 3: you're X or Y or Z or whether it's race, gender, sexuality,
Speaker 3: whatever it may be is I've seen it just that
Speaker 3: that reality is so entrenched on especially on campuses, that
Speaker 3: when I was in discussion based philosophy courses especially, I
Speaker 3: would hear all the time people preface their arguments almost
Speaker 3: as a way to like buttress themselves against criticism by
Speaker 3: saying as a woman X y Z, or as a
Speaker 3: person of color or whatever it might be. Because we've
Speaker 3: we so fundamentally know that we will get attacked based
Speaker 3: on our characteristics, or that our characteristics have something to
Speaker 3: do with the ideas that we're presenting, that we try
Speaker 3: to like buttress ourselves at the same time, which is
Speaker 3: like almost the inverse of the ad hominem attacks in
Speaker 3: a kind of funny way.
Speaker 2: You can't be like as a cisgender white man, I
Speaker 2: you know, listen to my perspective, I feel like that
Speaker 2: one doesn't.
Speaker 3: All I have is the woman card.
Speaker 1: But you know, I mean probably a different cards.
Speaker 2: That's my point. My point is that there are different
Speaker 2: cards and.
Speaker 1: When and we take it through the perfect rhetorical fortress.
Speaker 1: One point that we make because the perfect rhetorical fortress.
Speaker 1: One of the reasons why it's perfect and it's so
Speaker 1: complex is because since it comes from the left, it's
Speaker 1: largely been adapted on campus where there's just exquisite ways
Speaker 1: to kind of dodge arguments. And so the first one
Speaker 1: is if you can label someone conservative, it doesn't matter
Speaker 1: if they are. You don't have to listen to them anymore.
Speaker 1: And I can attest even back when I, you know,
Speaker 1: started law school back in nineteen ninety seven at Stanford
Speaker 1: kind of like you can dismiss somebody like that was
Speaker 1: well established, Like arguing someone's conservative was kind of the
Speaker 1: same thing as arguing that they were wrong. And we
Speaker 1: still do this very much, you know, on Twitter. It's
Speaker 1: embarrassing and ninety nine percent of people can be accused
Speaker 1: of it. I mean, it's one of the reasons why
Speaker 1: you started seeing the ACLU being accused by some activists
Speaker 1: of being right wing or in that New York Times
Speaker 1: it's like, well, it's worked on everyone else before. They
Speaker 1: hate being called this. But then we go down what
Speaker 1: we call the demographic funnel, which we had some fun with.
Speaker 1: Height actually encourage me not to not actually put the
Speaker 1: demographic numbers on it, but I insisted, in part because
Speaker 1: most Americans don't understand what the demographics of the United
Speaker 1: States actually looks like, so we go through all the
Speaker 1: race dismissial, gender identities, dismissals, et cetera, et cetera. And
Speaker 1: by the time you're done, you get down to about
Speaker 1: point nine percent of the population of the country. But
Speaker 1: here's the trick, here's the kicker. If you're in that
Speaker 1: point nine percent, like so like a trans, non white person,
Speaker 1: and if you have the wrong opinion, you're still wrong,
Speaker 1: and actually you might get even greater frustration because people say,
Speaker 1: you have internalized transphobia, you have internalized misogyny, you have
Speaker 1: internalized depression, et cetera, et cetera. You actually might be
Speaker 1: up for greater hate. So like basically, and we've got
Speaker 1: examples and quotes of people saying this. It's like, there's
Speaker 1: a great quote that we have in there from Coleman
Speaker 1: Hughes of a black independent thinker who sometimes called dismissed
Speaker 1: his conservative but he's an amazing, amazing, thoughtful dude, and
Speaker 1: he says he makes the point that it's like, I'm
Speaker 1: often being told that essentially the color of my skin
Speaker 1: is the most important thing to give me credibility on
Speaker 1: any number of topics. But as soon as I have
Speaker 1: the wrong opinion. I get told that I'm not really black,
Speaker 1: So you see, it's perfect, like either I have the
Speaker 1: right opinion or I'm not really black. John mcwardar said
Speaker 1: the same thing. Well Will for Riley, Like every black
Speaker 1: conservative and most black moders we talked to, he said,
Speaker 1: they've been told, and I think often by white people
Speaker 1: they're not really black for their opinions. And that's what
Speaker 1: makes the rhetorical fortress perfect because it's kind of like
Speaker 1: there's no way to get out of it, you know,
Speaker 1: being legitimate.
Speaker 2: Ricky, do you want to touch that?
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, I mean I'm I walk off any clip.
Speaker 3: I have no sensitivities with that at all, whatsoever. But
Speaker 3: it's funny. I was. We did Jordan Peterson's podcast, which
Speaker 3: I don't think either was expected would concentrate so much
Speaker 3: on toxic femininity, but.
Speaker 2: Oh boy, that was a little super was obsessed with that.
Speaker 1: I was looking. I was looking at that, and it
Speaker 1: clearly seemed like he was directing it. Partially because you know,
Speaker 1: my co author's a young woman, and I liked watching
Speaker 1: the expression on her face as this was coming at her,
Speaker 1: agatting a little bit like okayus up.
Speaker 3: I was just I was very I was nervous, but
Speaker 3: I actually I listening back, it was a really interesting conversation.
Speaker 3: I thought it was discussing a lot of things that
Speaker 3: that you otherwise maybe would not have been able to
Speaker 3: discuss if there was not a woman at the table,
Speaker 3: which I don't actually think is that productive of a reality,
Speaker 3: to be honest. But I also, of course like got
Speaker 3: all the accusations as a result that it's like my
Speaker 3: internalized misogyny that I might agree with him on some points.
Speaker 3: I didn't agree with him on everything that he said,
Speaker 3: but there's certainly that accusation that even if I can
Speaker 3: participate in the conversation because I am a woman, but
Speaker 3: then even if I have a different or more heterotopus
Speaker 3: opinion on some things and not the expected opinion as
Speaker 3: a woman, then i've I must have internalized some sort
Speaker 3: of external bias, which is I don't believe to be
Speaker 3: the I just might think about it a little bit
Speaker 3: differently regardless of my my immutable characteristics.
Speaker 1: My favorite version of this is actually directed at Peter Teal,
Speaker 1: and we mentioned it in the book, which is that
Speaker 1: Peter Teal is a gay conservative, and there was an
Speaker 1: article that we quote in the in the book making
Speaker 1: the argument that Peter tele is not in fact gay,
Speaker 1: he is a man who has sex with men because
Speaker 1: his politics are wrong, and that somehow makes them magically
Speaker 1: not gay. It's like great, like just congratulations, You've created
Speaker 1: a perfectroal firds.
Speaker 2: So do you think there's a lot of gas lighting
Speaker 2: of the American Mind?
Speaker 1: Do you want to answer that, Ricky, because that's a
Speaker 1: softball question.
Speaker 3: I'll let you answer it, because that was one of
Speaker 3: our original titles that I think we were going to
Speaker 3: do before I was canceling, right, that was.
Speaker 1: That was actually one of the titles were originally thinking about.
Speaker 1: You know, got a I've never liked the title Coddling
Speaker 1: of the American Mind, but now I feel like I'm
Speaker 1: stuck with a formula. So it's always Jared the American
Speaker 1: Mind something. But we went with canceling in this case
Speaker 1: to make it clear it's about cancel culture. But we
Speaker 1: have a chapter called Gaslighting of the American Mind, and
Speaker 1: it's talking about this absolute blow up on Twitter of
Speaker 1: just people freaking out, Keith Oberman getting really mad, former
Speaker 1: and New York Times reporters saying that they wouldn't work
Speaker 1: for that organization anymore if they if they were there,
Speaker 1: they'd quit right away.
Speaker 3: And what was this?
Speaker 1: In The New York Times had committed. They wrote an
Speaker 1: article citing actual data that cancel culture is real. They
Speaker 1: point out that cancel culture also comes with the right,
Speaker 1: which we take on in multiple chapters in the book.
Speaker 1: By the way, to be clear, we don't dispute that
Speaker 1: they're saying things that, as best I could tell, were
Speaker 1: obviously true from personal experience and also from the data.
Speaker 1: It's the New York Times, and people flipped out. And
Speaker 1: by the time that even the New York Times, can't
Speaker 1: you get completely roasted for saying something that's obviously true
Speaker 1: by people are saying this can't possibly be true. I'm like, no,
Speaker 1: that's that's called gaslighting. You're telling the whole rest of
Speaker 1: the country that were not actually seeing what we're seeing
Speaker 1: with their own eyes.
Speaker 3: Yeah. And I would add to that, if you look
Speaker 3: at the actual statistics across different age groups what their
Speaker 3: view is of cancel culture, it's older people have a
Speaker 3: more negative view, Younger people have a more positive view.
Speaker 3: Millennials or super gung how and love it apparently, and
Speaker 3: then it completely inverts when you get to gen Z,
Speaker 3: and actually gen Z has the most negative view of
Speaker 3: any generation, so they completely break that pattern. And I
Speaker 3: think there's a lot of gaslighting with young people in
Speaker 3: particular because we grew up so mired in cancel culture.
Speaker 3: And like, if you're a young person trying to explore yourself,
Speaker 3: figure out who you are, where you want to fit in,
Speaker 3: go to a new college, start a new job, like,
Speaker 3: there's so many places where you can fumble and screw up.
Speaker 3: And I think growing up with no grace or forgiveness
Speaker 3: on that front really fundamentally shaped a generation. I think
Speaker 3: there's a massive authenticity crisis with young people that I
Speaker 3: felt myself for a long while, and so I would
Speaker 3: say young people are particularly gas lit.
Speaker 2: I think that it's important to point out that this
Speaker 2: issue goes far beyond K through twelve and universities. So
Speaker 2: in your book, you cover psychotherapy, you cover social media
Speaker 2: science and medicine, and my favorite comedy. But so let's
Speaker 2: double click on two two of my favorites psychotherapy and comedy.
Speaker 2: A lot of comedians need psychotherapy. Trust me, I say
Speaker 2: that as someone who dabbles in the comedic realm. Tell
Speaker 2: me a little bit about how is this Infiltrating How's
Speaker 2: cancel culture infiltrating psychotherapy? Let's start there.
Speaker 1: Oh man, that was probably the most depressing chapter for
Speaker 1: me to write, for us to write, and the and
Speaker 1: partially it's the fact that I have, you know, I
Speaker 1: know people who are getting their clinical psychology PhDs. I
Speaker 1: know people who are in various programs and they're afraid
Speaker 1: to complain about any of this to their classmates. And
Speaker 1: one thing that comes up all the time is that
Speaker 1: they're they're one of their nights mercenaries. Is what if
Speaker 1: it turns out I'm treating someone who's like a Trump supporter,
Speaker 1: What if I actually find out that they're actually kind
Speaker 1: of right wing? Like what do I do? Like do
Speaker 1: I just immediately cancel it? And of course, you know
Speaker 1: the people I know are kind of like, well, then
Speaker 1: you treat them, you help them, you know, like you're
Speaker 1: like you're supposed to. And we've heard this from multiple sources.
Speaker 1: But also there was a therapist talking about Sam Barry
Speaker 1: Weiss and Camille Foster talked to us about this too,
Speaker 1: about being in a therapy session and having your therapist
Speaker 1: correct your point of view on something like take time
Speaker 1: out of the thing you're paying for, which makes it
Speaker 1: even worse. But to correct to point out like, oh,
Speaker 1: that might be internalized racism, And I think about, you know,
Speaker 1: the thing that led me down this entire road was
Speaker 1: that led to coddling in the American mind. And this
Speaker 1: whole weird adventure i'd been on was you know, getting
Speaker 1: ready to kill myself back in two thousand and seven
Speaker 1: because I got clinically terribly depressed, partially because of the
Speaker 1: Culture War, which is one of the reasons why I
Speaker 1: actually take all this stuff so seriously. And I think about,
Speaker 1: what if at the time I went in to talk
Speaker 1: to to my therapist and they started judging me on
Speaker 1: the observations that I was having that were just true
Speaker 1: coming out of constantly being in the culture world all
Speaker 1: the time, Like I'm literally not sure i'd still be here,
Speaker 1: and that's no exaggeration. So the expansion of some of
Speaker 1: this sort of like I have to correct your thoughts
Speaker 1: or I don't have to treat people who are you know,
Speaker 1: fifty percent of the population if I don't like them.
Speaker 1: That's dangerous stuff for the mental health of the country,
Speaker 1: and it certainly creates horrible ethical dilemmas for the profession.
Speaker 1: But actually, have you heard any stories about this, Scott? Oh?
Speaker 2: Yes, what I see is a lot of ironically implicit
Speaker 2: bias within the psychotherapy profession. I'm turning it back on them.
Speaker 2: You know that phrase implicit bias. But you know, there's
Speaker 2: almost like greater compassion for certain kinds of client, like
Speaker 2: immediate without even knowing their life story. You know, certain
Speaker 2: like like oh my gosh, you know, I'm treating this
Speaker 2: person of color, so therefore I need to treat them
Speaker 2: more delicately and show them more compassion, you know, just
Speaker 2: pre judging things without which I thought the sort of
Speaker 2: aim of psychotherapy lest the car Rogers unconditional positive regard.
Speaker 2: Humanistic psychology approach that I take is that you care
Speaker 2: about the individual experience more than anything else. You know,
Speaker 2: you want to get to know a whole person, you know,
Speaker 2: and not pre judge them. So it seems to go
Speaker 2: be the opposite of that. You know, there seems to
Speaker 2: be a lot of implicit bias in the field, is
Speaker 2: what I've noticed. Shall we talk about comedy? Should we
Speaker 2: lighten things up a little bit? This is this is
Speaker 2: a heavy topic. You know, you guys wrote a heavy book.
Speaker 2: You know you know it.
Speaker 3: You know it.
Speaker 2: I don't tell you that, but but comedy, so thank
Speaker 2: God for comedians, right? Can we all agree? Can I
Speaker 2: get an amen? That might be the last amen, the
Speaker 2: last truth speakers that we that we allow, you know,
Speaker 2: but you're saying, maybe we don't allow it anymore, and
Speaker 2: maybe they are even they are being canceled. What have
Speaker 2: you found in your work there?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean there's example after example of comedians being
Speaker 3: protested or shut it down or asked to stop in
Speaker 3: mid routine due to sensitivities that people have. I think
Speaker 3: one of my favorite examples was Constantine Kissing at one
Speaker 3: point in the UK was invited to do some sort
Speaker 3: of charity event I think, and he was doing stand
Speaker 3: up there and I asked him to preemptively write or
Speaker 3: sign a contract that would say that he wouldn't offend
Speaker 3: people based on race, religion, gender, etc. Before you even
Speaker 3: showed up, which I then he pulled out of the event.
Speaker 3: I don't blame him, because that's certainly, I mean, you
Speaker 3: have to risk being offensive if you want to be comedic. Frankly,
Speaker 3: I mean, I think it's a place where or a
Speaker 3: cultural space where we can lean into some of the
Speaker 3: most controversial and uncomfortable reality is in a kind of
Speaker 3: cathartic way and share of laughs, and this is one.
Speaker 3: But this definitely is one that gave me a little
Speaker 3: bit of in the course of writing it. It's like,
Speaker 3: uniquely probably the only case study in our book where
Speaker 3: I feel like there is maybe light at the end
Speaker 3: of the tunnel, because it's so egregious to see cancel
Speaker 3: culture in this area that I think I think some
Speaker 3: people who might be more sympathetic to it creeping up
Speaker 3: in other crevaces of society are more allergic to the
Speaker 3: idea of censoring comedians. Because there's two examples that I
Speaker 3: think we're heartening. One was the Dave Chappelle Netflix protest.
Speaker 3: A lot of their employees protested a special on which
Speaker 3: he made jokes about transgender people. But the company in
Speaker 3: the end changed their entire policy and kind of like
Speaker 3: workplace manual to say, you know, we're going to say
Speaker 3: things in publish things that you're not going to like
Speaker 3: because we're a publishing platform, and if that's a problem
Speaker 3: for you, then this is not the company for you,
Speaker 3: which I think is a really great standard to put
Speaker 3: forth because it requires everyone to put their own personal
Speaker 3: politics and sensitivities aside. Then the other example that was
Speaker 3: really heartening was Andrew Schulz had to run in with
Speaker 3: a major streamer. I don't think he ever said publicly
Speaker 3: which one where they wanted to cut out a few
Speaker 3: jokes in a special that they bought from him, and
Speaker 3: he bought it back and sold it on his own
Speaker 3: and actually ended up making a ton of money on it.
Speaker 3: I mean, of course, these are people who already had
Speaker 3: very well established platforms, which puts them in a much
Speaker 3: better position to be able to fight back against the
Speaker 3: cancel culture versus someone who's up and coming. But I
Speaker 3: do think this is one place where it's just like
Speaker 3: a lot more people have been willing to say no,
Speaker 3: like not not here.
Speaker 1: And you do improv, right, right, Scott?
Speaker 2: Improv, but also stand up in an alter.
Speaker 1: Ego, Yes, what's the environment like in your opinion?
Speaker 4: Well, it helps having an alter ego that no one
Speaker 4: can recognize that has a mustache in an afro. I
Speaker 4: don't even know if I'm a lot to say afro
Speaker 4: to be honest, a jufro and maybe that's more Oh wow.
Speaker 2: But now the environment, you know, I still find that
Speaker 2: comedians you know, one of the greatest joy is amongst
Speaker 2: comedians is offending each other. Like when I hang out
Speaker 2: with my friends who are comedians, we enjoy offending each other.
Speaker 2: Is that taboo to say that? I mean, I feel
Speaker 2: like that's just like part of the exercise.
Speaker 1: Well, that's been one of the things that I found
Speaker 1: really funny about sort of like the rewriting of history,
Speaker 1: or when I look at people getting offended by like,
Speaker 1: you know, Sarah Silverman's you know, old TV show back
Speaker 1: in the two thousand and seven. I remember looking at
Speaker 1: the content of Comedy Central back in two thousand and seven,
Speaker 1: and it was also edgy. I'm kind of like, you
Speaker 1: know what, the situation for free speech can't be that
Speaker 1: bad if this kind of stuff is like people get
Speaker 1: that all this stuff as a joke. And then I
Speaker 1: kind of like I saw this kind of look at
Speaker 1: looking back, you know, offense archaeology stuff that we talk
Speaker 1: about in the book, the idea of like looking backwards
Speaker 1: in time to try to find something that was wouldn't
Speaker 1: be acceptable today, to for example, get Sarah Silverman in
Speaker 1: trouble for her for some of the racy bits that
Speaker 1: she did in her in her short lived comedy Central
Speaker 1: piece and getting her canceled. Meanwhile, I watched that show,
Speaker 1: and the whole joke was that, you know, because she
Speaker 1: was constantly making out of herself. The joke was that
Speaker 1: Sarah is a horrible person and she's selfish and narcissistic
Speaker 1: and does offensive things and doesn't even know they're offensive.
Speaker 1: Like so it was actually really funny. But sometimes you
Speaker 1: get the sense, when critically from younger people looking back,
Speaker 1: it's like you didn't know that there were multiple levels
Speaker 1: of things going on in this, Like we knew this
Speaker 1: was offensive. That was part of the joke. But the
Speaker 1: joke wasn't that, haha, this is offensive, It was what
Speaker 1: kind of idiot would actually say something that stupid?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, I think, honestly, no offense to the
Speaker 3: SNL people, but I think embracing a lot of the
Speaker 3: piece e stuff actually has made comedy considerably worse. Like
Speaker 3: I think about just how in my own lifetime watching
Speaker 3: SNL growing up, like it's just gotten considerably less funny
Speaker 3: because they're not willing to call out very obvious excesses
Speaker 3: on their own side. And then all of a sudden,
Speaker 3: once in a blue moon, there will be some degree
Speaker 3: of self awareness or like a political joke that pokes
Speaker 3: fun at the left, and that'll be the thing that
Speaker 3: goes viral because we make fun of the right pretty
Speaker 3: constantly in forums like that, and I think from time
Speaker 3: to time it's a little bit of like self referential
Speaker 3: comedy has become something that we've also pulled away from
Speaker 3: as well, in fear of being politically incorrect. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Really, you guys are making really good points. It seems
Speaker 2: to me like the ability to develop the capacity to
Speaker 2: laugh at yourself or to not take everything so personally
Speaker 2: should be something we should teach people, not exact opposite.
Speaker 1: You know what I mean.
Speaker 2: It seems like a great skill, like to be able
Speaker 2: to harness the skills of not taking rejection so seriously
Speaker 2: and to look at your floibles and you know, being
Speaker 2: able to laugh at them a bit. It seems like,
Speaker 2: you know, a great skill.
Speaker 1: Absolutely. It's one of the things that you can tell
Speaker 1: when I was really depressed back in tw thousands, someone
Speaker 1: was actually a dangero myself. The one thing that you
Speaker 1: you Scott would not have recognized about me was I
Speaker 1: couldn't joke and I couldn't laugh And as far as
Speaker 1: like my it's my major coping, you know mechanism and
Speaker 1: if I if I'm not if I can't laugh, I'm
Speaker 1: I'm in trouble. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I see therapists because I have trouble taking anything seriously.
Speaker 2: But that's that's a condition all on its own. It
Speaker 2: seems like Americans are really losing trust in science. It
Speaker 2: is it's in the air. It's you know, you see
Speaker 2: on Twitter, like like everyone just immediately dismisses any science,
Speaker 2: any scientific study. Now, can you tell me a little
Speaker 2: bit about how we're seeing cancel culture effect you know,
Speaker 2: our our mistrust of information?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, this is a major theme of the book,
Speaker 1: is about how cancel culture actually affects you, whether you
Speaker 1: know it or not. Because, like you know, I I
Speaker 1: this example a lot, partially because I know her. But
Speaker 1: have you ever interviewed Carol Hooven formerly of Harvard.
Speaker 2: Yep, She's been on my podcast and I was at
Speaker 2: a conference with her recently.
Speaker 1: Very thoughtful person. She's an evolutionary biologist. She wrote excellent,
Speaker 1: I mean, honestly, like, I love you know the art
Speaker 1: of popular nonfiction. It's just such a delightful read. While
Speaker 1: being full of information called tea about testosterone and you know,
Speaker 1: a controversial topic. You know, who could have seen that coming,
Speaker 1: you know, fifteen years ago, that as controversial as was.
Speaker 1: But she went on Fox News because you know, a
Speaker 1: lot of other places don't want to talk about a
Speaker 1: book that could be perceived as controversial. And she gives
Speaker 1: this really compassionate explanation of you know, you should use
Speaker 1: trans people's pronouns. You should be respectful, you should be empathetic,
Speaker 1: you should be compassionate. But biological sex is real, and
Speaker 1: we can't pretend it's not real. It's real, and it's important,
Speaker 1: it has medical implications. And she did it. She did
Speaker 1: seemed to do her best to really be the brilliant
Speaker 1: but also compassionate person she actually is. And immediately a
Speaker 1: DEI administrator at Harvard, you know, starts calling her out. Immediately,
Speaker 1: students start organizing, and often times could be clear often
Speaker 1: the student organizing is very much encouraged by administrators as well,
Speaker 1: you know, to sign petitions, you know, to punish her.
Speaker 1: So eventually nobody would be her ta, which Harvard should
Speaker 1: have came in and said, no, we're not gonna you know,
Speaker 1: get we stand by this professor. But the only person
Speaker 1: who really did that was actually Steve Pinker, who's on
Speaker 1: our board and as you know, a champion of back
Speaker 1: at mcfreedom free speech. And she felt very isolated and
Speaker 1: she got very depressed. She talks about in the book
Speaker 1: about for the first time actually having suicidal ideation. And
Speaker 1: she left Harvard. She came back to work for a
Speaker 1: Pinker for a bit, and she's going to AI now.
Speaker 1: And how does this relate to trust and expertise? It
Speaker 1: relates to trust and expertise because if you're someone in
Speaker 1: the public and you see this happen and you're like,
Speaker 1: wait a second, someone just said something that is best
Speaker 1: I can tell is always in a biolog that has
Speaker 1: been a scientific fact for my entire life. She says
Speaker 1: something that I think should be kind of uncontroversial, and
Speaker 1: Harvard students and administrators ruined her career. So I don't
Speaker 1: think science is owning enough how much it's done to
Speaker 1: undermine its own credibility in the past ten years.
Speaker 2: What a really good point. Yeah, Ricky, do you want
Speaker 2: to elaborate that all?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, I think the pandemic was just like
Speaker 3: the most clarifying instance of this because we went into
Speaker 3: it with I mean, I think we like, over the
Speaker 3: course of the pandemic, institutional trust went from like what
Speaker 3: even to me in the beginning was a surprising high
Speaker 3: to a really dismal low. Like I think back to
Speaker 3: the two weeks to Sow the spread sort of time
Speaker 3: period where I almost everyone I knew was a fan
Speaker 3: of Anthony Fauci and trusting him and trusting institutions, and
Speaker 3: yet we saw instances where people who had differing opinions
Speaker 3: on whether it was Jay Bodatariev pointing out lockdowns or
Speaker 3: Jennifer say out a school closures being an issue, or
Speaker 3: you know, Vina Persod I think just recently had a
Speaker 3: speech of his or a conversation that he was supposed
Speaker 3: to have somewhere get canceled because he's had like heterodox
Speaker 3: COVID opinions as well, and or the lab week theory.
Speaker 3: I mean, that's pretty much probably, I guess, the lowest
Speaker 3: hanging crew on something that seemed evident or very potential
Speaker 3: to potentially possible to people, and yet there was a
Speaker 3: total cancel culture teardown of anyone who had a heterodox
Speaker 3: view on any of these issues. Plus you add in
Speaker 3: the fact that people had more time than ever on
Speaker 3: their hands in lockdown to actually analyze some things for
Speaker 3: themselves and hold competing ideas in their head. And then
Speaker 3: you have a one way or the highway sort of
Speaker 3: public discourse, which I think is just one way to
Speaker 3: just totally and almost irreparably, in my opinion, devastate trust
Speaker 3: and voices of authority in a way that I mean,
Speaker 3: I feel that way personally, but I don't. I'm not
Speaker 3: reddling in that I don't think that's a positive in
Speaker 3: any way, shape or form.
Speaker 2: To what extent is a lot of this Does it
Speaker 2: come down to righteous indignation so much? Because I really
Speaker 2: I'm want to read one of my favorite quotes and
Speaker 2: link it to what we're talking about. The shortest way
Speaker 2: to work up a crusade in favor of some good
Speaker 2: cause is to promise people they will have a chance
Speaker 2: of maltreating someone, to be able to destroy with good conscience,
Speaker 2: to be able to behave badly, and call your bad
Speaker 2: behavior scare quotes righteous indignation. This is the height of
Speaker 2: psychological luxury, the most delicious of moral treats. Aldus Huxley
Speaker 2: in Chrome Yellow. I feel like I'm seeing this everywhere
Speaker 2: right now. Yeah, And I mean everywhere. I will this
Speaker 2: will left right up down, you know, that's everywhere.
Speaker 1: Now what why yeah, I mean what one caveat we
Speaker 1: actually found out that wasn't from Chrome Yellow. It is
Speaker 1: from like the forward to some of that. I hadn't
Speaker 1: I hadn't heard of it.
Speaker 2: It was Huxley, right, But it's Huxley.
Speaker 1: It's real. It's a real quote, and it's I couldn't
Speaker 1: believe we didn't see it until after the book was done,
Speaker 1: because it's like, oh wow, Huxley again for the when
Speaker 1: I mean just completely right. You know, I think this
Speaker 1: is one of the things that we're trying to actually
Speaker 1: establish that Cancel culture should be understood as this historical period,
Speaker 1: partially because every historical period has its own weirdnesses, you know,
Speaker 1: like and one of them is the massive reliance on
Speaker 1: social media changing the entire way we argue, you know,
Speaker 1: in some ways much for the much much worse. And
Speaker 1: that you know, that's why we are definition of has
Speaker 1: a historical like beginning date. But these instincts, you know,
Speaker 1: that lead to it, they're part of us. They are hardwired.
Speaker 1: But righteous indignation, I mean it just like Huxley says,
Speaker 1: I mean it's calling yourself a hero, you know, just
Speaker 1: for the way you feel and how much you disapprove
Speaker 1: and how much disgust you can muster. And it's so tempting.
Speaker 1: It's so tempting to feel that superiority over someone, particularly
Speaker 1: when you think your cause is righteous. And it's one
Speaker 1: of the reasons why humility and checking yourself and one
Speaker 1: of those things both Ricky and I repeat all the time,
Speaker 1: taking seriously the possibility you might be wrong on this,
Speaker 1: and knowing beyond a shadow of a doubt you're wrong
Speaker 1: about an awful lot of stuff, So you know, before
Speaker 1: you go decide to campaign to burn that which you know,
Speaker 1: to have a moment of being like, have I been
Speaker 1: wrong about stuff before? And if your answer is no,
Speaker 1: you never have been, well, I don't think I can
Speaker 1: help you very much.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, I think one thing that really stuck
Speaker 3: out to me in writing this book was an idea
Speaker 3: that Greg had about called censorship gravity, and how our
Speaker 3: society or all society is based on the fact that
Speaker 3: this is our human nature is just naturally inclined to
Speaker 3: being pulled down towards towards censorship. It's not a fallacy
Speaker 3: in this case, to say that it's a slippery slope.
Speaker 3: And I think, like an analogy, that he brought the
Speaker 3: censorship gravity idea to the table, and I complimented it
Speaker 3: with an analogy in the book about slouching. And I
Speaker 3: think it's really important to realize that it takes a
Speaker 3: degree in the same way that like you need to
Speaker 3: be purposeful in standing up straight and actually realize when
Speaker 3: your shoulders are slagy. It does take a degree of
Speaker 3: of buy in and and and personal discipline to make
Speaker 3: sure that you don't indulge those instincts. And I don't
Speaker 3: think that's something that we really teach anymore. I have
Speaker 3: those the idioms of live and let live and to
Speaker 3: each their own. I think those have really gone to
Speaker 3: the wayside with my generation and and I mean not
Speaker 3: just my generation, but in the past couple of decades
Speaker 3: in our culture, and we're seeing now the consequences of that.
Speaker 2: No, you, you, you really are far beyond your years. There,
Speaker 2: Icky you, I think I feel like you, really, you
Speaker 2: really belong here. I don't want to see any more
Speaker 2: self deprecation. I think I think you you know, you're
Speaker 2: very you are very wise and uh and great really
Speaker 2: did make a great choice, this idea of I've been canceled.
Speaker 4: Uh.
Speaker 2: I think I hear everything you're saying, and I agree
Speaker 2: with basically all of it. But I do see sometimes
Speaker 2: a sort of victim mentality amongst some people who say
Speaker 2: I've been canceled, And when you look a little bit deeper,
Speaker 2: they haven't really been canceled. They've been maybe even just
Speaker 2: criticized by someone on the left, you know. And I
Speaker 2: really think we need to make these important distinctions about
Speaker 2: what canceling really is versus those who claim canceling. But really,
Speaker 2: you know, when you look deeper, some of them actually
Speaker 2: even use it as ways of increasing their money, getting
Speaker 2: money in platform. They scream, you know, I've been canceled,
Speaker 2: support me at Patreon, you know, and then they become
Speaker 2: richer than anyone else. But there are some people where
Speaker 2: I feel like they they could easily have made the
Speaker 2: choice to not have a victim mentality over it and
Speaker 2: move forward with their lives very productively in a way
Speaker 2: that they weren't really actually technically canceled. But what are
Speaker 2: some of your thoughts. I know you have strong opinions
Speaker 2: about this.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, our definition of cancelation is very close
Speaker 1: to our definition of censorship. So if you got harshly
Speaker 1: criticized so what you know like that, that's not cancelation.
Speaker 1: If you lost your job because of a campaign because
Speaker 1: people were mad at you, that's cancelation as far as
Speaker 1: far as we're concerned. If you got if you got
Speaker 1: your paper rescinded, if you couldn't give a speech you know,
Speaker 1: because you were shouted down, we count censorship. Our definition
Speaker 1: of censorship and cancelation is very close.
Speaker 3: I'll also add to that that I had a point
Speaker 3: of realization when I obviously was like just a kid
Speaker 3: on campus that no one really gave a shit about,
Speaker 3: and then all of a sudden, I'm writing op eds
Speaker 3: and newspapers and some people did not like that and
Speaker 3: came for me. But then I started realizing, like, no,
Speaker 3: I am developing a victim mentality, where like if my
Speaker 3: friend hasn't texted me back for an hour, like, well,
Speaker 3: maybe it's because they hate me now, or maybe it's
Speaker 3: because they're canceling me. And I definitely, for a period
Speaker 3: of time assumed that you know, anything that might have
Speaker 3: been negative or ambiguous directed towards me was for that reason,
Speaker 3: and in retrospect, I remember just like one morning I
Speaker 3: woke up and I was like, hey, oh gosh, I
Speaker 3: totally have a victim mentality over this right now, and like,
Speaker 3: yes he did lead some friend, but certainly not everything
Speaker 3: bad that's happening is because they wrote not bad in
Speaker 3: the New York Post's that's for sure.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well that's a great realization. It seems like an
Speaker 2: important realization for your own mental health. I'm going to
Speaker 2: just cover a couple more of these misconceptions that you
Speaker 2: cover in the appendix. Because you tie your definition of
Speaker 2: cancel culture to protected speech under their First Amendment, doesn't
Speaker 2: that mean you're saying that people can dance nude in
Speaker 2: the workplace, call each other racial epithets, and burn flags
Speaker 2: at the office.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, that's exactly what we're saying. And I put that
Speaker 1: in there very specifically because we have a couple of
Speaker 1: critics who actually make arguments like this. And the reason
Speaker 1: why this ended up in the appendix was because I'm like,
Speaker 1: I don't want to waste any serious person's time with
Speaker 1: arguments this silly. The reason why we tie it to
Speaker 1: First Amendment is because it brings in a lot of
Speaker 1: complexity and nuance to a short definition it recognizes, for example,
Speaker 1: you know, incitement is not protected, defamation, it's not protected,
Speaker 1: true threats or not protected. Except it allows you to
Speaker 1: have a lot of complexity in a short definition, introduces
Speaker 1: a tremendous amount of nuance to it, and your company
Speaker 1: has the right of freedom association to decide I don't
Speaker 1: want to work with this person. I don't want this
Speaker 1: person representing me. But here's the problem from a culture
Speaker 1: free speech, from a national and a perspective. If every
Speaker 1: employer decided that they're both a widget factory and by
Speaker 1: the way, they have a right or left political point
Speaker 1: of view that if you disagree with you can get fired.
Speaker 1: That may be something technically they can do, but it's
Speaker 1: terrible for our democratic republic. It's terrible for democracy because
Speaker 1: you'd have a situation where technically you have a First
Speaker 1: Amendment right, but you can't actually say anything because because
Speaker 1: you can't, you won't be able to work. So I
Speaker 1: like having that as part of the definition. It doesn't
Speaker 1: it's not too hard to explain. But as far as
Speaker 1: like the actual objection, that's why I ended up in
Speaker 1: the appendix.
Speaker 2: I gotcha. I'm glad that I asked it to you,
Speaker 2: because I think that's important your answer. One more question,
Speaker 2: I just really quick one to ask, and maybe maybe
Speaker 2: Ricky can kind of take this have the last word
Speaker 2: in this one. But isn't you know calls of oh,
Speaker 2: I've been canceled only for the privileged, I would say,
Speaker 2: it's not a position of power. Okay, explain a little bit.
Speaker 3: I mean, there's we have so many examples. I think
Speaker 3: I just have friends that were canceled in high school.
Speaker 3: I kind of consider myself among them of people who
Speaker 3: are attacked, and when they're literally teenagers. I mean, the
Speaker 3: people who who make that case, I think often just
Speaker 3: completely ignore the fact that that high school and even
Speaker 3: middle school campuses now. I mean I hear that often
Speaker 3: from parents who tell me that, like, they're middle schoolers
Speaker 3: being attacked. How does politics even have a place in
Speaker 3: middle school at this point in time? And I mean,
Speaker 3: there's just so many instances of random people here and
Speaker 3: there just being torn down by mobs since the beginning
Speaker 3: of cancel culture, and across all age groups and demographics.
Speaker 3: I think there's a certainly a misunderstanding that it's minority
Speaker 3: groups teaming back power or only attacking the privilege. The
Speaker 3: chair downs have been pretty indiscriminate if you ask me,
Speaker 3: and I think the case studies that we have throughout
Speaker 3: the book demonstrate that fact for sure.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it kind of feels like the argument is, well,
Speaker 1: it seems like I'm only reading about famous people in
Speaker 1: the news. When it happens to famous people, it's like, right, because.
Speaker 2: They're famous people.
Speaker 1: That's what gets in the news. Like the like the
Speaker 1: little person getting toward down, which happens all the time,
Speaker 1: particularly in freaking high school, that's just not going to
Speaker 1: get in the New York Times.
Speaker 2: Wonderful. Well, guys, I just want to say again, congratulations
Speaker 2: on this book. I am honored to consider you all
Speaker 2: my friend, uh and I wish you all the best
Speaker 2: in this crusade to have more free speech and also
Speaker 2: you know these things are not all at alledge there
Speaker 2: more free speech, but also more compassionate in the world,
Speaker 2: absolutely each other. I mean, these things do not have
Speaker 2: to be mutually incompatible, right, So thank you, thank you so.
Speaker 1: Much, Scott, And check out the fire and out of Ork.
Speaker 3: What