#1005 - Warren Smith - J.K. Rowling & The Cost of Speaking Freely

11 Oct 2025 · 1 h 15 min

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Podcast Episode Summary - Modern Wisdom #1005: Warren Smith - J.K. Rowling & The Cost of Speaking Freely

Episode Overview In this episode of Modern Wisdom, host Chris Williamson talks with Warren Smith, a filmmaker and educator known for his “Secret Scholar Society” YouTube channel. They address the contentious topic of freedom of speech, exploring its nuances in contemporary discourse, particularly through the lens of J.K. Rowling's controversial public statements and the cultural backlash she has faced.

Key Themes and Discussions

  1. Freedom of Speech and Cultural Backlash
  2. J.K. Rowling's Position: The episode delves into why Rowling has become a polarizing figure. Her statements on gender and sex have incited significant backlash, raising crucial questions about freedom of speech.
  3. Existence of Free Speech: The discussion touches upon whether free speech can truly exist if it can be suppressed or “shouted down.” Smith argues that while it exists in theory, practical application can be hindered by societal pressures.
  1. The Nature of Honest Discourse
  2. Partisan Noise: The conversation examines how public discourse has devolved into partisan noise, making honest conversation increasingly difficult.
  3. Impact of Political Violence: Smith references recent surveys indicating rising support among young people for political violence, raising concerns about desensitization and conviction among the youth.
  1. Cultural Reflections on Violence
  2. Statistics of Support for Violence: Recent data shows increasing approval for using violence to stop campus speech, particularly among Gen Z, highlighting a worrying trend in societal attitudes toward conflict resolution.
  3. Desensitization: The episode discusses whether exposure to media narratives and political rhetoric contributes to this desensitization among young people.
  1. The Role of Social Media in Shaping Discourse
  2. Influence of Narrative: Smith articulates how social media allows individuals to shape narratives, impacting how public figures are perceived and treated.
  3. Dehumanization of Public Figures: The rise of online platforms has led to a phenomenon where individuals, especially public figures, can be dehumanized, losing their individuality in the eyes of the public.
  1. Challenges of Engaging in Rational Conversations
  2. Shutting Down Discussions: The conversation highlights the difficulty of engaging in rational discussions when pre-existing biases are present. Smith shares personal experiences of attempting to bridge gaps in understanding with friends and family.
  3. The Importance of Dialogue: Both speakers emphasize the necessity of constructive dialogue to address deep-seated issues rather than resorting to violence or silence.

Important Takeaways

  • Cultural Shift: There appears to be a cultural shift regarding how people communicate about sensitive topics, as reflected in Rowling's changing reception and the reactions from her critics.
  • Evolving Nature of Education: Universities and educational institutions are increasingly scrutinized for how they handle dissenting views and whether they foster an environment conducive to free speech.
  • The Role of Ego in Discourse: Ego plays a significant role in how individuals interact and communicate, often leading to dehumanization and conflict.

Conclusion Warren Smith provides valuable insights into the complexities surrounding freedom of speech, the impact of social media, and the urgent need for honest discourse in a polarized society. This episode underscores the importance of addressing difficult conversations and the potential consequences of failing to engage with differing viewpoints.

Additional Resources

  • Warren Smith’s YouTube Channel: [Secret Scholar Society](https://www.youtube.com/c/SecretScholarSociety)
  • Modern Wisdom Podcast: [Listen Here](https://www.youtube.com/modernwisdompodcast)

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For more episodes and content, follow Chris Williamson on [Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx) and [Twitter](https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx).

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Transcript

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0:00Before we get started, I'm going on tour this winter around the US and Canada, and you can join me. It's an hour and a half long show. There's a half hour Q &A at the end. There's meet and greet. There's music warmed up before I get started by Zach Talander and tickets are limited and you can get yours right now. New York, Boston, Chicago, Austin, Salt Lake City and Denver still have limited tickets left at chriswilliamson.live. That's chriswilliamson.live. All right, let's get into it. J.K. Rowling is back in the news. How do you feel about her recent debacle? I can understand where she's coming from.

0:37I think it was effective. I don't see any problems with it. I can understand why she would say that. I would probably feel the same way if I were in her position, honestly. Yeah, she's become a lightning rod. So for the people that didn't hear, Emma Watson went on Jay Shetty's podcast, said some stuff, and it seems, at least from the outside, like she's starting to sort of roll back some of the condemnation that's been there because maybe it's not as sort of trendy as it used to be and this is kind of the big complaint that everybody has do you actually stand on this principle or are you just blowing with the fucking wind and uh i think jk in this big tweet that's had like 46 million impressions which is that's enough that's enough to get people to take notice uh she literally says it like basically if it wasn't for the fact that she had to say that she loves and treasures me uh jk wouldn't have piped up but she is now beginning to detect this change maybe in the sort of cultural weather vein uh and um yeah dude be careful what you say on the internet yeah i think she's just emma watson's being opportunistic it's interesting though that the tide is turning in that way that's how you can tell that it really is or when people start to perform differently like that and it's all for business interests i think probably but jk rowling i mean if it wasn't for jk rowling i wouldn't be talking to you right now either so some of those things applied i was when i was reading through that tweet is jk rowling messaged me in the wake of my firing and that really meant a lot to me i think authenticity is something that's really important to her but yeah she's a she's a remarkable person to do that to take the time to do that so i have a soft spot in my heart for her always will why do you think she's such a lightning rod for this stuff what's uniquely interesting about her position well i think it's first and foremost that her work is the best-selling book in the world next to the bible it's for millennials it's it's our star wars it's more than that so she created this she became richer than the queen off of fiction so there's that but i mean her position i think is rather mainstream conventional it's not risque in any way and i think that's why that's one of the reasons i think it's become such a zeitgeist just people when they listen to it it's like this is very reasonable it seems very logical that's part of the reason why that video of me talking to the student did what it did because it's just so common sense it seems like there's nothing crazy about her position could you give a uh 30 000 foot view recap i know it was a little while ago now but just for the people that don't know the warren smith law um just do do the uh previously on this season yeah so i was teaching content creation multimedia we were supposed to do a newscast student was feeling kind of nervous so i said let's do a warm-up i'll sit here in the chair you what do you want to talk about just ask me we would do things like this have a little podcast and he's like well how have your views on jk rowling changed given her bigoted opinions it's like okay well when you say bigoted opinions what are you basing that on well these there's all these tweets she said i can show them to you if you'd like to see sure let's let's pull them up so he pulls them up we run through them the whole exchange was like five minutes and i didn't think it was that interesting or that crazy but that's and then i uploaded it to like my little rinky dink youtube channel where i had clips of me teaching and i called it like my teaching portfolio because we had to submit artifacts for teaching port our portfolio and i would have clips of me teaching and someone grabbed it and pulled it over to twitter where i was not active on twitter and that's where it went crazy yeah and then what happened a couple months went by everything changed very quickly two days after that pierce morgan had me on for like a 15 minute conversation i was completely out of my depth and i came in the next day and just acted like nothing happened and try and that didn't work denial is always a wonderful strategy i think well yeah no it didn't work and then that so then that afternoon because pierce morgan his producers they just want the flavor of the day like so they jumped right on it and they're like will you do this and i was working with one teacher we used to record in this space so after that we set the space up and started once a week making videos and so i told him i was like they want me to come on pierce morgan what should i do like is the school gonna get mad but he's like yeah they'll they'll get mad but it's like just do it you know just because if i ask they're just gonna give me some long thing that i think they'll make it impossible whatever it is forgiveness yeah it's it i knew i was in the midst of a once in a lifetime opportunity and i was at a fork in the road it's like do you make the most of this and i didn't know where it would go at that time all it was was one little video you know but there was the potential to try and make something so i did it it went on pierce morgan and then the next day they kind of got pissed but then i had to meet with all the lawyers and they called me in with the head of the school and who's never there um but she was there for that it they said well you didn't break any rules you didn't you have the releases this and you didn't reveal any information you you handled it delicately you didn't really take a biased position and so congrats they literally said congratulations you know and then but several there were teachers there that were upset with solely on my position my position around jk rowling which yeah i think it's unfair to call her bigoted but i didn't really say that in the video but that's where the student arrived at so they took it as a position and there were people coming up to be like how are you not fired and i was like i didn't they said i didn't do anything wrong with it you know and but there were people that were upset and it just kind of but we kept making in this space kept making videos once a week and it was getting a little bit of traction and i think they just were waiting until the storm blew over to be able to pounce it and i get it from a business perspective it can be a liability if you have a teacher like making youtube videos and people are actually watching them to some extent even though it's very small back then so but it was the way they did it like i would understand if they'd be like yeah it's not quite our cup of tea it's just a bit of a liability so we're gonna part ways but that wasn't what happened at all it was like we'll sign this nda we'll pay you to sign this nda felt like they were just trying to destroy me dude it was crazy it was one of the most challenging periods of my life for sure like yeah so that's that's the lore what have you come to reflect on with regards to that difficult time i think a lot of people maybe not quite so publicly maybe not with quite so many eyeballs but people go through periods where they get kicked in the nuts a lot and it seems to happen sequentially uh in bunches with the benefit of hindsight now, how do you think about that experience as part of the arc of your life?

8:55Well, it was the period that shaped me. It's one of the laws of narrative. If you're trying to write a screenplay, you have to have obstacles for the hero to overcome or whatnot. And we're all trying to become the heroes in our own story, whether we want to admit it or not. And the more adversity, Literally the week before that video went viral, I was watching the David Beckham documentary. And I was like, this is a really good documentary. And this really resonates because he was getting knocked down. He was struggling. And that made it compelling. And then his son becomes a soccer player in the documentary.

9:31I was like, I don't care about this guy at all because he had no adversity. He was just handed this opportunity. So for some reason, that was in my mind at that time. I wouldn't change anything. I got lucky. I was walking a knife's edge, but I made it through. It was scary. It was really difficult, but it's, I wouldn't change. Cause if you make one adjustment, who knows how that would. So I wouldn't change anything, but it was, it's been remarkable. It was, I would describe it as like, cause I've been a genuine fan of this space. I've been watching your show a long time. The people I've gotten to meet.

10:15Imagine watching your favorite football team. And suddenly overnight, you're given this opportunity to be on the field. And Tom Brady's throwing you the football. And you catch it. Now you just, I'm going to run as far down this field until someone tackles me. See how far I can get. That was my mentality. And that's what I'm doing. you know yeah it's a i resonate with that um the

10:47turning idols into rivals or friends is uh like a really weird sensation um it's a very facade thing and it takes a little bit of time for you to sort of come back down to earth and uh you know everybody can play it off as cool and i think a lot of people in this space do and after a while you habituate you're like oh there's andrew huberman or oh there's fucking joe rogan or whatever like oh there's matthew mcconaughey and matthew mcconaughey on the other week and um you do habituate to it in some ways but there's a bit of me that doesn't want to there's a bit of me that doesn't want to habituate to this there's a bit of me that wants to say yo my favorite movie in history is interstellar and the main guy knows me personally by name and has my phone number yeah that's fucking sick like i should be fired up about that like i should i should every time that happens i should be really excited and enthusiastic i shouldn't be like cooler than cool yeah it's it's just all it's old fucking matt over there you know double m or whatever like no like that's fucking sick like let it infuse you that's how i felt when jk rowling sent me that message and was like can i do anything like that's the most treasured like message i've gotten it's just a message but it's surreal that was so surreal yeah so and And I didn't know how to respond to it.

12:09And I still think about it now that she's back in the news with everything we're talking about. I was like, man, I hope I didn't say anything like Emma Watson did. Yeah, totally fine. I think it was fine. Yeah, you've got a quote that says, when conversations are not allowed to occur, it only makes the problem worse. Yeah, we've seen that for sure. And that's similar to something that's been kind of going viral that Charlie Kirk said. He's like, when conversations, when we stop talking, that's when bad things happen that's when violence occurs so yeah i think conversations are absolutely essential there's only really two forms of communication that has impact there's words and then there's violence like that i i can't think of what else there is like i guess music but you're not really communicating much through music yeah there's words in action you I describe it as like words are the boats floating on the surface.

13:06And we really communicate most of what we really think, I think, through nonverbal communication and action. And back to the narrative idea with actors, that's what people like Matthew McConaughey really dig into is the subtext in the scene. They understand that the words are just the tools. Anybody given enough time can memorize that script. But what Matthew McConaughey does so well is everything else beyond the words. It's kind of going off on a tangent. there, but that's how I think about it. Conflict is a form of action for sure. I was thinking about this. I did this retreat recently, and it's the most intense thing that I've ever done.

13:45And I spent 12 hours a day from 9am until 9pm basically working with emotions on a farm in Sonoma County. And I still, to be honest, don't fully know what to make of it. I haven't come back down to planet Earth fully yet. But one of the things that I did realize is the amount of information that was conveyed during the exercises and the practices and the processes that we were going through as a group and in pairs and on our own, so much of it was not about words. So little of it was actually about words. However, if you look at how most people communicate, it is through mediums that exclusively transact in words.

14:31There's no body language of a message. There's not really even that much body language over what we're doing right now. Uh, there's just, there's the, the aperture through which you're seeing this is squeezing this communication down. And like, you can sit with somebody and without getting into woo energy, astral realm, fucking five dimensional territory, you can sit with someone and you can tell if that person that sat opposite you is calm and peaceful, or agitated or sad without saying a fucking word, right? Okay. But all of that type of communication has been lost. And I wonder whether it has, it feels to me like it's led everybody, it's encouraged everybody to really lean into hypertrophying the word talking portion of things and completely pushing to one side that, well, okay, well, how do I feel right now?

15:27Like what is the emotional context that's going on here how is this other person showing up what are the things that aren't being said what's the pacing between the words that they're saying what's the tone that they're saying this in you know especially over text message all of this stuff is lost and um it reminded me working with emotions for an entire week and basically doing like navy seal boot camp for fucking feeling your feelings um really drilled it home to me how low resolution almost all of our communication is now and okay what are the implications of that if you keep on spinning it up yeah yeah it's nothing replaced in person for sure

16:11yeah i don't really know what to say about that that's well put though um political violence attitudes some new uh data that's just come out the percentage of students who support using violence to stop a campus speech is up 10 points from 2021. So that's 34 % against 24%. 47 % of Gen Z agree that violence can be justified to advance a political goal. That's against 22 % of boomers, 47, 22. In 2025, 38 % of US college students said violence is acceptable to prevent hate speech on campus. And 71 % of students are at least accepting of shouting down speakers and 54 % of physically blocking other students from attending a campus speech.

16:57I recently did a video on an independent journalist, a guy with a camera on Emerson campus, which is my college, where I still teach like one class online, but I went there for grad school and taught there. And he asked the students about that 34 % survey. And their response was, I'm surprised it's not higher at Harvard as well. He went to Emerson and then Harvard. And at Harvard, he asked that specific question. He goes, well, why? What do you mean? Well, Harvard's very liberal. I was just thinking, think about what you're saying. Like, think about the logic there. Well, liberals believe that violence is a legitimate form of response to speech.

17:39It's just crazy. It's been a crazy time, man, after Charlie Kirk. what's your what's your post-mortem culturally on this it's i think it's getting worse because there's that period right after it where people are walking on eggshells the people that disagree with them people are being very careful and kind of sympathetic with those that disagree with them many there's a lot of crazy people that this doesn't apply to it's kind of this period of mourning and then that passes and the mood the news cycle picks back up events continue and it and people kind of revert back to their their older ways we're seeing what's happening in portland i i just think it's it's not looking good is my overall take i think it was very illuminating though seeing those responses which has been some of a big wake-up call for me and i've been trying to shine a light on that as much as i can through these videos but like that hit me hard seeing that at emerson because but it didn't surprise me but i'm hoping that people i know like my family that disagrees with me will see will kind of understand more about where I'm coming from because it's like, look, this is like literally where I was.

19:10I was sitting next to these kind of people for years. This kind of, maybe this can explain a little bit of why I am the way I am now or whatnot, because I know they're struggling with understanding that around me. So that's been, I think a lot, it's been a wake up call for some people, but I'm generally, my responsibility, I'm deeply concerned about it, where this could go. This episode is brought to you by Gymshark. You want to look and feel good when you're in the gym. Gymshark makes the best men's and girls gym wear on the planet. Let's face it, the more that you like your gym kit, the more likely you are to train.

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20:19What are you deeply concerned about and where could it go? Well, so just yesterday we had Nick Shirley in Portland. The last video I did was covering him And a guy comes up to him, Antifa, and he threatens to shoot him because he was putting a camera in his face. And then two snipers on top of the roof, this is what it looks like from the video, paint with their lasers on him. And Nick points, he's like, dude, there's a sniper pointing at you right now. And there's a dot on his chest. And it gets him to deescalate and back off. I think it's only a matter of time until it's not just painting a target and someone pulls the trigger on either side.

21:05And that's where I'm worried that something is going to happen that's going to escalate things. More so than Charlie Kirk being shot. Well, what do you mean by more so? because what is it that doesn't make that the escalation we've had this event which has occurred uh you're presumably one of the things let's say that that event hadn't occurred and you were noticing these rumblings below the surface charlie kirk being shot would be the precise sort of thing that would be the sort of thing that would be an escalation so we've seen this one so does it do you feel a little bit like um there was a bunch of kerosene on the ground and someone lit a match and flicked it, but it happened to land just like a little bit off.

21:52It didn't quite catch fire to everything else, but that might not be the case if another inflammatory sort of event occurs. Well, yeah, the kerosene was definitely there. It is interesting to note that there was not a massive response from Charlie Kirk fans. We'll just say people on the right or whatnot. There was not rioting, and yeah, that's been pointed out. But I think my concern would be that same event with the opposite side of the political spectrum. I mean, we've seen BLM, we've seen the riots. There seems to be a tendency for certain ideologies tend to be more inclined to demonstrate frustration in different ways.

22:42So in a way, it's like that's bad. They threw something really bad at the world. And a small sliver of hope perhaps comes out of the fact that we were able to handle it or this side was able of the spectrum. It didn't go bonkers. I don't have a... I mean, don't you feel in a way like this could go south? am I off for feeling like there's potential here for this? Because you're right, that was an escalation. I'm glad it didn't spark off into violence. There's no rioting. Yes, there's protests going off in Portland around other topics. I mean, what are your thoughts on it? I think you're right to be concerned.

23:38It does say a lot that we've kind of become desensitized. sensitize. We were talking about the habituation earlier on, like, oh, there's JK Rowling in my DMs. It's like, oh, there's a huge, like another assassination attempt on a real public figure in the space of 12 months. And I don't, it's strange, especially given that I'm still in my feely feels after my week working on emotions. It's strange that we are able to continue moving forward that you can get up and go to work that like that's just a thing that happens and i guess you know humans need to fucking put bread on the table and go to the bathroom and walk the dog and stuff but it it doesn't exactly fill me with hope uh that this is although horrific and uh an atrocity just another news story that you know the world continues spinning and yeah we've got charlie kirk remembrance day i think which was passed which which is a very nice tribute but yeah i one one question that i do have that i realized while you were talking there how do you square the circle of what you brought up, which is hinting at a tendency for the left, at least parts of the left in its current iteration, to be more kinetic, BLM riots, et cetera, et cetera.

25:12How do you square that circle with some of the reports that I've seen coming out from maybe domestic threats, maybe FBI statistics saying that most of the domestic terror concern comes from right of center groups as opposed to left of center groups. Have you seen this? Do you know what I'm talking about? No. Is this the study that people were saying, oh, they removed it or something? No, I'm not familiar with that study. Basically, uh, it seems like a lot of the, uh, some of the studies suggest that it is groups right of center that are the biggest threat. Um, I just wonder, taking my big broad perspective of the news stories that have really come across me over the last half decade, I would say the same thing.

26:03You know, we saw, um, what was that place where everybody charlottesville you remember charlottesville yeah yeah yeah like when was the last time that we saw something like a charlottesville i i can't remember yeah i don't i i can't remember either well january 6th where they would probably there we go yes that is true that was quite a big one uh says it all that i've managed to forget that um so yeah fair enough maybe maybe you're right maybe it's maybe it's equal on both sides um i don't i'm not saying it's equal but it's i've been trying to look at this not through the lens of because it becomes a reductive game it's to try and equivocate between this yeah yeah your side did january 6th and this and you did this on this date and our side it's like we're not that's not yeah i just think how many january 6th is one blm how many yeah yeah because my my initial response and this is the i think for many people it was like this is not right verse left this is good versus evil but then it's like wait a minute but that's exactly what can that's a dangerous game to play because that's what can drive people to kill someone like charlie because they think they're facing genuine evil i have friends that have kind of tossed me away because it's they what's a friendship when you're genuinely up against fascism and genuine evil in their minds which is in their minds what i stand for so you've been reducing that down to it's correct behavior versus incorrect behavior, really, because there's also plenty of Democrats or liberals that aren't celebrating Charlie Kirk's death and that would say, you're ridiculous for saying these things.

27:45So it's not just Democrat, Republican.

27:52So there's going to be people with incorrect behavior on the right side and the left side. But I think there's something about the ideology or this way of thinking that has flourished from postmodernism, a victim mentality. It resonates with a certain personality that seems to me to resonate more with mass protesting, more inclination towards what we saw around the riots, Summer of Love, BLM riots. so i i do there is something within the ideas reflected largely on this side echo with certain types of action versus the ideas reflected on we'll just say the traditional conservative family more religious values you know the the personal responsibility have a family these that conserve the true great traditions of the past there's not as much inclination what i just said towards burn it down as opposed to we're all being oppressed by this by the west burn it down which is literally baked into the ideology yeah it's interesting isn't it because the burn it down thing i didn't know it it feels a little bit like if you were to if you were to tell somebody from 10 years ago that it would be uh people on the right that weren't responding to this sort of stuff in a kinetic way, I think that might be a little bit surprising.

29:20You know, one of the big concerns that lots of people have who are in the center is that if the left keeps on poking the bear, then the right is going to respond eventually, which it sounds like is one of the concerns you have, or you just get escalating violence on all sides. But the right is really fucking well armed. And there's probably a lot of people in there that are ex-military and et cetera, et cetera. So like if you were to just take the attributes of both sides, you should assume, I think, that right is like, oh, fucking hell. Like those guys are going to be pretty quick on the trigger, like defending myself, defending my beliefs, defending my tribe in that way, as opposed to a group that on the surface is like more compassionate, more open.

30:07And it doesn't seem to be necessarily playing out that way. Yeah, I think it's unlikely that we'll see a civil war in the way we think of civil war, where it's literally an organized elite. They have declared themselves independent and they are rebelling against, it would be the federal government with all the military and police. I think that's unless it was some bizarre certain states I just can't imagine it so when I'm talking about escalating conflict I don't necessarily mean as a civil war it's something much more invisible less more difficult to see that I don't know. I don't think it's going.

31:02All right. So going back to the stats about campus being shouted down. Yeah. If free speech can be shouted down, does it even exist at all? Like what does it mean when it comes into contact with a human arm-in-arm blockade? Yeah. That's a good question. I would say philosophically, it still does exist. Because yes, rights are always, I got into a pickle around this, but Andrew Wilson was talking about this. Rights are bound by force. Rights, he's someone who claims that rights all come down at the end of the day to what can be enforced. So your right to freedom of speech, it's only if it still is going to be bound by force.

31:55It's only if you can protect it. But yes, I can be, people can shout me down, but that doesn't negate within the context of the legal system. Like it doesn't negate my right. But functionally. Yeah. In the moment, functionally, you're shouting me down. Yeah. I understand you, uh, spoken like a, a true academic, um, that, uh, the, the theory, the principle, the philosophy of free speech is still there. but if it can't be actioned in the real world is that am i being am i being stupid here or is this like no no it would just have to be at such a large scale for it because okay they shout me down on the college campus i go make a youtube video about it and i reach way more people so but in that moment on the college campus yes but i have this kind of my personal philosophy and i can't is that there's objective truth the fabric of reality which is reflected by this what i call the audience kind of when you make a youtube video it's this thing that it's not just a mass of people but and you can't you can't ignore there's no escaping them so if they shout me down on the campus you they can't escape the audience which reflects the fabric of reality.

33:14So then I do make a video about it. It's almost like their actions compound and it draws more attention to it because they're taking an action against something that I think is very much real. These are not just social constructs. The idea of freedom of speech, yes, we have these conceptualizations of them. That's how we use the words floating on the surface to articulate it. But I think these are the same idea the founding fathers put forth with these truths are self-evident from God, objective truth, whatever you want to substitute there, but that's the fabric of reality. And so there's no, the audience, people can make noise, but nothing can change what is that objective truth that we're striving for.

33:56And I think that's what knowledge is, is trying to map onto what is truth, which is the exact opposite of post-modernism though. And that's where it gets interesting. Before we continue, you are probably not eating enough fruit and vegetables, you know it. This is going to help. AG1 just released their Next Gen formula, which is a more advanced clinically backed version of the product I've been drinking every day for years, delivering more than 75 vitamins, including your multivitamin, pre and probiotic, superfood greens, and more. And for the first time, they've added new flavors, tropical, citrus, and berry, only available in the US and Canada.

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35:07So you've got nothing to lose right now and get a year's free supply of vitamin D3K2 and AG1 travel packs plus that 90 day money back guarantee by going to the link in the description below or heading to drinkag1.com slash modern wisdom. That's drinkag1.com slash modern wisdom. Do you think government funding should hinge on whether or university actually protects dissenting voices? Protects dissenting voices. There's a big conversation to have around tax, why taxpayers are financing places like Emerson. They get so sneaky in those parameters. For example, Emerson just changed what used to be the social justice center because of this very issue.

35:58what you're describing. They just changed the name to the Office of Equal Opportunity. Because equality is equal opportunity. Equity is equal outcome. So they learned, and that's what colleges are doing. But then you see the video content or you talk to students, and they're, I'm surprised it's only 34 % celebrating Charlie Kirk's murder. It's so, but yeah, my answer to you would be yes. I don't think I'm very skeptical about the government providing tax money to these universities. It doesn't seem to me like children and young people, students are being taught to resolve problems constructively.

36:46This feels like a skill issue. yeah i mean i i think it's because so few of the professors the people that would be having the conversations have differing opinions it's just overwhelming it's impossible to even articulate unless you see it for yourself which is what i'm trying to do with the videos it's the closest i can do is when i see footage like that that's when i get most excited it. Like my favorite video I ever made was Joe Rogan talking to a postmodern professor on his show. Because to me, that was like, finally, I can shine a light where this is a real professor who's saying these things with his own words.

37:33Because I could talk to him blue in the face about postmodernism. Jordan Peterson's done it. And people just don't believe you or they just roll their eyes. And it's too philosophical. But then you hear him get up there and say, no, there's no such thing as knowledge, objective truth. Everything is a social construct. He's making it crystal clear that there's no such thing as the fabric of reality to strive for. Because knowledge is evolving, therefore, his logic is we don't really know anything. And you can see where that goes. I guess my point is you have to hear it straight from the horse's mouth.

38:16And that was one example where I was able to do that. And I was like, he's literally saying it to you. So if this doesn't show you, I don't know what will. Yeah. It feels a little bit to me like, uh, inverse exposure therapy. So the fact that so few alternate voices are, um, going onto campus that whatever some absurd percentage of students self-censor for fear of being judged and shamed by their fellow classmates that you have a changing shifting demographic when it comes to who is teaching at universities as well you even have a shifting demographic of who's attending universities right a significant uh increase in in women going versus men and it's very difficult to be a university professor that didn't go to university so like that is your stock of future professors are the ones that are going and uh all of these things together it's a great great study by cory clark you should have a look at it it stinks of you it stinks of your channel brilliant and um uh she sent a survey to every psychology professor in the u.s didn't get a response from all of them got a big fucking response talking about what topics should not be uh allowed and there's a huge sex difference there's a massive sex difference between men and women and there's a huge difference it was really really interesting my point is when you take this milieu altogether, what you end up with is students basically never hearing top down, like side to side, or random inclusions of other people from speakers and guests and stuff like that.

40:09There is this ever actually and inside out, right with their own self censorship. there is just this

40:19a increasing fragility or an increasing sort of unidimensionality to the type of topics that they're being exposed to does that all make sense? yeah, no, it's absolutely true it's just worse than you're absolutely right I'm right but it's worse than I'm right words, there's no words this is the limitation of words like there's no words to capture what is actually happening how so

40:53so

Read the full transcript

40:58all right so so when i'm making these youtube videos it's like or just this whole thing we've been talking about the desensitization of this medium and how you oh it's so and so and it all starts to feel it's just online. It's just about making content for sponsors so I can put food on the table and you lose sight of it. Then something happens. Bang. Charlie Kirk gets killed. And other things have happened. I returned home in the wake last year, last Christmas. I returned home. It's like re-entering the real world, sitting there with my childhood friends who literally so i had just been fired before saying they said similar to how people responded to the charlie kirk thing in many cases i'm sorry you lost your job warren but you did say this about jk rowling so what do you expect and walking through literally step by step logically like the flaws that she's pointing out are completely fair to have those concerns it's a reminder that this is real like there's something at stake here and and when charlie kirk died it suddenly it was a wake-up call it's not just it was it's not just about sponsors money and stuff it i forgot where but i forgot where we were going with that just more than just words it's hard to capture the reality of how crazy this stuff really is yeah what what do you think's going on with young people's support of political violence is it because of conviction uh desensitization what do you think's going on because going back to that fear i had about good and evil and that being very careful about that because they genuinely believe that they're facing true evil so to the point where those child like i'm talking my best friends grew up together since yay talk in their minds even if they don't hate me I'm giving voice to they can excuse me in their minds but my videos perhaps or talking to Joe Rogan or whoever that is contributing to something even if I'm not evil I'm playing a role in something that is so genuinely truly evil to them so we need to and then all bets are off and that's when you see people lose friends people do things they would never otherwise do and the only solution to this is rational conversations and that's that's why this thing has made such a wake because that's exactly what charlie was doing he was killed doing just that he was killed doing the solution and it didn't work.

43:54And he was, he was killed. He was killed for doing the thing that is the only thing you could do to prevent this. So that's even a double whammy. It makes it even scarier, you know? So, but the problem is, is that when I try and have those going back to most childhood friends, when I try and have those conversations step-by-step, if I can sit down with them, I can genuinely, I guarantee you by the end of it, they won't. think the way they thought coming into it. They still are going to disagree with Trump. That's not what it's about. It's about something deeper than that. And I can get there. It might take me an hour.

44:31I've done it. I've done it over and over with people in my personal life. The problem is that they'll shut down the conversation.

44:41Why?

44:47Why? Because it's almost, because the logic is not there. Because it's almost as though they, because they can't get, so the JK Rowling example, I get fired, I'm sitting on the porch at Christmas, my mom's house. Yeah, guys, I get, all right. So you, yes, I did say that about JK Rowling. I said that with the student. But you do understand, right? So tomorrow, just hear me out. It's like tomorrow, is there anything stopping me from deciding I'm a woman? Well, no, Warren, logically you could. It's true, okay. So I still have male genitalia. If I can then tomorrow walk into a women's changing room, can you understand why a mother, a woman, would be uncomfortable by that?

45:39They have a problem with that. Okay, but what if she's, yeah, but she's an adult. She should be able to get over it. Okay. But what if she has a six-year-old? Can you understand why she would be uncomfortable with that? There's no way to, how do you contend with that argument? If you can see a flaw in that, like challenge me on it. That would be really, if you can provide any pushback on anything, please do. Because that's where these things get interesting. It would make it way more interesting too. conflict drives stories the central law of narrative but that's my answer to you is why it's just the law it comes down to the logic it seems like you are getting it seems like this is sort of really hitting it at something deep for you like this mission and the challenges that you're facing by sort of trying to come head to head with this whether it's virtually or in your personal life yeah it's been infuriating it's it's and that would be my response to them a family member when they say that's like look if everyone when i come home or if and this is before viral videos or doing youtube or anything this is years ago i'd say look if i'm everyone of you hates me because of this right if all people your friends they all hate me but if i'm still willing to have these conversations and want to rationally step-by-step walk you through it, maybe that would indicate that if I'm still doing this and I'm still standing firm on it, maybe that would be an indicator that I've thought this through and I have a reason why.

47:22And I think that goes back to your previous questions. That's one of the reasons I think that they shut down the conversations because there's something, there's, that kind of goes back to the logic of it it's it's you i have thought this through like i have a reason i've that's why that video at emerson was so important to me because that was my opportunity kind of to shine a window on what i've been going like what i've the people i have sat with for years and it's there's no words for it but i can with a camera i can show it i don't need words yeah it's weird i guess we're not too far off from thanksgiving now and uh every year there's the same sort of memes come up online how to speak to your bigoted uncle this year over the or the sort of based reverse version of that which is three sentences to say to totally torpedo this year's thanksgiving dinner and uh people are going to be thinking about this man i would love you know it would be great and ridiculously difficult to do as a survey would be um some sort of analysis of the average volume, like sentiment analysis and volume and speaking cadence and like antagonism around the Thanksgiving table.

48:37Like it's just a one once per year little test, like a core sample right out of the ground. I will take this one and take this one and take this one. And I have to assume that that curve is just getting really fucking steep and like really, really getting up there now. And I think another question that I've got, we always hear, we heard this around Trump, you know, people made a bunch of jokes about thoughts and prayers to quote, literally Hitler, that it's very difficult to, with one sentence, say that this guy is fascist, beginning of the end reincarnation of the third reich and with the other uh show compassion and that those two things seem a little bit tough because i guess the subtext the implication is the language that you used in the first case is the reason for the event which caused the need for the apology right that when you use inflammatory language when you use sort of violent media um Um, my question is basically how much of that is shaping young people's tolerance for real world violence?

49:50Like, is it just reflecting what's happening bottom up or is it actually pushing it forward, sort of normalizing this kind of language, demonizing one side and the other. And it's not as if this is only going in one direction, like the demonization goes in both. Yeah, but there's, there's legitimate, that's the problem is there's legitimately wrong behavior, objectively wrong. I think it is safe to say that it's objectively wrong to celebrate Charlie Kirk's death. And some of the responses we've seen are crossing, I think, an objective, measurable line.

50:24Again, it's because we see the world through stories. We make sense because we're narrative creatures. Conflict drives story. and it's this thing that's driving people to genuinely believe the other side is is evil while also holding the the thought in mind that there is evil there and we can see examples of where that is that's what i started that's why i started the response with that because it does exist you just gotta be careful about it the solution i the only solution is to teach people that are claiming these things about fascism they need people need to explain more what fascism actually is.

51:04And it's such a, that's why I keep saying, I did get to talk to Joe Rogan, and I was trying to delve into that a little bit with him, because that is the singular to me, a window in time that has so much insight. And look, today, it's people are throwing around fascism, which echoes back to them, but they don't understand what fascism is. And yeah, it's slightly, it is difficult to define in a single sentence, but i think it's the authoritarian pursuit of national purity through force something around those lines at the very core of it and then components can be switched out but it's a dangerous it's a dangerous game maybe i'm misunderstanding the i think you're asking me how to where that's coming from which direction basically is it simply is the violent how impactful is the age-old question of like do violent video games make children violent what i'm asking is is violent media as in the sort of language inflammatory uh especially sort of escalating up and and using um really horrific examples of people from history or from movies or from whatever to describe someone like jordan peterson was red skull right from uh the marvel comics um i'm sure that there's been a thanos example used somewhere and And I'm sure that the right as well is slinging its fair share of murder, whatever this particular person is that's coming in to sterilize the youth or whatever it might be.

52:35But let's try and hone in on that. Like, what would an example be on the right? Because I know it's absolutely happening on the left, like Red Skull, the accusations of fascism. It's everywhere. But what would be, let's try and identify it on the other side. So the problem for me, I think, is that the response to these sorts of stories is always larger than the initial story itself. And that means that given most of what I follow online is center, center, right, what I see is crazy left of center stories that are then being responded to by somebody from the Daily Wire, whatever it might be. It does seem to, I'm trying to equivocate basically to at least give the opportunity that I don't know everything.

53:23I don't see all of the internet. And I'm like, look, given that maybe there is some stuff out there, I have to assume that there is some stuff. But you might be right. I may have a perfectly representative perspective. My sample may be like, absolutely perfect when it comes to understanding what I see on the internet. If I was to go by my own algorithm, which is obviously hugely fucking biased, if I was to go by my own algorithm, I would say, yes, there does seem to be a lot more of that inflammatory language going from left to right. The purity spiral stuff, the holier than thou, the very, very sort of accusatory, vindictive, over-exaggerated language does seem to go in one direction.

54:05But I just need to leave myself open to the fact that. I see what you mean. It's on the right, too. You're right. There's people, the accusations around Jews, things like that. It's there's there's I mean, racism, there's you see it on X. There's lines being that personally, I don't think that there are certain lines I don't think should be crossed or being crossed on X for sure. You're right. Yeah. In other news, Shopify powers 10 percent of all e-commerce companies in the United States. They are the driving force behind Gymshark, Skims, Aloe and Nutonic, which is why I partnered with them because when it comes to converting browsers into buyers, they are best in class.

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55:22That's shopify.com slash modern wisdom to upgrade your selling today. Yeah. I mean, you had, you had this idea about when you know that sort of behavior has gone too far? Is there such a thing, the line between correct and incorrect behavior? There you go. That's the question at the heart of it. So going back to postmodern thinking, which most people echoing the sentiment don't realize they're talking about postmodernism. So you go to a therapist. The therapist, to them, there's no such thing as correct behavior. They're not going to tell you what to do. They're just going to affirm because it's just a matter of perspective.

56:03There's no such thing as the right way to do something. There is no ideal behavior in any given scenario in that worldview. But I disagree. That's why I talk about the fabric of reality, which we strive for. Even if you can't achieve that ideal, you have to have the target to aim for, which means there is an ideal, whether we can achieve it or not. There is a best way to behave in any given scenario. And you can judge that if you had parallel universes that you could measure each different type of action, and then you could actually see the outcomes. You could compare those outcomes, and one logically will have to be better than all other potential outcomes.

56:44One has to be, but you have to have a way to quantify it. Right. So, but so to answer, yeah, there's, there is that's, we've lost sight of that. It's become this postmodern idea of everything is just a matter of perspective and is equally valid. There's no narrative, no shared meta narrative. There's no ideal shared story that is better than any other story. Everything is equal. It's just a matter of perspective. I mean, that's really a dangerous idea. So I'm glad you mentioned that. How do you operationalize this? What does it mean for a society to say that behavior is bad or that it's gone too far or that this is a line that's being crossed?

57:36You mentioned that before. I feel like a line has been crossed. That was a line has been crossed within speech, right? Yes. Talk to me about that. I need you to dig into that. That's why we have the legal framework, because that's the closest we can come to actually writing in black and white what these lines are. So freedom of speech, for example, how do we determine when speech crosses that objective line? Well, hate speech, no, because who can define hate speech? We can't. There's no way to determine where that line exists. So the best we can do, the least bad way of approaching this, they're all going to be flawed.

58:09The least bad one is to say, okay, we have these laws that draw these lines, calls to violence, defamation, whatever they are. But those are laws. And beyond that, you have legal freedom of speech. Now, yes, an employer can create their own framework because they have the freedom to pay who they want to pay and how they want to do it. But we're talking about that larger framework. And that's really what laws act as, which is why the J.K. Rowling debate comes back to where the rubber meets the road, which is the legal framework. Tomorrow, if I can decide that I'm a woman, the real question is, am I a woman under the law?

58:47Not do you need to use my pronoun? That is the question. Everything else is beneath that question. It's am I treated as a woman under the law? because today, if I were to walk into that space, that changing room, they have the legal right to call the police. Now, tomorrow, if I can decide on my woman and I walk in that same space, do they have the legal right to call the police? It has larger ramifications. And that's what JK Rowling has been trying to articulate to everyone. Just that, it all comes back to that, which all comes back to the legal framework, which is our attempt to create these objective lines.

59:27i mean it is uh i was gonna say it's a shame that we have to rely on the legal framework to get people to behave in a pro-social manner but maybe that's just like human nature is i don't think we do it's just we have to have some we have to have it written we have to have the constraints yeah sorry i don't mean i don't mean that it's a shame that that is a thing that exists it obviously needs to exist my point is it's a shame that we're having to think about But that is what we now rely on as opposed to, you know, common decency, shared humanity, et cetera, et cetera, like massive scaling problem when you don't see people as your neighbor, you don't see them as human.

1:00:06I realized this. There was this insight that I'd had. I think watching the rise of Peterson was the first one that I really saw this with. There seems to be a level of fame or exposure or notoriety, a threshold. And when people cross that, some big portion of the world doesn't see them as a human anymore. They see them as a conglomeration of ideas. They're a representation of an ideology or story or narrative or something. Yes, right there. The story. Because we're narrative creatures and we see the world through stories, we cannot separate the character from the story. So when you see Joe Rogan, Jordan Peterson, it's all the past context you have, psychologically is impacting how you see them.

1:00:53The only way to really perceive the massive amount of that effect would be to have parallel universes where you could have a politician who's Trump do the exact same action, same proposed policy, but doesn't have the backstory, the story of Trump. And you could see how the audience responds and you could have some quantifiable outcome. That's the only way we could ever begin to really observe just how powerful this effect is. But the thing that you notice, at least that I saw, when this threshold has been breached, people seem to be prepared to do and say things that they wouldn't of a person who doesn't have that story armor, whatever it is that they think that they've got, that hasn't gone through that altitude.

1:01:44And it was disheartening. It was disheartening to think, you know, these people are still people uh on the other side of this like if you say this thing or send this thing that i've spent the last seven and a half years you'll be episode like 1005 at no point on this journey to building this platform has someone sat me down and taught me about like the super secret squirrel technique that is only taught to people that are moderately fucking well known on the internet of how to not feel really disturbed when nasty shit happens. Like there's no, and, and the champagne problems, you know, what an issue do you not know that people are in poverty?

1:02:26You just need to make videos. Hey, I do not disagree, but the social issues are still a social issues. Like if you felt ostracized or condemned or, or, or like you were being accused of all of these things, um, it would be tough. And, uh, yeah, it was just, it was really interesting to me that there is a size that you get to where you are no longer seen as a human and it changes the way that people behave. And I fear that Charlie Kirk, Charlie Kirk had breached that as well. Yeah, I don't, I wouldn't know about that. I'm not near that size. You have Charlie Kirk did, but I think you're right. I think you're, I'd have heard you talk about this before.

1:03:02I understand it's a real, uh, and I know people dismiss it as champagne problems, but it comes with baggage just my little bit of whatever this is that i'm doing it yeah it's it has there's a cost for sure but it's it's not just the cost i don't think it's the lack of it's the lack of humanity from people seeing seeing those individuals that like joe rogan like you can do and say whatever you want about that guy or you know like pick somebody on the other side like holy fuck some of the stuff true or not funny or not that was said about joe biden last year was fucking horrific like think about if you are that guy you're this dude who has been thrust into a position that you were physiologically really really going to struggle with probably pumped with all manner of whatever they needed to keep that racehorse running for the space of four years and you're just like oh it made it made me feel really sad made me feel really really sad for him for the human that is joe biden like holy fuck it's so awful what he had to go through and um but people are just like well you know like you rise to the top and you're you'll be the the arrows are going to be slung your way or whatever i don't know maybe i'm too much of a pussy no no it's not that you're being a pussy it's because you because your ego is in check and you have so your ego is not flawed because you've achieved success you know you're like a handsome guy tall worked it you work out whatever all that stuff it's like you don't have anything to prove so you are now in this place where you have the i get what you mean i don't know the words for it i don't know how to describe it but it comes down to it's the attachment to ego that i've and I can't counter that often, man.

1:05:02It's ego is really the emotion is the death of reason and motion comes from ego. What's the relationship with ego and dehumanizing people? I think we want to dehumanize people from a place of ego often. It's like, uh, well, it depends on the example. Maybe if you dislike someone, a coworker, for example, maybe this is a bad example because it would be a co-worker but they have something you don't have or someone makes a video criticizing chris williamson's take on this political thing and do you respond with a counter video that's kind of going off the wall and when you a person that would respond is probably doing so from a place of ego i think it often comes from that thing that we call ego what ego means we could yeah at least for me it it perhaps part of it is the uh champagne problems thing this person has enough going on that the there's like a ballast in the system right they've got like enough enough buffer stability that i can use them as this sort of um like rhetorical punching bag in a way.

1:06:22When Jordan was ill a few years ago, or when, who was the guy who got attacked by the dude with the hammer in the house? Like last year. Yeah, I forget his. Not Elizabeth Warren's husband, somebody else's husband. And on that, you go, Jesus Christ, like an old dude getting attacked by a guy in his house. And look, maybe this is just what, maybe this is the most basic bitch point in history, which is people become famous and then people take the piss out of them and are mean. Like perhaps it's that, but it feels like it's something a little bit deeper than that to me, this sort of loss of humanity.

1:06:58And I wonder whether it's tribalism that this person begins to represent something that you either agree with or disagree with. So they're kind of like a flag bearer in some sort of a way or a totem or a mascot. And like you're behind this thing or you're against this thing. And if it's a big thing, like you kind of throw arrows at it or, and if you're with it, then you kind of defend it vehemently and that, you know, just naturally sort of spirals up the inflammatory language. Maybe that plays a role. I feel, I feel like it does. Yeah. The example of Jordan Peterson, if people were people, yeah, the way they were attacking him, the way they're going to continue, oftentimes I do think it comes from that part that's missing from them.

1:07:37It's almost as though they're jealous of in some way, they would never say this probably whether it's his ability to to think what he has achieved or being at peace with straddling two worlds and not you know falling into one tribe what you're talking about this team mentality i think is so silly because like where it's people so many people are it's like i'm on this team therefore i'm going to check off all the boxes and that's how they form their thinking it's just i don't understand that as opposed to going point by point following the logic well yeah i mean if you if i know one of your opinions and from it i can accurately predict everything else that you believe you're probably not a serious thinker right right you've you've taken a onesie and put it on and called it an outfit um but no that that's mono thinking right and you know it's because the demand for answers outstrips most people's supply and in in that case you have to retrofit all issues all questions are given the same answer everything is climate change everything is capitalism everything is progressivism everything is lgbt everything is fascism yeah um and that monothinking is a great shortcut the human brain loves those right um but it's an indication like if you've just here's a good way to think about it when was the last time that a content creator that you like or a person that you read, some news contributor, when was the last time that they surprised you with their take?

1:09:21But I would say, for instance, that Bill Maher is somebody who regularly surprises me with his takes. And that makes me, Sam Harris fucking almost always surprises me with his takes. If I was to like roll a dice and try and predict what it is that's going to come next out of Bill Maher or Sam Harris, there's some, I have some predictive power, but not that much, to be honest. And I'm like, wow, that fuck, I didn't think he was going to say that. And that's good. I think that's a good thing. But what it feels like to people on your side, it looks, it feels like you're an unreliable ally. And what it looks like to people on the other side is a lack of conviction.

1:10:03It's like, see, see he's not with them on that thing I mean he was with them on whatever but January 6th he's not with them there and he was with them on COVID masking but he's not with them on immigration and you go okay that looks so much like an opportunity for both sides like people on in your own camp and people in the other camp neither of them are going to agree with you for you dissenting the other group is going to remember the fact that you didn't agree with them previously and your own group is going to be like, wow, Warren, fucking hell. I thought you were with us on gun control. You were with us on immigration or you were with us on economic policy or on healthcare.

1:10:42And I'm obsessed with this idea. Fucking obsessed with this idea of what I think. It's so cool. That's especially when it comes to high, we'll call them high stakes topics like Christianity or whatnot, where it comes down to faith and belief. And that's essentially what happened with Jordan Peterson Jubilee that the criticism he got from that, which I think is silly, but he had a really interesting response to that where it was essentially an argument of utility. He's saying, because I can reach more people, there's a reason that I don't want to, beyond just that it's private and it's extremely complicated.

1:11:18He's a guy who's always straddling that reality that words are just the tools and everything of substance is beneath the surface. That's what gives him that ability because he's doing things with those tools no one else does he's like actually trying to reach more people with an incredibly complicated topic the problem is with christianity it's literally and i struggle with that i consider myself a christian but i struggle with the idea that all you need to do is say the right words and that makes you a christian and if you don't if you don't say the right words and claim so many people like genuinely seem to believe that it's you have to literally just proclaim certain things in order to be saved that's really important to them the words that you say the right words that's i'm not disagreeing with any of the beliefs or anything but i i do i tend to there's things that jordan peterson says about this topic that i resonate with on a gut level yeah strange one man it is a fascinating time to navigate the world of rhetoric and communication what do you think you don't have a crystal ball but what do you think the next few years looks like in terms of the way that this communication goes forward have you got any early inclinations

1:12:52well the the ramifications of like this technology this medium is changing everything we're seeing that it's harder it's harder to hide anything and in that sense i think it's a good thing because I do have this sense of the fabric of reality exists and that the audience doesn't lie that audience meaning that's reflecting what is and we don't want to pull the wool over their eyes the more transparency the better it's there's there's that pendulum that seems to swing from the left to the right. I don't know what will happen. I mean, as far as politics, I would never consider myself a political expert.

1:13:43It's difficult. I think the universities are in real trouble. They're in real trouble. That's another thing Peterson's right about. I don't know how they're going to come back from it. So there's going to be big change around that. I think that this agent Hollywood is transforming. They're trying to catch up with these technologies. They're realizing that the ability to connect to that audience, that thing that's reflecting the fabric of reality has shifted. shifted. I don't know. You probably have an agent. If you don't, I'm sure there's agents looking at you because they're launching new departments, recognizing that this is the future.

1:14:24And what the real ramifications of that are, I do not know. What the real ramifications are of this conflict between good, not politics, but right versus wrong behavior. Well, going back to the beginning of the conversation with Jay, there's something shifting which is why emma watson came out and made those comments something something's shifting for the better warren smith ladies and gentlemen dude i uh i appreciate you very much and i applaud you for taking something that could have been horrific and turning it into a springboard to to make something great so that's uh that's real alchemy there where should people go they want to check out all of your stuff oh just youtube warren smith secret scholars society yeah I appreciate you

From the publisher

Warren Smith is a filmmaker, educator, and host of the “Secret Scholar Society” YouTube channel.

If freedom of speech can be shouted down, does it really exist? When every debate turns into partisan noise, what does honest discourse even look like? If we can’t talk about our problems without resorting to anger or violence, how can we ever solve them?

Expect to learn why J.K. Rowling has become such a lightning rod for cultural backlash and why she’s back in the news, why limiting conversation only makes problems worse, whether free speech can truly exist if it can be shouted down, whether young people’s growing support for political violence stems from conviction or desensitization, the fine line between correct and incorrect behavior, what William thinks about today’s rising tribalism, and much more…

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