 All right. Hello, Xavier. Welcome to the podcast. How you doing today? I'm doing well. How's it going? Amazing. This is exciting stuff. And yeah, real quick, before we dive into everything, for those who have yet to meet you and discover all the wonderful work that you do and your podcast, let everybody know who you are, your background, where they could find you and all that. Sure, sure. So I'm Xavier Bonilla. I am my day job. I do clinical psych. I'm a clinician. I have been for, oh goodness, probably over 15 years now. I have my doctorate in clinical psych. I have a couple of master's degrees in psych and counseling. So I've been doing that work for a long time. And if you, I don't really have a specialty. I guess if you had to pick a specialty or pin a specialty on me, I've worked a long time with folks that have adults mostly, with severe mental illness. So schizophrenia, spectrum, bipolar, depression, anxiety, stuff like that. But some of the more serious experiences of that. So I've done that work for a while. And that's what I do now. I'm a clinician. I work in private practice. That's my day job. My, I guess, night gig. I have my own podcast, Converging Dialogues, which I do frequently. So I've been doing it over a year now. We've had a lot of great guests. And basically the podcast is trying to find ways in which people all over the spectrum with, you know, different fields of study and disciplines and political interest and social interest and, you know, even having philosophy there, just kind of a wide range of things, but just trying to get people exposed to different ideas, mostly from people that are specialists or they're, you know, researchers or they're philosophers or writers, et cetera. And yeah, just kind of a wide net. And so it's been going really well. I enjoy, I enjoy both things for, for different reasons. Yeah. Yeah. And we, we actually kind of like cross paths because we have a lot of the same guests on our podcast. We realize the same books. Yeah. We realize the same books, a lot of the same guests, which is, which is great. I mean, we've talked about it before, which is it's cool when, you know, the same guests will go on different podcasts. And there's some people that go on a bunch of these at the same time, but it's cool because you'll see for the guest a different side of them each time they're on someone else, you know, because different questions, different personality. And I think that's cool because you'll pull different things from, from each guest. So that's, that's always, always nice to see. And, and it's really, really cool. Yeah. Yeah. Like I'm a huge psychology nerd. Before we hop down, I was telling you about my mom's background, you know, in psychology. And that's like, kind of where my interest came, but I'm just fascinated with human behavior. And that's why I enjoy listening to your podcast, you know, a lot more than I do. And you take different angles and all that. But before we dive into some of the topics and everything, I'm curious because like I love knowing like what makes people curious or interest, like what drew you to psychology? When were you sitting there and you were just like, you know what, this is, this is the thing I want to, I want to go and like, and study for all these years and work in the field and all that. Yeah. So, I mean, I would say probably liberal arts and humanities was probably always my field or kind of, kind of that universe. I was, I mean, I think I've said it before, I was raised, you know, fundamentalist Christian for a good part of my life. I am not now. I haven't been for much of my adult life. So, so, you know, I was pretty rooted in theology for a long, long time, kind of a reformed tradition and rigorous study there. So, you know, theology starts to have a lot of crossing over with philosophy and from a really early age when I was an adolescent, I was a big nerd when I was a kid. As much as I read now, I've pretty much been reading that way my entire life, just different, different content. So, yeah, so when I was younger, you know, philosophy was my thing, you know, I would do theology and I also, you know, read a lot of philosophy and I got really interested in epistemology. I really liked, you know, how do we know things and how do we know how we know things and that was really fascinating to me. And, you know, that eventually led to human behavior and that led to brain behavior relations and that led to psychology, you know, psychology and philosophy definitely have a lot of crossover for sure. And so, you know, I wanted to do, I was going to do philosophy. I mean, like proper, you know, and then I, there's a big part of me that's very pragmatic. I mean, some people know that about me as well. So, I said, you know what, doing philosophy proper, I don't just want to like write and teach and do research. So, I said, you know, I kind of do something practical, you know, something I can make a living off of and do well. I mean, I wasn't that, I think, committed like I know some of my philosophy friends are and they're just much smarter than me anyways with that stuff. So, so I said, you know, psychology is, is pretty pragmatic. You know, it's kind of practical and rooted in things and you get to deal with kind of people one-on-one and, you know, or you can deal with people one-on-one in different ways and you get to understand things. And so, it just kind of went from there. And then, yeah, you know, got the bachelor's and psych and first master's in counseling, second master's in clinical psych and then the doctorate. So, I just kind of, you know, I just kind of started probably somewhere after my, right when I was finishing up my first master's, I said, you know, I just, I want to do clinical psych. Like I'm just going to be like, I'm just going to go all in. And so, I took the long path. And so, I spent many years in school and many, many clinical hours and lots of, you know, training and field placements and internships. And so that's kind of been my world. And I do love it. I really, really enjoy it. But they're, it's weird because people will see one side of me. And that's a lot of time and energy and effort and dedication. And, you know, but that's, you know, one love that I have. I have many loves and philosophy is one of them. I love biology and evolution is another one. Many, many things. So, yeah, I got into psychology and what I do with philosophy. And now I do more philosophy now when I teach and it comes on the podcast. And I've been reading that stuff for, you know, probably since I was a teenager. So, all of it kind of bookends and morphs together. But that's kind of the short, abbreviated version, if you will. Yeah, yeah. No, psychology was the thing that I always like to just read about and learn about and everything. And I only recently got into philosophy. And, you know, one of the reasons I, you know, was interested in psychology was just my own battles with, like, you know, depression and anxiety and all these other things, right? And then I started reading philosophy and I enjoyed how it got my wheels turning, right? And you talk about epistemology and asking, like, how do we know what we know? And I'm a huge fan of like cognitive behavioral therapy. I just finished Albert Ellis' book again on rational and motive behavioral therapy. And just questioning my own thoughts and how I know what my brain's telling me has helped me tremendously with my mental health. So for me, and what I try to explain to others, like, philosophy just kind of opening your mind and having to question the world and your own thoughts and experiences, like, it's helped me tremendously and maybe it could help others, you know? So I try to get people into it. But sometimes, like, for me personally, and maybe you can give me some advice on this, it's hard to find, like, philosophy books that I can, like, get into. Like I, you probably know, I'm an audio listener, right? So I don't read, like, the ancient books and, like, cons or, you know, stuff like that, right? But sometimes philosophers get way too profound and I'm just like, just stop it, right? Just, just stop it. So I get kind of like, I don't even know if it's like pop philosophy, right? But there's like the Socrates Express, right? Great book. Or Nigel Warburton, I think that's his name, right? And he did that. Yeah, he did that like little book on like, I'm like, hey, I can get into this. So yeah, he's great. If people are listening, they're like me and enjoy philosophy, but they don't want to go insane and have to sit and like, I don't know, try to dissect every little word. Do you have any book recommendations or philosopher recommendations that we can get into? Oh, man. So I mean, you know, as I've been reading philosophy and in talking to different people, I mean, if you, I mean, I like kind of the existentialist phenomenologists. I mean, I think there's something with the skeptics and, you know, Hume and Spinoza and Kant are all they all have their place, but everyone really just has to at some point read Aristotle. I mean, all of the philosophers in the 20th century and the 19th century and the 18th century, you know, they were all just kind of doing his homework. You know, Aristotle is kind of the man. So he's, you know, he's during the Greek philosophical period. I don't find it difficult to read. It's usually pretty, it's thoughtful. I mean, he kind of has a, you know, writes in aphorisms. So he's just kind of very like, if you think of just like big paragraphs that you can kind of just digest. I mean, they're all structured, but, you know, Nietzsche writes the same way and kind of with aphorisms. So I would say if you want to do, I think reading original source material is really important. Obviously, Cliff notes or people that have commentary that condense it is important, but I think it is good for people to read the original source material. I would say Aristotle is pretty, out of most people, he's pretty, I think, digestible. It's definitely something you want to take your time with. It's not something you're going to, you know, it's not a Dan Brown novel, right? I mean, you know, you've got to sit with it and contemplate it. But I'd say Aristotle is probably a good place. I mean, his ethics is pretty good. So, yeah, I would say, I would say Aristotle is a nice starting point. And mostly because everybody kind of, in terms of philosophy, everyone kind of references him. So, you know, it's kind of kind of getting it straight from the source. Is he the one who was the student of Socrates or something like that? Or am I thinking of someone else? You know, well, they're all kind of connected in that they're all around the same period. They're all talking about each other. So, their Plato and Socrates are usually connected. And sometimes people will say that they're the same person or it was a plait or the pillator really exists. You know, some people say that. But Aristotle is very much in the same timeframe, roughly. So, they're all kind of doing the same thing. So, a lot of people like the Stoics, you know, Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, you know, those guys are great. I mean, I love Heraclitus, but I mean, he's, we just have his fragments and that stuff can kind of get, it's deep in a weird way. So, I would say Aristotle. I mean, I think Aristotle is a good point for people that want to kind of get into it. And then, of course, you can have certain folks that kind of do some commentary. Nigel's great at that stuff. I'd say Simon Critchley is pretty good at this stuff too. Simon's pretty awesome at this, trying to make it tangible and practical. There's a few other people that will come to my mind, I can't think of at the moment, but there's some people that try and make it kind of digestible. So, yeah, yeah, some of those boys, but yeah, I'll eventually get around to it and try to sit with it because that is not something I think I could do audio format, like I'll have to sit in a chair like a human being and kind of digest it a little bit. Yeah, I mean, the Greeks really did the kind of oral format. So, that stuff is, so it's, you know, like if you read Homer's The Iliad or The Odyssey, I mean, it was oral tradition. So, people were talking this out loud. I mean, the Greeks somewhat are kind of like that too. So, it wouldn't be terrible. I guess you need someone, a good voice actor or whatever to read it to make it really compelling or something, but yeah, I mean, I wouldn't read, you know, Emanuel Kant or John Locke or Martin Heidegger on audiobook. I probably wouldn't do that. That would be a real, you know, tough move there. Yeah, yeah, I've tried to get away there or something. And it hasn't worked. But, you know, as you mentioned it too, like when Mark Hudson really asked, that was actually, so that'll be a good place to start. So, that was actually my introduction into philosophy. Like when I was going through a really rough time mentally in 2019, when the internet was coming after me for my YouTube channel and all that shit, I got into Ryan Holiday, right? And he's huge into the stoic stuff. And I started learning about how people like, oh, stoicism is like this bro philosophy and like, you know, pull yourself up on the bootstraps and everything. And we're going to dive into some like political conversations in a second. But that's where I see people having issues with stoicism, right? Is it seems like this very like right-leaning type of philosophy, right? Like, oh, the world is fine. It's just how you perceive the world, you know what I mean? And for me, stuff like that, like when I was reading Ryan Holiday stuff and learning about markets of realness and the stoics and all that, it really helped get me through a tough time. Because I realized like, hey, like I can perceive this however I want. You know, I can find some inner strength and all that. But now that you know, I'm leveled out and everything and look at these systemic issues and all these things, I can understand some of the criticism. So I'm curious your thoughts on like stoicism in the modern day, when there are these like social issues that you talk about on your podcast with different guests, whether it's, you know, issues with marginalized groups or whatever it is, like, you think stoicism is not the right route because of all the individualism with it? Well, I think, you know, you've got to put this stuff into context. I mean, the stoics were writing at a period that was obviously much different than ours. But I think what's not different is the human experience. You know, humans are kind of the same throughout time. And then also they're not. So, yeah, I mean, it can be kind of like a, you know, like a bro philosophy of sorts. It's, yeah, sure, I can, you know, maybe currently some, you know, right leaning folks use it to pursue some type of, you know, agenda, you know, whatever. But I think that that's not completely fair to the intention of what those guys are trying to do. I mean, most people can take anything out of, you know, to make it mean what they want. I mean, people were saying this with some of the nationalism stuff from Fishta and some of the stuff from Hegel and then definitely Nietzsche and a lot of the German idealists were, you know, the Nazis used to try and say like, oh, see, like, you know, these guys had it, you know, we're figuring it all out and we're going to use their philosophy. And it's like, you know, they had no idea that wasn't their intention to to have this, you know, propaganda for this particular party and so on and so forth. I mean, you can say this with Napoleon, he had certain folks that he was, you know, look, he used this philosophy to promote his like, you know, because someone uses it in a particular way. You know, it doesn't mean that's how it was intended. And I do think that we do need to be close to the author's intent. And I think that the individualism of stoicism was look, life's really hard. We all suffer and we all suffer in different ways. And how do we live an active life of how do we do something about it? And, you know, for some people that's going to resonate, some people, they're not going to be in the right space to hear that. That's fine. And then they will. So maybe like, you know, for yourself, you know, like, you know, it kind of hits you at the right moment at a certain part of your time of your life. And that's great. I mean, I think that it has a lot of, a lot of utility there. So I think it's, you know, people can take anything and make it, you know, for their agenda. But I think if we're trying to get as close as we can to the, you know, the author's intent and what they were trying to say, I think that that's most important. And sometimes this has a wide ranging application. Part of my distaste for a lot of the postmodern philosophers and postmodernism in general is that it takes a, there's some utility to it, but there, it takes too much of a everything's interpretive. And it's like, not really some things. Or we're going to just deconstruct everything into bits and pieces. And it's like, yeah, there's a space for that. But I don't think it's, you know, the be all in though. So I do think we need to look at what was the kind of the close intent, what was the context, you know, of some of these things and you can apply it in different ways, but I think you have to just be, you know, kind of honorable to what the person was trying to say. Yeah, yeah, for sure. And that's, that's, you know, even now that I'm remembering like where it all started, and I got into like Buddhist philosophy, even before that, because, you know, I was a few years sober and I discovered mindfulness. And, you know, it, it helped because I was struggling in my sobriety. And I learned about mindfulness and like, I was like, oh, shit, like, this is helping like, you know, it's not an experience many people have, but one of the first times I did a mindfulness meditation, like I was like, like, it was like this aha moment. I'm like, Oh, damn, I don't have to fight against these emotions, these feelings, these thoughts and all these other things. But anyways, and I'm like, okay, so where did this start and everything. And, you know, Buddhist philosophy, they talk about suffering too, like suffering is this inevitable part of life. And I have an upcoming episode with a guest on your podcast as well, Paul Bloom. And we were talking about, you know, his new book and suffering. And I'm curious just thought to when we see some of these like, social justice debates and everything, because I, you know, before we dive into the centrist conversation, like, I feel like I'm pretty progressive and I want systems to get changed to get fixed and all this other stuff. But I'm a firm believer like suffering is going to happen. And something I talked with Paul Bloom about is like, it feels like there's certain segments of people who many would label as woke, right, where we're talking about like trigger warnings and safe spaces and all these other things where it feels like their expectation is that they're like, there's this end goal where life is no longer going to have suffering, right? Everybody around them is going to always say the right things, never offend them, nothing ever is going to go wrong. And, and that's why I'm like, that is unrealistic. Like, I can, I can tell someone like, Hey, I think you're being a dick right now, right? But I can't have an expectation that we're ever going to reach a place where nobody ever makes me uncomfortable. Again, you know what I mean? So what are your thoughts in that regard? Do you do you feel like some people have an expectation of no more suffering or discomfort? You know, I don't know. I don't know what what some some people think or what their expectation is. Some people might think that I think it's hard to get a really honest answer out of some of the most, you know, very, very, very, very extreme left progressive folks. You know, they might say that, you know, utopia is the ideal or something. I don't know to, to, to eradicate suffering on the planet or I don't know. I don't know what their ultimate end would be. I don't expect an honest answer. So yeah, and that's not I'm not saying that they would be lying. I just think it would be like, you know, there's a certain element where it's like, okay, like, you know, what, where do we, where do we not need any more progressing, right? I mean, when, when do we get some wins here? When do we get some W's under our belt? And it feels like when we do point out that there are some wins, it's not enough, we didn't dream big enough, we didn't go big enough, we didn't go, you know, whatever. And it's like, yeah, but I mean, everything is, is in progress, right? You're not going to, you're not going to get to the end of it. So I think that there's, there's some aspirational utility for that, you know, we should try to end some, you know, we should find cures for cancer and Alzheimer's and, you know, everyone on the planet should have clean water. And I mean, those things are aspirational and things were actively working to, you know, eradicate or resolve and we should keep working on that. But, you know, the, at the end of the day, you know, suffering is a part of life, it always has been. Suffering doesn't know any, any morals or values, it just is. And it's, it's difficult. And I think the sooner we accept that that's a part of life, because to me suffering is a, is a aspect of life that tells you that it's real. This isn't an illusion, you know, this is, this is real, we're rooted in something and that's a, that's reality based. And most of the time it sucks. And we don't like it. But I think we can find, I think people can, can find kind of this relative meaning out of it. Maybe not for everything, but I think for a lot of things. I also talked to Paul on the podcast and we had a little bit of disagreement on this. You know, his belief is that some, some events just suck. Some suffering is just, just shit. It's terrible. There's, there's no silver lining and, and I get his point and I think he's right on one level. I do think that there is potential value from every experience if we can find it. And the value is not an absolute value. It's a value that we impose for our own specific experience in our lives with our, you know, folks around us. It doesn't mean you have to do that necessarily with every single thing, but, and it might not happen in that moment, but it might 10 years from now. And I think he was agnostic about it, but I think he was like, yeah, I could see that, sure. So it's a, we had a really nice exchange of that. So yeah, I think on the suffering piece, I think that we shouldn't be beside ourselves to say, well, that's just going to happen and we shouldn't do anything about it. I'm not saying that, but I definitely don't think it's a, it's an all or nothing, right? Until we get to the final aim, none of it's good. And it becomes this kind of black and white thinking with, with some progressives and not all, but some, and I don't think that that's a grounded in reality and be, I don't think that it promotes a kind of liberal pluralism that we should be promoting, you know, here in the United States or really anyways. Look, if you're, you know, truly about liberalism, you're okay with people having different ideas and different beliefs. We don't have this uniformity. And the fact that everyone doesn't pony up and get on board and, and believes exactly the way you do, that's not liberalism by definition. And so I think that there starts to become a kind of breakdown, but you know, so we can get into specific details, but that's my, my broad answer to that question. Yeah. Yeah. No, very, very well said. And, and yeah, I remember in my conversational part too, we talked a little bit about that. And, you know, something that, you know, was another like enlightening experience for me was when I got into the 12 step programs and we read like the big book in this section of the promises and they say, you know, we, we do not forget the past nor wish to shut the door on it, right. And, you know, it was basically teaching me like, Hey man, you've got through this shit, you're a little bit stronger. And then it talks about how our experience can help others and everything. But like you said, like, you know, I'm of that belief too, where even if not in that moment, or even not for a month, a year, whatever it is, I can look back and say, I survived that and I'm a little bit stronger, right. It helps me move through the day. Like in 2019, where all that shit happened, one of the things that was my saving grace aside from a support group and therapy and all that stuff was like, Hey, Hey, Chris, in 2012, you had a 10% chance of living and you were a drug addict and you made it through that, right. So you can get through this. And that's where I find strength in my suffering, even though it might take me a long, long time to look back. And like you said, like suffering reminds us that this is life and we're grounded in a real experience. Yeah, that really happened to you. That wasn't an illusion. That wasn't a hallucination. That really happened. And that that is rooting you in something that, you know, I mean, that's telling you an aspect of that you can't avoid or ignore it. And it's saying that there's something to be said about you existing your being of who you are as an individual existing on the planet. They're it's saying something about being itself, right, who you are as an individual is saying, Yeah, this really happened. That's much harder to do with positive experiences. It's they're wonderful when they happen and we should crystallize them in our memories. But they're much easier to kind of dismiss. You know, that was that could have just been because of this or, you know, that wasn't really that good as much as I remembered it to be. But our suffering is like, no, that was awful. That was terrible. And, you know, I'm I hated it at the moment, but many times it does make us stronger, I would say. And the fact that we want to be stronger as opposed to weaker, right? You said it. I've said it. Other people have said it. Well, you know, it made me stronger. People say that. Yeah, we don't we don't aim for weakness, right? You could you could swap out strength for vitality, right? Something where you're having this active participatory way of engaging in the world and with other organisms, people, things, animals in a very active way. That's vitality. That's, you know, strength. That's something we should be shooting for. And you're not going to get that if you feel, you know, weak, or if you're not having experiences with in reality. So yeah, yeah. Yeah, for sure. And, you know, like with with some of that, and, you know, I want to go back to a little bit of like the liberalism and everything to and dive into one of the main reasons I wanted to have you on because like, I can see like when I when I listen to your podcast and I listen to others, I can see like, how a person's personality kind of makes them look at the world. Like, for example, what in reference to what we're talking about, right? With that strength and the suffering and the experience, like my experience, like the experience I've had in life, when I see like the kind of culture wars and the bullshit that goes on, I'm like, is this really something that we're going to waste our time or breath on, right? I put everything on a scale, you know what I mean? Because when when you go through some like real suffering, you look at some of the stuff like, Hey, this is like nothing, right? This is nothing compared to, you know, my thing is, like, I know we all have our things, like some people it's like racial stuff or the trans stuff or like feminism and like for me, it's like mental health and addiction. I look at, you know, overdose rates, suicide rates, addiction, all these other things. That's my thing, right? So when I see like, these debates about like the stuff in schools, which we'll talk about a little bit, like, I'm like, you guys, let's let's try to make sure that kids don't start shooting up heroin when they're 15. Let's do that. And but anyways, brought you all because you identify as a centrist and this is where I want to ask you questions and I need you to help me out too. So I'm going to break this. I'm going to break this down for you. I'm going to tell you how I think what I think a centrist is and it might be rooted in some stigma too, right? And I'm sure you're well aware of this. So I mentioned you at the time of recording this, I just recorded with embrace the void the other day and you want to bring me on and he warned me like, Hey, I'm going to ask you and kind of press you a little bit, because some people might see as like a censor or a flipper, right? And that's what I feel like is centrist, right? Like, Hey, I don't want to Hey, I'm just Switzerland. That's me. I'm a pacifist. I don't have any strong beliefs. And you sent me a phenomenal piece that you wrote on radical centrism. But that's my concern, like, I feel so I feel like that I look at every situation independently, right? I don't like, Oh, my side believes in this, my side believes in that. Like, in every situation independently, do my research, form an opinion, go from there. You know what I mean? That's how I feel. But some of a or, you know, a lot of people with especially with the polarization now, it feels like if you try to take a rational point of view on anything, they call you a fence sitting just you doing it, you didn't pick the right side. And you're if you're not with us, you're against us. And, you know, we've talked to a lot of same people who probably have been accused of these things. And, you know, like, some of the same people will get accused of being like a maggot Trump supporter and others. And that same exact person by somebody else be accused of being like a socialist communist, whatever. So anyways, those are my thoughts, those are, that's my experience. And I'm sure you have a better definition or view of centrism, right? Like, is it, is it, is it on policy or is it on social issues? Is it on everything? Lay it on me. Well, I think that centrism is, you know, you ask, you know, 10 different people get 10 different answers for me. You know, I think it kind of comes down, you can break it into two forms. So I think you can have a temperament of centrism, and then you can have kind of the issues of centrism. And I think you can have both. To be a centrist doesn't mean you're, you know, riding the fence, middle of the road, compromise all the time, 5050, you know, both sizing it, all of these other things. It is very funny, though, I'll just say this as a, as a footnote. It's funny trying to see people kind of, whatever word you want to use, attack, bully, make fun of centrists. It's a very funny thing to see online, because there's not really any good, like, put downs for centrists. They're all kind of lame. And it's like, Oh, yeah, you're just trying to like both sides. It's like, yeah, sometimes, like, is that the best you got? Like, Oh, you're not really committed. It's just like, I mean, no, but okay, if that's what you think, I mean, I don't know, there's not really good, like, I don't know, I guess put down this, it's always funny to see people try and tear down centrism. I would say, you know, in the temperament, look, I think some people would say that we need to be able to talk to to everybody. Right? Is this kind of attitude of this kind of openness to like, let's talk to, you know, Republicans and Democrats and independents and everyone in between libertarians and, and whatever your party is, or affiliation is or whatever, you know, whichever country you're in, you know, these terms are start to look different in Europe and other places. But, but then I think that there's a type of centrism, which is on policy issues, which means that put it this way. So if if the Democratic Party in the United States or the Republican Party is a two major parties in the US, they have a platform, right? You know, that is a literally the parties, you know, the RNC and the DNC, they, this is what the codified 10 commandments are, if you will, the gospel truth for their party of what they believe, right? And I mean, they are kind of like articles of faith, if you will, I mean, there, there's not a lot of flexibility there, right? A little bit, but not a lot. And I think some of that's okay. I definitely think there are some things that make one person prone to one side or the other. So, you know, if someone is, if you want to say center left or center right or whatever, you know, or if you just want to say on the left or on the right, you know, there's not going to be many liberals that are going to be really animated about limited government. I mean, you just, that's antithetical to what liberals are for. Like, you just can't, like, that's just not a part of it. It's the same thing with Republicans, right? I mean, they're going to be for, you know, limited government, small governments, you know, stronger states rights, many things. Okay, there are some ideological pieces here that just, it's a, it's an outlook on how you see the world, right? This is how I think we should do things as a country, as, you know, different communities. Overall, you know, I don't, I don't want to, I don't want the government taking all of my, or much of my taxes, you know, or my money to taxes to give it to other programs and stuff like that. I want to decide what I want to do with it. That's a worldview. That's an outlook, right? That's a conservative kind of in its true sense, I guess. Liberals in kind of a political sense are more, no, I mean, when everyone does well, we all do well and we need to have these things to promote, you know, services we use, you know, together in society and, you know, it's kind of this, you know, social contract idea, et cetera, et cetera. So there's a kind of worldview there, which is fine, right? That's fine. Centrism is not that I don't have strong beliefs about something, or that you don't feel very passionately about something. I mean, centrists feel very passionate about things. Like give me an example. I'll give you an example, but here's, here's one thing about that. The difference is the centrists aren't going to be beholden to all or a majority of a party's platform. So they could share a worldview or an outlook, but that might translate differently based on the issue in front of them, because you want to look at what the nuance is at that moment for that particular context. Now, if I just say, no, I'm a Democrat. This is what it is. This is what I have to be for. That's it. I think what that does is that puts blinders on people from really thinking about the issue. And, you know, there's, you know, some work that's been done on, you know, for a while was, you know, what us versus them kind of thing was, was in this country very much a, well, this is my team. This is my tribe. So I'm going to coalesce with them and I'm going to be with them. And I don't really care what you guys do, but this is my team. Now it's, no, this is my team. And now being part of this team means I have to vehemently be against your team, right? And that becomes more polarized, which is, which is very damaging. So as an example, you know, you could be for universal healthcare, right? Public option or, or just, just flat out universal healthcare. Everyone gets it. We all buy into, we all have to have something the end and it should be free and we shouldn't have to worry about it. But you could also say, yeah, but I live in Idaho and I think that, you know, second amendment, I want to have my guns. It's a right and I want to use it. Now you can't do that really if you're just kind of following the party line for the democratic party. You know, if you want to say, yeah, I believe in climate change, but I'm not too sure how much of man's involvement is, is there. And I definitely don't want, you know, cap and trade. I rather just have nuclear energy. You can't say that if you're a liberal. Like you have, I mean, you can, but it's going to be, people are going to start questioning your, you know, allegiance, right? And look, you can do this on the right. You know, well, you know, I mean, I think a woman can choose what she wants to do with her body. Are you kidding me? That's killing a baby. No, I don't know if we can have you in our club, you know, or if you're like, yeah, you know, I kind of like how my public school is what we cannot have. We don't even need Department of Education. That's only been around since the seventies. So it's stuff like that. It's you have to kind of, and then look, there are some things that I think are staples of kind of each side. That's kind of what I was talking about, like limited government, big government. It's the involvement of it and how people are using some of that. That is kind of a worldview kind of thing. And so, but, but then I think that, you know, the world is very complicated and we must, you know, take things on the issues and on its merits. So I can tell you specifically how I think about it, but you go ahead and jump in if there's, if there's anything I'm, well, here's what I'm wondering. Like I don't know if you follow up or anything like that. But so I, I watched like independent news, right? So like Crystal and Sager. Yeah. So breaking points. And then there's Kyle Kalinsky, secular talk, the humanist report, Mike and stuff like that. And I, so, you know, when you get someone like, you know, like Mike from humanist reporting, like very like progressive and stuff like that. Then you have, but when I look at someone like Kyle and Crystal, for example, like there is a growing movement of people who aren't walking that party line and they're looking at the Democrats, right? And they call them corporate Democrats because it seems like they're doing everything in the interest of these like billionaires, millionaires and all this other stuff. And they're not walking that party line. But I don't think, I don't think any of them would identify as a centrist. So do you see what I mean? Like it seems like, like, for example, I'll watch, you know, Kyle and he's, he was part of like the Democratic Socialists of America and stuff like that. You know, he believes in like, you know, the Scandinavian type model and all that. And he's like, Hey, own your guns. I want common sense gun laws, you know, and he, you know, some of these, so there's some people who would identify very left leaning, but they want a nuanced conversation. But I'm curious, like your thoughts, like, would you, do you see those people as more like center because they're not like, Hey, this is what my team believes, even though I'm, or is that more of like, when we get into the conversation of left of center, right of center, where it's just not so far to the extremes. I think that there's, you know, look, I mean, look, people can do what they want. I want people to, I'm fine if people want to identify as Democrat and Republican. It doesn't bother me. That's, and see, that's the difference, right? Like I don't, you don't need to be in the middle with me. That's fine. Like I just, but I just don't want it to be this, you know, contentious hostility where we're, you know, politics has a really good way. I mean, good at meaning effective, I guess, in a, in a bad way of dehumanizing people, you know, and it's like, look, that's still a person. Like I don't care if that person, I mean, I do and to a certain extent, I don't care if that person voted for Trump or they voted for someone else. Like I don't care. I mean, we can have disagreements, right? I mean, I've said publicly, I vehemently dislike President Trump for many reasons. I can get into those if you want. I think people dislike him for different reasons, and I have my own reasons, which I personally think are good ones, right? It's not all of the stuff that most people talk about. I have different reasons for not liking him. Um, but I don't, for people that, that, you know, the 80 million people that voted for him, it's 80 million people. Yeah. I wanted each one of those people, or not each one, but many of those people has a family. They, they have their own struggles. They have things that are bothering them. They feel like people aren't listening to them. You know, my, my first inclination isn't to ostracize that person. My first thing is to run to that person and say, Hey, what was it that this fucking guy said that you're, you're going to pull the, pull the lever for him? Where did it fail you? And if it's like, well, here's all the reasons. That's what I want to hear. I don't want to be like, Oh God, this is, you know, a racist bigot and I can't ever interact with them. That's absurd. That's absurd to me. And on the left, the same. It's like, I don't like the far left just as much as I don't like the far right, but I still want to understand from that side. Okay. You guys are saying a whole lot of stuff. You're making a lot of righteous claims. Why? Yeah. Like maybe people are just complicated. Maybe it isn't, you know, we can't get it to this singularity where it's just, you know, box A or box B and that's it. But why are you doing that? Like I want to know that. I think that kind of openness and curiosity and trying to explore that it becomes very difficult when you're wrapped up in your tribes platform. And it's like, Nope, here's all the ticket lines. I vote blue. I vote red down the down the ballot. Don't even think about it. That's what we do in the end. And they're the bad guy and we're the good guy. Like it just, that is what I don't like. And I think that's what a lot of party politics does. And I definitely think that's what ideology does. And that's, that's why I don't play that because it just makes me miss the human and makes me miss the person. And that's what's more important to me. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, we will, we will dive into the Trump conversation because I think you're the perfect person to talk to about this. But I, you know, as you talk, I'm like, this is why we get along Xavier because, you know, I'm the same way. Like I, I have been like a political nihilist my whole life. I'm like, who cares if you vote on one of like hundreds of millions of people, my vote doesn't do anything. But in 2016, that's when I had that moment, like you're talking, like what you're talking about, you're the way you see the world where when, when Trump was elected in 2016, I'm like, I need to figure out what the fuck's going on. Like there is a reason, like there is a reason people voted for him. Like something is terribly wrong. And as I've caught up and as I've been, you know, reading all these books and understanding and all this stuff, you know, like I, you know, my son was born New Year's Eve, 2008, right in the heart of the recession. In February, in February, I was laid off. I actually wrote about this in a sub stack piece today. Like I was laid off in February. My son was two months old. I was laid off after all of us employees agreed to take a pay cut. So no more layoffs would happen. Still got laid off, right? And the owner of that cardio ship, he had houses all over the country. He had a house in Italy, right? He flies private jets, all sorts of shit. And then there was all these corporate bailouts. So as I started to understand, like in 2016, why, you know, we didn't, everybody didn't just flock to Hillary. It was a little bit more nuanced than everybody's just a sexist or a white supremacist or whatever. You know, that's when I was like, okay, well, what's going on? How do these people feel? But here's, here's what I want to talk to you about. Because since you're in the philosophy too, here's where I struggle. And I've talked with, you know, some political philosophers about this. So I get it. Like I totally get it. Like, I think it's ridiculous to be like, oh, you voted for so-and-so. We can't talk. We can't be friends, right? But when it comes down to personal morals and values, that's, that's where I start to have an issue, right? And maybe you, since you think similarly, you're seeing something that I don't, you're giving people more of a benefit of that, right? But for example, right, I don't see how I can befriend someone and want to hang out with them. If they are believing that the election was stolen, which helped lead the January 6 and stuff like that, right? Or I can go down the laundry list of Trump's things, right? Like, you know, the false claims that he made, the fueling of polarization and anger and animosity. So my thing is, like on a moral level, like, even if you want small government and everything like that, like, how can you still back such just a terrible person? You know what I mean? Like, for me, it's, it's a little bit, it's a little bit more than just being like, oh, well, I'm going to let all of these other terrible things slide. Like, it's all still up in the air with like sexual assault allegations and his ties to Epstein. Like, so I'm not even taking that into consideration. But him as a person, I'm like, this man is morally just fucking terrible. So if you back him, how do I like, you're not somebody I would like hang out with, because it seems like you would hang out with liars and assholes. You know what I, does that kind of make sense? Like on a moral level? So I really get, I almost get offended when they're like, oh, so you just don't want to hang out with me because I like Trump? No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. It goes deeper than that. You know, so, so on a moral level, maybe you can talk me through how you kind of view that situation. So I don't see a moral level. I'm not looking at politicians for morals and ethics. Maybe some ethics, but there should be some ethics, but definitely not morals. And I don't think it's, I don't think it's entirely necessary. I think there should be some element of it, but not entirely. I mean, look, the first question, the first, I mean, I can, I can give you so many counters to what you just said. And the reason I can give you so many counters is because I have friends that are Trump supporters. I hang out with these people and look, I hang out. I have plenty of progressive friends too. I hang out with them. It doesn't, I don't see that stuff. I just see, you know, we have fun, you know, conversations and spirited conversations, but at the end of the day, that's my friend. That's my family member. We're going to get a beer and I don't care, you know, I don't care. It doesn't, I mean, I care to a certain extent, but it not enough to not, you know, have a relationship with them. So, you know, the, the, some of the counters will be, are you kidding me? You're, you're telling, you're telling me about politicians lying and being immoral? Are you kidding me? Look at, look at, I mean, the Clintons, look at Bush, look at, you know, Nixon, LBJ, just pick, take any of your pick. You can, we can just go down the list. Why? Because they were buttoned up because they, you know, hide, hid behind their, their, their affiliations. So what? You know, I have more respect for Donald Trump because he just says exactly, he's not hiding anything. He's just saying, yeah, I said it. And people, I'm going to respect that. You know, you're the one that can't do it, right? You're the one that needs people to dress it up for you and put on a nice, you know, mask and whatever, like, no, this guy's just telling it like it is. He's just being his real self. And I'm tired of politicians having to, you know, always try and pander to me and all this and this and this, like, why not? We have, why don't we have someone like that? That you're going to get some version of that. That, that's the counter. That's the counter you're going to get. Yeah. No, I definitely hear you. Like right, right after, right after I was like, okay, cool, but I didn't got elected. Like, I think like the day after it was like official, I'm like, ah, okay, crack my knuckles. I sat down and I wrote an essay. I voted for Joe Biden, but he sucks, right? Just went through like all this shit, right? Like, and this is what I hate just about the polarized politics. Like with, you know, just in the last couple of years, we had all the Kavanaugh stuff. And then the second like allegations come out against Biden. They're like, oh, no, let's not talk about that. So like, I see it on all the sides. So I definitely see what you're saying. But so, so to your point about like, you know, we hang out and I have friends, right? So for example, I live in Las Vegas, ton of Mormons here, my best friend's Mormon, his family, like my mom was an alcoholic, my dad worked a ton and you know, he was doing his thing. And my best friend's family, like pretty much helped raise me. They were like my second family and they're hella Mormon, hella conservative, like you go over there watching Tucker Carlson and all this stuff and the super Trump supporters. So I get it. I get it because I love, I love them and their kind compassionate people who cared for me most of my life invited me over for holidays and stuff, because I stopped hanging out with my mom, all that stuff. So I get that. But I'll use like a different situation and just a little thought experiment, if you will, right? So you have a friend, you have a friend who is, you know, you guys are into the same like books, movies, music, you laugh, you have a good time, all these other things, right? Yeah. Yeah. But on January 6th, they flew across the country, broke into the Capitol and stormed in there because the election was stolen, right? Like at a certain point, don't you look at that person and say like, you're not grounded in reality, right? Like... I wouldn't say that. I wouldn't say that. Okay. So, so walk me through that process. I would want to understand why they believe that way. Now, I'll totally grant you that whatever their media diet is, is probably fucking garbage, right? I mean, it's McDonald's, really. I mean, most of mainstream media is that way. But, you know, yes, if they're eating the equivalent of ramen every night by watching Tucker or anything on Fox or, you know, you can make the equivalent on the left of MSNBC or whatever. But, you know, that's just not good for your brain in general. And it really is just kind of, you know, fine, maybe they're not watching mainstream, but they're, you know, doing some, you know, derivative of, you know, basically quasi conspiratorial kinds of stuff online. You know, that's gonna, it's gonna warp your mind a little bit. And you're gonna see things that aren't really there, that you want to be there to animate your feelings, to animate your emotional kind of outrage. My guy lost, there's some things that are kind of odd. There's things that are odd every election. You know, it was unique, the fact of all the mail-in ballots and all that stuff, granted during the pandemic. So, you know, okay, I mean, I can go all of that way with the person. I'll walk right with you on that. I mean, I don't believe that, but I can hear the reasoning. You know, but when we get to Republican, you know, state secretary saying, okay, look, we verify this, we've counted it like 18 times, like it's fine, like it's all there. And they still don't believe. That's where I'm like, okay, take the L. Let's just take the L and just, you know, try again. I mean, we know Democrats are gonna fuck it up in 22 and 24. You'll be fine. You'll get your chance again. Like just take the L for, you know, two, three years, you'll be fine. So, yeah, but then I, see, that's where it becomes difficult is, you know, I found January 6th, you know, completely sobering, one of the lowest points for us as a country, you know, just an abomination. Just, there's not enough adjectives to describe how despicable it was. And, and I think that there's a handful of people there that really believe. You can say it's delusion or not. That's fine. They really believe the election was stolen. They really believe they were righteous in what they did to try and protect it from not being stolen. And, and again, if, if this, if the shoe was on the other foot, you know, and we thought Donald Trump stole the election and was there wrongfully? I mean, we would all be saying authoritarian, dictator, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And you might have had other people doing the same thing because they really believe it was stolen. Even if all the other things said otherwise, it can't be, it can't be. He was impeached twice. He did all of these things. He was behind in polls. There's no way. Maybe he, if he, if we all found out the data, the same data, the same procedures. This is why we need institutions, by the way. If we have all these things, well, we gotta take that out like we did in 16. But I guarantee you there would have been a sizable amount of people that would have been like enough, no way. And maybe some people on the far left would have done something similar. Maybe not. I don't know. But even if that's not the case, I don't like what is, but I can understand some people having that mentality. Now, I don't think their actions were justifiable at any way. I do not think any of that should have happened. But in terms of trying to understand the mentality, yeah, I could get it for some people. Again, 110% disagree. But that's not the point. The point is to try and say, how do I try and sit there with this person, not in a judgmental way, but to try and understand, hear them tell me their reasoning. Again, just listening, not trying to condemn and judge and say that they're fucking insane and just say, you know what, I get it. I hear you. I can understand it. Understanding is not the same as agreeing or being complicit or whatever. Again, for people that are listening, I do the same thing. I do the same thing with very, very, very progressive lefties, you know, the quote unquote woke. I get it. I get why these people are saying this. I hear it. And so we have to have a stronger stomach for this stuff because if we don't, people are just going to keep splintering. They're going to keep diverging. And it's just going to get worse and worse and worse. We have to try and just like, look, this is hard for me. Let me push past that. And let me just hear what my fellow human, my fellow person is thinking and believing and try just understand this stuff and try and make some inroads. But, you know, if people aren't going to do that, then, you know, and I think that's very hard to do when you're ideologically possessed or you're just under the banner of whichever team you're on. Yeah. Yeah. And as you're talking, I'm just like, God damn it, Xavier, because you'll remind me like with your background and make sense in your clinical work, because like just quick little story, right? You know, I worked at a drug and alcohol rehab center for a few years. And like, you know, at an inpatient rehab, we had an inpatient and outpatient, right? I had people come up and cuss me out during detox and stuff like that. And oh, they just fuck it. You like, you know this, right? Like when people are sick and, and I can forget. I'm like, hey, man, like you're going through some shit. I totally understand, right? And I had a family member who I was just, oh, I despise them, right? And one day I just had this epiphany. I'm like, treat them like you would one of your clients and, you know, think of them as a sick person, right? And it helped me start getting along with them. So anyways, what I'm, there's a long way of saying like, if I look at these people as individuals and not a group and think about the media they've been consuming their background, what, what they believe, right? And this is one of the reasons why I think beliefs are so, you know, they're part of, they're part of the human experience, but they're so dangerous because like when I see people storm the Capitol, I'm like, yeah, if you believe, if you believe this is true, if you think this is happening, like, but you know, we look at somebody, you know, the, the guy who went into Comet Pizza with the gun, because he believed, he believed that there was a basement where they were like sex trafficking children, right? And that's why beliefs can be so dangerous and why I, you know, advocate for people to be flexible on their beliefs. And I, I try to bring people on where we talk about their books about decision making and, you know, cognitive psych and all these other things. But anyways, here's where I'm screwed up. And I have yet to find a good answer on this, right? Because, you know, you see it all the time on Twitter and it's these people with large followings, loud voices, and there's no way, there's no way to tell when someone is just full of shit. Like we were talking about earlier, right? Like if I asked like a progressive or whoever, right? There's a certain point where I just don't know if they're lying to me if they really think the way they think, right? But, you know, there's a, there's a fact, there's a fact that people are pandering to a certain audience because of the way we incentivize, you know, how, how you can make money online, how you can get attention. We all love our egos being fueled and stuff. And here's where I struggle and I'll use a recent example, right? Dave Rubin. So Dave Rubin went on the Braver Angels podcast and I'm like, oh, listen to this. Okay. And I shout out to John Wood Jr. Yeah, he's great. He's lovely. Did you listen to that episode? I have not listened to that episode. I've listened to a few of them. But John, John's a good friend. I love John. He's great. So I, I fucking, I love Braver Angels. I read an early copy of Monica's book that's coming out. She's fantastic. She's lovely as well. Yeah, she's awesome. I love what they're doing. I love their mission. But I listened to that episode and maybe maybe we'll revisit after you check it out. But Dave Rubin, if I had to say somebody, even though I, I don't, I couldn't prove that he's full of shit, right? Like I think that he's full of shit and panders to an audience. He found an audience. He makes money off that audience and he'll say whatever it is. Another example. Fuck it. I'll name drop Tim Pool, right? I've watched that guy's transition. The famous one is Milo Yiannopoulos. Hell, we have Alex Jones. Alex Jones is an ego driven, money hungry motherfucker, right? So now let's get back to the moral talk, okay? How, how can I like, because I've had people from all over the political spectrum on my podcast. I don't give a shit, right? But how could I in good conscious have one of these guys come on when I think that they are full of shit, right? Like I was listening to Dave Rubin talk with the wonderful, wonderful John Wood, right? About, about the polarization in media, right? And I'm looking at him, I'm like, you motherfucker, right? I'm like, have you watched or listened to your content? See, I'm going on a rant now. But that's where I find an issue, because you can look at somebody like Marjorie Taylor Green, some of these people who fan the flames of the polarization. And I don't know how I'm supposed to be like, yeah, one day come on my podcast and let's have a calm, normal conversation, because I think you're being deceptive on purpose for nefarious reasons. So lay, lay your thoughts on me about that, because you're on Twitter, you see these people panda and I do. Every day I see. So here's my general statements. I think that for folks like this, I know who you're talking about, the people you named and others. So a few things. So the first thing is, well, maybe I don't want to say the first thing in no particular order. I think a lot of these folks are, they've really been hurt by the system, by other people, and they've been hurt in different ways. They've been ridiculed, they've been mocked, they've been told their, you know, their ideas don't mean anything. They've been told, you know, we don't accept you here for various different things, whether it's their, you know, their gender, sexual orientation, or the religion, or you name it, their age, you know, their race, you know, so their ideas, their beliefs. And there's always somebody that's going to accept you. And when you gain a following of people that accept you, you start to kind of parrot what they want to hear and the feedback you want to get from them. And it becomes a downward spiral and you kind of get stuck in quicksand, I think. Then you're getting a lot of feedback, positive feedback, people love you, you know, you're calling things out, okay. And then you, it becomes a numbers game, you know, then you know, oh, if I start getting into this territory, I'm going to get more likes, I'm going to get more clicks, I'm going to get more of an audience. Now I'm getting monetized, now I'm getting, you know, bigger, bigger, bigger, bigger, bigger. And now I'm, you know, all of a sudden I'm talking about, you know, conspiracy stuff, I'm talking about, you know, I'm anti-woke, or anti-vax, or I'm just, I'm just the anti-everything, right? You know, whatever it is. And it sells, but they feel accepted. They feel included. And wherever they were at before, pushed them out. They didn't include them anymore. And I don't say outcasts, but they, so I just think they've been hurt. And so when they, when they find a community of people that accept them, not really for who they are per se, but for saying things that, you know, people like that want to hear or just kind of being contrarian, people really enjoy the rebel, contrarian, blah, blah, blah kind of thing. And, and, and that, that's effective. And it works. And so when I see folks like this, my approach is, I just want to, I just want to listen. I just want to understand, again, kind of like with, I'm not making a comparison, but just like with the Trump supporter or the January six folks or whatever, I just want to understand, you know, so, so you're saying like, you know, how do I have some of these people on my show? Look, I mean, I'll just say how I do it on my podcast. I've had a few controversial or potentially controversial people on my show. And, you know, for me, personally, you know, I, I want to, I try to get people that are experts or they're well, you know, researched or, or well written or they, you know, they've really contributed. And even if I disagree, I don't give a shit. I want to, I just want to understand. And I want to try as best as possible to understand the best version of themselves. So then everyone else can hear that. Because a lot of the times that this stuff becomes is everybody. And look, I get that impulse too. I hear it. People want to see the fight. They want to see the debate. Oh, you heard them when he said, oh, and then he hit him with this. Oh, and then he fucked them up on this one. Oh, you caught them there. You know, people like that stuff. It's kind of this, you know, gladiator or, you know, whatever it's just that kind of part of us that's like, yes, I want to see a bra or something like that. And I get it. I get that. But for me, it's less of that. And it's more of, yeah, that's cool. But then it's like, what does it leave you with? Right. And so my thing is, at least for me, and how I do thing is I want whoever's listening to say, I got the most accurate, clearest picture of what this person thinks. And if I, if a listener can walk away with that, I did my job. They could totally fucking hate the person. They could totally disagree with them. That's fine. That's totally fine. But I, at the end of the day, it's, but I understand what they think though. I understand their beliefs. And so for me, that's kind of my approach is to say, how can I best get that out of them? And, you know, maybe sometimes I do it well, maybe sometimes I don't. But I think that that's always my aim and my goal. So if, if, you know, you want to have some of those folks or other people similar, it would be to try and just understand. Hey, look, man, you say some wild shit, you know, or, hey, you know, I've seen a progression here. Tell me about that experience. Like, how did you get from here to here? And yeah, but you understand that this and this, and this, you know, do you hear how this is kind of received? Or I think it's kind of like that. And it's a way of, okay, well, you're saying all of these things, but seems like there's some holes here. Or what am I missing here? Am I understanding this exactly? Yeah, it's really a trying to understand. And I think if you do that understanding, you know, you can then say, listen, I disagree. And here's why, or, you know, whatever, pushback or whatever, that's fine. But I think if you predominantly try to understand the person, you know, they're not, they're going to put their guards down. They're going to take their knives they have out because they're used to that, right? That's what they're expecting, right? Oh, this person's going to come at me, and they're going to come out, and I got to have my shields up and be like, you can't, you know, whatever, and then it's going to be the whole like counter punch the whole time. And I think if you just like, take that out, it's like, oh, oh, this person isn't going to like hit me for saying blah, blah, blah, blah. Oh, okay. Well, wow, this person's like really curious about what I think and my idea is like legitimately, oh, okay, you kind of lower the temperature, you get hopefully the best version of what they're saying. And then you can maybe kind of give some of the like, you know, look, I disagree with you. And you know, here's some of the things why, but I understand what you're coming from, I think you've told me that I got accurate. And then you can have some kind of productivity after that. But that's just kind of how I do it. So I don't know if there's some of that that you do or Yeah, no, you're so much, you're so much more chill than me, it makes me sound like a lunatic, but that's, that's what I try to do. Like, for example, like, you know, like I recently had Charles Love on this planet that we disagree on, Benjamin Boy song, right? I know Charles, I know Charles. He's a very nice person. Yeah, just such a wonderful person to talk to. And, you know, I've had him on as well. And I disagree with him on a lot of things. But he's, he's to me a really good faith person. Yeah. And I understand, I think his motives, I don't agree with all of them. But I think he I can, the thing I can say about Charles that I think is one of the best things about him is he absolutely fucking cares about kids and education and getting that I understand that 110 percent and I will defend him on that point to the end. You can disagree with him and everything else. That's fine. But that's what's motivating him. That's the passion. That's the drive. Now how he, you know, his some of his beliefs or how he goes about it sometimes is, you know, I disagree. But I get that. And that's that I understand that. And so I can, I can meet him there. And I said, OK, OK, look, look, Charles, you and I are on this same page on this, man. What about this? Maybe maybe we could do it. Maybe maybe this way. And, you know, he might say, you know, go pound sand. But at least there's a way where we can connect somewhere with I understand his motive. And I also, you know, have, you know, some passion about that too. OK, you know, that's that's a good starting point. Yeah. A book that's currently in my rotation is Roy Balmeister's book on evil, right? And you talked about the myth of pure evil. And I always try to just remember this stuff because most people are are good. Like evil is just this thing that we like to do for like black and white thinking and stuff. But, you know, I think Charles is a great example. Or, you know, you and I, like we've both had people like Carol Hoover on. We both had big shout out to Carol. Carol is the most wonderful human being on the planet. She's absolutely lovely. Love her. I tell the story about how, like, we were having scheduling conflicts and she called me and she was so apologetic. Oh, she's such a good person. And I read the book. And then there's Paige Harden, right? With the genetic lottery. And I hate seeing some of these people get shit because I'm like, this is a good person, right? This is a good person trying to do research or they care about, you know, whatever it is. And I hate seeing them get labeled and attacked and all that. And as you're talking, because I do the same thing, like I want to see where someone's coming from, right? Like when I had Benjamin Boyce on, I'm like, help me understand, you know, and obviously his experience being at Evergreen, that's certain. But I call him out. I'm like, Hey, do you see some of the stuff that you're doing on Twitter might be fanning the plans? And, you know, I struggle with, you know, following James Lindsay. I like to keep an eye on him. But I'm just like, I look at him like, you mother, right? But here's where I get, I get torn, I think, because I'm all for having people on and trying to understand where you're coming from. Why do you believe what you believe? You know, the epistemology, all that stuff, right? And I want to understand other people. But here's, here's where I struggle is if you, if you believe, you know, taking different routes with how we pass bills and, you know, if you're against Medicare for all or anti-abortion, these are all things, right? But when you're, when your level of pandering gets to fanning the, the, the co, like COVID conspiracies, anti-vax narratives, right? Like I look at what Fox News does and I find it despicable knowing how many of these people are vaxed and they're fanning this, right? But like you said, and this is one of the reasons I asked you to come on and everybody needs to go listen to your conversation about, yeah. Like I understand that loneliness, right? Because that's part of what led to my downfall in YouTube. I was getting attention and all this stuff. And it kind of made me lose sight of my original goal of what I was trying to do. So when I see these people doing it, I understand. But at what point, at what point do we say, listen, now you've gone too far, right? Like if you're, if you're, if you're promoting conspiracies about election fraud or about vaccine, you know, vaccines causing you to be magnetic and, you know, it can lead to actual real world harm. If you were, you know, if you were really promoting the ideas of what led to January 6th, that's where I have a problem. Because I'm like, now I see what you're doing or even if we just go to Twitter, right? When I think about somebody like James Lindsay and you go through and it's just, you have X amount of talking points, you, you shove them out there and you say, your kids are going to die if we even teach people about racism or whatever it is, right? I'm like, you might be leading to real world harm. That's where I have an issue. I'll sit there and I'll be compassionate and say, hey, you might be hurting. Like I look at James Lindsay, I'm like, things rough in your life, right? Like, you know, do you have problems like in your real life? Is this why you do this? You go on Twitter and you get this attention and stuff. I always try to do that. But, but there comes a point where if it's leading to real world harm, that's, that's where I get conflicted. And it's, it's, it's like I want to understand, right? Like I'll have, I've worked with plenty of drug addicts who have lied to cheat stolen from their mother, right? Hell, I'm a drug addict who spent money on drugs instead of my son. And I've done plenty of reprehensible things, right? So I get it and I get that there needs to be this level of understanding. But when you're in good conscience, like when you're in, when you are aware, right? When you're not being affected by drugs, hey, some James Lindsay might be high as fuck. I don't know, right? But if, if you're doing something that could potentially lead to real world harm, that like, where do you see that? Do you see that as an issue or do you still just want to understand what's leading them to that? Or at a certain point you say, hey, you got to cut that shit out. Like this is just not cool, you know? Yeah. Look, I mean, I'm not saying that because I understand somebody's position that they get a pass for what they do or their actions or that I'm, you know, so agreeing with it, I think that people are going to have certain actions and they have to be responsible for them or they're, or they're not, right? I think that's definitely the case. I think that, you know, in some ways, Twitter isn't real. It's not a real place. And in other ways, it is. I, I, I do have some, some energy and passion for people that are causing harm inadvertently or otherwise. People disagree with me on this, but I think that we have to be responsible for the harm that we cause and directly or indirectly. You know, if I, if I cause somebody harm and it's indirect, I'm still going to have some ownership. Hey man, I'm sorry. Like, whoa, I didn't mean to do that. I didn't even recognize it. Um, let me, let me try and be more mindful. Um, but not everyone's going to do that. And I think it's because people have, they have different attitudes towards, you know, Twitter or online. And, you know, I think that people become, not always, but sometimes people become the stuff they hate, you know, what, what fights ideology, another ideology. That's usually how it works. Not always, but you need another type of intensity, another type of activism, another type of ideology. And um, that's what a lot of these folks are doing. Um, I do think, again, the most charitable reading of people that are, you know, anti-vax or, um, you know, have, have some conspiratorial thinking about COVID-19 and the election and things like that is they're frustrated and upset and they're lashing out. They're acting out, you know, against the system and look, the system fucking sucks most days. It doesn't help us most days and it's frustrating. And I think when there's, you know, those people, this is the, this is, it's, it's funny, right? And not actually funny, but it's just ironic how many of the folks that are talking about, I'm not going to get, you're not going to mandate a shot to be put in my arm or you're not going to tell me that I can't, that the election was installed or that the system isn't working against us or taking my rights or taking my liberties. That's literally the same argument that the woke make about marginalized communities. Now, some of that has, uh, actual valid truths to it, right? That we have evidence for and some of it's exaggerated. I mean, I'll come out and say that. I mean, I think some of it is exaggerated. Uh, I don't, or I don't think it's a panacea. I don't think it's just for everything, everyone all the time, you know, all black people, all Latin people feel and have this experience like, no, that doesn't happen. So I think you see it right at the fringes where people feel, um, wronged by a system and they have different ways of acting out against it. And I do think that there is a difference with, um, uh, you know, I think many educational institutions, I think many media institutions heavily lean, heavily swing pretty left. And I don't think that it's right that the right doesn't have, you know, their own version of that. Um, they do feel shortchanged a lot. And I don't, I think people need to have the right to say what they want and, you know, express their opinions and beliefs. But when you have 90% of, you know, educational institutions and 90% of media is, you know, swung one way and they're just kind of, you know, talking down to many other people, you know, they're going to lash out. They're just going to, they're going to get outraged. I don't think that's right. I don't think they should do that, but, you know, I understand. So I think that there's this, this is a big thing for me. This is a kind of centrist thing of sorts. And this is what makes me unpopular on all ends. You know, the way that progress happens in my mind is pragmatic institutionalism, right? How do we use institutions to create laws, to create change? It's very slow, but that's the way it works. Because you can't have a country of 300 and almost 50 million people and expect change like that and that everyone's going to agree if you're in a democratic state. I think there's a reason why you have, I think it's China, India, US and then Indonesia's after us. I mean, China is a communist state. India is a very complicated hierarchical state, but they're able to manage mass amounts of people. They can't have full democracies in places like that. It wouldn't work. No one would ever get anything done. You can't manage 1.4 billion people by everyone, you know, okay, that's their country. That's there. They have a different history, whatever, whatever. In this country, we have, you know, close 350 million people. Democracy is going to be extremely slow and difficult because there's 350 million people over the third or fourth largest country in the world, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. But what do you expect? And it cannot be one way or, you know, or the other. I think it's going to be slow. You use institutions to get pragmatic change where somebody's getting something. Someone's getting the slice of the pie and progressives don't like that, right wing Republicans don't like that, you know, and centrists love it because it's like, look, that's how that works. That's, you have to use institutions. And so I think when you have these, you know, culture or stuff and you have, you know, activists, there's a place for activism, but when you have these very strong ideological positions on both sides of things, it really just becomes a lot of hot air and it distracts us from really talking about things that impact everybody. And that's, that's what's frustrating. And I think most Americans feel that way. They're like, look, there's a place for cultural or stuff, but like, you know, I don't, I don't think, look, you can make claims one way or the other about, you know, critical race theory being taught in schools or, or fill in the blank, right? That's just what's in vogue now. You know, if you go back to the early nineties, it was something else. If you go back to, you know, whatever, at the end of the day, there's always going to be the basic stuff, right? Education, jobs, healthcare, you know, a better criminal system or justice system, rather, you know, how do we have trade, good foreign affairs, etc., immigration, those are always going to be somewhere on the ballot. Those are always things that are always going to impact everybody, black, white, Latin, mixed, Asian, indigenous, whatever. Those are always the big ticket items. If we ever forget any one of those things as our kind of North Star, you know, that per, that party is going to lose. And, and, and that, and, and we're, and, and really regardless of the party, when, when our country forgets about those things, someone else is going to fill it, China's filling it, India's filling it, Japan, Korea, you know, they're filling that void, you know, and internationally globally. And, you know, we're going to sit over here, you know, arguing about, is it really critical race theory? That's not what that actually means. That's not what's really being taught. And like, absolutely, they're coming for your kids. It's like, guys, I get it. There's some element of that that you want to talk about, but like, it's, in my view, not that important. I have had people yell at me, you know, tell me, this is the number one thing. If it's not this, this is going to be the end of us. And if you don't get on, you're going to see, you're, are you listening yet? You're going to see blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and I'm like, okay, I'm going to see meantime, people are overdosing on opioids. Meantime, we, people can't get prescription drugs that are affordable. Meantime, people are, you know, four million people just went out of the workforce last month that people don't have jobs. Meantime, inflation's high on and on and on and on with big things that affect everyone of every race and really of every class except for the very top percent. So, I mean, I want to worry about that stuff, not what was Loudoun County parents talking about in their education system at the school board meeting. Like, fine, like, let them do it. Or, oh God, did you see what Antifa was doing in Oregon? I was like, sure. Oh, let, I don't live there. Like, that's them, that's for them to figure out. So, I think we, there's this, there's all of this stuff and people have kind of missed the plot. And I will, I will, this last thing I'll say right on this is I will, I will slightly beat up Biden on this. You know, him going with the whole unity thing was very nice for a campaign. And again, I mean, he's not a progressive. I mean, he's, you know, he's super old. That's fine. But he really hasn't done anything in terms of his rhetoric, in terms of any speeches, in terms of anything in trying to reach people. Look, I mean, I think his policies and the bills that he's been doing are impacting many of those people. But he is not selling it that way. So they don't know that it's happening. And that's, Democrats, always the biggest issue. But I think that that's, that's a problem. Because in terms of leadership, you need someone to say, Hey guys, let's stay focused on the real thing here. Right. Like, that's fine. We can have some of these debates and stuff. But let's stay focused. Right. And I think kind of, you know, this sideline, you know, subplot of doing some of this kind of wokie stuff is not helpful. I mean, I would be maybe okay with it if he was also doing some other stuff for some of the things that people on the right are upset about, but we don't get that. We get, you know, a lot of concessions giving to his base and throwing them a little red meat. And I don't know how helpful that is. And so, you know, I would rather someone, I mean, the best presidents are always centrist in my view. I mean, JFK was LBJ definitely was Nixon really was for a little bit, at least first term. Carter was, you know, HW Bush was Clinton was Obama was. So I mean, you know, that's usually how it works. There's a few that are maybe a little bit more trending for one way or the other, but, and that's what we need. And so, yeah. Yeah, no. Yeah. And, and yeah, you were, you were right. Like we were talking about how long we would do this. And, and we have to talk about the University of Austin. But first, I do want to touch on something real quick. But yeah, like, so the way I see it, you know, like going back, right, something I've been on a kick about, you know, in my writing lately, and I've just been thinking about it a lot is, here's where I'm at, like, you know, going back to the conversation about, you know, these figures were fanning the flames of polarization and all that kind of stuff. Like, here's, here's what I've been writing about a lot lately. I am so I'm tired of waiting for like policy and institutional changes, right? Like I I 1000% believe we need these changes. But today we could be taking actions on a personal level, right? Because you have the politicians, you have all these people, but think about the world that we live in in 2021, right? There are people on, on Twitter, and it's not just Twitter either, we're talking about Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, you know, whatever, who have hundreds of thousands, tens of thousands, millions of followers, these are the people, these are the people who are perpetuating the polarization, right? And I look at that, and I'm like, we need to start here. But the issue that I see is this, you know, and I will get into the whole like, economical debate about it, but I always see capitalism as the major problem, right? Because everything we have, the North Star for every single person in the United States, right? Like you're familiar, like, you know, in Asian countries, they're more collectivist, right? Here, a little bit more individualist, right? But everybody's more star is money, status, power, right? So how the hell, how the hell do we ever expect somebody like, you know, anybody from the woke or from the anti woke to ever stop fanning the flames of tribalism when everything incentivizes them to go for the attention, the money, the power, the status so they can have their nice house, their nice car, all these other things, right? And yes, we do need to change systems and institutions. We need policies, like we're talking like we need, we need healthcare, we need mental health care and all these other things. But I don't see anybody caring about this stuff until these people, for lack of better words, chill the fuck out, right? And I hate it. Like I wrote a piece yesterday about Batya and some of the promotion she's been getting because Batya is a fucking angel, right? She's great. She's lovely. She's bringing it so incredible. She's bringing attention to, you know, how media has shifted to this college elite level stuff, which then spiraled into this kind of woke media. And I see what I wrote about is I see the anti woke just as bad as the woke and completely missing the point of what Batya is talking about. And the point being is that the culture war bullshit is making us forget about all of the real world stuff like prescription drugs, suicide rates, loneliness, which leads to addiction, right? I don't know if you read deaths of despair yet, but it talks a lot about that and how people are miserable. But the anti woke sharing Batya's stuff are just as bad because they're distracting from the real problem. But then when I go down to the root layer of that, they're incentivized by it. They're incentivized by the popularity. So anyways, if you want to touch on that for a minute, like I have two quick responses to it. The first thing is, there's two things. The first thing is people need to not they people. I mean, really it's the responsibility of each person. You have to really have, you know, social media and media in general, I think is like the biggest exercise in self control. And we we are terrible at that. And I think people need to not give into it. Don't don't don't click on the like, don't view it. Yeah, don't give your hot take. Don't don't do it. You don't need to do it. Think three steps ahead. I'm going to say this. This is going to happen. This is going to be gone in two days. No one's going to care about it. Do I really need to say this and contribute? No. Let it go. Let it go. I mean, it is by choice that if you look at my Twitter feed, I don't have takes on most of the stuff that comes up and that is uh, volitional. I I I don't do it. It's not necessary. Yeah, no one's going to be thinking about it. If you were to ask someone what was going on three weeks ago, no one could tell you to tell you, but it was at the time everyone was so outraged until the next thing. We got to stop that. The way you stop it is don't give into it. Don't don't feed into it. The second thing is connect it. If you don't have other things going on in your life, then you're not going to have the space to do that or you will have the space to do that. So you have to have other things in your life that are in the real world that are productive, that you're doing something for yourself, your loved ones, your friends, your family. You're pushing yourself. You're trying to learn new things. You're trying to experience things with people and you'll see very quickly that that stuff doesn't matter. I mean, a couple of weekends ago I did a kind of a friends weekend thing. My wife and I, we went and some of our friends and I don't think I picked up my phone more than twice. It was great because it was just we were connecting with friends. It was a group of us and we were just catching up and talking and we didn't really talk about politics too much. We didn't really talk about like culture or stuff. It really was just everybody as people like what was going on because you know what happens when all that every time when everybody has all that stuff like there's people have hurts and they have pains and someone's you know aunt or mom or whatever is dying of something. Someone just got laid off. Someone is having a hard time in school finishing something. And when we crowd our brain with all that fucking bullshit that doesn't really matter, you miss the person and that person that's sending that tweet that's got a really good dunk. They have things and when they when they put their phone down, they have something they have a problem they have to attend to. They got something going on in their life and you don't know it. And look, there's plenty of bots online. That's fine. But for people that are real people there, you know, it's it's that. And so I think if we have if we have if we we have our fill our time with things that are productive, there's less and less desire to want to have the like response to everything that happens. And and I'll just say, you know, that's how I see it. Maybe not every sees it this way. I always have this fear that I don't have enough time here on earth, right? That's not some weird vague suicidal thing, guys. But it's it's a it's time is short, you know, life is short. And and and, you know, how do we really make the most of each moment each day? And if if you sit down, you think, how much time did I spend dunking on people having my hot takes on the trial going on right now and the Chappelle thing and Afghanistan pull out. And it's like, sure, I mean, granted, people can do what they want. But like, think about all the time that you've spent negatively spewing all of your bullshit from stream of conscious that you don't think about ever again, when you could be doing something else more productive, isn't that a better way? And it's really having the self control and the wherewithal to do that. And to also say, do I have other things in my life that are, you know, productively feeling my time and really, really fulfilling ways. And I think when I see people online that do that. That's usually where I think they don't have enough going on in their life. And they don't really have as much self control. Yeah. And and and they like the dopamine hit and all that good stuff. And look, I mean, we all do that. Everyone's susceptible to that. But I mean, I know about those good dopamine. Yeah, it's we all we're also susceptible to it myself included. But we have to try. Yeah, no, and I think that's, you know, that's something that I try to do with my writing and why I call I call everybody out left, right, whatever I do it, I write about it because I, you know, I think about it like, yes, I think that the people and, you know, when we get into this University of Austin discussion, the people at the top, they're fueling this stuff, right? But the we're incentivizing them where we're feeding that monster, right? Every single like every single retreat. They're not doing that stuff. If they're not going to get look, look, you know this, right? You've had a YouTube channel, you have the podcast, I have a podcast. I know what's going to I know which episodes are going to get me the most downloads. I can tell you right now which episodes I don't have to look at it. I know which ones have the most downloads. I know it. The ones on race, the ones on gender. That's it. I know that I know I don't have to look at it. You know, the ones that have the really good title and the, you know, kind of tagline and, you know, whatever. I mean, I get it. I understand it, but like we, we have to fight against that and say, no, this is important. You know what? I want to, I want to look at that, that, you know, pure research article or the Brookings Institute put out this report about, you know, whatever it is, you know, opioid addiction or, you know, a wildlife refuge that, you know, whatever, whatever, like whatever you're interested in, whatever you're passionate about. That's what needs attention. And I think that if you just do that and you try and promote that, you know, people will eventually catch on and, and, and you can get people that are really engaged with that stuff and, you know, but it's hard though. It is, it is hard. Yeah. Like that, like part of my strategy, I do Twitter a little bit differently, but I try to, you know, aside from my, you know, tapes and opinions on things and my content that I, I try to like be like, Hey, look at this new Lego I got. Or Hey, I'm watching this with my son, you know, a real person in there. Yeah. Yeah. So that, that's kind of my strategy for anybody who's listening. Like that's what I try to do. Like, you know, you know, just societal issues. They're, they're something I care about immensely, but I'm also a real person just like you and me. And I wish more, more people would do that. But, but you know, this does transition well into the University of Austin thing because I'll give you my take on it. And I would love your, your opinion because I'm a college dropout. So you're obviously way more academic than me. But anyways, so University of Austin, people's, you know, should hopefully know about it. But if not, Barry Weiss made this big announcement. And I feel like I've been critical of Barry Weiss because I feel like she's leaned really into, you know, a certain niche, right, of free speech and all these other things. And I think, I think she's, you know, she's more dynamic than that. But anyways, she brings on a lot of these guests, Peter Bogosian, you know, Kathleen Stock, Julie Bindell, people who talk about the main cultural war issues, race, gender and all that stuff, right? Okay, cool. So I do see, I do believe, you know, we've seen it, you know, like many others, I read The Coddling of the American Mind that there are some issues on college campuses where people feel that they can't say or teach and all these other things. I've talked to a lot of professors and stuff like that. And I'm always like, how big of an issue is it that I still don't know for certain? But anyways, they started the University of Austin to be this kind of place of free thought, free speech and all these other things. And me, so me, where I land, you know, because of all the people who have joined on like all the people I listed, like Peter Bogosian and Steven Pinker, I'll mention that in a second, but all these people, right, they're the outcasts, right? They're the ones from like the intellectual dark web and the people who they talk about those controversial things that they brought them on board. Here's why I'm on the fence, right? I'm anybody's biggest cheerleader if they want to start a project, if they do, I'm like, fuck, yeah, you go like we were just talking about, like, everybody needs things outside of the internet. So if you want to go through the act of starting a university or whatever, fucking cool, that sounds like a fun little project for you to do, which, you know, you believe is very important, right? But you know, the reason I'm on the fence about it, because even if it's somewhat needed, right, even if they believe it's somewhat needed, my concern would be that they would be just as bad as what they're fighting against, right? Like, here, like, I'm always trying to think of both sides, right, and each other's worst enemies, right? So when I think of the University of Austin, the people they've gotten on board and if they're really about free speech and sharing ideas and everything like that, the true test of that would be is that you need to sign on some of the wokest fucking professors that I could even imagine, right? Like, I want, I want a professor there who has a course on how gender isn't real, how racism, you know what I mean? So, so people do have that full spectrum, because unless you're doing that, no, no, you're not, you're not for free speech and sharing ideas and all that. So for me, I'm like, you know, is it, is it just an attention grab, because that's what I get concerned about, right? And recently, I think it was just yesterday, Steven Pinker and somebody else, they jumped ship, they said it's because they have other, you know, projects, Steven Pinker has his new book, he has a new show coming out. Personally, my opinion on it, which I have no evidence for is, I think that's bullshit, you know, like, he's known, like, he's, he's known about his book for how long he's known about his upcoming show. Like, I'm pretty sure I've never met Steven Pinker, but I'm pretty sure he has like a calendar and organizes his time pretty well. So it's not like, oops, I have these other commitments to just pop them. So I'm a little skeptical of that. But anyways, that's kind of where I stand on the University of Austin. I don't like, I don't see it being this huge make or break thing. It's one of those like small topics, but I would love to know your thoughts on it. Yeah. So I was, I was trying to, to pull up the, the actual like a mission statement. Yeah, the actual thing that they had that they kind of their mission statement. Okay, here it is. I mean, there you can, people can look this up, but it's I won't read all of it. But I think one of it was the big thing is building a university dedicated to the fearless pursuit of truth. And then they have all these things about their principles. So universities devoted to the unfettered pursuit of truth at a cornerstone of a free and flourishing democratic society for universities to serve their purpose, they must be fully committed to freedom of inquiry, freedom of conscience and civil discourse in order to maintain these principles. University of Austin will be fiercely independent, financially, intellectually, and politically. That's kind of like their principles, mission statement. So look, I mean, you know, if you read any of these institutions, they all have some kind of boilerplate language like that. I mean, that's not anything out of the ordinary. So I haven't, so this is kind of going to my example. So I saw this happen last week, I guess it was, I saw Barry's post. And I said, Oh, it's interesting. And so I saw kind of the all the list of names, the, the, the Avengers, if you will, of the anti woke that were the all the, all the big guys and girls that were part of it. And I like some of those folks. I didn't say anything on it, because I just kind of wanted to wait and see. And I saw all the expected, I mean, this stuff is really, really predictable at this point. But, you know, there was the pile on, you know, everyone was like, you know, just trashing them. And I didn't say anything publicly. I didn't think I needed to. I was like, Oh, okay, cool, whatever. I kept seeing some things in the past couple of days. And then I kind of was started formulating my own opinion about it based on what was there. And, and then yeah, there's at least three people that have pulled from the board, which is G Zimmer and Pinker have pulled away from the board of the university for various reasons. I think Zimmer was a little bit more pointed. I think he said that he had ideological differences and wasn't completely on board with the direction they were going. Yeah, Pinker said that he had other engagements. So and and I'm not sure about the other guy, but so, you know, I mean, it's not a good start for them for sure. I mean, you have three people within a week pull out, you know, kind of some big names. So I'll give my charitable view on this first. So look, the thing I disliked the most is people that kind of bitch and moan about like, you know, just railing on, you know, oh my god, there's all these problems with, you know, education. There's all these problems with our institutions. Ah, you know, there's all these problems, all these problems, all these problems. Yep, for sure. And then people don't do anything about it. They just kind of like, just kind of like a broken record. These go over and over and over and over and over. And, you know, I've done some of that too. So I really applaud their attempt at trying to do something, right? It is extremely hard to start a university from scratch. You know, it's not an online university. I mean, it's like a legit like buildings and the whole thing. So, you know, and they got, you know, they got some big names. I think they, I mean, before some of the folks pulled out from the board, you know, they had some people that were in kind of the administration side of things, right? This wasn't just a couple of, you know, sub-stack reporters, right? And there's a lot of those. But there's, you know, they got people from the president, I think was at St. John's College, which is a great liberal arts school. And they had, they did have the guy at from University of Chicago, etc. So I think that that's good, you know, you need some, some good people that, you know, know how to run administrations. You need some people that are at the top and then middle management of how they do it. You know, you want some people that are good on the board, and then you want some really, you know, good names that are going to teach and, you know, professors or instructors, whatever they're going to call them. So, you know, I really applaud that they're trying to do something, right? They're all complaining about education in the United States. And that's good. That's good. You know, they're trying to do it, you know, instead of just like railing against it. So I really do applaud that I do. It's not how I would do it. My thing here is I'm fine with people wanting to start new institutions. That's fine. This really feels as a reaction to what's going on in our universities, right? This doesn't feel like it's its own thing. Like, hey, we have a, we have a, we have a group of people that we want to get together and we want to do this kind of educational institution. Full stop. Yeah. It is very implicit with, or even explicit, here is the problem in universities today. It's being run over by anti-woke, or excuse me, by woke, blah, blah, blah, blah. And, you know, very liberal bias. We have a free speech crisis, blah, blah, blah, blah. I'm not disagreeing with any of those pieces. We do have problems in our universities. We do have problems with free speech. We do have problems with quality education in classrooms. That's one of the biggest things there. Those are all huge problems in private, public, state, run universities, you know, community colleges, online. It just, it is a big problem. Okay. But I guess the thing about it that really bothers me is that it feels reactionary. Right? Okay. So we're going to do the opposite of this. Right? So the second thing is the point that you brought up. Okay. What was it? You know, free speech and inquiry, and what was the pursuit of truth and conscience and civil discourse, fiercely independent, intellectually and politically? Great. Okay. I fully expect you to get some folks that are teaching critical race theory, gender studies, you know, all that stuff. I fully expect that. And what I saw was a lot of people that are liberals turned, you know, kind of center right folks. And that's fine. That's fine. Um, but I saw a lot of things that were kind of reactionary and it didn't seem balanced. I mean, you know, and, and, and that's the thing, right? This is the thing. This is the problem with parties. You know, people will say half to three fourths of those people that were announced will say, I'm a liberal. And look, I think in theory, they probably are. Um, but no liberal or no one on the left would consider them part of their group anymore. Absolutely not. Absolutely not. So then it becomes this whole like weird argument about like, well, I'm more liberal than you are, blah, blah, blah kind of thing. And that's a weird thing to argue about. Um, I know what real liberalism is, you know, and it's just like, okay, what are we doing here? So yeah, I worry about the whole like diversity of like thought really, right? Is this going to be just how to fight the woke kind of shit? Is this going to be, you know, here's, we're just going to read John Stuart Mill, you know, over and over and over on free speech and, you know, whatever. Um, you know, or, or is it really going to be now? It might be. It might be. I could be wrong. It might be. Yeah. And so, um, I think that was my biggest thing. And, and again, I don't, I don't want a university of anti-woke, right? If you're going to do something right. So, so then my third point is, and now maybe some people have tried to do this. Now I could be wrong on this. So I'm not inside this stuff. I don't know. But another criticism is this feels ideological. This feels exactly the opposite of what you're going against. And it might have really good intentions and I can really see that. Like, I mean, I just, before I said any of my criticisms, I just said I really appreciate the intention, the motive for doing it, trying to be active about it. But it feels pretty ideological in some ways. And, um, what's the end point? So you're going to have one university. Now, granted, I mean, I'm not trying to be too harsh. I mean, they got to get started or whatever, but you're going to have one, one university in Austin. Okay. And you're going to attract a lot of, a lot of people are going to be into it. Okay. There's going to be a lot of certain types of people that are going to be into it. But what about all the other institutions? So we just, we just don't, we don't do anything with them. We just like, they're a lost cause. That's it. You know, we don't, we don't do any reform. And this is the thing. This is the thing. This is the thing that really gets, gets me going is if you really like the ideas and the principles of many of our institutions, right? Our country was founded, um, on many certain principles. Our country's founding and our founders are flawed human beings and they had a flawed system. They did not figure it all out. Fine. That's fine. But there are many good things about this country. There are many things about what it is to, to be proud to be in this country. Um, and many of our institutions are, are fantastic. They're imperfect. They need, um, continuous. They're, they're living, right? They need to always be updated and, and reformed. But we don't get so much of the great stuff we did. Um, we did a lot of horrible things too for sure, but we did a lot of really awesome things in the 20th century, you know, and, and so much innovation, so much creation, so many awesome people, you know, why? Because, because of, for a certain period, there's, you know, there's a really strong ideological bent. So we're just going to say, fuck it. We just give up on 250 years or whatever it is of institutions like, you know, fuck Harvard because, you know, it's a little woke right now. We're going to do a new university. I mean, again, that's fine. If you want to do that, you can do a new university, but, but these are people that are just like fed up. I'm tired of it. And there's no, I guess for me, again, I'm not in this, right? So, you know, people, it was really easy for you to say, right? You're not in these places. You don't know. That's fair. That's fair. But shouldn't we try to, I, this is the conversation I had with, with Batya. Like, I don't think having the future of journalism be on substack. There's nothing wrong with substack. That's fine. That's not what a future journalism is. We need institutions and, and both sides of these, of these folks make the same arguments. It's, it's the right. Yeah. That's saying we don't need department of energy. We don't need department of education. We don't need the, the federal reserve. We don't need any of that. We don't need institutions. We don't need government. Tell us what to do. But you have other people on the left or formerly on the left saying, well, fuck it, we're not going to use any of the institutions either. And it's just like, it's this weird thing where it's like this, like, it's this like, you know, um, dissociating from like the people in the institution. It's like, no, it's, it's, it's slow. It's hard, but it's where you're active in trying to change institutions. You know, just as a reminder, right? You can say all the things you want and how flawed he was X, Y and Z. Do you know how we passed the Voting Rights Act, the Fair Housing Act, the Civil Rights Act, Medicaid, Medicare, the new deal. Were these the Nixon things? These are all LBJ things. We did that through what? The House, the Senate, the, the, the, the executive branch. We did it through activism. We needed activism, but it was all of those things. It wasn't, fuck it. We're just not going to do it anymore. Uh, we're just going to find another alternative to doing this. Yeah. Right. We've done that with everything. How did we get idea? Right? The Disabilities Act. How did we get gay marriage to be legal in this country? We used institutions. They are flawed. They need to be fixed for sure, but you don't give up on it. Right. You don't just go and start a new thing because, uh, well, we're tired of trying. We're tired. That's not how you, that's, that's how you, you go to ruin because if you don't have institutions to kind of coalesce things together, everyone's going to be doing their own thing. Yeah. Which, which again, even though I'm center left, you know, I will always say, I believe and I, and I back it up with how I vote and I back it up with what policies I really like. I believe in a strong centralized federal government, just like Hamilton Washington, one unit and Adams is that's how, that's how I think we need to have things and everything outside of that. We can have different states or we can have all these things, but we need that. And I think because that's what you can't do those things to scale. How are you going to educate people if you don't have that? We have 330 million people in this country. It's a huge country. You can't have 50 people doing 50 state doing 50 things. You need something that's centralized. That's why the whole argument with Scandinavia never works for me. It's like, yeah, sure. There are 5 million people in Denmark or whatever it is. Like, okay, and they're all homogenized like that. Nothing wrong with that, but it's easier to scale. So how, I don't understand. I don't understand what's the end game here. You're going to have a one-off university that's going to attract certain types of folks. I would be floored if they taught something balanced. I already can hear the counter. Well, we can't get anybody that wants to teach that. So I guess we won't. We're just going to teach. I can already hear the counter. It's the same thing with people on the other side. We don't need any of these institutions. We don't need any of this stuff. I'm not opposed to people starting new things. I'm not opposed to trying new stuff or creating new institutions. That's fine, but I don't want it to be something that's done in reaction to something. Do it in a way where you've really thought about this. Would you have done this in 95 where there was none of this going on? No, probably not. Would you have done this in 2010? Probably not. Why are you doing it right now? Because you're tired. You're tired of having to deal with this. You don't want to do all this stuff. So you're using your name. You may be using money. Maybe you're using clout. Maybe you're using some experience to say, we're going to do this. Look, it might be good. It might be good. I do applaud them for trying to do something, but I'm less sanguine about some of the ways in which their success may be. So again, people can listen to this and be like, whatever. They can have their opinions about it, but I sat down. I thought about it, and I said, I've looked at it this way. I think there's some pros and cons to it, but probably on average, I think the intention's right, but I think I'm probably 70% like, eh, not really a fan. Yeah. And that's a great place to wrap this thing up, because with this specific thing, I think with your thoughts and my thoughts, only time will tell. I'm hoping. Of course. Yeah. I could be totally wrong. I could be totally wrong. Yeah. I'm hoping. Hey, I love being wrong about that stuff, and it's like, you go. So maybe we'll do a follow-up after they like announced a curriculum, more of their staff and everything, and maybe they have bigger ideas to spread this thing. I don't know. But yeah, man, congratulations. This is officially my longest episode, and I can honestly go forever, but I need to eat. So for everybody who just fell in love with the man who is Xavier, where, where could people find you and keep up to date with all your stuff? And do you have anything in the pipeline that we should keep an eye on for? Or is it just the podcast that you're sticking with? For now, it's just the podcast. I have a bunch of unfinished pieces that I'm writing, and I can never, you know, I'm so impatient with myself, and I can never just take the time to write and edit, but I have a few things I've been working on and off, but nothing really serious that I'm going to put out soon. But hopefully, hopefully this coming year, I'll be able to do a little bit more writing. Yes, the best way to find me is, I mean, I'm on Twitter. I'm pretty easy to find. But also, the best place is the podcast. I am pretty regular there. So the podcast is Converging Dialogs. I do at least an episode a week. For now, it's been two. It's going to go back down to one in the coming year. But for now, it's two. Lots of wonderful, awesome people. And I greatly enjoy doing that. So I hope everyone subscribes and listens. And yeah, it's on all platforms. You can Google it. You'll find it. If you've seen me on Twitter, you'll find it. You'll see all the links and everything like that. So that's probably the best place to find me. Yeah, well, I'm going to do one, but I'm going to link all that stuff down in the description. So they don't got to Google a damn thing. That's great. This is great. And I think we'll definitely do this again. I'm going to get some more topics because we could talk all day. But yeah, man, thanks for coming on. You're easy. No, it's great. It's a great conversation. You're very, very easy to chat with and just nice flow. And yeah, I greatly enjoyed it. It's always nice being on the other side of the microphone. So I have no post editing to do. So it's wonderful. Oh my God.