Factually! with Adam Conover - How Contrapoints Reinvented Philosophy for YouTube with Natalie Wynn

Episode Date: June 26, 2024

Since 2016, Natalie Wynn has been making wildly popular video essays on YouTube under the name ContraPoints. Her videos, which cover everything from politics, to gender, to society's obsession with the apocalypse, gracefully distill academia-level research into insightful and highly digestible packages. Despite winning a Peabody award and holding a master’s degree in philosophy, Natalie proudly calls herself a YouTuber. Is this a new form of media? One that eschews the conventional structure of academia to bring university level discourse to anyone with an internet connection. This week, Adam chats with Natalie Wynn about gender, conspiracies, and the evolving role of academia in the digital age.SUPPORT THE SHOW ON PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/adamconoverSEE ADAM ON TOUR: https://www.adamconover.net/tourdates/SUBSCRIBE to and RATE Factually! on:» Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/factually-with-adam-conover/id1463460577» Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0fK8WJw4ffMc2NWydBlDyJAbout Headgum: Headgum is an LA & NY-based podcast network creating premium podcasts with the funniest, most engaging voices in comedy to achieve one goal: Making our audience and ourselves laugh. Listen to our shows at https://www.headgum.com.» SUBSCRIBE to Headgum: https://www.youtube.com/c/HeadGum?sub_confirmation=1» FOLLOW us on Twitter: http://twitter.com/headgum» FOLLOW us on Instagram: https://instagram.com/headgum/» FOLLOW us on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@headgum» Advertise on Factually! via Gumball.fmSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This is a HeadGum Podcast. Hello and welcome to Factually. I'm Adam Conover. I don't know anything Hello and welcome to Factually. I'm Adam Conover. Thank you so much for joining me on the show again. I am so excited for today's episode. We have on the show today a guest I have wanted to have on the show for years and frankly one of the people I most admire working on the internet

or really in all of media today. I first saw a video from the YouTube channel, ContraPoints, five years ago in my trailer while I was working on one of the last seasons of Adam Ruins Everything. And this video blew me the fuck away. It was brilliant, it was fiendishly funny, it was stylish, and it was unlike anything

I had ever seen on the platform before. In just 30 minutes, Natalie Wynn, the host of ContraPoints, explained the right-wing psychologist and self-help guru, Jordan Peterson, better than any piece of media I had ever come across. And from then on, every single one of her videos became a must watch for me. What is so impressive about Natalie's work

is that she doesn't just repackage other people's thoughts like so many people do on YouTube. No, she delivers original philosophical insight and analysis that is genuinely new. But rather than deliver that in a lecture room or a book, she puts them into video essays on YouTube that are watched massively. Her work has won her nearly 1.8 million YouTube followers

and she has also won a Peabody Award. Her work is genuinely a new form of media, serious philosophical work watched by millions on the biggest platform imaginable. And I could not be more excited to have her on the show today. But before we get into it, I just want to remind you

that if you want to support this show and all of the fascinating conversations we bring you every single week, you can do so on Patreon. Head to patreon.com slash Adam Conover. Five bucks a month gets you every episode of the show ad free. For 15 bucks a month, I will read your name in the credits. We got a lot of other great community perks as well.

And if you like stand-up comedy, I just want to remind you, you can come see me on the road. Head to adamconover.net for tickets and tour dates. And now let's get to my interview with the writer, thinker, philosopher, and YouTuber Natalie Nguyen, also known as ContraPoints. AdamConover.net for tickets and tour dates. And now let's get to my interview with the writer, thinker, philosopher and YouTuber, Natalie Nguyen, also known as ContraPoints. Natalie, thank you so much for being on the show.

I'm thrilled to have you. Thank you so much. I am very happy to be here. I've wanted to have you on the show for years. You're probably one of my favorite, what do I call you? Internet public intellectuals? Like, what do you call yourself? I call you? Internet public intellectuals? Like, what do you call yourself?

I guess I worry that public intellectuals sets me up for failure, but I'm not gonna call myself a YouTuber because, you know, like why get more complicated than it needs to be? But yeah, I make, you know, video essays on YouTube. I've been doing that since 2016 or so, and cover a lot of topics from politics to sexuality to psychology, I guess, I'll even cover.

So it's pretty broad, I guess, in terms of what I'll go into. But yeah, the channel's called ContraPoints. And I feel like we have something in common in that I've said many times on this show, I intended to go to grad school for philosophy. I never did. And it's been a thorn in my side ever since.

I have a shameful bachelor's. You went for a number of years and left and now both here we are on YouTube, you know, trying to maybe use some of these ideas in the public sphere, but you do it on such an incredibly deep level, your new video, which has the title, Twilight, that's the entire title.

Yeah, yeah. But in the video, you cover everything from the nature of desire to sadomasochism to radical feminism, and you end with this incredible insight about the nature of the masculine and feminine and then containing each other. And watching it, I'm like having, you know, every single sentence in the video

gives me a little mind explosion, you know, of like a new insider thought that I'm processing with everything else. They're incredibly dense. It's just like such an amazing work to go all the way from Twilight to that big concept. How do you even begin to put together a video like that?

What's the first germ of it? Well, I think with this video, I knew I wanted to make a video about sexuality, but to do that on YouTube, I was in search of a PG-13 framing device, and so Twilight kind of became, I was like, okay, if I want to talk about sexuality, but I want to do it on YouTube,

you know, the community guidelines will just love if this video is about Twilight instead of being about something more explicit. So I've, and also, you know, I've, I've been alive long enough to have sat through at this point in 20 years of discourse about the Twilight series. So it's something that I'm very familiar with.

A lot of the complicated conversations people have about sexuality have been sort of magnetized to this topic in particular. So, you know, a lot of the things that people worry about with Twilight, the kind of power dynamics and the sort of, I guess, people were about misogyny and all this, I guess, stuff I wanted to go into in the video. And so for me, Twilight was just like, I guess, I got with stuff I wanted to go into in the video.

And so for me, Twilight was just like, I just felt this was like the right case study that I could attach all these wider issues to. That's amazing. And one of the things that's amazing about this video is it has almost 4 million views on YouTube. And some of your previous works, say you did a video about Jordan Peterson, right?

That's a wonderful, I think philosophical, that's the first thing I ever saw of yours. And it was really influenced the way that I think about that guy and that entire movement in pseudo intellectual circles. But that's a hot topic for the algorithm, right? Jordan Peterson does well. Twilight, if the words Jordan Peterson

are in the title of the video, it'll do well. This video is about a couple decade old romance series and the topic ranges so widely from the nature of romance fiction all the way to the nature of desire and sexuality itself. And people are watching it in such huge numbers. What do you attribute that to? Because again, it's a really dense,

truly philosophical work. Well, I think people are curious about these topics and I feel like a lot of times the discourse about them is of a pretty low quality. So I feel like this is another thing that attracted me to this topic is that I felt like, I feel like that there's stuff that's not being said about this that I can say.

So, you know, I try to look for something like that when I'm deciding on a video topic. If it's something that I feel like a lot of people are covering really, really well, then I'll like, well, I don't know, I try to look for something like that when I'm deciding on a video topic. If it's something that I feel like a lot of people are covering really, really well, then I'll like, well, I don't know if I can add anything to this. But with this, I felt like I had something to add. Um, and... Yeah, I mean, I guess one reason I decided to make this video

is as a LGBT person, I feel like, well, I'm a trans woman. I'm not, I'm not LGB and T, but you know what I mean. Um, I feel like, well, I'm a trans woman. I'm not LGB and T, but you know what I mean. I feel like people like me, we're very frequently asked these days to like provide, like to explain ourselves, like explain your sexuality. Why are people gay? Why are people trans? Why are people... And like, I've spent some time on YouTube

trying to do exactly that. But I feel like what I came to realize is like, we're trying to understand, people are trying to understand why people are gay or why people are trans. And no one even really understands heterosexuality very well yet. So it's like, why are we trying to do calculus before we figure out arithmetic? So in a way, I think the toilet, which I want to do a video about heterosexuality, right? It's like, before we start talking, before we get really complicated with this and start talking about the sexuality of, you know, trans people, like, why don't we figure out

how like this, you know, a Mormon housewife's sexuality works, in the case of Stephanie Meyer, right? Because I feel like we haven't even kind of cracked that code. So I guess I felt this was like maybe a better introductory place for people to start thinking about sexuality than for like demanding that marginalized people explain themselves to people who kind of don't even have the tools needed to understand it in the first place.

That's so funny. Well, it's such a funny flip of the request too. Hey queer person, explain yourselves to us. Well, no, how about me, a queer person, ask what the hell is up with you people? Yeah, explain it. What is up with your media? Explain heterosexuality. It's really weird.

Yeah. Because heterosexuality, I mean, sometimes, you know, people might frame heterosexuality as like boring or vanilla or whatever. I mean, heterosexuality is actually extremely complicated. Right? And you notice this like this, and it's also something that I think most queer people,

we all kind of grew up being taught how to do heterosexuality in a way, right? So it's kind of the default that all of us are sort of used to and most, I think a lot of gay people, even like we kind of, we kind of form our sexuality in response to heterosexuality in a sense, like, as this all gets pretty controversial with the in-community stuff that we probably don't want to get into here. But, you know, with terms like top and bottom and or butch and femme, like these terms are not the same as heterosexuality. These dynamics are not literally heterosexuality, but they obviously have some kind of resemblance to the kind of tropes that we sort of expect of a, you know, a kind of dominant active man

and sort of submissive, maybe passive woman. That's kind of the stereotype of heterosexuality. It certainly comes up a lot in romance fiction, including Twilight. So I felt like that was kind of an interesting place to start with discussing sexuality as just like, well, let's look at what's considered to be, let's look at what's considered to be normal

and see how actually complicated and strange the normal thing is. Well, I found that fascinating because I am heterosexual or at least mostly heterosexual. We're all a work in progress, but you know, heterosexuality also, all of those norms and tropes were like imposed upon me. And sometimes, you know, I found myself,

especially in the part of life I am now going like, wait, what are those things? What, you know, are those part of me or were those things that were imposed, right? And so hearing you unpack desire, the nature of desire, submission, dominance, masculinity, femininity is incredibly fascinating. You have this concept that you keep going back to DHSM

in the video over and over again. Can you tell us a little bit about what you mean by that? And for folks who haven't seen the video, go watch it. But, you know, I'd love to give them a little bit of taste of what the themes are here. Sure, yeah. DHSM is an acronym that I made up for default heterosexual sadomasochism.

I was thinking of like BDSM, and then I'll just make a, you know, corresponding acronym that describes what I see as the kind of assumed sadomasochism of normative heterosexuality. So, you know, we're all familiar with, with like heterosexual dating rituals, basically, where it's kind of expected that a man is going to take initiative and that a man is going to be more dominant,

is going to kind of, you know, lead in's kind of expected that a man is going to take initiative and that a man is going to be more dominant, is going to kind of, you know, lead in the dance of dating, right, essentially, and also of sex. And I think that there's a whole complicated series of power dynamics baked into these assumptions, where it's assumed that sort of, you know, you could take things like vulgarism, exhibitionism. It's assumed that men like to look and women like to be looked at. It's assumed that, you know, men pursue and women are pursued, all kinds of dynamics like that. You know, I in the video, I have a whole list of this, these these binaries that basically are included. But I guess one of the questions is like, well, why is this? Is it is this? Is this the project basically of patriarchal conditioning

or is there something inherent to human sexuality itself that involves these binaries? And so all of that stuff that I try to explore. And explore through the lens of Twilight where all of these things are present, which is part of the controversy about Twilight, right? That it's putatively for children or at least for young adults.

And yet it has these themes of dominance, submission, sadism, masochism, which feel like really inherently sexual and confusing to a lot of people, especially when it's like in the form of very popular fiction. And watching it, I literally just watched Twilight last night

unrelatedly, it was not quite research, but it certainly served well as it. And yeah, I mean, that stuff is in the movie and in a very like stark, almost blunt way. Yeah, I think it's interesting how, because heterosexuality is considered so socially normal, like you can get away with, like, a shocking amount of, like, weird sex stuff in, like, young adult media

as long as you keep it hetero, right? And Twilight definitely, like, pushes that as far as it can. Um, obviously, like, there was a, you know, a decade ago, a controversy erupted around the Twilight fan fiction, Fifty Shades of Grey, which is explicitly a kind of sadomasochistic romance novel, where, I mean, what E.L. James, author of Fifty Shades, did basically is just pick up on all those themes that are already present in Twilight and kind of make explicit what was implicit in

Twilight. So in Twilight, the plot is about a male vampire, Edward, who falls in love with a human girl, Bella. And obviously part of what, part of the kind of sex appeal of vampires does have to do with this hierarchical dominance, right? The vampire is usually old, is usually there's undertones of violence with the fangs and blood drinking. Rich lives in a big castle, right?

Wearing cloaks everywhere wealthy man. Yeah, it's inherently associated with like, and there's a few working class vampires lost boys, but usually it's, we're talking about an aristocrat, right? Yeah. Someone who's sort of overwhelmingly powerful. And that's seems to be intertwined with why people find something sort of sexually enticing about vampires.

It is the danger and the power itself. So the question is like, you know, isn't it kind of disturbing, right, that like we have, you know, millions of teenage readers who seem to be so attracted to this and like what kind of messages is sending? Well, before we can even answer that, you have to unpack why this kind of thing

is appealing to so many people in the first place. And why do you think it's appealing to so many people in the first place? And why do you think it's appealing to so many people in the first place? I think for a bunch of different reasons. I definitely do, I'm certainly not dismissive of the feminist arguments about this, which are that if you are a woman or a girl

and you're raised in this society where you're kind of conditioned almost to like romanticize a certain type of dynamic between men and women. That sort of is the result of a long history of men having social power over women. So even in historical romance novels like Pride and Prejudice, right?

In Pride and Prejudice, you have Darcy, this like extremely wealthy man who's, at first he's kind of an asshole. And then Elizabeth who needs, you know, because of the situation of her family, she needs the money, but she also wants a marriage of love. And so in Pride and Prejudice, you know, the appeal of this power dynamic seems to derive in part

from like the economics of the situation, where it's like as a woman in the early 19th century, you kind of have, your economic fate is intertwined with who you marry. So it's not just, it's not, it's hard to look at something like that and be like, you kind of have your economic fate is intertwined with who you marry. So it's not just it's not it's hard to look at something like that and be like, oh, this is just nature, right? We you know, women are just naturally attracted to powerful men. It's like, well, women have always been put in these situations

where they kind of need men to provide for them. So, yeah, under those conditions, obviously, most women are going to do the rationally self interested thing of pursuing a man who is the only like plausible route that they have to economic stability and to to any kind of power, right. But I also think that, you know, the kind of SM sadomasochistic dynamic has something to it that kind of transcends just the economic appeal, which is, I think that there's something about sexuality,

about desire in general, that kind of likes sort of barriers and overcoming, you know, overcoming barriers. So I think one thing that I think about a lot with Twilight is, you know, I think about a lot with Twilight is, when you have this like hunter and prey, predator prey dynamic, I think that poetry has often described love as like a hunt, right? And there's, it's a motif that goes like way back into the ancient world.

You can think of myths like Hades and Persephone, where you have, I think that desire often feels like pursuit, right? And so I think that the metaphor goes kind of deeper than just economic imbalance. I do think that the reason why it's so disproportionately seems to be, when people create romantic fantasies, the reason why it's usually a man pursuing a woman,

I think that is largely social and economic, but I think that someone pursuing someone, that I think goes deeper. Right. Yeah. Right, there's a deeper like pattern in human sexuality or psychology or behavior that needs some kind of disparity, some kind of block in the way. I mean, you talk in the video about how desire,

you can specifically only desire something that you do not have, that once you acquire it, the desire dissipates to some degree, that that's the nature of it. And so you need those impediments. You also say that, I just wrote down this quote from the video, equality like wisdom is not exciting. That if Twilight had been a, there's a power dynamic,

oh no, we don't want power dynamics in our real relationships, one might say. But a perfectly equal relationship between Edward and Bella would not be necessarily worth writing a book about, nor might it be sexy to encounter in real life. Like that sort of perfect, what do you, could you expand on that?

Well, I think that you could certainly make an egalitarian relationship exciting in fiction, but the way that you do that would be to put other kinds of barriers in the way. So, I mean, I guess you look at something like Romeo and Juliet as an obvious example, where Romeo and Juliet are, I mean, I guess you look at something like Romeo and Juliet as an obvious example, where Romeo and Juliet are, I guess, more or less socially equal,

although, you know, as like medieval man and woman, not really. But still, like, there's not quite the class element that there is in, say, Pride and Prejudice or in Twilight. But as a result of that, other barriers have to be involved, right? Their families are feuding, and that adds this dangerous, almost like, in this case, deadly element to be involved, right? Their families are feuding, and that adds this dangerous, almost like, in this case, deadly element to their romance, right, is that they are kind of risking everything for each other.

There's different ways, I think, for an artist to accomplish that, but people do seem to find the danger of it exciting, right? And you can create that through the kind of vampire hierarchy, whereas one person is sort of overwhelmingly dangerous to the other person. Or you can create it through social circumstances

where, for whatever reason, this romance is forbidden. But speaking more generally about equality, yeah, I do think that even outside of fantasy, if you look at role play and the kinds of scenarios that if you look at the fan fiction people, right, or erotica, it's very common to have situations of power imbalance. So I think that, I don't think it's impossible

to make equality sexy, but I think that for a lot of people, a kind of fantasy scenario gets more exciting with the addition of some kind of power play. Right, and the nature of fantasy and sexual fantasy is something that you go into a great deal of detail about. You have a lot of insight into that fantasy is some way of like licensing ourselves to enjoy that thing while, can you complete my thought?

Yeah, I think that human sexuality needs fantasy to function. Like I think that we all, well, I don't wanna over generalize, but I think that for most people, they don't experience, I don't know, sexuality as this kind of purely animalistic thing, right? It's usually sustained by some kind of fantasy content,

you know, whether that's... I mean, I think the best way to encounter a lot of this is just to read a lot of, like, erotic fan fiction, for example, or to, like, I don't know, I mean, you can also, like, you know, if you have the stomach for it, you can look at pornography and, you know, I mean, it's the variety of situations that people can cause and there's in their fantasies, I feel like speaks to something

in human sexuality that kind of needs something more than just sex, right? Sexuality is more than just sex. Even the bluntest, you know, Pornhub video that's just a video of two people going at it, at least the title will be like, you know, stepmother, blah, blah, blah. There's a scenario like in the title of the video,

at least to just like give you a frame of who these people are to each other, what they might have in common. And, you know, that might draw one person to the video more than another, depending on what you're into. And there has to be a reason for that, right? Like if I don't, I think if people,

they wouldn't be so many stepbrothers in pornography if it wasn't appealing to people reason for that, right? Like, if, I think if people... They wouldn't be so many stepbrothers in pornography if it wasn't appealing to people for some reason, right? That is generating clicks. Why is that? Well, I mean, we can analyze why. I don't think it's because... I don't think it is because most people have, like, some kind of secret, unconscious longing for incest. I don't think that's why. I think the taboo is being used

in this case, right? Incest is a taboo. It's being used, although it's kind of hedged with the like step thing, right? You know, we don't want to go too far. But like this element of like taboo is another factor that kind of increases the excitement by putting an additional barrier, right? Social norms are being shattered and desires in some way like pushing through the norm. And that element of like overcoming a barrier always seems to be what's exciting. And I think that goes back to like

this idea that desire is lack or that you want what you don't have or want what you're not supposed to be able to have. You know, in a way it's like the harder you have to the more obstacles you have to overcome to get what you want. In a way, the more you want to, the more obstacles you have to overcome to get what you want in a way, the more you want it or the more exciting that it seems. Yeah. You also talk about fantasy. This is the most interesting part to me as being a way of, okay, so people say about Twilight a lot.

Why is this the fantasy? This is a dangerous situation for Bella to want someone who might want to kill her or hurt her and is barely holding back. Isn't that frightening? But you talk about fantasy as being a way of almost creating a safe place for the female character to enjoy a certain type of desire

that would otherwise be dangerous. I might be, you know, mutilating the point. Could you, you know what I'm talking about? Yeah, well, I think that, you know, look at the kinds of media that people consume all the time. Like the popularity of movies about the apocalypse or about, you know, all kinds of horrible things happening. People like to experience things in fantasy,

in art in general, that obviously we don't want to experience in reality. Yeah, we crave the apocalypse, even though we don't want to experience in reality. Yeah, we crave the apocalypse, even though we don't want to live within it. Most right, most of us do not want the apocalypse to happen, but there's something that just is endlessly fascinating to people about watching a movie where like New York City is destroyed.

We just were obsessed because we just want to see it again and again. And that's not, I don't think because we actually want New York City to be destroyed, right? It's because, I don't think because we actually want New York city to be destroyed, right? It's because I don't know, there's, there's some, there's, there's some part of it that's part of us that's sort of fascinated with at least the idea of destruction, right? Um, and, or like the fantasy of it, even though we, you know, and I think for,

for mentally stable, mentally stable people, those two things are, are. Securely separated. Um, you know, I do think that there's a validity to the objection that, you know, people who worry about media like Twilight being so popular or normal among teenagers, you know, do teenagers have the media skills is the question, right? To understand, OK, like this is not depicting an actual relationship, right?

Like this is not depicting an ideal. Like you don't want a real relationship with a vampire. That's not, that's, you know, this type of relationship is disastrous if you're actually in a relationship with someone who wants to, you know, drink your blood or who wants to kill you or whatever. That's, you know, that's a catastrophe if it actually happened.

But in fantasy, again, these things sort of kind of become exciting and the danger as to the excitement. But I think that most readers of these things know that, right? I think most readers of dark romance novels are aware that what they're not, they're not consuming content that's like, ooh, this is a blueprint for how to live your life. Like most people know that when you read escapist fantasy, you're not, you don't actually want that to happen.

But of course, you know, you can't always point to some people who don't have, who aren't so good at making those distinctions between fantasy and what they really want. But I do think that it's unfair to malign the fantasy itself because some people are sort of, don't have like a good grip on the difference between fantasy and reality.

Yeah, we all engage in fantasy and yet, because it's a human thing to do, and yet there's this constant push to criticize the fantasies that other people have as being harmful while engaging in our own. Yeah, absolutely. And I mean, that's one reason why you have, you know, so slogans like,

don't yuck my yum, or like the discourse about kink shaming. I mean, obviously these, you know, those kinds of slogans are relative to a particular context where, you know, you've agreed on in advance that, okay, this is a space where we're going to openly discuss sexuality. And so like within certain reasonable limits, I think we, you know, you say like, we, we appreciate that people have like a very diverse range of, you know, turn ons basically, right? And so what other people, what someone else might be into might seem like completely disgusting to you, but like, yeah, that's just, that's just how it is. Like, I don't know, the humans are very diverse. I don't know, humans are very diverse. And human sexuality is kind of amazingly diverse in a way, because obviously this is something that does,

at some point, have some kind of biological, evolutionary history, but the psychology of it is significantly more complicated than biological function. Yeah, and a big theme in the video is how our sexuality is more flexible or less determined biologically than a lot of people think. You're pushing back against the idea

of default heterosexual sadomasochism. A point that really spoke to me was you noted how a lot of men who are socialized know, socialized to be dominant or to be the Edward in the situation, right? And to pursue and to be the desirer, have like a latent wish to be desired. And I'll just say, I related to this. I was like, oh, you know, a little ping went off in my head.

Ah, yes, I have felt that way and never quite had language for it, which I think is a wonderful thing that media like yours can do. Can you talk a little bit more about that idea and where that came from? Yeah, this is something I've heard from a lot of individual men.

I mean, I also think that when I'm doing research on videos like this, I will kind of browse across social media in search of relevant discussions. And I remember one time, I think it was like the ask men subreddit. Someone asked something along the lines of, what is one thing that you want from relationships with women that you feel like you don't often get?

And I think the most upvoted response to that question was, I want to feel like I am desired. So I think that both men and women are, in a way not served well by being forced to conform to a default heterosexual sadomasochism, where it's only the man who's who's supposed to desire and the woman only is supposed to want to be desired. I think that puts people in in boxes where there's certain desires that don't get

acknowledged or met. And as you say, often people don't have the words for it. So I think that a woman who kind of wants to that more, like, quote unquote, virile, like, pursuing a desiring role, um, you know, will feel like she, there's something sort of masculine about inherent to that or something even sort of shamefully unfeminine about it. Um, and likewise, I think that men are put in this situation where they, because they need to be the dominant,

active pursuers, there's part of them that maybe wants to be, you know, that you want to be pursued, right? You want to also feel that, you know, someone you're attracted to is attracted to you and will, is kind of active in that. It is not just like a passive participant for you to do things to, right? Like I think that, but I think that, you know,

there's often some kind of, there's often a kind of shame that comes with that, where I think it, you know, it's sort of, it feels unmanly maybe, I think even to kind of want to be wanted. But there are times that, you know, I think you have some examples of this. If you look through the behaviors of actual men in real life, you know, they will betray that desire

or there are certain features of masculine. I mean, you saw it for yourself on a Reddit page. These things are real and an acknowledgement of them can lead to a more functional sexuality. I mean, you had a, what's the word? It's not variability, something like that, flexibility that you say, maybe rather than equality, we can strive for,

what is the word you use? Versatility. Versatility, thank you. Just talk about that a little bit. Well, I guess, I mean, the word comes from gay culture where people will use terms like top and bottom or dom and sub. And then the word verse means that you are someone

who's interested in or who likes basically occupying either role. So verse, just short for versatile. But I think like most straight people do not use terms like top and bottom. And you know, there's a question of whether straight people should use them because it's something that comes from gay culture. But I do think that most people, gay or straight, or bi or whatever you are, like would

benefit from this concept from from being a little bit more open to versatility and relationships and sexuality. I think that I think a lot of people have like, you know, by putting themselves in one box or the other, kind of are closing off some part of their own desire. And it's something that you kind of discover by opening yourself up to it. Whereas I think most people tend to, you know,

all of us are kind of on some level, the products of the social conditioning. And so there's a implicit value, I think, placed on a man being active or a woman being passive or a man being the one who desires, a woman who's sort of being desirable. And I think that for most people, if you wanna get outside of those boxes, it involves navigating a certain level of shame and overcome and also like. But I don't think that's I don't think that's psychologically the case. And I think that it comes across in things like, well, even if you just like look at like, Manisphere, like in

cell culture, for example, a lot of these, you know, so if you if you read in cell forms, they get really upset when someone suggests like just hire a sex worker. Well, they don't want to do that. They don't want to hire a sex worker. Why? Because it's not really just about sex for them. They haven't really analyzed this maybe, but they want a woman to want them, right? They don't wanna pay for it, right? They don't want this transaction because,

and maybe they feel like they can't say that or they don't know how to say it, but it's like they want to feel desirable. And that's something that they're sort of almost confused about it seems. And likewise with romance novels, a very feminine genre, a lot of romance novels are written with a very strong male perspective in them.

And one thing that I kind of speculate about is I do think that a lot of women read romance novels and identify with the man, right? So, I mean, for example, in Twilight, Stephanie Meyer has rewritten in this 2020 book, Midnight Sun, which is just the Twilight story, but told from Edward's perspective.

It's common in mainstream romance novels, even for the male's perspective to be included, I think because women have the kind of versatility, a lot of female readers have, like the versatility of that, right? They like being able to identify with either side of this dynamic. Yeah, and I mean, that's in Twilight a little bit itself

that, you know, Edward has some, I think you would call, archetypically feminine qualities. That's what, you know, a lot of teenage boys were pissed about when the book came out, that like, oh, he's kind of like a feminized vampire in some way. There's parts where Bella becomes a vampire, becomes stronger than him,

and maybe dominates him a little bit. It's almost modeling a healthy, versatile switch that they're able to do. Is that the case? Well, I think that if by the end of the series, right, that the dynamic between them does kind of equalize, which I do think is another thing that people do tend to neglect

when they discuss this story, is that it starts out with this massive power imbalance, but by the end of this series, Bella has also become a vampire and she's kind of risen to Edward's level and their dynamic is much more equal. And that's pretty explicitly something that's explored in Breaking Dawn, the last of those novels. Yeah, and even in the first film, which is the only one that I've seen,

you know, yes, there's a dominant and submissive relationship to some degree, but also Edward is like almost driven mad by his desire he can't stay away. And I'm watching it going like Bella doesn't feel like unpowerful. She feels like she has, there is a power in the being chased, right? In being desired.

Like every single time one of these ideas arises, there is a power in the being chased, right? In being desired. Every single time one of these ideas arises, the opposite is buried just under the surface, ready to come out and flip over in some way. And that sort of leads me to the end of the video. I think one of the most powerful ideas, when you got to this point, again, I was like, how did we get here in a video about Twilight?

The idea that we do not have a, I'm gonna mangle again what you said, but we do not have a video about Twilight, the idea that, you know, we do not have a, I'm gonna mangle again what you said, but, you know, we do not have a gender binary, we have a gender yin-yang, where the masculine and feminine are counterparts and contain each other and are constantly undermining or replacing each other and that containing each other and nested nested levels.

How did you come to that idea? Was that through the examination of Twilight or was that an idea that you had had before that you expressed via Twilight? Well, I like the idea that this was some like deep truth that I discovered by reading Twilight. In reality, no, I don't think that was exactly how it happened.

But yeah, I was actually thinking about the concept of yin-yang and I like this kind of as a more, what I think is a deeper way of thinking about what people often think of as a binary. So a binary is just one and zero, but oftentimes binaries like masculine and feminine, that they sort of are mutually constitutive, right? Where like part of what it means to be,

you can't really understand what we mean by masculinity unless it's complemented by this concept of femininity. And I think that when you appreciate that, you also kind of see the transformative capacity that exists in this where, there is something feminine about the masculine and there's something masculine about the feminine. And one person is not just masculine or feminine.

I think that we all have these sides to ourself and over time these can change and one or the other can be more dominant at different times. At least that's how I think about masculinity and femininity, not as like, oh, either you're masculine or you're feminine, and that's like an essential thing about yourself.

Like, no, I think we each contain the whole dynamic in a way. So I think that that is something that, I mean, you don't have to explore this through Twilight, but I think that is something that Twilight does ultimately explore. And not just Twilight, I mean, you don't have to explore this through Twilight, but I think that is something that Twilight does ultimately explore. And not just Twilight, I mean, often romance novels, you know, they get a lot of criticism for being sort of, you know, masochistic,

that is for having disempowered female protagonists, which a lot of them do. But a lot of those disempowered female protagonists also kind of end the novel powerful. And so I think in a way the inequality, I mean, it's complicated, right? You could argue that the inequality is being romanticized and often it is, but also a lot of times the inequality is there as an obstacle to be overcome, right? The inequality is the driver of a conflict

where the end of the fantasy, like the consummation of the fantasy is in a way overcoming the inequality and achieving an equal relationship. Right, the separation ending, the separation of desire ending and the becoming one, which brings us back to the yin yang. And it's also a, I see how this works in sex, right?

That if you are beginning in a masculine way, but there's the seeds of femininity within, right? When that comes out, that is a sexy reversal, right? Yes, yeah, yeah. It makes me think a little bit in, this is a very strange comparison, but in comedy writing, something that we do a lot is hiring and lowering.

You want to see the low become high and the high become low. The Lord becomes the peasant, the dog starts walking around and giving orders, like the dog and family guy or whatever, right? It's fun to see the flip, and you wanna see it happen over and over, right? You wanna see in trading places, you wanna see them go up and down and down and up.

It's the transition between the two that is enjoyable. It's not like the static nature of staying in one place, which I don't know, that's life, right? That's what is fulfilling is to experience that going back and forth. I think there's so many odd connections between comedy and sexuality. There's, I like what you're saying about like high and low

sort of becoming each other. There's also the like what you're saying about like high and low sort of, you know, becoming each other. There's also the tension and release theme that I think I talk about a bit in the Twilight video. And obviously this is the thing that comics will talk about, right? You know, building tension, a joke often starts by building tension and then a punchline will be a release of that tension and the audience laughs. I mean, I think sexuality works that way too. The reason a romance novel usually has a kind of, I mean, there think sexuality works that way too. The reason a romance novel usually has a kind of... I mean, there's a reason people like the historical romance novel, right?

And part of it has to do with tension. There's more tension in historical romance, oftentimes because of the barriers that that setting involves, right? Everyone's wearing so many clothes, I mean, to be very literal about it. But also, there's all this like social, there's social... Yeah. it. But also there's all, there's like social, there's social cl- It's not just the bodice, it's the social bodice, right? There's rules about who can have a romantic relationship

with whom and those rules create kind of, they add to the tension between characters. As the sort of stakes are higher, there's more that's key. The situation is high, strong, right? It's tense. And that I think people find sexy, obviously hoping that eventually the tension is released. But in a way that it does, it is kind of similar to a joke.

Yeah, I love how comedy is similar to other genres. I have to think about comedy is similar to horror in a lot of ways. Yeah, yeah. I've never considered how it's similar to romance, but it really is. That's so funny and surprising to me. You know, in the last couple months, we've talked at length on this podcast

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and get 30% off your first order plus a free $60 gift. Go to thrivemarket.com slash factually for 30% off your first order plus a free $60 gift. That's T-H-R-I-v-e market.com slash factually, thrivemarket.com slash factually. You also come to this point though, about human sexuality. I think it's so beautiful.

You're talking about, again, S and M and, and the, you know, fantasy and desire, but you come to this point about masculine and feminine containing each other. And one of the things I love that you say is, someone who is a masculine acting man or a trans person is not appropriating someone else's sexuality. Masculinity and femininity are like,

we all have them as humans. We are all, and they're all our, you don't say birthright, but they're all something that we are entitled to by virtue of our humanity. And that's such a, I don't know, that's such a powerful point that spirals off in so many other directions, philosophical, political, and to get there from this place where you're talking

about S&M and Twilight is fascinating to me. Yeah, I think that, I mean, people will often say, oh, gender's different from race, but then without really specifying what that difference is, I mean, I think one of them has to do with the fact that, you know, gender exists in some form in pretty much every human society that I'm aware of. I guess, you know, I think gender does,

in some ancestral way, of course, derive from the kind of generally dimorphic reproductive roles, but obviously there's a lot more to gender than that and a lot of ways gender has become and for a long time, you know, quite unhinged, I think from directly being about reproduction. But I think that, you know, unlike race or ethnicity, like within every human family, there is a man and a woman. Well, okay, not every human family, right?

We can... Of course. But again, I think that the origin of, most people have a mother and a father, and I think that's the sort of origin of a lot of ideas about masculinity and femininity. And I think that no one person is like, just the result of, I mean, I guess, I don't know, I guess there's probably some like monk somewhere who has never met a woman.

But I don't know, I do feel that most people contain some some, you know, masculine and feminine element. And I think that, to me, I see some level of androgyny as being, I guess I'm kind of getting this from Virginia Woolf, right, who says, like, Oh, a great writer is always androgynous. Right. And the idea is seeming to be that like to kind of fully perfect yourself as an artist, you need to be in touch with with both the masculine and the feminine within yourself. And, you know, if things get too unbalanced, it leads to problems. So I think that applies not just to art,

but also kind of to sexuality, where I guess I've tried at times to force myself into one box or another. I've tried to be, to make myself more masculine or tried to conform to like a very strict idea of femininity and neither of those has ever worked for me. So maybe this is just me, you know, in a way, philosophy is autobiography. In a way, maybe this is me just working for my own personal thing and then making sweeping generalizations about human nature.

Well, lots of people do that. So I guess, you know, guilty. But I think it's I think it's, you know, there's sweeping generalizations that other people seem to relate to. So I think it's probably not just me that finds that only being, that being strictly masculine or strictly feminine doesn't really, doesn't really, hasn't really worked out well for me. And I think it probably doesn't work out well

for a lot of people. Yeah, I've often felt that in my own life, that that's a box that I was placed in and I have a constant sort of desire to undermine it or to find more richness in it or to find what I'm missing. And I think that's probably part of why this was a popular video is because it expresses that. You said philosophy, I wanna talk more about

how you think about this video as a work of philosophy. I mean, at one point, I believe there's a graphic on the screen that says, or maybe you say this out loud, that you made this video instead of writing a PhD dissertation. And at that moment, I realized, wait, this, yeah, that is this dense of a philosophical work. There is that many citation of other thinkers.

You're doing that much original thinking. I mean, there's a huge number of videos that are, philosophy videos on YouTube that are just summarizing. And that's wonderful for them to summarize. That's essentially what I feel I do's a huge number of videos that are, you know, philosophy videos on YouTube that are just summarizing. And that's wonderful for them to summarize. That's essentially what I feel I do as a comic. I read a bunch of ideas and I summarize them for you in a way that is funny and intelligible. I make it go down easy.

And hopefully I get a couple of my own ideas in there too, cause I'm a smart person and I like to think I am. And I have my own thoughts about the world. But I mean, at the end of this video, I was like, put this in a fucking library somewhere because people need to like keep watching it and understanding exactly what point you're making and put it into dialogue with other philosophers

or psychologists or thinkers. I mean, how do you think about the work in that way? Well, I think unlike, I mean, this video, more than my other videos was like, I did so much research for this. I think I read at least a hundred books for this. And then also like a lot of articles and things. And so I tried to get like very familiar

with like a wide range of thinking about the topics that I wanted to cover and use that to build what's basically a three hour argument of what I wanted to say. So that I think is more academic than most of the stuff I do on YouTube in the sense that the citations are very wide and there's a lot of them.

But also, yeah, I am trying to make an argument that I think is my own argument. And then the citations are just sort of ways of like bringing in other people's ideas. You know, it's always tricky with a video essay. You want to balance the kind of academic side with the entertainment side. You can't just sit in front of a camera

and read your master's thesis or whatever, because I think people will find that boring. But the hope anyway with this video was that I was going to be able to balance what are my sincere ideas in my academic reading? I'm hoping that I presented this in a way that was not just kind of for an academic audience, but would be for a popular audience.

And people have watched the videos, I guess on some level that has succeeded. I know you left the world of academia years ago after spending some time there, but it really struck me with this video that you are doing work that one would strive to do in an academic setting. I have to imagine that there are people in grad school

or philosophy professors themselves who are thinking, my God, I wish my ideas were able to get 3.7 million views on YouTube. Is that a world that you still want to interact with or that you hope this video interacts with? Have you had outreach from, you know, people who are working on similar ideas and issues in the world of the Academy? I have, yeah. And I, it's been long enough now that I do sometimes miss the academic context.

I mean, I think I kind of overdosed on it a bit when I was in my 20s. Like I, you know, getting a, I got half of a philosophy PhD basically and ended up quitting with a master's before writing a dissertation. But I think that I kind of coasted for a few years afterwards.

I was like, well, I've basically spent most of my 20s with my face in a book. So now, you know, I want to like say things with that to an actual audience. And I felt that I found the audience on YouTube. But I think a few years ago, I started worrying. I was like, it's been years now since I was in, since I was taking classes, going to seminars,

getting feedback from professors. I sort of started to worry. I was like, I'm taking classes, going to seminars, getting feedback from professors, I sort of started to worry. I was like, I'm gonna start getting sloppy and boring in a sense if I don't, well, not boring, but I guess I worried that I was gonna get a little too detached from that research foundation. So with this project, I really wanted to make myself like go back to school in a way.

And so I read a lot of pretty dense texts from psychoanalysis to feminist theory to kind of a wide source of commentary on sexuality or on gender. So I tried to kind of bolster the substance of this video by using academic texts again. And that's such a, it's such a project to do that. Like as somebody who builds arguments myself

in my own work, done so on TV, I do so on YouTube now. It's a big lift for me to do 20 minutes, right? To make a 20 minute argument. You're doing a three hour argument I do so on YouTube now. It's a big lift for me to do 20 minutes, right? To make a 20 minute argument. You're doing a three hour argument where you're doing a vast amount of reading and also original thought. And I just would, I'm dying to know like a little bit

about your process. Like when you're reading a hundred books, right? And you are trying to get your head around this argument that you wanna make. What are you then doing with the book? Are you, do you have a note taking process? Like how are you assembling this argument as you go? Yeah, my methods for making this video

were actually like so crazy that I can never do this again because it took so long. Like, I have, okay, I have a donkey. How long did it take you all together, by the way? How long were you working on this? I mean, I think I started it, I think I started it in like June, 2022, and then published like March, 2024.

So more than a year and a half. I mean, I was working on other things in between, but I think that, you know, when I say reading a hundred books, how long did it take me to read a hundred books? Well, usually it takes me more than one day to read one book. So, you know, a lot of reading days. Um, and I, I had, I was writing down the quotes that I thought were interesting. I have a document on my computer that has more than a hundred thousand words of quotes and notes stuffed into it, which is just an insane,

of quotes and notes stuffed into it, which is just an insane, I mean, that's, you know, at least novel length as just a notes document. And then most of that, obviously I didn't use because I way overdid the note taking. I'm not, that's why I say I'm not doing that again because there's probably a more efficient way to use time, which I'm trying to do,

because I don't want to just make one video every year and a half. So I've got to find ways to be a little more efficient than that. But for this one project, I was like, oh, I just felt like really committing to the bookish element of it. So I made, you know, I guess a one-time commitment

to put in basically a year's worth of research. I really feel that making YouTube videos myself, the pull between spending as much time as you want on something and getting things out more quickly. I'm constantly trying to evaluate that myself with the work that I make. How do you think about pace

and nurturing your audience on YouTube? Because as you say, you are a YouTuber. Being a YouTuber puts you at the mercy of the algorithm, of the audience, of these sort of very mechanized processes that determine success or failure. It seems like it would take a lot of trust to spend a year and a half on something and know that it will be watched on the other end

and not be anxious about, ah, shouldn't I have put out 12 more videos in that period of time? Wouldn't that be better for my numbers? Like that sort of thinking. How do you think about that? Oh, well, it definitely would be better for your, for my numbers if I had made 12 videos instead of one three hour video. I mean, I think that for me... Really? Because the three hour video does well, you know. Yeah. Well, okay. That's, I mean, I do think that long videos do seem to be doing well on YouTube lately. I think that when I was building an audience,

I would never have been able, I don't think, to do something like this. This is kind of the luxury stuff you get to do if you have already built that foundation. Yeah. I definitely think there was a period where I was kind of having to grind a little bit to get videos that are at least every couple months.

Because at first, we do worry a lot about, oh, is the audience even going to still be there? I feel at this point, I have built enough of a long-term audience that will kind of trust the process a little bit. And I feel like I can count on them to watch when I come up with a new thing, even if it's been a while. So I tend to worry about that a little less, though I do also think that, you know, a year and a half is too long. And I think that I benefit from a little bit because at a certain point with the research, there's there are diminishing returns to spending more than a year on researching a video. I think at a certain point, you know,

you have to say, okay, that's enough, like save the rest of the research for another video. So that's, from now on, I'm trying to do that because I do wanna make videos a little more frequently than once a year. Well, it's fascinating because you could have made just a video about, hey, I've been reading Twilight and there was a moral panic about this series

and that misunderstands the nature of fantasy and that would have been one great video that could have gotten a million views on its own, but that is one point within this massive edifice that you built. to you in your creative process of exploring so much in a single video rather than chunking it up or making a more, you know, I often look to make one discrete point, maybe two. And if I do more than that, I start going, ah, maybe I'm getting too over ambitious and I need to scale it back. Whereas this video is so incredibly maximalist

in its conception and design. Is there something about that that draws you? Yes, there is. And it's hard for me to explain what it is, but I do think that I am sort of ambitiously drawn towards more and more elaborate projects. It's something that I have to fight in myself to make every video not be three hours long. But I do think that I like, I don't know,

there's something fun to me to be exploring one topic from every possible angle. And I don't know, there seems to be an audience that is appreciative of that kind of like extremely thorough deep dive. You know, I think that there was a time I remember when YouTubers were basically given the advice that go no more than 10 minutes, like no one has an attention span anymore in this day. And now like people just regularly watch content that's hours long. I think part of it has to do with the way that people watch videos has changed. I think a lot of people,

they watch every video kind of like they listen to a podcast, right? It's kind of on, you know, maybe, you know, I'm not so arrogant that I think everyone who watches my videos has to sit down at the TV with a bowl of popcorn and give me their undivided attention. I mean, I guess I'd be flattered if people do that, but I'm sure, I mean, that's not how I watch video essays.

I'm doing the laundry. YouTube is also the most popular streaming service on televisions. Like it is more popular than Netflix. And so surely some people are doing that. They're loading it up. They're no longer just, you know, clicking on a link at work, you know, in a browser tab.

And so there's been a lot of changes. Yeah, and I do try to, I mean, I do put effort into like visuals and things. I do want to reward the people who have taken, who have put the video up on their TV and are sitting down to watch it. I do want it to make that worth people's while, but I also know that some people are cooking dinner

and that's fine too. You make almost every element of these videos yourself, right, in addition to writing them, you also, my understanding is you're your own DP, you do your own lighting, you do your own editing. I believe you have other folks do the music. Do I have that basically right? Yeah, that's right.

I definitely, people always ask me like, why are you doing this to yourself? Like, why don't you hire more people to do it? That was my next question, Al. You have the money to do it. Yeah, I feel like, well, I think I've just gotten so used to doing it in this kind of solitary way that now it kind of feels like I would be like, I don't know, I would be taking my own,

I feel like what people like about my videos probably is that I made them on some level. And so I think there's something that sort of comes across from like one person's like manic project. Like even I don't know, even if there's imperfections, which I'm sure there are, right? There are ways that a professional could probably like do better lighting or something. But I don't know, there's like, I have like the way that I do it. And I think it gives the videos kind of a distinctive feel.

I just think it's something that people pick up on. And also maybe it's just me being like a reclusive loner or whatever and not wanting to deal with the social element of having a. No, that's such a great answer. I mean, I've learned in my own work how much the process is the product. And I actually experienced, you know,

I came from doing videos on a website called College Humor. We had our low budget way of doing things. And I experienced later on when I was doing work on Netflix, there were things that I wanted to do that were actually harder to do with more resources than when I had less. And I would try to get certain sort of gags done, certain sort of visual effects,

try to use things on a certain timeline, and the more expensive crews that we had to work with said, we don't know how to do it that way. I was like, oh, well, the 25 year old I used to work with like could help me do it that way, right? And so the process is the product, the way you make the thing is how the thing comes out. And so I understand, yeah,

if that's how you got started doing it all yourself, that's what the audience likes, that's the way you do it. You maybe don't wanna fuck with something that's working because what the audience likes partially is the feeling of watching this lady go crazy in her own house at 4 a.m. You know, they like a little bit of that feeling. I think that's exactly what it is.

Because I think there's a certain vibe for you, for lack of a better term, to a person like manically recording a video in a room alone at four in the morning. Like, I don't know. I don't know if that could be replicated if I weren't literally doing that. Yeah.

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Rules and restrictions may apply. So in terms of your audience, you are entirely audience supported. I don't think you take ads of any kind. There is, that's a wonderful thing that's possible now in today's internet media ecosystem. It's also, there's a hazard of audience capture, of your audience driving what you're doing too much,

or of feeling at the whim of your audience. What has your experience been with that, and how do you resist that affecting your work? Well, I am very grateful to Patreon for allowing me to have a financially viable career without filling the videos with ads. That it's a good model. I do think that as you say, the, there's a hazardous side to it, which is that, you know, it's not the, in a way you don't have a boss, but in another way,

your boss is like this mob, right? This, this group of a few thousand people who are funding your project. So you do, you are kind of accountable to them in a way. So how do you not just become a people pleaser? Well, I think, I mean, lately I've been doing these like Patreon only videos that, you know, I'm just charging people two months, two dollars a month or whatever to watch them.

And then our people can pay more to vote on the topic. And I do think that people vote on topics that are sort of different than what I would, I don't think anyone would have voted for Twilight, for example. Right. I don't, I don't think that if I had had a poll to decide what my next video was going to be, I don't think Twilight would have gotten a lot of votes. Um, you know, people tend to.

Vote for things. Well, one things they've heard of. So it has to be something familiar. It has to be often something topical. We'll get more votes than something that's, you know, kind of outdated or that doesn't seem particularly relevant at the moment. But yeah, I do think that there's something to be said for me, you know, using that kind of voting feedback so that I kind of keep in touch with what people care about.

But I do think that it's also good for the main channel videos that I'm that I'm not just taking, that I'm not just having the topic dictated to me by the audience demand. Because I think a lot of times, people don't know what they want, or the most exciting content, I feel like comes from, I had no idea that I wanted this, right?

Like, I would not have asked someone to make a three hour video analyzing Twilight from every imaginable philosophical angle, but hopefully now that it's here, they like it. I think also, you know, a lot of times what you think you want is more of what you've liked in the past, which I think can kind of stifle, it can stifle innovation or change where,

well, I mean, look what's happened with movies where everything's a sequel now, right? I think that you can be able, if you become too conservative in terms of what you are willing to experiment with creatively, if the way that you choose what projects to work on is just informed by what has succeeded in the past,

well, then you just make the same thing again and again, and no innovation ever happens. Yeah, and if you just make the thing that the audience says that they want, there is some value in that. That is something that, there isn't value in pleasing the audience. But if that's all that you do,

the audience is never surprised. That's what always bothers me so much about, you know, it's a cliche, but fans of IP media, of superhero media, or whatever, being like, we didn't want this. This isn't what the fans asked for sort of discourse. Why didn't they ask us before they made the new Star Wars? Like, well, is that what you want?

Like you didn't know, you wouldn't have known to ask for the first Star Wars movie before it came out because it was a unique act of creativity on the part of this weird dude, George Lucas. And in fact, that was what we liked about it. And the reappraisal of the Star Wars prequels is exactly about that, that George was just being weird. And that was kind of more interesting than some mega corporation trying to give people

exactly what they wanted. We don't get serendipity and surprise in media that way. Yeah, I completely agree with that. And I do think that it's too bad that, well, I do think that I have an increasing sense, I mean, with Star Wars, this is probably literally the case that a lot of creative decisions are basically being made

in corporate boardrooms. And- Literally, yeah. I mean, it seemed that that's how it feels. It comes across, like I liked your slogan about the process as a product, it comes across, right? We can tell. Yeah.

And yeah, totally. You could just basically remake the first Star Wars movie now, but it wouldn't have the same impact that it had initially because we've already seen Star Wars. Make a new thing, right? Yeah. Yeah. You are diagnosing the exact problem with my business.

Yeah, that nobody is making new things currently. Everybody is trying to figure out, this has worked in the past, so let's make another one of those. What is working? And nobody is taking a chance on the new thing. And one of the real ironies of creative work in Hollywood, at least,

is even the executives don't know what they want, because if they did, they would be writers and directors, but they aren't, because they are not the creative people. You at some point need to trust a creative person saying, I think this is a good idea. I just want to make it. You should believe in me. If you want to get, you know,

the thing that is a surprise hit that changes the culture or makes things go in a new way. Yeah, it requires you to take chances, which means that sometimes you'll lose, but I also think that the super conservative approach to, oh, just keep making the same thing that worked in the past, I think that's a very short-term way of thinking

where people will eventually get bored, right, of you making the exact same superhero movie again and again, and I think that, you know, even economically, that will eventually cost you, you want to take, it's worth it, I think, to take chances on someone who's trying something new. Sometimes it won't work, but when it does, it really pays off.

Yeah, and that's why some of the best media brands are the ones that you get used to taking an interesting chance where, oh, if this came out, HBO used to be like this. Oh, they put a lot of money into something. I don't know if it's for me. You know what, I'll watch a couple just because I have a certain expectation.

I think people have that same expectation of your work. Like I, you know, normally I had no interest in Twilight, right, it was not particularly on my radar, but oh, Natalie has a new video out that's three hours of Natalie talking about Twilight. I am interested in that because I have seen your past work and I know that you are going to surprise and delight me. I love your approach of you're slaking the audience's thirst

to have a say with your Patreon videos and then you are separately using that to be able to fund your crazy passion products, which are the things that people actually want of you. That's a wonderful audience expectation to set. Yeah, and it does require me to have a level of trust in my own audience. Like I'm trusting them to trust me in a way.

Like I know you probably don't think you want a three hour video about Twi'Late, but I have an idea for one that I think you probably do want. Just let me do it and then, you know, we'll see. I'm sure, I'm sure, I'm sure I will occasionally do projects that don't hit, cause no one has all hits, but I think that, you know, I think it's worth it to me to take the risk

because I don't wanna stultify, you know? Yeah. Do you have bigger aspirations in media? Because look, again, in the field I'm in, I'm always like, my instinct is how is that a TV show? Or how is that a movie? Or how is that, just what's the bigger version of the thing, right?

Which is a very capitalist fueled impulse that comes from the media environment that I have to work in because that's the life I live. Whereas you have absolute freedom, you're able to make a living and do what you want. And yet, this video is so ambitious. I'm curious if you just, you know, is there more that you wanna do and in what direction?

Well, I'm pretty happy with the current process. I mean, is there more that I wanna do? Yes, but I feel like the more that I wanna do is not necessarily what most people imagine I would want to do. People ask me all the time, like aren't you gonna have like a Netflix show or something at some point? Or, you know, when are you gonna like have a, I mean all the time, like aren't you gonna have like a Netflix show or something at some point?

Or you know, when are you gonna like have a, I mean, they don't say when are you gonna have a real job, but there's sometimes feels like a little bit of an implication of that. When are you gonna make it big? Right, that's the idea, that's the implication. Yeah, when are you gonna make it big? I'm pretty happy making it medium, actually, at the moment.

Like I think that I like the independence and I like the fact that I can do like weird experimental things and I like the kind of direct relationship to the audience that I feel like I have through Patreon where it's not mediated by a studio. I don't know. It's not to say that I will never try, you know, doing something that is with a more conventional

production approach. But I feel like for the time being, I'm pretty happy with the way that this works out with Patreon and with the audience on YouTube. And so I'm not like itching to change it up in that sense. Yeah, I would also ask, oh, would you ever want to write a book?

Except that again, the video to me has the density of a book. Every sentence is something that I want to pause and unpack and reread. And yet it's being seen by more people. You are able to, I think probably make a better living at it than you would if you were to publish it as a book. Is there, it seems kind of perfect for getting the ideas

that you want to get out out. And yet I think there's maybe a YouTube stench that I feel as well of, isn't there some more legitimate place to go? No, people ask that too, when are you going to write a book? Well, I don't know, I may well write a book someday, probably when I get tired of looking at my face

on the screen, but I think that, um, I feel like I've put so many, put so much time into like learning the skills of doing video essays that I feel like I may still, you know, continue doing the thing that I know I'm good at. I mean, part of that, of course, is writing. And I'm sure that that skill would, would transfer over to writing a book. Um, so again, I think I haven't ruled that out. I imagine myself writing a book someday, but for the time being, all the ideas that I have for books,

I feel like I ended up making them into videos. So it's not a, doesn't seem like a super pressing need for me to switch media. I don't feel that you'll ever get sick of looking at your own face if you spent this long doing it. You have the same sickness that I do where. If the narcissism has lasted this long, I should be in the clear, right?

Yeah, if you want this many people, if you have spent this much time trying to get people to look at you, you must want people to do it. That's never gonna leave you. Yeah, it's a long-term personality defect. What have you been thinking about or reading more recently? That is, I mean, this video took you a year and gonna do that. I'm not gonna do that. I'm not gonna do that. I'm not gonna do that. I'm not gonna do that. I'm not gonna do that.

I'm not gonna do that. I'm not gonna do that. I'm not gonna do that. I'm not gonna do that. I'm not gonna do that. I'm not gonna do that. I'm not gonna do that. I'm not gonna do that.

I'm not gonna do that. I'm not gonna do that. I'm not gonna do that. I'm not gonna do that. I'm not gonna do that. I'm not gonna do that. I'm not gonna do that. I'm not gonna do that.

I'm not gonna do that. I'm not gonna do that. I'm not gonna do that. I'm not gonna do that. I'm not gonna do that. I'm not gonna do that. I'm not gonna do that. I'm not gonna do that. I'm not gonna do that. I'm not gonna do that. stand it. In another year, I'm sure it'll interest me again and I'll go back to it. But yeah, I definitely will do something

completely different next. Obviously, well, I'm very anxious about American politics this year. So I think probably I'll get something sort of a little bit more directly political, politically engaging next. I've been doing research for most of my adult life on conspiracy theories.

So that's something that definitely interests me as a possible topic. And those go together. I mean, American politics this year and conspiracy theories. It feels like we're living in a more conspiratorial politics than ever. I remember a time when conspiracism was this kind of counter-cultural thing, like in the Bush era

or early Obama years. But now, yeah, it's- It was fun. It was fun. Yeah. You know, Men in Black was a movie, right? It wasn't something that people actually believed in. Right, or it was, I mean,

I guess there was always the 9-11 truth stuff and that, but even that, like, it never seemed very, like, threatening to me, I guess. I don't know, but maybe it should have, because now, I mean, at this stage, the Republican party may as well be a conspiracist party, where central ideas of Trump include the idea that the elections are rigged.

So that's not, this is not counterculture anymore. This guy was president, he's friends with Alex Jones, or at least they're in communication. So this is, um, you know, I've been talking with some people lately about whether QAnon is totally irrelevant now. And I think that it's not irrelevant. But the reason that it's not irrelevant is that it's actually a lot of the pieces of QAnon have just become incorporated into the main, the main, the main of the pieces of QAnon have just become incorporated into the main of the Republican party. So, yeah, we're not talking about Q, but the idea that the deep state is rigging elections, for example, like all this stuff is basically just mainstream American political ideas now.

It's a longstanding tendency, I guess, in American politics. Like there's that essay from the sixties on the paranoid style in American politics about like the gold water campaign, I guess. And, you know, in the fifties and sixties, there was like the John Birch society and all this idea of, you know, like you see in Dr. Strangelove, where there's this character ranting about the fluoridation of water being a communist plot. So it's not like this is- Yeah, against our vital fluids, yeah. Yeah, the pressure is bodily fluids, which I guess is kind of like a predecessor

to the anti-vax movement. This is the stuff I've been thinking about lately. That guy would have been an RFK voter. Yeah, completely. Have you, and yeah, the conspiracy mindset, it's not just that the literal conspiracy theories have infected the Republican party, but the sort of behavior of conspiracy hunting

has infected almost everybody. You see Democrats or people who don't call themselves political at all just go down these rabbit holes constantly and undermine everything that they think they know, et cetera, with that type of thinking, even when it isn't specifically a right-wing conspiracy theory of the type that we're most used to. Yeah, it's really a style, maybe a style of,

I mean, paranoid style, right? It's a style of thinking more than anything that can be applied to literally anything. I mean, I feel like it's gotten to a point where any significant event that happens in American or world politics or news will be kind of, it will have a host of theories around it about how it's an inside job or it's a hoax

or it's this and that, right? I think it's just become kind of- The Kate Middleton photo is a perfect example of that, right? I mean, Taylor Swift will drop an album and there's people theorizing about how it's just become kind of- The Kate Middleton photo is a perfect example of that, right? I mean, Taylor Swift will drop an album, and there's people theorizing about how she's just secretly gay, and she's very, like, I mean, it's like everything. Yeah, my friend, the very funny comedian, Sammy Mowry,

said that Taylor Swift is QAnon for girls. That was, that's their joke. Yeah, it's a- And people are like connecting the red string, like between Taylor Swift songs. That is the accepted mode of consumption for the biggest mainstream pop artist in America is to treat her like you are uncovering a vast conspiracy.

She's dropping these cryptic clues and it's your job to go down the rabbit hole and figure out the truth. It's, yeah, it's, I mean, people seem to find this way of engaging with anything very, very exciting, right? I think it kind of, it puts you in the role of an investigator, right? Everyone thinks they're Sherlock Holmes,

and you feel like, you know, you can find some kind of truth that has been hidden. I think that there's something, I mean, maybe this takes us back to the romance topic, actually, because in a way, that desire to like, find what is concealed or like overcome some kind of veil of illusion. I feel like that in itself is a kind of like, you know, tension and release type thing where, you know,

why is a hidden, a hidden truth is more exciting than an open truth, right? Because there's this element of pursuit of search involved. So it's exciting to discover a secret, I guess. And so people go looking for secrets anywhere. I mean, I literally have just been playing video game, a video game called Animal Well that is entirely built around the search for secrets.

And that's like the, there's the motivating factor in the game. And that's so sort of an odd thing to bring up, but it's literally what it reminded me of. Oh, I was doing this for fun just last week of like hunting, hunting. What does this mean? What does that mean?

I love the connection though to, I believe you said in the video, this is just written in my list of quotes. You wrote philosophical questions that never be definitively answered as being part of their allure, I think, and like our desire to answer them. They can't be definitively answered,

so we're always questing after them. Is that correct? Am I misrepresenting you? I think that's part of the appeal of philosophy is that we're asking these big questions that seem to defy definitive solution. Yeah. And so I think that is part of what's exciting about it

is the desire to find out something that seems like it's always eluding us. Yeah, so I wanted to ask, because this is a question of perpetual fascination for me, what do you think it is that philosophy does? Because there's often, you know, a realization I had after being very, very intent and fascinated by philosophy for many years, I realized,

hold on a second, exactly this, none of these questions are ever answered, you know? People are still arguing with Plato and Descartes and every philosopher for hundreds of years. And so isn't that shameful, that philosophy never makes progress in the way that science does? I've read essays to that effect. I was talking to the philosopher Quill Kukla about this,

and they said that what they think it indicates is that philosophy is more of an art than a science or a practice. I'm just curious how you think of it. Like, what is the thing that you are trying to do when you are answering these questions if they can never be definitively answered? Well, I think it does a lot of different things.

One thing it maybe does is take a mystery and then clarify the mystery so that even if you don't have a definitive answer, you at least have a better understanding of what it is that you don't understand. I think another thing I can do is kind of, again, like sort of clarify concepts that are kind of murky or sort of bring out something that's sort of implicit and make it explicit in a discourse. So I mean, this I think has a potential to be useful to science, right?

At least in certain, you know, fields where maybe there's a question of, you know, I guess psychology comes to mind where, you know, what are we talking about? When we talk about, you know, consciousness versus being unconscious, you know, that the question that actually kind of is conceptually complicated in a way that is not, it's not clear to me that it's easily solved

just through like experimentation. Before doing an experiment, you have to know, you have to have a conceptual framework for what it is that you're testing. Yeah, and in fact, on this show, in recent months, we've had on different neuroscientists who are arguing between themselves about whether humans have free will, et cetera.

And my reaction to all of them is you have committed a philosophical error and that you don't know what you mean by the phrase free will yet, or that's the disagreement and you won't acknowledge it. Like that sort of problem is a classic one that can only be addressed by philosophy. Yeah, I don't think the question of do humans have free will

and in what sense, if so, or if not, like I don't think that's a question that's going to be answered by doing, you know, functional MRI scans of the brain. Like, you know, there's a certain type of evidence that MRI studies are going to supply, and that certain type of evidence is always going to have to do with what amount of blood is flowing

to which brain region, right? Which is not gonna, because then you can't really answer your free will question. You kind of need to like, to transform that into something that can be empirically verified. I think so, yeah, the question about free will is, what do we mean by free will? And what is the relationship between free will and say,

you know, chemistry or these seemingly deterministic levels of analysis? Yeah, we might not get a final understand, we might not get a final understand, we might not get a final answer to that question, but if we actually examine it, we might understand a lot more about ourselves and like all of these other things. In the same way that you're exploring Twilight

and you are coming to what I found fascinating conclusions about human sexuality, fantasy, genre fiction, gender itself. I mean, it's just such an incredible tour de force. I don't know. Are you happy with the response to the video? Like are people, are they taking it in the way that you hoped that they would? Yeah, I'm very happy with it.

I think that a lot of people have given it a chance and I'm always very appreciative of the kinds of comments that people leave on my videos. I feel like I'm proud to have a better than average YouTube comments section. People often write paragraphs of text and some of it is very, very interesting. People have their own ideas and insights or people will challenge a certain point I made. I'm always very appreciative of people taking the time to do that. Because I know these comments just get lost in a sea of comments, but I do try, I do read a lot of them and a lot of them,

and a lot of them, unfortunately, are actually worth reading. So yeah, I'm happy about that. I mean, you really like strike me as a, you know, a philosopher from a few hundred years ago, like reading your correspondences, you know, you publish your monograph and then you get, you get all the responses back

and people debate and et cetera. It's just fascinating to see work of this caliber come across on a platform that most people deride as being really superficial and stupid. And you're one of the most successful and popular YouTubers and you're doing honest to God philosophy and psychology and analysis on there.

It's, I don't know, it's incredible to see. Yeah, sorry, go. Yeah, the feedback is definitely one of the things I like about YouTube. As you say, a YouTube comment section has a reputation as being like the worst of what the internet has to offer. It certainly can be, but I think that I also, you know, it's a mix of things.

Like some people just say that I'm ugly or whatever. So, okay, thank you. But, you know, I think that I also, you know, it's a mix of things like some people just say that I'm ugly or whatever. So, okay, thank you. But, you know, I think that mixed in with that is a lot of people who are out leaving actually very thoughtful ideas. And it's actually something I look forward to whenever I publish a video is like seeing what people will say in response.

It's almost like I want people to like challenge me back. Like I want people to engage with what I'm thinking about because I know they'll come up, people have different experiences, they have different expertise than I do. They'll come up with a bunch of stuff that didn't occur to me. And it's always very interesting to see

how other people react to the incomplete ideas that I've had. Well, I've given you a lot of reaction here. We've been talking for quite a while. I could talk to you all day, but I should probably let you get back to it. So yeah, I mean, thank you so much for being here, Natalie. Where else?

I mean, we're talking here on YouTube, which is the platform where you're at. So I think people will be able to find you, but where else can they find the rest of your work? You can find me on Twitter and on Instagram and Patreon, of course, but you know, watch my videos first, decide if you like them. Um, on all platforms, I'm just ContraPoints,

so that should be pretty easy. Well, thank you so much for being here. It's been such a thrill to talk to you. Yeah, thank you so much for having me. This was a great conversation. Well, thank you once again, Natalie Wynn, for coming on the show. I know you loved that conversation as much as I did.

If you did, you can support us on Patreon. Head to patreon.com slash Adam Conover. Five bucks a month gets you every episode of the show ad free. For 15 bucks a month, I will read your name in the credits of this show and also put it in the credits of every single one of my video monologues. This week, I wanna thank Eden Welch, Patrick Flanagan,

Kraton, Linslat, Andrew M. Purifoy, Marcus Mitchell, and Vanessa Russell. Thank you so much for supporting the show. Patreon.com slash Adam Conover if you wanna join them. Head to adamconover.net for my tickets and tour dates. You wanna come see me do standup comedy on the road. For this show, I wanna thank my producers, Sam Roudman and Tony Wilson,

everybody here at HeadGum for making the show possible. Thank you so much for listening, and we'll see you next time on Factually.