The Daily Stoic - Bari Weiss on the Power of Choice and Voicing Your Opinion | It’s Too Early To Quit On Yourself

Episode Date: January 19, 2022

​​Ryan reads today’s daily meditation and talks to author Bari Weiss about the pressure to be agreeable, the importance of calculating opportunity cost, the line between speaking up about social issues and staying silent, and more. From 2017 until 2020, Bari was a staff writer and editor for the Opinion section of The New York Times. Before joining the Times, Bari was an oped editor at the Wall Street Journal and an associate book review editor there. Her first book, "How to Fight Anti-Semitism," was a Natan Notable Book and the winner of a 2019 National Jewish Book Award. She is the host of the Honestly with Bari Weiss Podcast.For ONE WEEK ONLY, you can sign up and immediately begin the 2022 Daily Stoic New Year New You Challenge at your own pace. It’s 3 weeks of actionable challenges, presented in an email per day, built around the best, most timeless wisdom in Stoic philosophy. Just go to https://dailystoic.com/challenge to sign up.Blinkist takes top nonfiction titles, pulls out the key takeaways and puts them into text and audio explainers called Blinks that give you the most important information in just 15 minutes. Go to Blinkist.com/STOIC to start your free 7 day trial and get 25% off of a Blinkist Premium membership.Reframe is a neuroscience based smartphone app that helps users cut-back or quit drinking alcohol. Using evidence-based tools, techniques and content, To learn more go to JOINREFRAMEAPP.COM/stoic and use the code STOIC for 25% off your first month or annual subscription. Download Reframe on the App Store today.Trade Coffee will match you to coffees you’ll love from 400+ craft coffees, and will send you a freshly roasted bag as often as you’d like. Trade is offering your first bag free and $5 off your bundle at checkout. To get yours, go to drinktrade.com/DAILYSTOIC and use promo code DAILYSTOIC. Take the quiz to start your journey to the perfect cup.Novo is the #1 Business Banking App - because it’s built from the ground up to be powerfully simple and free business banking that Money Magazine called the Best Business Checking Account of 2021. This year, get your FREE business banking account in just 10 minutes at bank novo.com/STOICSign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://DailyStoic.com/dailyemailCheck out the Daily Stoic Store for Stoic inspired products, signed books, and more.Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, FacebookFollow Bari Weiss: Homepage, Twitter, SubstackSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hey, prime members, you can listen to the Daily Stoic Podcast early and add free on Amazon Music. Download the app today. Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, where each weekday we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoics, a short passage of ancient wisdom designed to help you find strength and insight here in everyday life. And on Wednesdays, we talk to some of our fellow students of ancient philosophy, well-known and obscure, fascinating and powerful. With them, we discuss the strategies and habits that have helped them become who they are, and also to find peace in wisdom in their actual lives. But first we've got

a quick message from one of our sponsors. Hi I'm David Brown, the host of Wonderree's podcast business wars. And in our new season, Walmart must fight off target, the new discounter that's both savvy and fashion forward. Listen to business wars on Amazon music or wherever you get your podcasts. It's too early to quit on yourself. It was only a couple of weeks ago now that we were all talking about how 2022 was going to be the year. The year for our goals and resolutions. We were talking about our plans for joining this gym, we're starting that project. We were talking about our plans for joining this jam, we're starting that project.

We were so ambitious. So naive. But 19 days into 2022, the new year novelty is wearing off, and our motivation is too. A couple of years ago, a study of 800 million people across the globe found that January 19th is the day that most people quit on their New Year's resolutions. In January 19th has since been dubbed Quitter's Day. Disgraceful, Marcus Aurelius would say, for the soul to give up when the body is still going strong. So goes for giving up on the year so early. It is yet young. You still have time. So much time. Don't quit on yourself.

And that is why we chose today to do something that we've never done here before at Daily Still. We're relaunching the Daily Still a new year, new U challenge. In the past, it's always been a live challenge for the first three weeks of the year. You either got on or you missed it. But this year, we've decided we wanted to help more people. We got so many requests about it that we felt really excited to do it. And we wanted to help people avoid quitting on themselves and falling back to their old,

easier, more convenient, bad habits. So for one week only, you can sign up and immediately begin the 2022 New Year New Year challenge at your own pace. We recorded edited timestamps my live Q&As. That's three hours of me answering questions on a wide variety of topics, including how I applied stoicism to my own life. My goals, my practices, my lessons from the challenge this year.

We talk about what to do when you're overwhelmed and you've taken on too much ways to rethink your habits, routines when life gets too chaotic. So much more, you get the benefit of all the other people who've been through the challenge and what they've learned and shared as well. Additionally, the new year, new year challenge participants get 21 custom challenges delivered daily that will help you stop procrastinating gain clarity on the life you want to live learn new skills quit harmful vices make amends be more courageous break destructive

thought patterns I was saying in the run up to the challenge that I felt like this 2022 new year new challenges are best challenge yet well now you don't have to take our word for it we've been blown away about what people are saying and you can see that in the challenge and Anyways, I'm honored to share this with you. I'm excited to bring it back for this one week period I've never done it before. I hope you like it and I'd love to see you Join that course of people who are making changes. You can sign up at dailystilic.com slash challenge. Again, this is just for a week. If you procrastinated earlier in the year, if you told yourself you were going to get around

to it, you missed it. Well, you got a second chance. You've been given a do-over, a reprieve for the new year, and we'd love to have you take advantage of that. You can sign up at dailystilic.com slash challenge. And as always, if you're a daily stilic, life member, that's dailystil.com slash challenge. And as always, if you're a daily stoke life member, that's dailystokelife.com. You get this challenge and all the challenges that we have planned for the year for free. So check that out dailystokelife.com and of course dailystoke.com slash challenge.

Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another episode of the daily stic Podcast. I went to a dinner. This would have been like four, five months ago, hosted by a former guest of the podcast. This is one of the early dinners where some folks were getting together to discuss this thing they were thinking about starting called the University of Austin. You might have read some of the press about it.

Arthur Brooks, another podcast guest was there, and some other folks. I always like being at dinners with interesting people, whether I agree with them or not, whether I know them or not. I always like people who are pushing the envelope, thinking about things at a deep level, experts, or well regarded in their fields. As I was outside on the patio, I bumped into

Barry Weiss, and I'm a big Barry Weiss fan, I would say. I really enjoyed her book How to Fight Antisemitism, which I carry here at the Pannon porch. I've read her pieces when she was a staff writer and editor for the opinion section of the New York Times. Previously, I read some of her stuff when it was published at the Wall Street Journal. I don't agree with her on everything, but I found her to be really interesting, really thoughtful, and really fun to be around. I ended up doing her podcast afterwards, which was like three hours. We went way in depth. And I had heard from her and her wife, Nelly Bulls, that they had liked my book Conspiracy. So anyways, I always like when you bump into someone and a new friendship emerges. Again, even if you think differently, even if you live differently, even if you are in different worlds.

I hope we can say a friendship came out of it. That's where this episode of the podcast comes from. Barry Weiss is a graduate of Columbia University. She's the winner of the Reason Foundations 2018 Bastia Prize. And her book, as I said, How to Fight Antisemitism was a Naton Notable book. And a winner of the 2019 National Jewish Book Award. You can follow her at berrywice.com

and on Twitter, she is at BerryWice. And I recommend checking out her sub-stack, which is really interesting. Berrywice.substac.com. She's written a bunch of pieces. I again don't agree with all of them, but I always get something out of reading them. And of course,

but Daily Stoke, I'm a big lover of newsletters. I think it is a superior way to consume great writing. And so check out her substac, follow her at Barry Weiss, and I hope you will enjoy this interview, which was a lot of fun. So Barry, why can't you and your journalistic peers just get along? Why is it so hard for you guys to be friends? I don't find it hard to be friends with most of them. I mean, I think that there's a small sort of cabal or minority group.

Cabal, I guess, makes it sound like a conspiracy, but it's not. It's just normal social behavior. Who really doesn't like when people that don't agree with their view of the world, and in fact, like every single detail of their view of the world kind of, you know, come into their playground, piss of them off.

You largely agree on probably most issues, right? Isn't that the weirdest part? Like, I mean, it's not like there are like some outsider who came out of nowhere and it doesn't make, of course you wouldn't get along. You've got along for a really long time and you share very similar backgrounds and beliefs and lifestyles and all these things.

Yes, we all like our seasonal bespoke things, furniture wise, food wise and the rest. We like a, you know, like a restaurant with a good ambiance. Yeah, we're all like, you know, middle class to upper middle class, well-educated, and so on and so forth. That's all true. But I think it's a mistake to suggest that this is about like policy and whether or not we agree on abortion or we agree on game marriage or we agree on criminal justice reform

or legalizing marijuana or all the things that would come to mind that of course I agree with those people on. I think what this is about, and I'm curious if you see it the same way, is about kind of like a bedrock fundamental assumptions about the goodness or badness of liberalism is how I would describe it. Yeah, but I guess I think that's it, but but largely most of those issues that you agree with are downstream from a broad agreement on sort of Western values, I would feel. I don't know. I mean,

ask the people that we're referring to in this sort of like weird and co-eat way. Do they believe that America is fundamentally a force for good? Do they believe fundamentally that America is, you know, is a country that has allowed for the thriving of frankly people like me and people like them in a way that for you other countries in the world would allow for. I'm curious what they would say. I mean, to me, one of the things that was kind of like, I don't know what the right word here would be, tone deaf, not self-aware, shocking, is some of the arguments that I hadn't really heard since Freshman

Year of College, which is to say these just kind of like morally, culturally, relative arguments that all cultures are equally good, that you know, female genital mutilation is kind of just as good as not. I'm only being like slightly hypergalic there. All of a sudden I was like, oh, these people actually seem to believe that or at least they ape believing that. Yeah, it's weird though. Maybe part of the problem is these sort of mansion questions like it is America of course, for good in the world. Because it's complicated.

Of course, America can be a force for good in the world and has also at other times been a force that's not good in the world and has also at other times been force that's not good in the world. When America is doing what it should be, it is a force for good in the world. But that's not the discussion we're having. We end up sort of getting caught up in in what I might describe as sort of the narcissism of small difference. Like instead of coming, instead of talking about where we disagree on these little things, we end up sort of, or yeah, like I would probably agree, most people, I would probably think

that most people agree that say, general mutilation is bad, but we end up arguing with people who have nothing to do with that. You know what I mean? We end up arguing with our colleagues or co-workers on things that we are in largely agreement with on most issues. Yeah, I mean, but here's so there was an op-ed that was going around from the times the other day about this woman who had built one of those like adorable little libraries. Do you see this, Abad? This is a sentence that was written in this piece in the New York Times, by a not just a random person, by a Times contributor. She talks about how she built this library and she is trying to protect sort of black space.

And she says, what I resented was not the specific couple. It was their whiteness. And my feelings of helplessness at not knowing how to maintain the integrity of a black space that I had created. She also writes this of this couple. One morning, Glitz got my window, I saw a young white couple stopped at the library. Instantly, I was flooded with the motions, astonishment, then resentment, then astonishment at my resentment. It all converged into a silent scream in my head,

get off my lawn. It didn't matter that I owned my house as many of my neighbors do. Generations of racism, Jim Crow, disinvestment, and redlining have meant that we don't really control our own spaces. When you, that's not about the narcissism of small differences. Anyone's entitled to think whatever crazy bigoted crap they want in their head, fine. The idea that this is an institution that is elevating and giving real estate to bold, unadulterated racism that's dehumanizing a group because of their color. Like, that's to me when it shifts beyond what I, like you, used to describe a few years ago as the narcissism of small differences. That's really interesting. Yeah, there was a time piece I saw

that struck me the other day. I was actually talking to a Republican Congressman, I know about it. It was this piece about where the pro-choice movement went wrong. That was the headline. And again, I think wherever you come down on the pro-choice or pro-life issue, I thought the article itself was illustrated. Because basically what happened is there was some conference call between a bunch of abortion activists on the left, talking about some laws that they'd passed in Texas, which I personally am opposed to. And some troll gets to, yeah, some troll gets on the Zoom call and he calls the head of Planned Parenthood, who I believe is black, the N word, like several times. And so they're kind of scrambling, just as you and I would be scrambling, if some like weird person started

interrupting this call and saying horrible things. And so at first she tries to like sort of like push through it and then they end up having to cancel the call. Anyways, I would have thought this would have been a moment. They all sort of rally around or being attacked, whatever. But if you read the piece, the fascinating part was plan parenthood ends up apologizing for not protecting the safe space and not addressing the racist comments and how this there, you know, does violence on the people on the call. I thought it was really illustrated because it sort of captured where certain movements are, which is they're attacked by an outside group, that wishes them ill.

And instead of going like, hey, although we might have different experiences in different beliefs and different world views on this call, we're all largely aligned on this issue, so then when we're attacked by an outsider, we'll rally together, solve this problem, then we'll deal with our distinctions later. Instead, it spurs a bunch of infighting within the group that, of course, doesn't make their actual objective of protecting abortion rights any more possible. And I thought that was really illustrated

because it was one of microcosm of the infighting that I think the left deals with. But it also kind of, to me, was a microcosm of like America in the middle of this pandemic, which is this outside thing happens that's nobody's fault. And again, instead of rallying together. Well, to be clear, it is somebody's fault. Yes. What I mean, it is somebody else. Yes.

What I mean, it's not like a person is doing. It's the thing that's happened as close to, it's as close to aliens invading as we'll ever experience in our lifetime. And instead of being able to rally together, we then get caught up in these distinctions that not only drive a support, but also exacerbate the exact issue that we're

supposedly the victim of. I have to look up the abortion store. I thought the one you were going to set up for was the op-ed that was just the, I don't know if you noticed the discussion over the past few days on Twitter. I'm you're healthier than me and much more steeped in stoicism and hopefully will intervene in my life to make me as disciplined as you are. But in any case, if you were on Twitter over the weekend, there was this whole conversation stoked by an op-ed in the Times course about from someone who adopted. And it was basically like, I wish that like the trauma of adoption is so horrible

that, you know, non-existence would have been a better alternative. And it led to this wild conversation where it's like, oh, now we're at a point in the discourse where we need to justify existence as being a fundamental good. It's just, it's a little mind bending. That is fascinating to me because I experienced it when I was writing the Gokr book. You realize that ultimately the sort of real victims of this way of thinking is primarily the people who, like it's not fun to be those people.

Like the sort of the cycle of New York Times op-ed Twitter outrage, weird self-flag relation that comes after, and then sort of repeat ad nauseam, I thought like when you left the times, I was happy for you in the sense that it felt like you were cutting free of a not-so-fun place to be. Yeah, I ejected myself. I will say that cycle that you're talking about when you're inside the institution, that one or 20 others we could point to, it's so hard not to get caught up in the spin cycle. And, you know, there are times that I remember I'm so embarrassed now where there was a wedding weekend,

a family wedding, and I was in Nashville. I never been in Nashville. I was excited to go to Nashville with barbecue, but I could barely get out of bed. I was so flattened by one of these cycles, so depressed, so humiliated, humiliated, and embarrassed, and all of the worst things that we can feel. And looking back at it, I'm like, oh, that never happens to me now.

Right. And it's amazing. Yeah, it's like a sinking. It's like a ship is sinking and you have to like kick out just far enough that it doesn't suck you down into it. There's like a toxicity and a self-loathing and just fundamental unhealthiness that seems to define, I don't think it's just a left wing thing,

but it seems this sort of people who live their life primarily through the internet outrage machine, the political internet outrage machine, it's just not a way to live, I don't think. Well, it's a choice, but I don't, to me, it felt, I'll just say that I'm not a person prone to being down or depressed, thank God. But when I think back over the kind of, like,

I don't know, the lows that I reached and the despondent feelings that I had, you know, I don't wish that on anyone. It's not, it's just so, it's just such a, such a time waste. It's such a waste of our time here not to sound too cheesy about it. No, I think that's right. It's like, sometimes I'll look at, when I do go on like sometimes I'll look at when I do go on Twitter, I'll look at like the amount of tweets that a person has sent. And it's just like, it is an interesting representation of how much time a specific person has spent shouting into a void of nothingness over things that there's no way they remember tweet 11,013, you know.

Yeah, I mean, if there's any sort of silver lining, Nellie, and I were just talking this morning about, you know, whether or not, like, House and Sorious Twitter is going to become under the new CEO, and I think it could be bad based on people that have already been kicked off in the past few days. Mike Salana had a great column about it, my newsletter. And I was like, well, maybe I would, you know, maybe I'll sort of, you know,

find myself in the maw of it. Maybe that will be a liberating thing for me, not to say that I'm cheering, you know, since Soriasness on that platform or any other, but, you know, it's interesting to sort of like, look at your life at a distance, be like, well, would it be like, if I just like wasn't allowed

on Twitter? Well, I was thinking about that. Like the test I think of addictions is often like if it was invented today, would you use it? Right? Like if they invented alcohol today, we'd have a very different relationship with it than like the fact that it's sort of always been with us. Like, what would be different?

Well, we would look so much more clearly at the negative side effects of it. We wouldn't integrate it into our lives the way that it sort of is. If suddenly this new thing, like you look at the reaction to say vaping and the somewhat negative effects it has on like young people, if alcohol was invented by a tech company today,

I think we'd have a large debate about whether that something like that should exist or not. Same with, but same with social media, right? Like, why not just liberate yourself from it right now, though? Oh, because I am addicted to it. Oh, 100%. It's like a hit. It's like, I'm like, I've never done serious drugs. I've never had much interest, because I guess I'm lame, and also just scared of what it will do to my brain. But in the meantime, I'm rotting my brain from within because of my addiction to this thing.

Oh, 100% am addicted. So now I'm sitting in front of someone who seems to have mastered his desires and addictions and proclivities and I'm curious like what should I do? Well, I wouldn't say that I've mastered them at all. In fact, because I haven't mastered them, I have to have a lot of rules about like how I use them. That's what I mean by mastered. I mean, like you've set up guard rails for yourself that seem to make you an exceptionally productive person. Well, I don't even know the login to most of the social media accounts.

Like I just don't have access to them. For a long time, I would just, for instance, like on Instagram, I just had it on my wife's phone. So I had to be like, can I have your phone for a minute, which kept me honest and more ways than one, I think. But the idea being that like, since I didn't have it in my pocket at all times, I couldn't get the hit whenever I wanted,

which was helpful. And then I think it's ultimately, because it's not a real addiction in the way that like, you would have to detox from heroin or something. It's mostly the habit formation. Like you sit down at your computer, what are the first tabs that you open, or when you pull up your phone, what are the first things you click? And so I think a big part of it is just creating just enough artificial friction

or boundaries that it's not instinctually what you do. And then you realize like, oh, my life is better, and I get more done the less I use these things. And then you realize, oh, my life is better and I get more done the less I use these things. I'd never go on Twitter, especially at night and feel like I'm so glad that I did that. I'm always more unhappy. Right, I'm a fan, but I don't know enough about your personal history to know.

You ever seriously enthralled to these platforms and needed to do that for yourself? To me, it's less the platforms and it's more just work in general in which like the platforms are a form of work. I think that's what's so insidious about those platforms is that we tell ourselves it's part of our job, right?

So it's like, I'm not just entertaining myself or arguing about politics. Like, this is my job as a writer or a thinker or a even like as an informed citizen, I have to do it. So I think for me, it was just like the incisive checking. But one of the benefits of having kids is you like, you realize who you're stealing the time from in a way that you would never, you would, you like, apparently I'll steal an unlimited amount of time for my wife. I'll steal an unlimited amount of time for myself. But a five-year-old, I start to be like, oh, this is shitty. Like, this is mean. Okay, so this, so I was saying before we started recording that I read an essay of years that I

loved and I sent it to a bunch of people and there was also a poem in it that I sent to a bunch of other people, my like fancier friends who I was like they just need the original poem that this is based on. And do you know what do you know what piece I'm referring to? Is this the work family scene? Scene. Yes. And well, I'll restate the argument to you to make sure I got it right, which is based, it's so simple, but it was so like, aha, which was, you know, there are three things,

work family scene, scene, you call it scene, but I'd call it friend, social life, frankly, like Twitter and like online friend, life too. And you're like, you get to pick two. That's it. No way around it. And I was like, oh, really? And then as I was reading it, I'm like, yeah, you do get to pick two. And that's one of the shifts that I've sort of begun to feel in my own life. We're not of children yet, but want to try to hard, I guess, when you're two women. And

you know, as I've sort of been throwing myself more into my work and building a company and the rest, I'm like, oh, wait, like, I need to go out all the time. I used to be with my friends all the time, like, what happened at that part of my life? And I don't know, maybe that's just a natural shift that happens if you get older in the majority of us, you know, married, how kids, whatever. Ah, the Bahamas. What if you could live in a penthouse above the crystal clear ocean working during the day and partying at night with your best friends and have it be 100% paid for?

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of investors blaming him for their crypto losses. From Bloomberg and Wondering, comes Spellcaster, a new six-part docu-series about the meteoric rise and spectacular fall of FTX, and its founder, Sam Beckman-Freed. Follow Spellcaster wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, prime members, you can listen to episodes ad-free on Amazon Music. Download the Amazon Music app today. No, I love that. And I feel like if I was doing the piece over again,

I would have made scene, social media more a part of the scene because I think it is. Like I remember when... It is. I remember when Clubhouse came out and people were like, oh, you got to join this thing. And I was like, I don't have time to attend a virtual daily

conference. Like, what are you talking about? This sounds horrible. And I was like, some of you have children. Like, when are you going in these rooms and just listening to people talk for hours? But because we can tell ourselves it's work, that's one of the ways I think we lie to ourselves about the things that are actually just sort of about keeping up with

being cool or whatever it is at pretty immense either personal or professional cost. When you were sort of, you said in the piece that you were never really a seen person, although I did meet you at a sort of social event, the one time that I met you, but you did also say that you're a cram engine and you're always doing your work over their kids. Like, was there actually ever a shift for you or were you always primarily work and relationship and now family? Well, I think one of the benefits of being an introvert

is you're sort of naturally averse to seeing anyway. But I would just say yes to stuff because it seemed cool and it seemed irresponsible to say no. Like not irresponsible, but it was almost like pretentious to say no. Like, I think when I lived in New York, I struggled with this the most because stuff was always happening.

Like, there was always something better that was worth doing at all times. Whereas like in Texas, I mean, there is cool stuff happening, but like, a lot of the cool stuff would involve me getting on a plane. So it's just like not really worth it. So I think, again, having some sort of artificial boundaries that make it just increase the hurdle a little bit,

it filters it just enough that then I have the self-control to do it. But the pandemic was a big shift for me in that just a bunch of stuff that I used to do unthinkingly became harder. And then once it was removed, I was like, oh, I don't miss that at all. But like what?

I'm a travel mostly, like traveling, speaking, going meetings, or like, hey, so and so is doing this really cool thing at this place, at this time. And you're like, well, I can't miss out on that. But of course, you can miss out on it. And if you didn't get invited, you wouldn't have missed it at all.

But the thing that I struggle with that, you don't seem to have as much of a problem with it. I wonder if it's an introversion thing, but I also wonder if it's a gender thing, is it seems obnoxious to say, like, how do you say no to a amazing invitations, but also be like your friends who you love. Like how do you slip yourself

from the feeling of obligation and burden that I literally wake up and I wake up Ryan at four in the morning thinking about texts and emails I haven't replied to? That's my life, okay? I just read this great book by Evan Thomas about Sandra Day O'Connor, who I knew next to nothing about.

And they had this quote, I think I'm gonna use it in the book that I'm writing right now. But one of her clerics was like, you know what I love about Sandra Day O'Connor? She's the only woman I've ever met who just says no. She never says sorry first. And I was like, oh, I love that.

And so I do imagine there is some, I think there's an extra gender pressure, for sure, sort of agreeableness or not wanting to offend people or, or, you know, feeling like, you know, if you already are getting fewer than your fair share of invitations, Each one feels like more important. You know what I mean? Like if you feel like you're being excluded a little bit, then when the guys ask you to do something, it feels like it's actually gotta put.

Yeah. For me, it's more about agreeableness. It's more about, you know, if people, and this might be, you know, my own neuroticism, paranoia, Jewishness, I don't know, it's like, you want to be agreeable because you want to be liked because you walk into a room and maybe you don't have the best Google search. And, oh my God, people are like, oh, she's great, you know, which, it's so it's like you want, like, I think there's an extra pressure to be I'm inclined to want to be

agreeable anyway and I'm unlike you you know an extrovert so I like live off of interaction from people but I find it so hard you know you told me about that sign that you have next to your desk I think it's there yeah yeah yeah it just says no and I think it was the I think you took it from Oliver Sacks Is that right? Yeah, I remember that and I I came back after I met you and I was like isn't and I told Nelly my wife And I told people that are working with me. I'm like isn't that amazing? They were like well, you could do that. Do you think about what it costs you to say yes all the time? Yes, and I've gotten I should say I've gotten

so much better than what I used to, but the feeling that cripples me is the feeling of disappointing people. So it used to be that I had much more bandwidth, let's say, to talk to sophomore in college who was getting canceled for some bullshit reason and needed advice. Right? Like, I love connecting with people like that, and that was a huge part of my life. was getting canceled for some bullshit reason and needed advice, right? I love connecting with people like that, and that was a huge part of my life. So those emails of help never stopped,

but now I'm like, oh, I'm disappointing all of these people. I can't do hand-to-hand combat in the same way, because I'm like, no, now I gotta be strategy, grand strategy, but it's like, the hand-to-hand combat is still necessary. So what do I do? Yeah. How do I not be like a horrible disappointment? Yeah, I mean, one of the ways I think about that is like, how do you, what are you willing to do? And then what are you not willing to do? So like for me, like, I just hate

getting on the phone. Like that, I hate getting on the phone because then it has to be scheduled. And then once it's scheduled, then it sits in the calendar, then I have anxiety about it. Yes. And you feel trapped. It's like, if there's, if I have a free day, which never happens, and then I see it like 4 p.m. there's a column like, yeah, stay sucks. Now my whole day is around that thing. Yes. So, so it's like, okay, I don't get on the phone. I don't schedule stuff. But like, if it's like, okay, I don't get on the phone. I don't schedule stuff. But like if you send me an email, I'll reply.

And then it was like, I used to write these big replies and it's like, now I'll give you two sentences, right? So it's just like, I'm not gonna give you nothing, but here's what I'm able to give. And then I think it comes down to some boundaries, you know? Like, and then being willing to be the bad guy when you enforce those boundaries. I think COVID was helpful for that too, especially with young kids, because I do have some of that agreeableness. So, like, you know, like, you're you bump into someone

and then you don't know where they've been or whatever and And they're like, oh, let me give you a hug. And you're like, no, we're not gonna do that. Like, but if it was me, if it was just me as like a single person, and I'm talking more like earlier in the pandemic. But the point was like, again, because you had kit, because I had kids, I had to be like, well, this isn't really about me. What is my obligation to this other person?

So externalizing a little bit was super helpful because then I could be like, like my wife was telling me, she was reading this thing about like, what you're supposed to say, like when you drop your kids off at a sleepover or whatever, like all the things that you have to worry about as a parent,

like are there guns in this person's house? Like, were they a child molester or whatever? And that like as a parent, you can't be like uncomfortable about talking about things because the stakes are very high. So you have to like go up to someone and be like, hey, do you have guns in your house? And like, you were you were gonna molest my kid?

It's just like a natural banter with the kid. Well, no, she was like, as you're dropping the kid out as you're a kid off, you go, hey, by the way if anyone touches you You just like give me a head like you have to talk but the point is I'm totally butchering this But the point is being like a shameless parent about it like not giving a crap about what other people think because the Stinks of the issue are really high to me. I think the pandemic and then becoming a parent's been really helpful It's like yeah, you're asking me to do this thing that if we actually fleshed out what an imposition it would be, you wouldn't ask.

So I'm going to have to be clear about why I'm not doing this. And I'm just going to have to enforce the boundaries. So it just made me better at just sort of being upfront and straightforward and then not giving a shit about what people think. Which is ironic for you, because that's something I wanted to talk about. You clearly are not afraid to be disliked. I mean, this is like a whole mess about it.

No, but that's what's so weird. You don't know me well enough to know that the idea that I am somehow by nature, a contrarian person, or that I'm comfortable being dis, I mean, obviously I'm comfortable being just like to something extent, although it's really overstated. Like my life is mostly really lucky

and blessed and warm and surrounded by people that do happen to like me, but I like being liked. Like when I meet other people who maybe would fall into like a similar lane to me professionally or in terms of public perception, I'm always like, oh, wow, we're so different. I really like getting along with people. I'm very uncomfortable.

I mean, I think compared to most women, I would say I'm more confrontational, but like in the scheme of personality spectrum, not at all. Well, and I didn't mean to say you're like an aggressive person who picks fights. I just be like, no, no, no. If something is true, you will write it down. Like you, you, you, you, you say what needs to be said in your writing. So it's, it's ironic that then if like you have to say no and that's rude to someone,

you're reluctant to do that, even though it's the same choice. Sort of. I think the thing that allows me to be able to say it in my writing or in a talk or out loud in public is that I am super clear about the things that really matter to me and that I anchor my life around and frankly that I'd be willing to like sacrifice for.

And I'm super clear that being popular as wonderful wonderful as that seems, is not as important to me as fighting for things that I really truly believe in, and that I think are at stake right now. And so that is like in that situation, I'm like, oh, I know what the right choice is. It's a little different when I'm like, wait, I could be getting on the 10th call this week with a college student that needs me, if that makes sense. It makes total sense. I think what that is is an issue of identity. So your identity as a writer is a person who,

that your identity that it comes with certain obligations and duties and a certain sort of authenticity and honesty, but then often our identity as a person can be separate from that. So you can be like sort of a fearless warrior in what you do. And then someone can be more meek in their personal life. But what's ironic here is that they're related to each other. Because if you appear on every podcast that asks you, or you say yes to every, you know, request for counseling or help, then you can't do the thing that you do.

And so when I go like, yeah, I have to do it because it's like being a parent is important to me, that's part of my identity, or like being a writer is an important part of my identity. And this thing is stealing from that thing. So I'm okay being the bad guy to protect this other thing. I'm building a company with my wife, that's pretty weird. Oh, I didn't. I didn't know

that you guys were working together on that. Yeah. Yeah. This is the media company. Yeah. Like, Nellie and I are working together now, which is great. We were just sitting the other day and being like, oh, like, could we have imagined? Like, certainly not when we met five years ago, but a year ago, what our life would be. It's just, it's a, it's like things have changed in a radical way, you know. You guys work well together, or is it very challenging? I think we work extremely well together.

I, you'd have to ask her, but we had friends over the other night, and they were like, how are you doing this? We were like, oh, not good, what, it's like actually going extremely well. And I think the reason for that is we have very different identities as writers. Like, Nellie's a stylist.

Nellie is like, she's an incredible, like, she, for her part of the pleasure in it and part of the reason she became a writer and a journalist is like, she wants to like go to the spice market and like taste everything and then bring it to you. And for me, it's like, no, I became a writer because I believe in a certain set of things. Sure. And I want to like push those in the world and try and ship the culture. And so she gets to be the like, you know,

the like fancy precious cupcake. And I can like be the cake stand. And I'm totally happy with that. and I can like be the cake stand and I'm totally happy with that. It's, I think the other interesting shift for writers of which you're experimenting with and exploring is like the writer has their own boss and the sort of writer as entrepreneur. Like I think the sub-sec stuff is very interesting because,

when you kind of did it like before any of us. Yeah, my path has been a little bit different and a little bit that way, but it's interesting to watch some of these people talk and then people in journalism sort of talk about it from a very angry way. Like, suddenly people are making all this money and it's like, no, your work was earning

the same amount of money before. Just there were several middlemen between you and the customer who were keeping all that money. And that's why you were only making $80,000 a year as a salary employee of insert institution. And now you're the media company and it's a pretty lean, efficient,

and maybe even profitable business. Yeah, the challenge I think is that it's unfairly rewards, and maybe it's maybe fairs the wrong word. But if you are in this model, it doesn't work for the people that make the meat of the protein of a place like the New York Times or the Washington Post or the journal, which is like the New York Times or the Washington Post or the Journal, which is like, you know, most obviously,

like we're writers, we notice bylines, but most people who read the Times and they're reading about like the way that apples caving to the CCP in China, they're not noticing like, oh, Jack Nick has wrote that story. They're just like, oh, that's news that's important to me. And the person, this new mode,

and who knows how long it will last for, and when it will morph, rewards people that have already sort of created a brand for themselves as a name. And so I'm really curious to see, and I'm trying to do this somewhat in the writers and reporters that were elevating inside like the Common Sense newsletter newsletter universe are writers that

don't yet have that brand. And thinking like, oh, how do we elevate this person that's writing about this issue in a way that we think is really, really smart and deserves a wider audience? And isn't it also tricky though, because as a writer who writes for an institution, your job is just to say whatever the story is supposed to be. But then when you have paying customers, this is something I have to think about at the least, still, I've had to set up certain boundaries again, so I don't see what people think of what I'm saying. And I don't even see necessarily the financial impact of certain decisions. I don't want to know how many people unsubscribed because of this thing that I wrote

because that will make it harder for me to say what I think is true because now I'll have this financial filter. But how do you guard against, like so you're telling me you don't look at the numbers on a particular post or podcast or a story? Yeah, like I don't look at the day-to-day numbers and I don't look at the day-to-day numbers, and I don't look at the day-to-day responses.

Like if people reply to a daily stoic email, I don't want to see it, because I don't want them, I don't want to see them telling me that I'm awesome, but I really don't want them telling me that they unsubscribe because I said insert political thing that I think is important, because then I'll be less likely to say that in the future because I'll be thinking about what it will cost me.

You have to, I think, maintain some bubble of purity. I completely agree with you, but I think you would, if you're, I mean, I'm not suggesting you're dishonest, but if you're really honest, you know in your heart and in your gut where your audience basically is and the things that would be sort of really out of bounds for them and that would cut like the problem of audience capture that we can all see like so clearly in a case

like Fox or CNN or the New York Times. It exists for all of us no matter what Like no one has solved for that problem. I find, I'll give you an example. It did a like a symposium the other day on vaccine mandates. And I asked a range of people that I thought were really interesting, including Adrian Vermeul from the right at Harvard who out of like a common good sort of Catholic world view supported the mandates and also Glenn Greenwald. You know, we disagree on a million things,

but I thought, you know, he is a very consistent civil libertarian, be interesting to get. I got any time I touched the issue of COVID vaccines mandates from any perspective. Like this is the thing that causes so many people to click on subscribe. Yeah. And I've already felt like I'm like,

but this is really interesting. Like Australia's like locked down. What's going on in Australia? I want to go there. And I already feel myself having to like tamp down the risk aversion that I feel bubbling up because I'm running a business. It's I'm obligated to see what my subscribers like

and don't like, right? Like I just, I guess what I'm saying is I think, I think it's impossible to avoid it, even if you're not, even if you're building the guardrails. And for someone like a Ben Shapiro or, you know, Barcel Sports New York Times, like, their audiences are clear. I think for me, it hasn't even been yet a year that I've been doing this newsletter a few months on the podcast.

Like, my audience is unclear to me still. And I don't fall, I think like you Ryan, into like a clear lane politically. And I think that makes it a more difficult needle to threat because it's like, I know I have disillusioned liberals, but they're liberals. And I know I have people in the center, right? And like, what does that mean? And by going one direction or the other, it could be, you can get a sense of like

how being clearly in one camp or another is a clear, safer, financial decision. And to to to to to maintain the ambiguity or the scientific contradictions, but the independence to be able to pick and choose. The tricky thing is that is both financially risky, but it's also the sole reason that you exist. You know what I mean?

If you were just like everyone else, you wouldn't stand out. And so there is this tension between, you know, there's that line from Henry Ford, which I don't think he actually said. But like, if I'd listened to my customers, I would have made a faster horse. That's what he said about the invention of the car. So it's like, you also have to understand that people don't really know what they want, right? They know what they think they think they're. That's like the Steve Jobs thing. Yeah. Yeah. And you have to realize that you could, by telling people

what they want today, you could, that might be the safe thing, but it also may well be the most dangerous thing as views shift over time. So you don't want to be someone who was very of the moment in 2020 or 2021, but you don't realize that you're actually committing slow-emotion career suicide that's gonna come back and get you down the road. To totally agree.

And I think, yeah, but it's an interesting, so the beauty of being at a place like the journal or the Times, right, is that you're insulated from this information. And, you know, obviously different companies at different models. I've read in your book about, you know, the Gaucker leaderboard and the truth is, like, you know, when a story of yours goes viral at the time, even if you're not like in Parsley or whatever the data center was, it had a different name at the time, even if you're not in parsley or whatever the data center was, it had a different name at the journal. But the good editors would kind of insulate you from that.

And explain that, you know, a good publication means a mix of things. I'll give you, I mean, which I'm extremely interested in China as a subject. China and a lot of other foreign places, foreign stories do extremely badly with my readers and listeners. They're just not as interested. If I did culture war stuff every single day and what's going on at this crazy prep school or crazy college, I'd be very rich lady.

But I feel for the sake of my soul and integrity and good journalism and also like I think that the job of an editor is to like curate what they think is important and interesting for reader like yeah I'm going to take a hit when I do those kinds of stories but I'm not going to stop doing them. How do you manage that? I imagine it would be sensitive in your space where like the culture war stuff. Let's say you write about this or that. You're coming at it from a place of intellectual curiosity, let's say or nuance or whatever, but you understand that it's also playing to a certain percentage of the population that's

like acting in bad faith or that you're utterly misaligned with on everything else. How do you think about, and I feel like some of the people in the sort of intellectual dark web have not navigated as well, how do you manage to say what you think, do what you think is important, but then not be used essentially as like a cat's paw for like bad people who want bad things. The easy answer for me is to say to you, I don't think about it. I just, you know, try

and pursue the truth and try and pursue. Of course, I think about it. Of course, I do. There's a reason that I, you know, I get invited on a lot of shows on a certain network as you can imagine. And I haven't gone on them ever. And of course, I'm aware when I do a story of the way that it can be used. What that's one of the reasons that I think it's really important for me to both a, personally, appear as a person in full with all of my contradictions

and all of the views that I have on any number of topics that would make me detestable to the people that like my coverage of the culture war. But also I think it's about what I was saying before, which is like the like the right mix of stories. And I think like I'm going to create an immersive world for people. Like the kind of world I would want to go into and feel like, okay, yes, I had my broccoli and I had my steak. Oh my God, but that doughnut's amazing. Right now I'm struggling with the doughnut category. And the reason for it is that people came to me once I left the times for culture war

rees. I mean, I think it's a limited way of explaining it. But let's just say that. But I know that if that's all people get, a, it will give them a total misperception of the world. It may kind of radicalize them in a way that I think is irresponsible and also just inaccurate. And, you know, it's a challenge, though, because just as an example, I assume that my reader is also reading mainstream media. And I assume that they're getting tons of coverage about January 6th and Trump and all

of the rest. And so, like, can I really do that better than the New York Times can? Better than the Washington Bureau. Like, I don't think so. So in part, it's like, I think this will evolve over time and the more that I can really create a full universe and not just like a stream that I'm very good at, then I think that I'll start to do some of those stories

that right now I've sort of ceded to the mainstream if that makes sense. It does, it does. Yeah, it feels, that feels like an obligation that one would have to have in your position, that not all these sort of outsideery intellectual figures are as cognizant about. And I see the damage that that does

because I get the crazy emails from their fans sending me weird stuff. I think you have to think about the context in which the things you're making are being used. Yeah, I agree with that. And for me, one of the challenges right now is that people are coming to me for a certain thing and they get an email from berrywightsatsubstack.com. But it's like, but I'm also interested in like satire

and shouts and murmurs type pieces. And there's just right now there are so many kinds of things that have no home in the publications where they a decade ago would have. And I'm really interested in publishing a much broader range of things, but I feel like I need to almost acclimate my audience to getting used to that.

And that, for me, begins with publishing people sort of in publishing independent, free thinking, heterodox people on a range of different subjects. And that I think I've been able to do extremely well. And I'm not sure there's anyone else on substack that's quite doing that. Yeah, the heterodox stuff is cool. One of the things Peter Tiel told me,

and it's funny that you brought up, that you don't see yourself as a contrarian. He said, like, it can't just be like putting a minus sign in front of like whatever the status quo is or whatever conventional wisdom is. I love that, yeah. What, there, there seems to be, it's almost like politics of spite on both sides

where they're like, oh, here's what's so and so things or here's what some people think, I'm gonna think of the opposite of that, even if the opposite of that is really stupid or obviously wrong. Yeah, what would be an example? Like, like, not getting the Vax or something. Yeah, what would be an example, like, like, not getting the Vax or something?

Yeah, I mean, Vax scene is one, but just this like, in reflexive sort of opposition to, on both sides, to what data might be or something that makes you uncomfortable, like, it doesn't seem like a fun way to live. And it also, I think, can drive you just in pretty dark intellectual corners also. Yeah, I also just don't think it's generative. It's very easy to be anti-woke and dunk on that all day long.

And to some extent, I think it's important, because I think that ideology has a tremendous amount of power. I really do. So I think it's important to expose it. But I also think there are other things. China and the rise of China being one AI being another. And there's so many things happening right now. We're living in like a really transformational moment. And so, yeah, I know how to do that kind of story, the culture war story so well, and I know how well that it does. But I hope people that have been reading me and listening to me see that that's really not what I'm all about. And in fact, like on balance, it's just a slice of what I'm trying to do. Well, and some things are just kind of,

they're pretty straightforward and simple. So like the Trump one is a good example where it's like, oh, maybe actually he's playing this like four-dimensional chest and he's like a G, it's like, he could also, he's probably just an asshole, dude. It's not like, it's not that complicated. So that's why I've been in the signal group

where people are like, do you think he's running? What do you think he's met? And like, he says everything that comes into his mind. Of course he is. Yeah. What are you talking about? How are we still trying to imagine that this person is bling some kind of,

yeah, four-dimensional chest as you put it? Yeah, you can end up overthinking yourself to a very stupid place. Yes, I agree with that. I agree with that. But it's hard because, yeah, Trump's a really good example. I've just, I wrote obviously pieces about him when I was at the times, but I really haven't since the election in part because I'm like, what is like one of the tests that My earliest editors at the Wall Street Journal would say to me is okay, you're you're 20 years old

You know, we don't give a rat's ass like what you think about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict We're gonna get the players involved in that conflict to write about it. So like the Test that they always gave me and that I give to young writers is like what are is like, what are the things that you are uniquely suited to write about? And I don't feel that I am uniquely suited to write about, you know, the threat of Trumpism when there's so many other people doing it. And I edited thousands of op-eds about it. But maybe that's mistaken and maybe it's important, you know, maybe it's also important for me to weigh in on that more often. I don't know. I think it is a little bit. I mean, if your silence on it could be misconstrued as somehow

an endorsement of it, I think that's the tricky part. And that's the challenge, right? So like, obviously, I've been watching the case that was just heard of, like, in on the name at the Supreme Court that threatens to overturn, bro. Do you remember the name of the case? This is the Mississippi 15 week one, right? Exactly. And one of my friends and an editor was like, we really should have a podcast or a piece about it.

And I'm like, well, we just had this amazing podcast with Caitlin Flanagan about this topic. And it's like, but no, I'm worried that people are gonna like hear your silence as meaning something. This to me can drive me nuts, where it's like, if I'm not weighing in on every single thing that's going on in every single moment, like, people read into the silence, and it's like, no, sometimes it's just like, I don't have to bandwidth to do another thing. And it's hard, right, it's hard for me to sort of like know when the silence

really matters and when it's important to just speak up and say something. I don't know how to. I want to talk about that because it ties in as we wrap up, it ties in to your book, Cantez and Matism. Because I remember it in this would have been in December of 2020. I was talking to a politician I know. And I was like, hey, you should really congratulate Biden on winning the election. And he goes, why should I have to do that? I didn't congratulate Trump when he run. It's not a thing that I should do. And I said, well, I think you know why you should do it. It's because by not doing it, you're leaving it in limbo. And under normal circumstances, yeah, that you don't have to congratulate a politician for winning an election.

But when someone is actively attempting to undermine the validity of that action, then saying something conspicuously matters and makes a difference. Right, so I think, and this is the famous poem about the Holocaust, you know, first they came for so and so, then they came for so and so, and then finally, they came for me and no one was left.

How do we know what issues to speak up about? How do we know when it's something that our silence is as they say, violence, or when we're just chiming in for, you know, our own ego, like, how do you know what to speak up about and not speak up about? That's a really good question. I think part of it is just like of intuition sounds like way to home-birthy, but intuition. Yeah. And and conscience maybe? Yeah, what do you mean when you say that? Well, intuition might imply that it's somehow like,

you know, like, whichy? No, no, it's just not, there's not the moral component to intuition. Yes, yeah, no, that's, yeah, it's,'s it's yeah, conscious. I can never say that word. That's why I'm not repeating it. Conscious. I never I can't say it. It's just I can't. Yeah, I think that's part of it. I also think there are certain things that we each come to be known for. And it's like, that's, oh, people are going to expect me to write about that thing. and it's like, that's, oh, people are gonna expect me to write about that thing. But for me, in this moment, it's like, there's a lot of nonsense

that we could weigh in about every single day. And then there are things that, to me, it feel like they are threatening, like the bedrock assumptions that make our freedoms possible. And I think that there's an obvious threat that's coming from the right that everyone in our world is constantly talking about. And there's another threat that's coming from the left that

cloaks itself in language of justice and righteousness and morality. I think that that one is sometimes harder to see. That's one of the reasons that I have felt drawn to exposing it. I think I'm no great stylist like Nelly or you, but I think I am really good at is articulating for people in plain language, like giving them the vocabulary to articulate something that they have a sense, like this is not right.

And I don't really know why this isn't right. And I think I'm very good at saying, let me explain to you why I think this isn't right. Right, yeah, it's like in the last 18 months. So first you have George Floyd and then I'm on Arbery and everyone's sort of like, okay, we should all say something. Then there's this sort of rise against rise and violence against, you know, Asian Americans and then people like, should we say something? Should we not say something? Then there's this sort

of rise in anti-Semitic violence. And then people are like, should we say something? Should we not say something? And it's so it's interesting. people are like, should we say something? Should we not say something? And so it's interesting, it's like, what is our obligation? Right? Like when, when, you know, when is one obligated to speak up and say, that's not right, we don't do that, that's not who we are. And then when is someone supposed to go, oh, that's not my issue, I think your arguments about anti-Semitism have been interesting to me because there does seem to be a specific

and alarming sort of historical relationality to anti-Semitic violence where it's sort of like it's the canary in the coal mine. Yeah, because, and this is me stealing a line from someone you should have on your podcast. Just the amazing amazing Darryl Horn. She's a new book out. Oh, you should hopefully this is in your bookstore. It's called People Love Dead Jews. Just want some big awards. She's a, yeah, it's a title you will not forget. She's a, she's a, you know, scholar. She's a novelist, she's an essay, I love her essays.

And she has written so beautifully in this book and elsewhere about how, and I really think this is true, like where liberty thrives Jews, like where Jews thrive, it's a sign that liberty thrives. Right. And the reason for that is like our ability in a majority Christian country, you know, to think differently, worship differently, have really weird rituals. Like, that's a sign that everyone has the ability to have sort of the dignity of difference. And when we are under siege, it is a sign that pluralism itself, liberalism itself, most broadly understood, is also under siege. Going back to what you were saying before, though, I think we're living in a strange world

where, like, corporations feel the need to speak out about, like, every single microaggressions. And it's like, if you don't speak out its violence, violence. So we're in like this weird, extreme version of that. But I think one thing that I have noticed, and maybe you have two, is that it's not a good sign when your care and outrage for a victim of a horrible crime or a rash of crimes is dependent on the identity of the victimizer. Sure. And that's sort of where I think we are.

It's like the reason that it's really hard for people to let's say, you know, there's been an unbelievable rash of violence against Chalrae de Black Hat, Alter Orthodox Jews on the streets of Brooklyn, mostly carried out or at least in some part carried out by young men of color. That's a hard one, right?

Because it's like, wait, that group like doesn't believe in all the things I believe in and they're fundamentalists in all these ways. And so they are victimizing me, at least theoretically, or my identity group. And here's a group that historically has been the victim of systemic racism in the country. So it's like, I guess what I'm trying to push back against and what I'm trying to resist is, to me, what is fundamentally dehumanizing about

the worst version of identity politics, which is seeing all of us as like avatars for our race or any kind of like immutable characteristics rather than human beings capable of making choices. And I think that people don't realize the extent to which that dehumanizing version of identity politics has taken over everything. Yeah, and like what aboutism is obviously a dangerous thing, but it is weird to, let's say, the immense focus and attention that gets played to say trans issues, meanwhile, sort of anti-Semitism is something that we don't want to talk about, right?

Even though statistically those groups are of similar numbers globally, one gets a lot of attention, and then the other is something that we seem not to want to make a big issue of, even though as you said, historically, one seems to be representative of a trend, an alarming trend that you want to nip in the butt. Yeah, I actually have no idea how many,

like estimations of trans people there are worldwide. I think it's like 1%. Really? Yeah. Okay, I didn't know that. Yeah, I think we can care about both things. Of course. But I think that like the silence around, I'll just say that like in, I've thought a lot about this issue and the kind of outrage that poured out rightly after the attack on the synagogue in Pittsburgh where I became a government. So white supremacist neo-Nazi walked in killed 11 Jews, mostly for the attack in American Jewish history. And it was like, oh, this is morally clear. Like innocent people, not orthodox Jews, you know, look like us attacked by a vicious neo-Nazi.

We know. And then when Black Hebrew Israelites, which, you know, they are neither Hebrew nor Israelites, you know, trying to blow up but end up killing four people. A kosher supermarket in Jersey City. It's like, no one remembers that. Why? Yeah, is it, is this us filtering it through the media? Is it just, you know, just the random, I don't wanna say lock, but just the random way of certain story unfolds.

Oh, I think it's intentional. I think why is it that, you know, Darryl Brooks allegedly should add in Wakusha Wisconsin, gets in an SUV. He is a long history of horrible, hateful ideas all over social media, many of which have now since disappeared. He is a kind of avatar, a different identity online. And he gets in an SUV and drives through Christmas parade and murders six people, including an eight-year-old boy and dancing grannies and injuries and a ton of others. This was a new story for a day. Come on, like it's sort of impossible not to,

and meantime, I mean, listen, yeah, I think that there's like so much horrible violence in America, you know, like not all of them are gonna capture the national imagination. I'm personally obsessed with Gilein Maxwell. You may be obsessed with Jesse Smiley, you know, fair enough. But I do think that there is a clear pattern and it has to do with seeing people

either as somehow less capable of evil and violence because of their identity. And I think that that's wrong. Well, and this is what I meant when we're sort of talking about what are our obligations. One of my favorite passages in meditations, Mark Sures says, and you know, you can commit injustice by doing nothing also. So it's like one of the first sort of indications

we have that quote of, all the evil needs to prevail is for good people to do nothing. But when there is so much happening in the world and you as an individual seems so powerless, how does one know when they should speak up, when they, how much of one's platform are they obligated to use to speak out about these issues?

When, as you said, there's also a financial point. It's, I think these are just issues we're struggling to navigate as a society and we're sort of sitting in this. And then we're just all kind of staring out at this horrible world that we feel powerless to do anything about. Well, I think one of the tests for me is,

are people not speaking about this because they feel they're gonna take a bit reputationally or socially? And if so, I'm gonna speak up about it. Like, for me, it's not always, but I think that that is an important test, is, are people not speaking up about this because they're scared of the cost to them? I'm not really scared of the cost to me. I'm like post that, whatever you want to say, like post, I don't think I'd be canceled, but it's like, you know, if people aren't speaking up against, let's say, getting rid of algebra in San Francisco, which is horrible because they're scared of being called a racist.

Like, yeah, I'm going to speak up about that because I know that it's not racist to advocate for children having algebra, correct. So and I think that there's like an inordinate number of those things right now, but I think the thing to guard against and I, I'm always thinking about this in myself is like, you know, there are also things that are getting a tremendous amount of attention that deserve a tremendous amount of attention. And maybe I'm putting too much weight on speaking up about the things that others are overlooking when I should also be lending my voice to things that are generally outrageous and are being noticed for being outrageous. I don't know. It's a hard, it's a really hard dance actually.

No, like this is the critique of Fox News that it's sort of like fake controversy after fake controversy. Their argument is probably like, well, no one else is talking about it. And then the retort to that is, but does it actually matter in any way? Yeah, how do you know whether this issue is a minor issue that you're making into a major stir or if it's actually a major issue that everyone else is just afraid to touch? Mm-hmm. Great, Ryan, say that one more time because an urgent text just came through from a friend that I'm like, she's like getting, yeah, say that one more time, because an urgent text just came through from a friend that I'm like, she's like getting, yeah, anyway. No, no, this is my life.

The critical, the difficult thing is how do you know that you're not taking a minor issue and making it a bigger deal than it needs to be, like putting a mojole into a mountain, or how do you know that it's not some big thing that just other people are afraid to touch? Yeah, I think one of the ways to know that is to see what is the effect of it if you do speak, like write the criticism of me and people like me who try and shine a light on the liberal left is like, oh, just a bunch of college kids stop. But it's like, well, hold on, what will happen if you criticize this? Might you lose your job?

You know, like, I don't, it's just, it's so obvious to me that this is such a huge, but overlooked phenomenon. The reason people aren't talking about it is because of the reputational and career and familial costs. But yeah, I think it's, I think it yeah, I think it's a really important question to be asking.

I was curious about the intellectual dark web stuff because where people get their information is really interesting. And now that algorithms sort of sort things for us and surface things for us, now that we're several years, from the publication of that piece. How do you, how do you see that world?

And how do you see like, yeah, a generation of young people getting informed by new ideas? Is it, is it still kind of inspiring to you or now are there parts of it that alarm you? Both, both. I mean, 100, like I think the thing sort of existed for the briefest of moments, and then it sort of unraveled just like so many other things. And the question of like, why did it never cohere and was it ever possible for it to cohere? I think is a really interesting one I

Think that what that piece captured and I didn't really fully understand this at the time like I noticed something I named it Or I you know amplified the name, but I think what it did capture was the fact that there were all of these people that were not known, like their names weren't known to readers of the New York Times. And oh my God, they arguably, obviously, especially Rogan and Peterson, have an impact on the country exponentially more than all of Primetime on CNN. Sure. And that to me is both amazing in the sense that, oh, wow, like, you really can build new things and you really can sort of like make an end run around these institutions, but also, oh, wow, you know, gatekeepers are

important. And, you know, like, like, like, there is definitely when I'm, I'm sort of watching some of these figures and thinking, I'm not sure they've sort of updated their software to understand they're not the underdog anymore. Like they actually have a tremendous amount of impact and is there a sense of obligation and responsibility that's coming with that.

And a range of people in that piece, and I think that they have a range of different understandings of their role in the world. Yeah, and that for all the criticisms of the sort of mainstream institutions, without a certain set of principles or rules that you operate by, like standards that you hold yourself to, you can spin off the planet very quickly as well. So if you really are just, I take whatever the mainstream view is

and I find an opposition view, you end up in fantasy land, like really quickly. As we see with some of those figures. Yeah, and I think, there's one thing I'm thinking a lot about for myself and what I'm trying to build and also just in general right now is like, we're in a very anti-institutional moment, I think, and you know, we're living in a weird, almost like tent revival, but online where people like follow around their little online preacher. Yeah. And the question is, can you build an institution with the kind of rules

and guardrails and mores that I think we both agree are important for sharing a sense of reality and truth with other citizens in a moment where people are just so skeptical of institutions. Right. And to me, that's like the whole challenge, because one thing that's become just incredibly clear to me is, especially as institutions have revealed themselves to be so degraded and compromised, is, yeah, that's true. But also, we need to live in a world with institutions that we can all trust.

Like, that's extraordinarily important. And the question is how do you make that? The problem is not the existence of the institutions. The problem is the decayed institutions that are no longer true to their founding values. And if you a world without institutions is chaos or as Peterson would say is chaos and disorder, right? And you need order and values. The problem is what happens when you abandon those things. And there's a second part to it also, which is without the framework of an institution, how do you mentor new people? How do you, how do you like

replace yourself? And this is something that I am fixated on because if the whole show is you and your brand and your personality and your special charisma, like what happens when you burn out? What happens when you cash out or any of it? Like, so like what was all the work for? And I am like very, because I think about my own life

and the extent to which like everything was made sort of possible because of mentors and people that nurtured me and institutions that formed me and spent so many thankless hours teaching me how to edit and not bed, like I want to, I want to be able to do that. And part of it's, I don't know, maybe also personality. Like, I am, I don't know if maybe also personality. I don't know if this is a gender thing or not, but I'm really not interested in being like a one woman band. I'm really interested in creating an orchestra. And one of the things that I think is a shame

a little bit about that world. And I think it's beyond the intellectual dark web. It's like the Wild West and the New Media landscape is like, okay, yet amazing that you have this many listeners to your podcast or whatever, but like what's going to live beyond you? And I would love to see some of those figures thinking about that question. No, that's great. I think that's an awesome spot to stop. Uh, I always love talking to you, and this was amazing.

Hey, it's Ryan. Thank you for listening to the Daily Stove podcast. I just wanted to say, we so appreciate it. We love serving you. It's amazing to us that over 30 million people have downloaded these episodes in the couple years we've been doing it. It's an honor. Please spread the word, tell people about it, and this isn't to sell anything. I just wanted to say thank you. Hey, Prime Members, you can listen to the Daily Stoic early and ad-free on Amazon Music, download the Amazon Music app today, or you can listen early and ad-free with Wondery Plus in Apple Podcasts.