Latest / Come Together with Ephraim Herschmann / #127: Ephraim Herschmann / Deplatforming v Debates / Monsters and Babies / Risk and Comfort

Transcript

#127: Ephraim Herschmann / Deplatforming v Debates / Monsters and Babies / Risk and Comfort · Come Together with Ephraim Herschmann

0:01
Welcome to another episode of Come Together.
0:15
We are back, ladies and gentlemen, with another episode
0:18
of Come Together solo episode. So episode today I actually
0:24
recorded like I think maybe 3 or 4 solo episodes in the last
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month or so that I just haven't posted for the video that have a
0:35
tiny little coffee here that I'm a big fan of espresso Nespresso,
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double espresso glass. But yeah I don't know I wasn't
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really too happy with the content even though I made my
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way through the forty 4550 minutes that I like to post for
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solo recordings. I, I don't know, I didn't feel
0:58
great about them and I don't know whether it's because they
1:01
were forced or whether or not I just hadn't done it in a long
1:05
time. Solo episodes like that.
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It's been a couple of months now.
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Instead of doing it maybe once a week or once every other week,
1:13
it's every month or two that I'm posting solo episodes.
1:16
And that's obviously for better. I think so, yeah.
1:19
I don't want to spend too much time talking about that and
1:22
rambling on that. I I had a bunch of things that I
1:25
wanted to talk about and I got my handy dandy piece of tiny
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paper over here. And there's actually a bunch of
1:32
different topics on there that I kind of wanted to start talking
1:35
about or at least trying to be thoughtful about and present,
1:40
you know, and just just to kind of put out some information for
1:45
people to think about. And the first thing that
1:49
actually was really the last thing on my list was, but I
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guess has become the most culturally relevant and not just
1:55
because it's a news topic, but because I think generally
1:59
embodies perspective and philosophy or a clash of
2:03
perspectives and philosophies. And that's his whole platforming
2:09
argument or debate that's been going on.
2:11
Now, you know, who can I talk to?
2:12
Who can I not talk to? Who should I talk to?
2:14
Who should I not talk to? To what degree would something
2:18
be considered, you know, endorsing or pushing back?
2:22
What degree is it not? And you know, and I and I, and I
2:28
think that rightfully so, by the way, I actually think that it's
2:31
really important that we have both sides really pushing their
2:35
perspectives on this issue. And the reason why I think it's
2:38
important is because I think that when something becomes a
2:41
hot topic conversation, it really forces people most of the
2:46
time to be relatively thoughtful about it.
2:49
Or at least gives you a lot of information and a lot of context
2:53
to be able to kind of make your own, to draw your own
2:57
conclusions based on a really, really it's there's a lot of
3:05
information to pick from. There's a lot of information to
3:07
choose from. And, you know, as to whether or
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not you even want to have this platform in conversation or
3:12
debate or not, you know, and so, you know, on one hand, people
3:16
will say, well, it's a really terrible idea to platform people
3:19
that that spread bad or stupid or hurtful or wrong, you know,
3:26
rhetoric or conversations. And and you shouldn't even have
3:30
that conversation. You shouldn't even make it
3:31
available. You shouldn't even post it
3:32
online. It's not going to work.
3:35
And then there are the people that respond that say, well, I
3:39
think that it's important to talk about these things because
3:41
whether I agree with them or not, ignoring a topic, ignoring
3:45
a conversation, banning people from talking about it, as we've
3:50
seen in the last 5-10 years, if not more, but definitely at
3:56
least the last 5-10 years, doesn't work.
4:00
Doesn't stop people from really thinking what they're going to
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think and feeling what they're going to feel and looking for
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what they're going to find. You know, I feel like this is
4:07
also kind of the, you know, the root of the gun control debate
4:13
in a lot of senses in the in the, in the I, I think in the
4:16
kind of the sense that, you know, on one hand, someone's
4:19
going to be like, well, listen, like, you know, here's another
4:21
case of gun violence. And obviously we're insane to
4:24
have so many guns and so many weapons available so easily.
4:27
And on the other hand, someone be like, well, listen, a gun
4:30
itself is amoral. A gun does not act, People act.
4:34
You know, if someone is and and so you know what gun control
4:37
laws ostensibly might be make the most sense is to kind of do
4:43
you know, a mental health background check, you know, a
4:46
check to see is this person part of, you know, has this person
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ever been a legitimate threat as someone that has, you know,
4:54
manifested violence or encourages violence or supports
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or is mentally unwell? Is this person bipolar?
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Is this person prone to anxiety attacks or manic waves or, you
5:06
know, what's this person like? And then you kind of make a
5:07
decision on a case by case basis.
5:12
And you know, I'm sure people could probably say the same
5:14
thing about platforming and the degree in which that you push
5:18
back, right? And I don't, I kind of tend to
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and my personal opinion on this topic is to air on the side of
5:29
have the conversation because I don't think that anything that
5:32
anyone is going to do is going to stop the conversation from
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happening. You know, there's obviously the
5:38
most rampant and the most relevant example or, you know,
5:44
human manifestation of someone that has been that's been
5:49
attempted to be cancelled in every institutional sense
5:52
possible would be a guy like Nick Fuentes, who literally, I
5:57
believe just has like his rumble platform.
5:59
You know, like he was banned off YouTube, banned on Spotify, D
6:03
bank D platformed, kicked out of I, I believe, either dropped out
6:07
or left college. But really like no, like he was
6:12
considered toxic for anyone to touch and no one would host him
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and no one would do anything with him.
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And what ended up happening was he found a way to get his idea,
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you know, to get his listeners to listen and to spread his
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ideas. And he, you know, it happened,
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quote, UN quote underground, you know, the same way that the
6:30
hippie movement kind of happened with underground newspapers and
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you know, you know, informal, you know, ways of passing around
6:38
information, whether that's books or music or libraries or
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again, new underground newspapers and stuff like that.
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As long as you have platforms like Rumble, as long as you have
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platforms like that that are committed to ideas like free
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speech, no matter how institutionalized or no matter
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how quote UN quote deep platformed someone's going to
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become. Their ideas don't just disappear
7:02
into a vacuum. They don't go and they don't
7:04
just go nowhere, especially if you keep at it for long enough.
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And I mean, Nick Fuentes I think is late in his late 20s now,
7:11
started this in college. So anyone that invests A decade
7:16
into anything that they want to do and into, you know, it
7:18
doesn't have to be politics. It doesn't have to be a new
7:20
show. If you if you do what Nick
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Fuentes does for a decade and he decided that he wanted to do
7:27
real estate or he decided that he wanted to go into tech, he
7:29
decided that he wanted to do education, he would be
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enormously successful because putting that much effort every
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single day for a decade is a recipe for success no matter
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what. And So what ends up usually
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happening is these ideas that are quote, UN quote, deep
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platformed, where no one will have a conversation with no one
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will rebuke and rebuke or understand or ask to elaborate
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or ask or force, for example, Nick to expand on some some
8:01
ideas that he's had. Without that happening, we have
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a much more dangerous outcome, potentially dangerous outcome.
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And that would be the infamous echo chambers.
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And that would be the infamous, you know, like we need, you
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know, all people. And I, I think I've talked about
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this. I don't remember whether it's on
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one of my unpublished solo episodes or not, but we need
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people, human beings need, need real time feedback on their
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behaviors, on their ideas, on their perspective.
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And that's actually one of the reasons I think that one of the
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issues that we have as a society today, which hopefully, you
8:42
know, we're on the on the on the way to course correcting.
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Excuse me, but one of the issues that we have as a society today,
8:50
as far as I see is or as I see it, is people are aside, aside
8:59
from the fact it's, it's a huge issue that people are isolated
9:03
and lonely a lot of times. It's a big issue that people, a
9:06
lot of people, especially young people below the age of 30 or 30
9:10
or below, typically do not have as many friends as they've
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historically had as many social connections as many in person
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embodied relationships. And a lot of times these in
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person embodied relationships are the things that keep us
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honest because we learn through reading other people's faces,
9:27
through reading other people's responses, through reading the
9:30
room, you know, through getting feedback.
9:33
You make a joke and no one laughs at the joke.
9:34
You put the joke aside, you know, it's not funny anymore.
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If you make a joke and everyone laughs and everyone laughs and
9:38
everyone loves it. And the next thing you know,
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someone else is, you know, is telling the same joke to their
9:43
friends another time. And you're like, wow, that was a
9:45
really great joke. I'm going to keep that up.
9:47
You know, another one was like, yeah, I don't know about that.
9:49
You know. So I think that the so, so I
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think that there is not only enormous value in not doing this
10:00
whole deplatforming thing, I think that the danger of it is
10:04
that it causes this weird. The consequence, the what, what,
10:09
what arises from not having conversations and not
10:13
platforming, especially people that have huge followers and
10:16
huge followings is there's no reality check ever.
10:21
There's no, there's no putting your finger on the pulse and
10:25
being like, oh, shoot. No one thought, no one thought
10:27
that joke was funny. No one thought that idea was a
10:29
particularly good idea. You know, and actually, and
10:32
actually a great example of this that would never have happened
10:36
had no one ever pushed back or given anyone a platform was.
10:42
And I was talking to a friend of mine who a very close friend of
10:46
mine and to keep him anonymous for now, Although if you,
10:50
although if you listen, I'm sure he will know that I'm talking
10:54
about him. You know, we're talking.
10:56
I was obviously Israel has been an enormous topic recently of
11:00
conversation and it has been really ripping apart the the
11:05
modern right wing political coalition.
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But it really kind of manifests itself everywhere because, you
11:13
know, whether you're into politics or not, politics impact
11:17
news, politics in politics impact business, politics impact
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like and and, you know, and for better or for worse, one way or
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the other, you know, Larry Ellison buying, you know,
11:30
Paramount and, you know, CBS and putting Barry Weiss up there.
11:35
Like, yeah, you could say I'm not interested in politics.
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But there's a very clear political agenda that is going
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on over there that's in the world of the bit, in the world
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of business, the world of entertainment, the world of news
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are all having this, are all being impacted by politics.
11:52
So on one hand, it is totally fair to not be interested.
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On the other hand, it's a little silly to deny the far reaching
12:00
influence that politics have on everyday life.
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You know, I don't care about politics.
12:07
I care about my, my, my, my, my bills.
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Well, if you care about your bills, then you want to find out
12:12
what's causing your bills to be so expensive.
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And like, if you don't want to find out, that's totally fine.
12:17
But that doesn't mean that there aren't forces that are impacting
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that. You know, there aren't economic
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strategies and economic, what's the word for it, policies.
12:28
Thank you. That are you know that that,
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that, that, that are affecting and that are having an impact on
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on the cost of food or gas or whatever it is.
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So so you know, and this is what conversation has really been
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having. It has really been for the last
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couple of years, probably, you know, since October 7th really
12:48
has been just absolutely enormous.
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It's just been swallowing up everything, you know, and, and
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everything falls under this conversation now JFK and Epstein
13:01
and foreign policy and wars and and Middle East policy and I
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mean everything. So, you know, so it's become a
13:10
convert, a huge conversation and and one of the prominent anti
13:13
Israel voices are critical of Israel voices that's come up.
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I don't want to say anti Israel, but critical of Israel's
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policies and behavior as a country is Dave Smith.
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And he recently had to a couple of really great debates.
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One with the trigonometry podcast, which was I think 2 1/2
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three hours, which is really, really excellent.
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And yet another really long form on with Coleman Hughes, who and
13:41
he was really great. Now I've been listening to Dave
13:44
Smith because it happens to be that first of all, I found him
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to be a really, really persuasive and dynamic speaker
13:50
debater. I like a lot of his, I, I think
13:54
that a lot of his ideas about policy, economic policy, even
14:00
like social ideas. I, I, I, I tend to think they're
14:03
pretty good usually. And I really do like the general
14:06
anti war perspective that he's pretty consistent about across
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the board. He's actually almost, he's
14:12
extremely consistent about across the board.
14:14
That's actually what people find so challenging about debating
14:18
with him is that he has this the same moral standard for everyone
14:22
and everything. And he's completely consistent
14:24
with it with this idea. And the the issue that people
14:27
take with it is that they say it's not realistic.
14:30
And his argument is I don't care whether it's realistic or not.
14:32
Let's, let's keep that as the yardstick that we're going to
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measure by civilian casualties, bad war only if we absolutely
14:42
need it. Find another way to figure out
14:45
the to resolve your problem without blowing up civilians.
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Doesn't make a difference whether it's in Israel or
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Lebanon or Syria or America or Iran or Iraq.
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He has the same policy. He has the same perspective
14:55
about everything. But, you know, and and and and
14:59
and he is extremely harsh on Israel and their influence, you
15:03
know, especially with their historical entanglement with the
15:08
military industrial complex, Republicans from the early 2000s
15:13
in America. And he has a couple of really
15:18
great quotes, you know, that he's brought up.
15:20
And like, you know, he said, well, this guy who was a
15:23
four-star general, and I don't want to, you know, you should go
15:26
and listen to the podcast if you haven't heard it.
15:28
It's his debate with Coleman Hughes on Coleman Hughes's
15:30
podcast was really, really great again.
15:33
But Coleman Hughes says, well, listen, there's no, you know,
15:35
And so I thought that was a really great point.
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He brought up the point with Coleman.
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And I thought, and I've heard him say this, you know, with
15:41
Douglas Murray, and I've heard them say this in other
15:42
conversations. And Coleman Hughes was able to
15:48
do his homework and is able to do research it and was able to
15:52
appropriately push back and be like, hey, man, like there's no
15:54
actual record of this. There's like a side conversation
15:57
he was having with someone else. You can't tell me that entire
15:59
foreign policy is going to be based on, you know what, you
16:05
know, like a little psychotic. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't.
16:07
But like that's not good enough to like point all the problems
16:12
of a country on another country on a couple of like, you know,
16:15
off the record, you know, chitchat conversations.
16:18
And that if Coleman had not made that, had not had the debate
16:24
with Dave Smith and had not made the time to have a conversation
16:29
with him and quote UN quote, platform him and let him make
16:31
it, make his points, though, I would never have realized that
16:36
that was the context of the conversation.
16:37
And I never would have understood that.
16:39
And and so now by embracing these ideas and now by embracing
16:47
a conversation and preparing yourself for a debate and
16:50
listening to the points that other people make and looking
16:54
into them and responding to them, sometimes you win and
16:57
sometimes you don't. And sometimes your ideas are
16:59
really great and sometimes they're not.
17:01
So you know, there are plenty of points that they've made that
17:04
were great. There are plenty of points that
17:05
Coleman made that were great. And the same thing happened with
17:07
the Trigonometry podcast. I think that overall, generally
17:10
speaking, these long form, multi hour conversations, debates,
17:15
podcasts, whatever you want to call them, they are good.
17:19
Like they do lead to generally really good responses.
17:23
And the only times that people don't like them and the people
17:25
don't respond well to them is typically when they feel like
17:29
they've lost. I mean, I think, I imagine, you
17:32
know, if, if, if, if everyone walked away from that, you know,
17:35
and I don't know. So I think that the platform and
17:40
conversation is one that's kind of over in the sense that I
17:46
think that the popular consensus and the overall impact that's
17:50
made by these long form debates and you watch them and
17:53
especially now, I mean, it's cool.
17:54
Like you could really track how many people are watching these
17:57
and viewing these and how relevant they are.
17:59
I actually would make a really strong case that the clips that
18:02
we watch of these debates are way worse than actually watching
18:06
the debates themselves. And that's because, again, the
18:09
clips are always subject to nitpicking or always subject to
18:13
changing or removing or reframing context.
18:16
Terrible, terrible, terrible idea in my opinion.
18:19
And you know, you have these two and a half hour debate.
18:22
If you watch a if someone posts a minute and 15 second clip of a
18:27
three hour debate on Twitter or on Instagram or on TikTok and
18:31
like says, oh, dunks on him, you almost are.
18:33
You could be you could bet you go to the bank, you know, seven
18:37
days a week and passion knowing that it's probably context less
18:44
so that. So I think that the platform of
18:49
conversation should really just be, hey, you are getting a lot
18:55
of listeners, you are having a big impact.
18:57
Your ideas are something to be acknowledged whether you agree
19:04
with them or not. They're ideas that are obviously
19:06
making some kind of impact and influence.
19:08
Let's talk about them, let's see.
19:11
And by the way, and also and also depends on who the debater
19:13
is and how the conversation goes.
19:15
You know, like a Piers Morgan show tends to be real sloppy,
19:19
real messy of when yelling at each other, yelling over one
19:21
another. OK, fine.
19:23
Like that's a certain that's got a certain I and I would
19:26
personally call it a little bit of more entertainment focus as
19:31
opposed to contact to content focused.
19:35
You know, conversations like it's more about entertainment
19:38
factor and yelling and shock and and, you know, kind of getting
19:41
those like clicks. But then you have like the Lex
19:44
Friedman debate. So you have the again, you know,
19:46
like the debates that Rogan will host or that, you know, people
19:49
having good faith one-on-one or whatever it is.
19:52
And those really, really, really tend to just like be great.
19:57
And I think even with like Nick Fuentes, right, Like there's two
20:01
cases on both Tucker Carlson and with Dave Smith where Dave
20:05
Smith, you know, the famous thing about Nick Fuentes, the
20:07
Holocaust denier, Holocaust denier.
20:09
And then Dave Smith said, dude, like, dude, what's your story?
20:11
And like, do you really not believe that like 6,000,000 Jews
20:14
were killed? He's like, I don't know, maybe
20:15
it's an exaggeration. It's like, dude, I don't think
20:16
it's an exaggeration. He's like, yeah, OK, I'm not
20:18
really going to like, you know, fight about that.
20:20
That's not a hill I'm going to die on.
20:22
So like in just that conversation, in just having,
20:26
just saying, hey, man. Do you really think that and
20:30
like really confronting an idea, you're forced, like someone in
20:33
Nick Funton's position or someone in Dave Smith's position
20:35
or someone in anyone's position, when you're generally confronted
20:39
with an idea that you are not 100% certain about or confident
20:42
in, you're probably going to leave behind.
20:44
Because hey, I'm not really, I'm not really willing to let my
20:49
whole reputation collapse based on this hot take that I want to
20:53
have. But I don't really have all
20:54
fleshed out, you know, and the same thing with Taco Carlson
20:57
when he was talking to Nick Fuentes and pushed back to him
20:59
about, you know, the Jews. And he says, listen, if you have
21:01
a problem with the state, with the with the way that particular
21:04
individuals or a particular government behaves, hold the
21:08
government accountable, hold the particular people accountable.
21:10
But we don't. But but you know, he says as
21:12
Christians, you don't believe in in in collective punishment.
21:16
And Nick Fuentes said literally no choice.
21:18
But he's like, yeah, that's a good point.
21:20
You know, So like, you know, again, does Nick Fontes really
21:25
believe this? Maybe, maybe not.
21:27
But does his several million followers that I'm sure are
21:32
flocking to see, hey, wow, Nick finally is on Tucker Carlson's
21:37
Tucker Carlson show. Hey, look, wow.
21:39
Nick Fontes is, is, is debating, is having a conversation with
21:41
Dave Smith for like 3 hours. It's going to be great.
21:44
And they go listen to it and then they hear the pushback and
21:46
then they hear Nick say, yeah, I don't know if I really believe
21:49
that. You know, like I, I, I, yeah, I
21:50
don't, I can't really argue with that.
21:53
Think about the impact it has on those millions of people,
21:55
everyone that just said the Holocaust was a fake, the
21:58
Holocaust wasn't real. And now and now when push comes
22:01
to shove and you make when you when you have a debate with
22:03
someone that's really prepared, like this documentation and you
22:06
really prepare to, you know, really slug it out, you're not
22:09
really willing to do it the same way.
22:10
Because, yeah, it's one thing to, you know, like what I'm
22:14
doing right now, I'm spewing to a camera, you know, I'm talking
22:17
to. I'm talking to an audience that
22:18
will listen to this either live or at another time, like right
22:22
after I post this or in six months or in five years from
22:25
now, someone's going to listen to this and someone could
22:28
confront me on the ideas that I'm talking about today.
22:31
And I make fault. I mean, I don't think I will
22:34
because I think that again, like I'm trying to present an idea
22:37
and present tangible anecdotes and cases in which those ideas
22:42
are supported, you know? But I will.
22:44
I'm certainly not beyond beyond saying ideas that are not
22:51
completely formed, you know, fully formed.
22:53
And with that, I'm going to top in jump into the next topic.
22:55
One second I'm back The next thing I wanted to talk about.
23:00
If you hear a little noise in the background, it's because I
23:02
got my 6 month old over here who woke up from a nap and she does
23:05
not want to go back to lato. She's going to go back to sleep.
23:11
But yeah, so that's that's really my that's really my take
23:14
on this. I think that more conversations
23:16
are good. I think more debates are good.
23:17
I think that the amount of good that comes out of a trigonometry
23:21
slash Coleman Hughes kind of debate.
23:24
That's the kind of good that we really need to really to really
23:29
kind of get people a little bit more on the same page with one
23:33
another. Because most, I think that most
23:37
of, of vehement disagreement and the most aggressive or harsh
23:45
debates come from places where you don't understand the other
23:48
person. You can't understand the other
23:50
person and so just doesn't make any sense and doesn't align at
23:53
all with any kind of form of reality to you.
23:56
And once you can understand that person, even if you don't agree,
24:00
at least it's a reality that you could understand that how it
24:03
exists and how it, you know, permeates.
24:05
And whether it's for you or not, or whether you agree or not, at
24:08
least you guys could coexist in the same, you know, same world
24:11
and hopefully get along and hopefully, you know, not being
24:14
one of the, you know, not everything has to be so
24:16
polarizing and divisive. So that being said, you know,
24:22
the other topic I really wanted to talk about that I actually
24:24
did record a previous episode about, but I think, but I think
24:30
is really, really important is the idea of of the institutional
24:37
breakdown and whether or not to, you know, when there's a
24:46
breakdown in institutions, right?
24:48
When there's a breakdown in, let's say, trust in news, for
24:51
example, which is obviously extremely relevant for the last
24:55
decade, if not more. There's two ways that you can
25:01
approach obviously trying to correct it and you can either,
25:06
you can either try to recapture the institution and recorrect it
25:12
and, you know, and, and, and reset the course of where it's
25:16
heading, or you can create a new alternative, you know, And so in
25:23
the most relevant example and the most pop example in, in our
25:27
culture today would be obviously the rise of podcasts as a form
25:31
of alternative information. You know, where someone like
25:37
Danny Jones who would never get his own show, he does, you know,
25:41
a lot of extraterrestrial, excuse me, excuse me,
25:45
extraterrestrial or ancient civilizations or you know, a lot
25:51
of architecture archaeology, excuse me, and stuff like that.
25:58
He has a three hour podcast a couple of times a week that goes
26:01
that goes deep diving into a lot of these ideas.
26:04
And even if none of them are conclusive or even if you don't
26:07
like them or agree with them, you can learn a lot that is just
26:10
not available. And so even if the pieces that
26:14
you pick up, you know, you have imagine, I mean, you know, the
26:17
way that I like to think about it is that you have a puzzle and
26:20
the news puts the puzzle pieces together for you and then the
26:24
narrative collapses and then all the puzzle pieces are on the
26:26
floor again. You pick them up and you try to
26:27
figure out what to do with them and what the picture really
26:29
supposed to look like because the first picture didn't look
26:32
great. The next thing that you can do
26:37
is try to figure out a new picture that comes up.
26:39
But you could at least acknowledge along the way, even
26:41
if the new picture that comes up is not a great, is not the right
26:44
picture, you could say, hey, but we still know that we have these
26:47
pieces around. And I think it's really
26:49
important to be able to have available, you know, when when
26:53
you have conversations with Huberman, when you have
26:55
conversations with Lex Friedman. Yeah, then and, and, and these
27:04
conversations would never happen in a may, or probably would not
27:08
happen in a classroom setting, would not happen in a news story
27:11
or not happen in an interview done by Fox or CNN or something
27:15
like that. Then these are alternative
27:18
perspectives that are coming up that are replacing the, the, the
27:22
larger problem at hand, which is that they're gatekeepers and the
27:24
gatekeeper. And, and, and again, this also,
27:27
I mean, this is also has to do with the idea of who's to say
27:30
what ideas are allowed or not, you know?
27:32
And so ideas are going to kind of make their way into, into
27:36
reality one way or the other, no matter how much you try to hold
27:39
them down. So what do we do right?
27:44
And I actually think that you kind of have to try to do both.
27:46
I think that the total destruction of institutions is a
27:51
big problem because it really does leave people with nowhere
27:56
to turn as far as trust goes. And it leaves people without any
28:00
kind of tangible idea as to where in like what is considered
28:05
true or reliable or believable. And, you know, so I think it is
28:10
important to kind of have at least an attempt at recapturing
28:15
a broken institution. On the other hand, I think that
28:18
long term, the issues that caused that institution to, you
28:22
know, decay and to fall apart, those those problems typically
28:29
are human problems. And we have to try to find and
28:34
we have to by observing human nature and understanding human
28:36
nature, we have to be able to try to come up with a little bit
28:41
of a better system than the one that we have.
28:44
And you know, and for, and what's cool about podcasts, for
28:47
example, is that it really is a meritocracy in the sense that
28:52
not that in the sense that no one's going to find you unless
28:56
you're really good. And there's so many podcasts out
29:00
there. There's there's so many.
29:01
I mean, there's millions and millions of podcasts out there.
29:05
How does anyone succeed? The only way you can succeed, I
29:09
mean, there's a couple ways to succeed.
29:10
It's not true that you could, you could kind of force your way
29:12
to the top, but you can always tell whether it's manufactured
29:14
and they don't really, really stay around very long.
29:17
Or you could again, with, you know, with merit, with ideas,
29:21
with conversation, with hard work, with homework, You know,
29:25
you come up with something that is true, enticing, exciting,
29:31
nuanced and educational for people and they're going to dive
29:35
right into it. And, and then, and you see that
29:37
the people that are at the top of the charts, their philosophy
29:40
is that they're great humans a lot of times that their, that
29:43
their humanity tends to shine. And the humanity directs their
29:46
curiosity and directs their projects and directs their
29:48
passions. And, and the combination of
29:52
humanity and hard work leads to some of the greatest people in
29:57
the world, some of the greatest scientists and athletes and
29:59
doctors and engineers and physicians to and researchers to
30:05
want to participate in this really good idea structure.
30:08
So I think that institutions are important.
30:11
I think that as time goes on, they obviously need to change
30:14
and do change. I think that the same reason
30:16
why, you know, the same way that we have the printing press and
30:18
then the Internet, the same way that we had that one evolved
30:24
into the next. There's always going to be
30:25
evolution of these kind of concepts.
30:27
And I'm back. I'm sorry I had to put the
30:30
little girl down. And it seems to me just
30:34
continuing in the same train of thought that we listen, we need
30:40
institutions because I think people like the idea of
30:45
security. I think that people like the
30:51
idea of someone taking care of them.
30:53
People like comfort. People are willing to trade
30:56
almost almost anything for comfort.
30:58
And that's what we really crave, right?
31:00
When you want all the money in the world, what does that really
31:03
mean when someone desires money, When someone desires a bigger
31:06
house, when someone desires, you know, the, you know, generally
31:10
the things that we're looking out for are things that provide
31:14
us ultimately comfort and protection and that we don't
31:18
have to worry about threats and we kind of just want to be free
31:20
to live our own lives. The problem, I think, becomes
31:25
that in order to achieve a certain level of comfort, you
31:28
have to sacrifice a certain level of independence and
31:30
individuality. And that could, and that's a
31:33
good, that's in some cases a good thing.
31:36
For example, when you're driving the street and everyone comes to
31:39
the same conclusion that hey, we're going to abide by the laws
31:44
of traffic, that when there's a sign that says stop and there's
31:47
four of them, then everyone stops and everyone takes turns
31:50
going whoever got there first. That's an important society.
31:54
OK, Yeah, you're giving up a freedom, but you're doing it so
31:56
that you don't have X amount of X amount more car accidents
31:59
every year. When you agree to abide by a
32:04
speed limit, it's because if you're driving in a place that
32:08
is congested and has a certain amount of people that are
32:10
crossing on foot or going to shops or foot traffic or real
32:14
traffic, then there a lot more can happen that you don't see.
32:17
And so we're all agreed together collectively to limit some of
32:20
our freedoms and how fast we're going to go in a car for the
32:23
sake of security. But how far are you willing to
32:26
go with that, you know, and to what extent do you go?
32:29
And, and that that is and you know, and so that is the
32:33
importance of having two parties or two perspectives.
32:38
You know, when you live, when you loosely say liberal or
32:41
conservative, what you're really saying is how strict are we
32:46
going to be about maintaining the rules that we currently all
32:50
are willing to play by? And do we need more rules or do
32:54
we need less rules? And let's see as as a society
32:59
how we're doing. And if we do need more rules,
33:02
then we should definitely implement that.
33:04
If we need less rules, we should definitely implement that.
33:06
We rarely go from how, unfortunately, we really go from
33:12
having more rules to having less rules as time goes on.
33:14
And part of the reason why is because when people get more
33:17
rules, when there's more rules, there's more power.
33:20
When there's more regulation, more people have control over
33:23
what other people can or can't do.
33:25
And that's something that in human nature is inherently
33:30
addicting. It's something that is
33:33
extremely, extremely powerful because if people do what you
33:36
say, then you control resources, you control potential, you
33:40
control how much safety or not you have because other people
33:44
are willing to bend to you. So the desire for power is
33:48
really the desire to control, or at least a portion of it exists
33:54
as a desire to control resources.
33:56
And that could be resources as in money, or it could be
33:59
resources as in public opinion. That could be resources.
34:02
And it's really important that I get validated and, you know,
34:05
it's really important that people like me.
34:06
I think people think highly of me.
34:09
So I was reading, I'm reading right now actually a book called
34:14
Creativity, Inc written by Ed Catmull, who is The Who is the
34:18
president of Pixar for many, many, many years.
34:21
And I actually emailed him try to get him on the podcast.
34:25
I have to give him a couple of follow-ups and see if he could,
34:27
if he if I could get him, but I would, it would be such an honor
34:32
to talk to him. But he wrote this book called
34:34
Creativity, Inc. And I actually, you know, it's
34:37
one of the many books that I kind of discard.
34:39
I picked up when I was in high school or college and discarded
34:43
because I didn't see the value because I was missing a lot of
34:47
context and knowledge. And now, now I'm turning 30 in
34:54
less than a month, December 7th. Today is November 18th and, and
35:01
I have a lot more context. And so I picked the book back up
35:03
a couple weeks ago and I've been inhaling it.
35:05
I've been flying through it. And one of the things that he
35:08
talks about, one of the goals of the book is how to try to
35:10
create, to maintain a creative environment in a very, you know,
35:15
in a business or in a corporate world.
35:18
And it's a really, really interesting conversation and
35:24
book. There's 1 chapter that talks
35:32
specifically about something called the baby and the beast.
35:35
And I want to get into the beast is basically corporate
35:42
interests, interests and the need to make money and to create
35:47
capital and the baby. And he actually, I think he
35:50
calls it the ugly baby because the ugly baby is filled with
35:53
potential is like not fully formed yet, but it has all the
35:58
seedlings and all the potential for like to really, really be
36:02
something great, right? And that's what people really
36:04
always find so beautiful and so awesome about babies in general
36:08
is the notion that, hey, there's so much hope this kid could turn
36:11
out to be really, really anything.
36:13
And so he said that, you know, so a very frequent part of and
36:17
he talks about the movie, the film industry and the movie
36:19
making process like this, right? You got corporate companies that
36:22
care about the bottom dollar. You have the the studios and the
36:25
corporations and the banks and, and the marketing teams and
36:28
whoever it is. And they all care about this and
36:31
they all care about the quality. But they care more about the
36:33
amount of money they make because they know that even if
36:35
they make a great piece of art or a great piece of work, if it
36:39
doesn't sell, then it doesn't really help anyone.
36:42
And so light. So life and business, he says,
36:45
is about balancing the beast is always is never satisfied, is
36:50
always, always hungry. And you know, and, and, and
36:54
actually, I think that, and I've talked about this in a couple of
36:57
a couple of episodes, one with John Perkins, economic hitman,
37:01
one with a couple of with Lawrence White, the economist
37:06
and the professor who's actually in England right now.
37:09
I think he just retired and he's doing some work in England now.
37:13
But one of the things that we talked about is the fact that
37:16
when our quarterly earnings system puts an enormous pressure
37:21
on companies to show everyone at all times how they're always
37:24
making money. And sometimes a good business
37:27
plan, I mean, more than sometimes, very, very often a
37:30
good business plan takes more than 1/4 to implement,
37:34
especially when you're a business conglomerate.
37:36
The size of Disney, the size of Apple, the size of Amazon, the
37:40
size of Netflix, right? You're like, Oh my God, like,
37:43
yeah, how, how, how, how do you ever, you know, like you do need
37:48
to keep on making these decisions that keep on bringing
37:49
money in. And, and each and, and, and
37:52
every quarter the expectations go up dramatically.
37:55
And every year the expectations go up.
37:58
And, you know, and, and the whole notion of and, and so you
38:02
become less and less inclined to take care of this ugly baby
38:06
because after all, it's just a baby and it kind of is ugly.
38:09
And we do have bills to pay now. So, you know, let's let's just
38:13
kill the baby, not actually kill any babies, but kill this really
38:18
great idea with a lot of potential and not tend to and
38:21
not help it come to life and not see that you can try and give it
38:26
an education and see what it has a natural proclivity towards.
38:31
You're just throwing it out because, right, listen, I
38:33
understand that you got to do it, but you want to do it.
38:36
But there is just not enough money.
38:38
There is just sorry, we just need to make money right now.
38:41
And that is a huge issue as far as you know, our general
38:48
perspective goes, which is I don't have time to take care of
38:56
these cute little ideas. I don't have time to be risky.
39:00
I don't have time to, or I don't have the effort or I don't have
39:03
enough resources to pursue something meaningful, something
39:06
pat, something of that, something I'm passionate about
39:08
on the side. There's just not the means to
39:10
it. And the problem is that
39:14
philosophy is really, really difficult to argue with because
39:18
you can't say you're wrong, right?
39:21
There is always things you can do to become more secure.
39:23
There are always things you can do there.
39:25
There are always things you can do to become more secure.
39:27
There are always things that expenses that are coming up in
39:30
your life and unexpected things. And you know, Charlie Kirk used
39:34
to say, and I was not a huge fan, but when, and I never
39:36
actually really even listened to him while he was alive.
39:40
One of the one of the things that I saw going around that he
39:42
was always emphasizing was have more kids than you can afford.
39:45
And one of the reasons I would imagine one of the rationalities
39:50
is you're never going to be ready for these kind of things.
39:52
Like if it comes down to like, hey, I want to wait till I make
39:54
100% ready that I'm going to be like 100% prepared for a
39:58
commitment to another human being.
39:59
Get married. It's never going to happen.
40:02
Now, I'll tell you right now, you know it's never going to
40:04
happen. You are never going to be 100%
40:06
confident. You are never going to go into
40:08
the day of your wedding being 100% certain that this is the
40:10
person you're going to spend the rest of your life with.
40:12
Unequivocally, nothing can go wrong.
40:15
There's always risk. There's always risk.
40:17
And yeah, you want to minimize, minimalize it, that's fine.
40:19
But if you're going to minimalize it, the risk to the
40:22
point that you're not letting any potential come through,
40:25
you're not letting this ugly baby, you're not taking care of
40:26
this ugly baby in your life. Everyone's got ugly babies.
40:30
There's an ugly baby of your passion.
40:32
There's an ugly baby of a side project.
40:34
There's an ugly baby of a relationship that you always
40:36
wanted to pursue that you never did.
40:38
Or, you know, I kind of want to go out and meet new people.
40:41
And, you know, maybe I'll go to, like, a brewery or meet someone
40:44
new or go to cigar shop and say hello to someone.
40:46
But it's late. I'm tired.
40:50
It got, you know, daylight savings and it gets darker
40:53
earlier. And I'm so tired.
40:54
And I worked so hard today. No one's telling you that those
40:57
things that you're saying aren't true and they are true, which is
41:01
why there's such good arguments is why it's so easy to get away
41:04
with. But when we as when we become a
41:07
world of people that ignore these babies.
41:11
When you become a world without passion, without excitement,
41:14
without risk, without, without the potential to have
41:18
conversations that are unpleasant and to pursue jobs
41:21
and and ideas and podcasts and creative expressions that are
41:26
not guaranteed to work and don't necessarily listen.
41:28
I mean, even from a business perspective, you know, my, my,
41:32
my, my dad's business that I, that I work and I work with him.
41:37
It's been around for 25 years. He's put six kids through
41:41
Orthodox Jewish private school. And, you know, and I have no
41:46
idea how he did it. I have no idea what he did, how
41:49
he did it. My dad's, I mean, both my
41:52
parents are heroes as far as I'm concerned, but you know, my dad
41:55
in this particular way as an economic caregiver, which is so
41:59
not relatable to so many young men in today's world, that my
42:02
dad, you know, that he's that he founded a value and not only a
42:06
value and necessity to pay for his kids tuition and to put them
42:08
through higher education and to put them through school.
42:11
Whether you know, regardless of what he personally thought of it
42:14
himself because he just thought it was going to be what's best
42:17
for his family. He had a business that has been
42:23
around for 25 years. He and I recently went to get,
42:26
went to open a line of credit and you know, and got declined
42:29
because we didn't have, I think the bank in order to give us
42:33
$50,000 of credit, we had to have at least $25,000 and
42:38
$50,000 in cash in our bank account at that particular
42:42
moment. Regardless of the business
42:45
history, regardless of how much revenue we did, how much
42:47
business we did, regardless of what assets and inventory we
42:50
have, regardless of all that sorry, you know, there is so
42:54
little appetite, there's so little room for risk.
42:58
And by the way, and and you can't understand why there's why
43:02
risk makes people nauseous, because the way that the way
43:06
that it's perceived risk led to the 2008 crash risk led to
43:10
the.com bubble crash risk, you know, but that's not risk.
43:14
That was outright corruption. That was outright bad policy.
43:19
And there was, and the consequence of bad policy was
43:22
safer policy. But there's still a whole group
43:24
of people, a lot of people that weren't doing anything wrong
43:29
either way. And you know, we're totally
43:31
fine. And now life and now, you know,
43:33
life becomes almost necessarily more complicated and more
43:36
difficult and becomes more restrictive.
43:38
The safe, the safer we force, the safer we vote, I guess.
43:45
And you know, everyone says, you know, you get the government,
43:47
you deserve that. If we become so addicted to
43:50
safety, we become so addicted to comfort, and we become so
43:53
addicted to feeding the beast as opposed to protecting the ugly
43:57
baby, then we're going to live in a society that doesn't take
44:01
risks. And we don't take risks
44:03
socially, you know, relationships are dropping, like
44:07
the rate of relationships are dropping like crazy people.
44:10
People do not have as many friends as before.
44:12
People do not feel connected. People feel like there's less
44:14
opportunity now than before. Opportunity comes from someone
44:19
taking risk. You know, the reason why I have
44:21
a job with my dad, it's because my dad took a risk.
44:24
The reason why hopefully in years from now I'll be able to
44:27
support my family with the podcast is because I'm taking a
44:30
risk by doing this. This, this might never turn into
44:33
anything. I might be spending hours and
44:35
hours and hours of my life and weekends and giving up time with
44:39
my kids and time that I could have spent investing in another
44:43
business or in sales or in my in, in, in my own learning or
44:47
reading or or teaching my, my teaching career.
44:50
I'm risk there. There is significant risk to
44:53
what I'm doing right now. Now it's, it's risk of time.
44:56
It's not a financial risk, it's risk and investment, but time
45:00
and investment are some of the most, you know, effort are the
45:03
most important things that we have.
45:05
You know, I mean, that's what we, we only have X amount of
45:08
years of our lives and and of those X amount of years of our
45:11
lives, we're only capable of being productive for a certain
45:16
portion of that time. And if most of my effort, most
45:18
of my awakened conscious effort is going towards making this as
45:21
great of a podcast as it could be, then that's enormous risk
45:24
that I'm taking on, right? And hopefully the reward will be
45:27
that someone else will be will have opportunity as a
45:30
consequence of that. So I guess this is a very
45:33
roundabout way of saying that I think that as a world, we have
45:38
to become, especially as Americans and as as a country,
45:42
we got to become, we got to open up our appetite for risk again,
45:45
We got to open up our appetite for trying new things.
45:48
And listen, I'm not a very, I'm a pretty conservative guy when
45:52
it comes to resources, right? Like I do like, I don't want to
45:59
sacrifice. I do like a certain level of
46:02
comfort. You know, I'm not giving up my
46:04
job full time because I do need to know that X amount of money
46:07
is coming in every month. I'm not giving, you know,
46:10
there's certain things that I do value.
46:14
You know, I own a home. I could have put, you know, the
46:17
money I put on my down payment in my house into, into another
46:20
investment and try to make money on that.
46:22
But I think it's important for me to have a home.
46:26
You know, it's all more conservative in the sense that
46:28
like, hey, this, I, I prefer that stability, but I think we
46:33
need a welcome potential failure and potential risk.
46:37
And I think that we, when someone says that they're trying
46:39
something new, that we shouldn't degrade that or laugh at that
46:42
and we should try to support it. And, you know, and again, and
46:45
with the, as far as conversations go, someone has a
46:48
idea of a business and it sounds stupid or it sounds dumb.
46:51
I don't think it's the meanest thing in a nice, in a nice way
46:54
to say to someone, you know, what about this or you have you
46:57
thought about that or why don't you try and you know, like, what
47:00
about this problem? How would you go about resolving
47:03
it? And a lot of times you're doing
47:04
that person, especially if you present it to them in a nice
47:09
regular way, you're doing them one of the biggest favors you
47:12
could ever do them, which is you're force them to re examine
47:14
ideas and to solidify them and strengthen them.
47:17
So to summarize, I guess the platforming to me is a little
47:24
bit of a silly word and concept that ultimately ends up being
47:28
dangerous and harmful. Have more conversations, bad
47:34
ideas get just swept up, you know, in the wind and tossed
47:37
away and good ideas and the ideas that at least have more
47:40
merit are the ones that stick around more baby and the beast.
47:47
There's always going to be the side of us that needs the
47:49
comfort and to provide and to and to, you know, create and
47:53
produce value. But we can't forget about the
47:56
potential of tomorrow and the potential of, of this quote UN
47:59
quote ugly baby that we don't know what it's going to look
48:01
like. But with our help and by paying
48:05
attention to it, we could actually see how you know what
48:08
it's good at and what it could grow at and turn into.
48:13
And so we need to find a balance between the two of them.
48:15
Work a full time job. I'm not saying don't get don't
48:18
take on responsibilities, but pursue a passion, pursue
48:20
something that makes you more than an accountant, something
48:24
that makes you more than an investment banker, someone that
48:27
makes something that makes you more than a teacher.
48:29
What makes you more than what? You than what?
48:31
Than what your six hours, 7 hours, 9 hours, 10 hours a day
48:34
job is same thing with relationships, same thing with
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family. You know, you could be safe, you
48:40
could be at home. It's always easier, it's always
48:42
cheaper. But what does what does it
48:45
really get you? You know, so, and I think I'm
48:48
going to call it here and I'm actually a little dry on the
48:53
podcast pipeline at the moment unless and today I hope to do a
48:56
lot of work into spending time into getting some more, more
49:00
guests for you guys. But for now, I will see you when
49:06
I see you all. Bye everyone.