#1113 Rikki Schlott | Gen-Z Journalist Exposes Woke Culture

Rikki Schlott is New York Post columnist and writer of the forthcoming book "The Cancelling Of The American Mind". In this conversation, we discuss her time at NYU, the college exodus, Zoom university, insane policies at NYU, right think vs. wrong think in the public discourse, squashing descent, self censorship, why Gen-Z is politically homeless, Andrew Yang's "Forward Party", Jordan Peterson, and more. ======================= Exodus is leading the world out of the traditional financial system by building beautiful and user-friendly blockchain products. With its focus on design and user experience, Exodus has become one of the most popular and loved cryptocurrency apps. It’s supported on both desktop and mobile, allowing you to sync your wallet across multiple devices so you can have access to your funds anywhere. You can instantly exchange around 100 different cryptocurrencies straight from your wallet. Interactive charts let you view an asset’s price history and your portfolio’s performance over time. And maybe the best part, Exodus is integrated with the Trezor hardware wallet - making advanced security easy for everyone. Visit exodus.com/pomp for your free download or search Exodus on the App Store or Playstore. ======================= LMAX Digital - the market-leading solution for institutional crypto trading & custodial services - offers clients a regulated, transparent and secure trading environment, together with the deepest pool of crypto liquidity. LMAX Digital is also a primary price discovery venue, streaming real-time market data to the industry’s leading analytics platforms. LMAX Digital - secure, liquid, trusted. Learn more at LMAXdigital.com/pomp ======================= Amberdata provides the critical data infrastructure enabling financial institutions to participate in the digital asset class. We deliver comprehensive data and insights into blockchain networks, crypto markets, and decentralized finance. Download our Digital Asset Data Guide at https://www.amberdata.io/pomp ======================= Bullish is a digital asset exchange that offers industry-leading order depth, consistently tight spreads, and new ways to earn, with world-class security. Combining innovations of DeFi with the performance of a traditional, centralized order book, Bullish lets you trade with certainty across variable market conditions. All in a regulated environment. Learn more at Bullish.com and follow @Bullish on Twitter today. ======================= The number one name in NFT domains and the world’s most powerful wallet are teaming up to bring something new to the crypto and Web3 world: That’s right, Unstoppable Domains and Blockchain.com partnered to create NFT domain names ending in . Blockchain. It’s the perfect ending to show that you’re a believer in a decentralized future. Either sign up for a free blockchain.wallet or visit Unstoppabledomains.com to buy your domain today. ================== Arculus is the next generation crypto & NFT cold storage wallet that combines one of the world’s strongest security protocols with the easiest to use form factor and app. Arculus requires 3-Factor Authentication to ensure only you have access to your digital assets – something you know – a PIN, something you have – the Arculus Key Card, and biometrics. Learn more and buy it now on getarculus.com. Use promo code POMP to save 15%. Remember, with Arculus, it’s your keys, your crypto. =======================

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:02Anthony Pompliano?

  What's up everyone? This is Anthony Pompliano. Most of you know me as Pomp. You're listening to the Pomp Podcast, simply the best podcast out there. Now let's kick this thing off. Ricky Schlott is a New York Post columnist and the author of the forthcoming book, The Canceling of the American Mind. In this conversation, we talk about our time at NYU, the college exodus, Zoom University, whether college degrees are worth it anymore, the idea of right think and wrong think, squashing dissent, creating self censorship, the importance of independent thinking, how Gen Z is politically homeless, that political divisiveness is all Gen Z knows, the Forward Party, Andrew Yang, and much, much more. I really enjoyed this conversation with Ricky, and I hope you guys enjoy it as well. Once

• 0:44Anthony Pompliano?

  you get done listening, jump on Twitter and let both of us know what you agreed with, what you disagree with, what we think we got right, and what you think we got wrong. All right, let's get this episode with Ricky. Hope you guys enjoy this one.

• 0:55Speaker 01

  Anthony Pompliano runs Pomp Investments. All views of him and the guests on his podcast are solely their opinions and do not reflect the opinions of Pomp Investments. You should not treat any opinion expressed by Pomp or his guests as a specific inducement to make a particular investment or follow a particular strategy, but only as an expression of his personal opinion. This podcast is for informational purposes only.

• 1:18Anthony Pompliano?

  All right, guys. Bang, bang. I've got Ricky here with me. Ricky, I thought a great place to start, given kind of your past couple of years and your rise in popularity on the internet and in many different political circles, was to talk about this idea of a college exodus. And I've read a number of different versions where you were sitting in college, all of a sudden at home, and realized like, maybe this isn't worth it. Talk a little bit about that experience and kind of what was going on during the two-year pandemic while still in college.

• 1:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, so I was a sophomore, I guess, when the pandemic started. And it was the spring semester of my sophomore year. I'd gone to NYU with the expectation that I'd be going to law school. And I got to school and I was like hiding my Jordan Peterson books under my bed and just kind of keeping my head down to hopefully achieve academically and just kind of get to the next thing. And The pandemic happened and I was in lockdown. I was in L A living with my mom. And she was watching me do Zoom and just be like miserable. And then NYU increased tuition beyond the rate of inflation at the time, which was insane to me. Um, and so she said, I'll help you get through one semester of a leave of absence.

• 2:30Speaker 02

  Just do something cool, do something productive and then you can go back. And then, of course, the world never got normal. And at the same time, I was just reading and doing my thing and learning in the way that I wanted to learn, I think, which was um very liberating for me, rather than just having a syllabus that a professor decided um on my behalf. And so that turned into just sending a few op eds here and there, and then it just kind of snowballed. And all of a sudden now here I am doing journalism full time. Um, I don't think that I'll be going back to school. Um, it's possible I got into Columbia recently and I might end up doing that part time, but um, by and large, I think my story is kind of

• 3:10Speaker 02

  similar to a lot of people who were just in the achievement loop and then pulled out and realized like, oh, I'm not doing what I love. And I was fortunate that I was young enough that that happened at a point where like I hadn't already invested in LSAT prep and all that time. And so I could kind of just pull the plug and reorient and thankfully it's worked out. So, yeah.

• 3:30Anthony Pompliano?

  So when you think of the Zoom University, which is a hilarious name for this whole phenomenon, you're there on Zoom, attending class, but NYU then increases the tuition at a faster pace than inflation. What was their logic for doing that?

• 3:45Speaker 02

  Um, I think they just did the tuition increase that they had scheduled. Um, and it's I mean, it's one of the most expensive schools in the country in the first place, which I went in with the understanding that that was the case. It's New York City. The cost of living is obviously enormous and living there is and with a dorm room, like I just accepted that fact, but then when you don't even have the benefit of that and the school thinks that they're giving you an adequate enough education, just, I mean, I was also, it was like five AM in California and I'm in uh, like middle ages class for my history major and none of the kids are showing up. Everyone's cameras Off if they even do, like the morale was super low, the standards were going down. We recently had a big scandal at NYU. They fired a organic chemistry professor for

• 4:30Speaker 02

  being too hard, which is pretty ironic considering organic chemistry is the class you're meant to take to figure out if you're, you have what it takes to be a doctor. And so, um, I just generally I saw the quality of education decline. The lack of in-person connection, like one of the biggest things for me was meeting professors and like networking and um, kind of being a part of the community there. And so it just wasn't serving me at the time and thankfully, um, I had the guts to actually leave.

• 4:59Anthony Pompliano?

  So when you think about, uh, people being fired for being too hard of a professor. Well, I saw the headline. I literally just laughed. I was like, this has got to be a fucking joke. Uh, what happened there? What is the conversation among the people who went to NYU? Are most of the students like, yeah, that should have happened? Or are they like, this is ridiculous and, and they feel bad for the professor? Like what, what's going on?

• 5:21Speaker 02

  I feel like a lot of people didn't really investigate it very deeply. I've talked to some of my friends that went there and most of them are like, yeah, well, his course evaluations were really bad, but essentially what happened is there's this organic chemistry professor. This is supposed to be a stumble class. One of the first things you take, if you can't get through this, you probably shouldn't be entrusted with someone's life in an operating room. And that's the whole point, like you might get a C, but if you get through, then awesome. And there was this one like old, I think he was eighty-four, um, he had, he is, he wrote the textbook for the class. He had been at Princeton before and then he was on a year over year, um, like part-time basis as a professor in semi-retirement at NYU and um, kids in the class circulated a petition saying

• 6:04Speaker 02

  he's too hard, he's not helping us, he's not telling us like how to get to the next step in, um, like there's an expectation with my generation that a professor will tell you how to write the essay or how to study for the test. And then you just are told what to do and do it and get an A. And he wasn't doing that. He hadn't changed his standards. He's taught in the field for like forty years or something crazy. And the standards of like how students are performing, which is not entirely their fault. Considering some of these kids were in high school, like half of their high school experience was in lockdown, which was unjust in the first place. But there's an expectation that you lower the standards if kids are not doing as well. And that's obviously not the way to go if we want to get back to where we once were.

• 6:46Speaker 02

  But the grade inflation at NYU is like absolutely insane. Like the average grades in most courses is like an A minus or something like that. So if the, if the standard of excellence isn't even rewarded, there were, there weren't A pluses at NYU. Like, what are we really doing if everyone is just like getting a gold star?

• 7:04Anthony Pompliano?

  The two things it immediately makes me think of, uh, one, I think part of the petition was also like, he's hurting our chances of getting into medical school, right? So like, it, it wasn't even like him as a teacher as much as it was like, if I get a bad grade because I'm an idiot or because I don't do the work to get an A in the class, then uh, somehow that's his fault, not my fault. Uh, stuck out to me. And the second thing is, uh, I don't know if you know who this is, but uh, there's a gentleman named Paul Graham. He started Y Combinator. He'd previously sold a company, uh, in, in the tech industry. And he essentially has an apprenticeship for founders and it's become incredibly lucrative for him and, and his team. But also it has produced companies like Airbnb and Dropbox and, and many other large tech companies.

• 7:45Anthony Pompliano?

  And he wrote a, a piece one time that said, most people need to learn how to unlearn what they got in the education system. And his whole point was people would show up to Y Combinator and they'd be like, okay, what do I do to raise my first round of funding? Okay. Now that I did that, like, what do I do to do the second thing? It's very similar. Like, how do I write the essay? What are the questions that are going to be on the test so that I can pass? And he's like, no, no, no, no, like, what you need to do is you need to build a product that people like. And then you can raise whatever money you want. You can do, you know, it, it's like a different game. And it sounds like maybe the students in college today, that's kind of lost to them in some way.

• 8:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, totally. I mean, I think it's, um, it goes back to like the way that we were raised in childhood, in my opinion, where like everything is done for you. Your parents are very engaged. Um, like they're, they're wiping the germs off of everything and then you don't really develop the immune system, sort of analogy where like for us, I like so many of our parents were getting us to sports games and helping us get into college with these essays and like we've, we've had our hands held and then there are older professors who don't want to continue to do that, like this guy. But then there's also younger professors who know now like the asylums are the, sorry, the inmates are running the asylum here a little bit. And essentially, like these, these younger professors don't want bad, uh, recommendations from their students.

• 9:06Speaker 02

  We do these course evaluations that NYU puts out all the time. And, um, like if you're getting tanked in your, in your course evaluations as a young professor who wants to continue to work at NYU, then you better just give kids A's because that's the way to get the five stars from all of them. And so I think that there's, um, definitely like a phase shift that's happening where, I mean, I'm fortunate, my dad's much older and so he kind of raised me and my mom is, um, from like a kind of tough Eastern European family. And so they raised me to be like, pull yourself up by the bootstraps. I'm not going to coddle you and hold your hand the whole way through. Like you get yourself to where you're going to go. But there's a whole generation of kids that were raised with a totally different

• 9:46Speaker 02

  attitude. And now the, the new generation of professors are saying, well, this is what I have to do to succeed and to get the five star evaluations.

• 9:56Anthony Pompliano?

  At NYU, uh, there's a hotline on the ID cards, I believe. Uh, it's essentially like an I'm offended hotline. What is this thing?

• 10:04Speaker 02

  Yeah. So, um, it's the, I think it's the bias response hotline is what it's called. And, um, I actually brought that up. I was on Bill Maher's show recently and I told him about that. And I just brought it up as an anecdote because I've known it about it for all this time and he really like went in on it. Um, but essentially it's a hotline that was set up by the school, um, like within the last decade where it's on the back of our IDs. It's literally like the, like the nine one one. Number, the student health center, the campus police, like the really important things that you need to be a student at NYU. And then also on the back is this bias response number, which is supposed to be like, obviously, I want to steel man it and say that, of course, like, there are things that shouldn't happen on college campuses,

• 10:48Speaker 02

  and there can be biased incidents, and, you know, the school has every right to make sure that that's seen through. But essentially, there's this like hotline phone number where rather than go to like a dean and say, hey, this thing happened to me. Like, it's essentially a snitch culture. And so I brought that up on Mar and then later wrote an article about it because I, the more I went through NYU's original preliminary report about how it, how well it had worked, they like separated things out between like actual egregious like offense that someone could get kicked out for, um, something that maybe just gets them like a little discipline and then something that just doesn't really rise to that level, which they gave the example of like cultural appropriation or something like that.

• 11:33Speaker 02

  So basically just the I'm offended and you didn't do anything wrong to me, but I don't like what you said, sort of level of entry, and the majority were in the latter. Um, so it's essentially just telling people, I mean, it has a chilling effect. It's on the, um, the back of our cards, it's on the back of the stalls and the bathrooms and the library. Often they put like signs up so everyone knows. And the idea is like, I mean, I don't think it's the intention, but the effect is watch what you say because the kids around you are deputized essentially. And, um, I, I mean, I just found it to be very creepy and very weird, and I just don't think a hotline is the answer to interpersonal problems.

• 12:14Anthony Pompliano?

  It feels like the people who are relying on the hotline are going to get metaphorically punched in the face when they walk out into the real world and someone says something mean to them, uh, because they don't have a hotline to call. Like, you know, you can imagine like, who do you call in the real world when you're like, that person offended me? Uh, some people do call the police, as we've seen, uh, but for the most part, like, you're kind of, you know, out of luck. And so I don't know, it, it does feel like there's a little bit of coddling going on there. Another, another example of this is, uh, the professors, I, I think you've mentioned in the past, uh, they have to issue trigger warnings before they say certain things in the classroom.

• 12:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's happening. Um, I think for the majority of the classes that I've been in, if I had one of those, it would just be on the syllabus, which at least it's not like they're verbally saying it. But um, I've heard more and more reports of like literal law school students getting trigger warnings for case content, which if you need a trigger warning to be like doing the the um, like precursor function of being a lawyer and dealing with the sometimes awful things that lawyers are dealing with, that's so like, I I can't even imagine how unprepared this next generation of people going into these professions are going to be. Like, for example, um, there have been a ton of reports of law

• 13:31Speaker 02

  school professors who are being asked to either um, issue a trigger warning or potentially remove um, like rape cases, which, I mean, the world is the world. Of course, that's an awful thing. But if you want somebody to be able to go out and um, argue on behalf of justice and defend somebody or or put a bad person behind bars, then they need to understand what the bad thing is. So I mean, it's it's one thing when it's an undergraduate class, which I roll my eyes at. It's another thing when it's a like profession, a pre-professional graduate level course. So um, yeah, it's that's yet another thing that I think is very coddling.

• 14:10Anthony Pompliano?

  How do they issue the trigger warning? Like, i- if it's on the syllabus, does it literally say like, "Trigger warning"? You know, "The contents of this syllabus may offend you"? Or do they stand in front of the class and be like, "Trigger warning"? Or do they kind of more aptly present these warnings?

• 14:24Speaker 02

  I think there have been um, examples of both. I know some professors will start, I haven't seen this happen personally, but they'll do like the first day of class and say, like, "These topics will be addressed in this semester and just get it out of the way." Um, other professors will put it in like their um, their presentations or PowerPoints, maybe if they're doing something on a day that might be disturbing to someone. And then in the syllabus, it would essentially just say like, "Content warning" and like, "This this course deals with issues of X, Y, and Z." And, you know, deal with that, what you want. But I think the unfortunate thing about the trigger warnings is that it makes the assumption that the way to help someone with trauma is to protect them from the source of it.

• 15:07Speaker 02

  And of course, like over traumatizing someone is not ever what you want to do. But cognitive behavioral therapy has shown that essentially the best thing to get past like PTSD like symptoms is is reasonable exposure and to face your fears and to actually acknowledge them and deal with them. And I think that the assumption that kids, even kids from terrible backgrounds who have experienced trauma, um, need to be told, no, you can't handle this by a professor, or that they should be raised with the assumption that they should, they need to have the jungle kind of paved for them in that way is, um, like, it's just kind of dis disheartening. I mean, I can't even imagine thinking like, oh, I have, I'm, I'm worried about this content,

• 15:51Speaker 02

  or I need to digest this, or deal with this, or grapple with this, but my professor is telling me that I can't. So, um, I'm, I'm very concerned about it. And I think it totally flies in the face of what we know about like cognitive behavioral therapy entirely.

• 16:05Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, this brings the idea of like right think and wrong think, which I've seen you talk about. And, uh, it, it's hilarious to me that literally it feels like on a college campus, the way that you've described it is that there are certain things you are allowed to say, but also certain ways to think. And if you violate that, you are outcast in some way, uh, or heavily incentivized to not voice your opinion, uh, for fear of violating that kind of right think that that is so pervasive.

• 16:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, totally. I mean, on so many levels too, because there's the fear of grades. I found more and more through my academic experience that there's an expectation or like a reward if you basically repeat back what the professor said to them, or you, you make their viewpoints essentially be reflected in your essay. I, I have seen that happen more and more and more where there's an expected conclusion and you can kind of tell that professors have this like subversive message that they're expecting to get through to you through the course of a semester. Um, but then there's also the social repercussions too, which. I mean, this is happening in high school as well, but I mean, every kid going to college is looking at social media and seeing people get canceled and

• 17:15Speaker 02

  and people get canned for voicing opinions, sometimes that are very, very reasonable. Um, and so going to school, leaving your house, being eighteen, living somewhere new, having roommates. Like, of course, you're going to sit on your hands and not be honest about who you are if you feel like you're going to be living in this new place and totally shunned and miserable and canceled. So, um, I think on so many levels in college campuses, there's this this urge to kind of keep quiet and I felt it and I'm really glad that I kind of left that behind. Unfortunately, um, most people in my life have been, um, understanding and welcoming because I try to approach them in good faith, even if we have political differences. Um, so

• 18:00Speaker 02

  I, I mean, I felt it, I did it. I, I sat on my hands. I wrote essays that I'd look back on and probably say, I don't agree with any of that. And I probably didn't at the time that I wrote it too, which is really sad.

• 18:11Anthony Pompliano?

  Why do you think that you wrote them? It was it, hey, this is what's going to get me an A and this is going to like help me get pushed through this system and get to law school. Uh, is it, oh my God, my, you know, roommate or, uh, uh, kind of fellow student is going to read it? And if I don't write this, then like I'm going to be shunned. If you had to kind of unpack, uh, having written things that maybe you didn't agree with at the time, like, why do you think you did it?

• 18:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, I would say, um, for me, it was definitely academic oriented. Like I just, you know, I, I wanted to achieve. I wanted to go to law school. I, um, I worked hard and I wanted my grades to reflect that, but I mean, I wouldn't, I never made like an argument that I don't believe in, but I think that there were, there were things that were taught to me as truth or fact, um, from time to time that I didn't feel like I should be challenging in the course of an essay. And I sometimes, looking back, I like, I know some of the professors still who actually are, they might not agree with me, but they're supportive of me and we, we're still in touch and they know what I'm doing and writing. And had I kind of put myself out there and taken that risk, I don't think I would have been batted down as aggressively.

• 19:17Speaker 02

  As I expected, but then again, there are also professors who are just like, they clearly have their ideology and they and they want you to uh walk away with a little nugget of their knowledge that they feel they have and it's just disappointing to me that by and large, I would know the political orientations of almost every single one of my professors, even if it wasn't relevant to the course. Um, and so, yeah, that was just kind of disheartening, but I wouldn't have, I didn't like write a thesis that I don't agree with or present it as my own idea. But I like at the time I told myself like, oh, I'm just arguing like what this piece is arguing or I'm I'm making that point, which was a good mental exercise in a sense, but um, it's still like I look back and I'm like,

• 20:00Speaker 02

  darn, but I think every other kid in college is essentially doing that.

• 20:05Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, it's kind of crazy. You also mentioned uh putting Jordan Peterson's books under your bed. Uh, same exact, you know, kind of pressures of like somebody walks in my dorm room or uh in into my place. And if they see that I have a Jordan Peterson book here, they're going to think that I'm some, you know, vicious monster that may lash out and they'll have to call the bias hotline or or something else.

• 20:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, it was just like, I I mean, I don't like to bring politics into friendships. Um, I generally try not to, even though I'm a very political person. But the reason that I was doing that was like, I mean, I have roommates and they're all lovely and I'm still friends with all them and it probably would have been totally fine. Um, but there are some very aggressively political people at NYU and I just thought, you know, it's just not worth it. I don't, I don't need to, um, even though obviously like here I am in front of my bookshops now and that's like a very, um, my my politics are a very important part of who I am, but um, yeah, I just, it was a, it was a social pressure to just not pick any fights or have any

• 21:05Speaker 02

  anyone come and say like, you're a terrible person or um, I mean, obviously Jordan Peterson just recently was tarred and feathered for being like essentially wanting to put women back in nineteen fifty's gender roles by Olivia Wilde, who made a whole movie based off of a misunderstanding of what he has said and advocated for. And so I think there's bad face interpretations that I grew up seeing all the time on social. Media and I didn't want that to happen to me. I just wanted to have friends and co spy and get A's and then go to law school. Which was, I'm so thankful that that is an old version of myself because actually being who I am and saying what I mean has been so much more fruitful.

• 21:46Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, let's talk about the Olivia Wilde and Jordan Peterson stuff. So my understanding is that Jordan Peterson been living his life, doing his thing. Olivia Wilde created a movie, was recently doing some of the press to kind of build up, you know, support and interest in the movie. Was asked about one of the main characters and she essentially said, yeah, that character was rooted in or inspired by Jordan Peterson. But then she went on to say that he is the leader of the incels. I may be dating myself. I didn't know what that was. I had to go Google. And was like, okay. And he was asked about it, I think on Piers Morgan or maybe one of the other shows.

• 22:26Anthony Pompliano?

  And he actually got pretty emotional. And he basically was like, look, you know, I'm trying to speak directly to young men who are depressed, who feel lonely, who, you know, are in kind of a bad place in their life.

• 22:41Anthony Pompliano?

  I don't see the connection was essentially what he said. I guess it's like my understanding of the situation correct to start with? And then like, how did you think about this back and forth between two people who, you know, don't quite seem to cross paths a lot? From what we can tell from the outside?

• 22:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, I think her characterization of him was completely unfair. Like she made the, she said he was, he was like the pseudo-intellectual leader of the incel movement and that he justifies their worldview wherein men are entitled to sex from women and just painted this hideous picture of him. And then made this whole film based on the premise that there's this cult leader who's evidently Peterson, who is making this like experimental little world where women are back in the 1950s roles and oppressed. And he teared up actually on Piers Morgan's podcast, which a lot of people were dunking on him for. But I just, I mean,

• 23:37Speaker 02

  It's such a gross mischaracterization of who he is and what he says. I don't agree with everything that he says. I don't think I should agree with anything that, everything that anyone in the public world says because I'm a different person. But he, I felt the need to like stick up for him a little bit because I'm, I read his books when I was going to college and I continue to be a fan of his. I've found so much in his lectures that have been fruitful and meaningful and empowering. I give him in part credit for when I was twenty, being an influence of just like, do your thing and actually be you and work hard and you'll be rewarded. And that's why I'm not just in the feedback loop of the achievement loop right now.

• 24:21Speaker 02

  But I, I spoke out because I'm a young woman who has never really felt either that his advice is specifically gendered. Like I've never heard him say something that I'm like, oh, that's clearly just for men. Sometimes he'll speak directly to men or directly to women's issues. But like his general advice is just for people looking to assume some responsibility, do their thing, be a competent human being in the world and kind of buck the victim mentality and just kind of do what you can for yourself. And I think that the, it's like very old classic wisdom. I don't think it's rocket science or something totally new and shocking. It's just classic advice. And so to hear that

• 25:04Speaker 02

  somehow because young men have gravitated to him more, that's a bad thing or that that must mean that it's like a zero sum game wherein like lifting young men up is pushing young women down. To me is just the opposite of what my experience with him has been. So it's, it was an interesting kind of cultural moment to watch because I don't even know like where Olivia Wilde came from with this, but it's, it's it's always interesting to see that is what people think when they see the Jordan Peterson book, which no wonder it was under my bed because if I'm like a gatekeeper to the misogynistic incel culture, then I mean, no wonder people would want to cancel me.

• 25:43Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, it is very interesting how you mentioned zero sum and I don't really, I haven't thought enough about it to have like a fully formed view, but it feels like the people who have been labeled as misogynistic in terms of putting content out on the internet. Now, there are definitely misogynists, there are definitely people who say dumb stuff, do dumb stuff, and I think those people are pretty easily identified and kind of outcast or shunned, and rightfully so for the people who do that stuff. But what has become now kind of a common playbook or a tactic is anyone who is speaking to really mental health issues and loneliness and these other things that are very well

• 26:25Anthony Pompliano?

  documented, both in the scientific community and the psychological community, but also in just kind of the mainstream press, they are labeled as misogynistic because of who gravitates to their message. And what fascinates me about this is when you ask them, so literally if you go and you ask them, "Hey, somebody said X," their responses, they sure sound pretty common sense. They sure sound like, "Oh, wait, the way that this person thinks about what they're doing is something that actually most parents would want their kids to have, right? They would want to see this." And so like, what do you think is the disconnection here? Is it just people see like a clip, or they see like one piece of it and then they make

• 27:07Anthony Pompliano?

  a bunch of judgments, and it is the most extreme version of them? Is it they don't care? Do they just need an enemy to point at? Like, what's going on? Why is it that the people who are actually in the communities, or the people who are providing the information, think one thing, and the people on the outside have like almost a 180-degree different view of what's going on?

• 27:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, I think the seeing clips out of context thing is certainly at play here. I mean, the more time you spend saying something publicly, the more stupid things that you're just going to say inevitably. And so I think every like, public figure probably has a reel of stuff that just wouldn't be great if you put it all together and then that became like the kind of face of your brand for a ton of people in the population. And I think that was in part at play with the Peterson thing. I think there's also just this like... This really sad sense in our culture that like statistically, boys are struggling. Everyone's struggling right now. There are like men are falling behind in education and

• 28:10Speaker 02

  um their suicide rates are going up, so are girls as well. But I think there's there's this sad assumption for some reason that specifically ends up getting Peterson like tarden feathered is just because he he's speaking to issues sometimes that do that do pertain more to men or not necessarily. But he has spoken out about like the ways in which men are falling behind or gender differences, which is something that I think we should be allowed to acknowledge. But there's this sense that, you know, we have girl power and you can do it and like be a girl boss and that's all great, whatever, do your thing. But as soon as you flip it around, there's this idea that just because you're speaking to young men or young men are getting empowerment from you and um deriving it from a person like Peterson,

• 28:54Speaker 02

  that that somehow is anti-woman, which I think is just such a sad reflection. Like you can be pro-woman and pro-men and just pro-people and the idea that somehow he's like a gatekeeper to the misogyny or like to the patriarchy because of that is um a really gross mischaracterization, in my opinion. And I I know he gets crap sometimes for talking about like gender differences, but I think that's actually um acknowledging stuff that we all kind of see with our eyes, that some people just pretend not to really think about. Um and I don't know, I I mean, I think there's a lot of factors at play. And then also, people just love the idea of like, oh, here's

• 29:34Speaker 02

  this. He was also compared to like Red School, who's like a Marvel Nazi-based character. Oh, my cat just walked across my bookshelves behind me here.

• 29:44Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay.

• 29:44Speaker 02

  Um, but I I I think there's an idea that like it's it's nice to have a villain. It's nice to have the bad guy that you can um refer to. And yeah, I don't know. It's it's just really sad because to me, he's very innocuous in a lot of ways. Sometimes he'll say something and I'm like, yeah, I don't agree with that. But I mean, he's basically just giving fatherly advice to a lot of young men and increasingly, a lot of young men don't have fathers in the home. And statistically, that harms boys far more than it does girls. And so the idea that someone kind of filling that void and giving some old classic wisdom and advice would be a terrible thing is just sad.

• 30:23Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. What's the difference between girl boss and alpha male? Is there a difference? Like, it feels like those two things are trying to get at the same concept of somebody who is in charge of themselves, their family, their, their life, their group of friends, their organization that they're within, what, you know, whatever the, the kind of perimeter is that you want to label. But it feels like really it's just modern terms for leader. But they're received very differently in society, it appears.

• 30:52Speaker 02

  Yeah. Um, yeah. I mean, I guess there really isn't an enormous difference in terms of the actual qualities that we're describing, except for that one is celebrated and one is demonized. But, um, yeah, I mean, I guess I can understand the fact that over the past few decades, like, women needed to be promoted and lifted up. And there, we've made a lot of progress and we have, like, we're, we're working and doing our own thing and we're financially independent and we have more opportunities and options before us than ever before. And so the idea that we did benefit from encouragement and having that conversation and getting there is great. But the idea that you couldn't also have that conversation about men and empowering

• 31:36Speaker 02

  men when clearly people just in general and by and large are disempowered in the same way. I mean, I just think it's a, it's a double standard. But I can understand like that one might be more taboo because of the historical context, whereas the other was kind of a useful mechanism to empower young girls to like, think that, like, dream big and stuff like, I, I mean, I, I guess the historical context is the only real difference. Up and she knocked up the books. Sorry.

• 32:05Anthony Pompliano?

  So when you think about squashing dissent, right? When somebody has an idea, somebody has a viewpoint and you just constantly are after them, whether it's an online mob, whether it's in a classroom at a university, or it's just what I would consider more traditional cultural pressures or social pressures, that obviously plays into self censorship. I have many, many friends that I am in private group chats with who will say things. And it's like, wow, the difference between- What you are willing to say out in public online versus what you will say in private is widening at an alarming rate. And I've asked them, I was like, hey, why don't you feel comfortable saying that in public? And it usually comes down to two answers. One is like, I just don't want to

• 32:47Anthony Pompliano?

  deal with the backlash. I don't want to deal with the nonsense. Like, it's not my goal, nor do I enjoy waking up every day and like going to war on the internet. Right? So like, that's like one group of people. And the other group of people is just like, I have career risk. I have, you know, some other risk that I can't say it, right? I'm not in a position where I can go out and say this and not worry about what the the reaction is. Do you see this among young people as well? Where there's self censorship is not only happening, but it's becoming much, much more kind of robust and pervasive throughout that generation? This episode is brought to you by Exodus. Accessing Web3 across multiple networks just got a hell of a lot easier. Exodus is one of the most popular crypto wallets for mobile and desktop,

• 33:32Anthony Pompliano?

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• 34:57Anthony Pompliano?

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• 35:26Speaker 02

  100% because, I mean, I was probably in high school when the earliest version of modern cancel culture started to be a thing and then like celebrities would be deplatformed, or even people at school. And I think growing up with this sense that there, there is like a public facing you and a kitchen table kind of you. I mean, it feels like very Soviet to me. Like, it's, it's really dystopian. But growing up in that way and feeling like you need to develop like the, the type of person or the, the set of beliefs that's palatable to a professor or to a teacher or to your social circle versus who you actually are, or maybe like the context of your family, you go home and they have a totally different

• 36:09Speaker 02

  set of values from this assumed set of values with your school is enormous. And I think going, developing in that way versus a lot of adults recently like have had to kind of shift and kind of get into that mindset. I think there's something very sad about growing up and being a teenager and you're supposed to be grappling with ideas and like messing up. That's just part of being a teenager. You're going to say stupid things and now it's on the internet forever. And people are, want to attack you for virtually anything you say or go way back into your teenage tweets like they did to that Teen Vogue editor. And so I think it's kind of short circuiting this exploratory time when you're a teenager.

• 36:54Speaker 02

  And you're supposed to be like an anarchist one day and a communist the next day and just figuring things out and saying stupid stuff and realizing later that that was stupid and then getting smarter from the process of doing that and kids aren't really given the freedom to do that anymore. And so I feel my generation, I think, is probably most adversely impacted because we've we've never really known anything different and I found since I started speaking out, I thought NYU was going to be like the most inhospitable place for someone like me as a New York post columnist of all things, which um actually hasn't proven to be as bad as I expected because you have no idea when everyone's sitting around and sitting around and sitting on their hands and biting their tongues, that there are people around you that

• 37:38Speaker 02

  either not not necessarily think like you, but would respect your views, but they never get voiced, they never get aired. There's just one sort of narrative that in classrooms is allowed to thrive and survive. And then like as soon as I just decided like screw it and I wrote an op ed about free speech at NYU, I could not believe the amount of people that I knew professors that I knew, deans that I knew of that I would never have imagined would reach out and say like, congratulations on this classmates, people who lived across the hall from me and I never would have put that together and I'm sure that none of them have put together how many other people are more heterodox in their universe because they didn't speak out. And I'm not saying that like everyone should do that. Obviously, if you have

• 38:22Speaker 02

  if you're gonna go to law school and that's not the the right move for you, then do your thing, whatever's best, but I think there's this illusion that you're totally alone in places like like college campuses or at like in a progressive city when that's not actually the case. And I'm just like the human repository for everyone's stuff where they're like can I run an idea past you, but like, don't tell anyone or I'll get like the texts outside of group chats of like, have you thought about this? And I'm like, yeah. I mean, you're like, I appreciate that you're coming to me, but you can also say that in front of people because everyone's sitting on their hands and everyone's kind of questioning things more than you realize that they are. But it's just because we've never kind of like broken down that barrier that everyone's just coming to me and saying like

• 39:07Speaker 02

  here's my secret viewpoint that I don't want everyone to know.

• 39:11Anthony Pompliano?

  It's just leadership. The way that I always come back to is we forget biologically, there is this element that when you see someone step up into a leadership position, if they're good, right? Now, again, there's bad leaders, but if they step up into that leadership position, people will follow. And you see this in everything from the military and war, to local politics, to national politics, but also in social circles. And I think one of the pieces of the playbook that I'll call out is cancel culture was winning for a long time because everyone feared it. Now, all of a sudden, you have people who have learned the playbook of when cancel culture comes for them, they just say, "No, I'm not canceled."

• 39:53Anthony Pompliano?

  And what it does is it actually swings the pendulum back. It gives them much more power, right? Like, one of the things that I've observed multiple times now is there have been very obvious efforts to go after someone, whether it's the online mob, whether it's just a cancel culture thing. You know, sometimes they're the same, sometimes those are different. And whether it is the actual individual themselves who stands up and says, "No, I will not apologize." I think Matt Walsh recently did this with some of the work that he was doing. He did a whole video and it was kind of dramatic, but he basically was like, "No, I'm not apologizing. Like, I am right on this. I'm convicted on this. And like, go

• 40:33Anthony Pompliano?

  away." And that gave him way more power. And it almost reinvigorated an entire following around his leadership on that one issue. At the same time, we saw when people came for Joe Rogan and was calling him racist and all this stuff, Andrew Schultz stood up and was like, "Listen, I don't give a shit what you guys are saying. I know this man. I don't think he's racist. He's helped me drastically in my career and blah, blah, blah." You know, all this other stuff, as he has, you know, many people in the comedic industry. A bunch of people rallied around that and kind of stood back up. And so when we see these examples, I do wonder how much of it is like, the cancel culture was a learned behavior, and so people saw that it worked, and so then they began to execute that playbook

• 41:12Anthony Pompliano?

  over and over again. And now, almost the like, counter, you know, tactic to cancel culture has been learned. And so now, we just get two groups that are going to war with each other, with it being unclear whether there's actually ever a true winner now, because both sides are armed with the playbook as to how to handle the situation. What do you think?

• 41:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think there's a nuance between public figures and people and their private lives with cancel culture that um like just the unfortunate reality is if you're out there and in the world and someone tries to tear you down, you have more defenders to come by your side and people with less to lose because they're established. Um but I would say like a hundred percent the idea that you don't apologize to the mob if you if you haven't done anything wrong. I mean, if someone pulls something stupid that you said from forever ago, it was just stupid, and you just say, okay, that was stupid and move on. Like, I think we've learned that the apologies and the like very clear, like people just disavowing their former selves, and you can tell that's not genuine, is not the way to go.

• 42:17Speaker 02

  So I think the tactic of fighting back is certainly more refined than it was. I would say for the average Joe who might like have something happen in a workplace or have something happen in school, the odds that people are going to come up and stand uh stand by their side when their job is at stake or when your job could maybe be at stake by standing up as well. Um I'm I'm more dubious that on the kind of low scale personal level, that's necessarily um as feasible, but I would say that by and large, we've learned a lot of lessons from uh as bad as it got, especially in 2020. I feel like literally everyone was getting canceled and everyone was scared to speak out because it felt like we were having this like collective social meltdown.

• 43:01Speaker 02

  Um but yeah, I worry about like, it almost makes us kind of retreat into our own camps and say like, oh, now like I'm I've been canceled and so now I'm uncancelling myself and I'm going to just make a universe of people who agree with me, which I totally understand that that's the reaction when you've been pushed out of a universe or pushed out of like the kind of mainstream. But I think it's it's a sad effect because we've totally lost the ideals of free speech culture and the ideas of like how you talk through differences and just treat people like human beings or even like there's there's an interesting double standard where I think it used to be like you don't talk about politics at the dinner table.

• 43:41Speaker 02

  And that I actually think is probably a healthy thing, like you maybe don't bring that up on the first day, or you maybe don't need to talk about it at Thanksgiving, but there's this double standard that's come up where, or even in the workplace, but now every workplace is like espousing the same values. And there's a certain set of politics that you can talk about and play company and then the other side that you can't. So it's a weird kind of double standard, but I do worry about, um, not that I like ascribe blame to somebody who says, oh, I'm gonna un-cancel myself and make my own universe and go independent. I think that's a great thing. I'm glad that that's an option for people and that they're being supported. Like there are a lot of creators that have gone independent on Substack and I think that's great. But it's just, it's disappointing that we're kind of leaving behind all these institutions and like,

• 44:27Speaker 02

  you know, I'll leave like a big publication and do my own thing and not talk to people across the aisle. Like I thi- I think it has a sad, negative, long-term effect as well.

• 44:38Anthony Pompliano?

  I don't disagree, but I also think, uh, people like to tell of the story that the big institutions, uh, oh, you know, woe is us, we don't know how we found our way to this weird place. Uh, damn, aw shucks, uh, we don't like how we got here. I think that that's complete bullshit in many cases. Uh, I think it's like in very intentional, very malicious. Uh, and you know, I have friends who work inside of some of these organizations and left. And the stories you hear about, you know, uh, facts being made up. Uh, people literally, uh, just digging and digging and digging until they can find the information they need for their specific, uh, angle on a story.

• 45:20Anthony Pompliano?

  Uh, the, um, uh, just complete lack of what I would consider journalistic ethics or the pursuit of the truth and more so the pursuit of their story. Um, it's nasty stuff. And what I think has happened, and it goes back to kind of this idea of, you know, there's now two playbooks, the cancel culture and then the counter cancel culture. Uh, also in the media, uh, space specifically, like the mainstream media has lost. Like it is game over, game set match, it's done because the audience sizes. Of where they chose to build their audiences were just so small compared to the internet. And so what you're seeing now is like, if you went and asked a kid on a college campus

• 46:03Anthony Pompliano?

  to name the top five information sources of where they get, whether it's political information, you know, finance information or whatever, I'm willing to bet that at least half, right? It still may be fifty fifty, but at least half are independent type sources. Now, there's questions like, you know, is Jordan Peterson independent anymore, given that he's at, you know, Daily Wire and they've got, you know, almost a million subscribers. Like, we now are seeing so much success on the independent route that it becomes competitive to some degree with the mainstream. But I don't know, do you agree that most people on college campuses are actually getting a big portion of their information from independent sources? Or do you still see most of them going to the mainstream outlets?

• 46:44Speaker 02

  Oh, a hundred percent. Like, I actually, I think it's gone to such a ridiculous extreme where like you look at the polling and people are like, I'm getting my news from TikTok and Snapchat. So it's so disaggregated that it's not even, it's just like some random person who makes a TikTok about a political thing. And it's like, I don't know, I think that's concerning, even though I'm all for independent disaggregated media. I think is, I mean, definitely all the big guys have been taken down. And the idea that we would look to one sort of voice or one news anchor as like the arbiter of truth on our behalf is very much a thing of the past, which I think in one way is healthy. And another way, it's kind of sad that it, there is a journalistic idea

• 47:28Speaker 02

  that you don't say your opinions, which I'm an opinion journalist, so I don't pretend that I'm not saying what I think. But there was a time and place where a news anchor would just say, here are the relevant facts. And that's the journalistic ideal, that you don't need to lead people to a conclusion or pick and choose which facts are suitable for them. And we've seen that happen. So many times. I mean, I was just recently thinking about the New York Post Hunter Biden laptop scandal, which I wasn't there for, but I recently talked to the editor in chief who okayed the story going through. And I mean, I can't even imagine being a part of that newsroom at the time when you can't even share it on Twitter. New York Post is locked out of its Twitter account. It's one of the biggest newspapers in the country.

• 48:12Speaker 02

  And yeah, I mean, I think it's a healthy thing that we have all kind of found voices that match us a little bit more. It's also, I think there's a consequence to that, which is that we all end up in our echo chambers and it's kind of hard to hear anyone else anymore. But I think it's definitely better than the model of like, there's the one team kind of media and the other team kind of media and you pick your side and then you just talk past each other forever. At least there's more nuance now.

• 48:37Anthony Pompliano?

  It feels like the divisiveness in media coverage is a proxy for the divisiveness in politics. And I've seen you argue that Gen Z, which you may have to define Gen Z for myself and others, but they only have ever known political divisiveness. Like the early parts of their life, they don't know anything about politics. And then they basically walk right into 2016 election. And from there, you know, explosion over the next six years is just all out, you know, competition in a positive light, you know, a political war, if you will, in the most extreme version.

• 49:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, totally. I mean, I was probably 15 in the lead up to the 2016 election and 16 when it happened. And so that's the beginning of my political memory. I can kind of vaguely remember the elections before, but not with any level of sophistication. I was like 12. And so I think there's, there's a shared strange generational experience with Gen Z, which I think is people born in 97 to 2012, which I'm, I'm really talking about the people closer to 97 to like within a few years of my age range where we've only really known political divisiveness. We've only known a reality where like there are relatives that you can't invite to Thanksgiving

• 49:56Speaker 02

  because somebody's mad at somebody else over politics, even though they've been just fine for decades before that. And so I think growing up with that. Looking at that model and looking at, okay, there are these two-party systems. It's literally like shattering the fabric of of my school and people are getting canceled, or it's shattering the fabric of my my um my family and my maybe my parents are having tension because they like the opposite political party like. Growing up with that, I think there's there's a reason why Gen Z, even though I I would say that by and large we are very progressive um and definitely on the left, but we're

• 50:36Speaker 02

  far less likely than most people to say like ascribe our political beliefs to a specific party. I think it's um Gen Z is twice as likely to be registered independent as anyone in the general electorate. And so I would I wouldn't say that means that we're all a bunch of moderates, like there are independents who are further left than Democrats and independents who are further right than Republicans among us. But um there's a general sense that this system isn't working and that like maybe a third party. I mean, I'm I am a fan of Andrew Yang's, not every single thing like I'll be. I mean, he's definitely further left than I am, but I'm a fan of his vision for um bringing like a third party in or at least

• 51:19Speaker 02

  reforming some aspects of how our democracy runs in order to kind of depolarize and break down the duopoly of two parties. But I would say my generation by and large is um more attracted to that because we've never known anything different than just like a partisan hellscape and things cut like the wheels coming off the the bus here with our country being torn apart by these two teams. And then every single election that I remember have just been lesser of two evil elections where it doesn't seem like anyone's happy with the options that we have. So why? I mean, I'm a registered independent. I don't know why I would I would uh put myself in a specific box because of that life experience.

• 51:59Anthony Pompliano?

  So I'm gonna read you three stats uh that you put in one of your articles and each one of these I was like, oh, boy. And the third one really shook me. Uh California during the um runoff, uh they saw forty-eight percent drop in young turnout compared to twenty twenty. The Virginia governor race saw 62% drop in voters under 30, you know, more than 60% drop. And then the last one was half of Gen Z is registered as independents. I think that that would shock people who are older, who are used to independents was kind of a joke, like, you know, it's like all libertarians and independents that hang out with all their imaginary friends, right? And it's like the Republicans and Democrats and nobody else.

• 52:41Anthony Pompliano?

  What's going on? Why do you think that that is such a high percentage of registered voters?

• 52:47Speaker 02

  Because the system's never worked for us for as long as we can remember. And the idea that you have two options and that, I mean, we're the most diverse generation of human beings to ever share a nation in human history. And there's absolutely no reason why we should just fit into two sets of boxes. I think people are, I mean, there's a whole host of complaints of, I know a ton of people who are independents because the Democratic Party's not left enough for them. So it's not like we're a bunch of moderates sitting around in the middle and just like wanting everyone to be kumbaya. But I think just that life experience in that context has made us way more independent minded, which I think could in the long term be a good thing.

• 53:28Speaker 02

  I mean, we're definitely, definitely further, like the mean of my generation is far more to the left than I am. But there's also another interesting statistic that like the biggest drops of approval ratings for Biden over the past couple of years have been among young people in Gen Z. So even though I, there are very few of us that are registered Republican, there are also very few of us who look and say like, the Democratic Party is, is doing what I want it to do, or, or like, at least that Biden is. And so, um, yeah, I don't know. I think it's just this new attitude of like, George Washington, his farewell address was like, don't do the two-party system thing because that's going to pull people apart and alienate them from one another.

• 54:13Speaker 02

  And here's the generation whose whole life experience is kind of built on that foundation and that understanding.

• 54:20Anthony Pompliano?

  All right. So Andrew Yang's got this new political party, the Ford Party.

• 54:26Anthony Pompliano?

  When I first heard about it, I was like, there's 0% chance that the Republicans and Democrats are going to let anyone else in the game. Just they will do anything and everything they possibly can to stop that. What is the general idea behind the Ford Party? So like structurally, yes, there should be a third party. Okay, we're going to go try to do that. What are like the main points of the Ford Party?

• 54:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, so um, I'm definitely not an expert on it, but I have looked into it quite a bit. And he, so he had a lot of like, personal policies that he's kind of put on the back burner now that he's merged with um, like, two small Republican Party offshoots as well. Um, so he's not, he's no longer through the party platform advocating pre-universal basic income, which I know is what alienated a lot of people from his platform.

• 55:10Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, I'm out on that. Ju- just so we're clear, I'm out on the UBI. I think it's the dumbest idea.

• 55:14Speaker 02

  I'm not a UBI person either, um, definitely not. But I, he, basically, the party right now, I don't believe they're running candidates, but what they're doing, because like, there's this whole, like, legitimate narrative that if somebody is running as a third-party candidate, it's a spoiler fact that either you're throwing away your vote, or you're giving a vote, taking away a vote from the party that you would prefer between the two options. And so they're acknowledging that that's a problem in our system right now, and they're not trying to run people to just, like, ruin elections and get people elected that wouldn't otherwise. Um, so they're endorsing people regardless of their political affiliation. So you could be a Democrat, or Republican, or an independent that just shares values of,

• 55:59Speaker 02

  like, wanting some more cohesion and believing in, like, cross-party cooperation. And, um, like, a lot of values that I think are just fundamental to a democracy that we've lost sight of. But a few of his reforms I really like, which, one of them is like, open part- are open partisan primaries. So, in the beginning phases of an election, rather than have people, like, the most extreme voters that are actually motivated enough to go and, they're registered for their party and they're gonna go get up an extra day and vote for a candidate within that party, and then have the two extremes phase off against each other. He wants to open it up to make it that, that, like, every voter can vote for any candidate,

• 56:41Speaker 02

  and then the two best people end up facing off, which seems to me like a better way to get at the mean of what people actually want in a candidate. And he has also advocated for ranked choice voting, which would do kind of a similar thing, like, you don't- Have to pick an extreme and then if your voice doesn't get heard on one thing, it can get heard on the next. And so it kind of averages out to the collective will, which I think in New York City, that was how Eric Adams ended up getting elected. And that's a demonstration of the fact that like, I mean, I don't think he's been doing as great of a job as I had hoped, but that a more moderate candidate can rise to the top through the process of kind of averaging out people's will. Um, and so I'm, I'm into a few of his ideas there, but I don't know. What are your thoughts?

• 57:25Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, I, I, I think that there's a number of different ideas. Uh, he's got the rank choice voting. Uh, I think it's open primaries is another one, um, that they're like very nuanced structural things in the US political process with, if you don't pay attention to politics, you don't even know what this stuff means, right? So it's like, you really got to understand what the problems are to understand what the potential solutions are. And it seems like he's done that. Uh, I'm definitely out on the UBI, uh, for reasons that, you know, people may or may not agree with. But the UBI thing, um, I understand and am sympathetic to the problem that has been identified, right? Like, uh, I, I was just reading an article today, uh, Northwestern Mutual just did a brand new study, uh, for 2021, um, that they just now are publishing and they were talking about retirement.

• 58:07Anthony Pompliano?

  And in the retirement, uh, study, it said that Americans are reporting they need 1.25 million dollars to retire. That is up 20% from 1.08 million, which was what they reported in 2020. So it's a 20% leap in what they think that they need. But the problem is the average in, uh, retirement age went from, I think it was like 62.6, you know, years old to now it's 64. So we've increased the retirement age. We think we need 20% more money, but the actual amount of money people have saved has dropped 11%. Went from like 98,000 to like 86,000 or whatever the exact numbers are. And so you look at that and you're like, oh, people are screwed. Like there, there's no math. You can't, you know, come up with some like nice slick way to talk about it.

• 58:48Anthony Pompliano?

  It's like, you need 1.25 million, which I would actually, is actually low, but you need 1.25 million to retire. You only have less than a hundred K. Uh, it's not clear how you're going to close that gap. And by the way, you've got to work longer to even get to the hundred K number. And so like, this is a bad situation. What's the solution? Well, somebody steps in and is like, let's just give people money. I get it. I, I understand why that is a potential answer. But the problem with it is exactly what we just saw for the last, you know, almost three years now, which is when the government steps in and starts handing out free money, they screw everything up. And they don't mean to do it. It's just you cannot continue to intervene in a free market and do it. Now, do we have free markets in the United States? It's pretty obvious, no. But if they continue to intervene like this, what it does is it actually hurts over the long term.

• 59:33Anthony Pompliano?

  And obviously, the high inflation now, but you can imagine if all of a sudden we were giving a thousand dollars to everyone every single month, it'd be a bad situation. And so when you look at this, what it ultimately goes back to, and I think where a lot of people, maybe this is some of the independent stuff, is like, the problem seemed to be pretty well identified. And actually, I think that is a point of agreement across political lines. It's like, people are like, oh, crime is bad, you know? Oh, inflation is bad. Oh, this, you know, retirement situation is bad. It's the potential solutions where all the disagreements are. And so, you know, maybe we count it as a win that we all agree on the problems, but maybe not? I don't know.

• 1:00:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, I don't know. I mean, I definitely agree with you on the UBI front. The only time that I've kind of been sympathetic to it is hearing him argue it in the sense that, like, this would be in place of a welfare system, and rather than what we're doing right now, which is giving people money and filtering it through a bunch of bureaucracies and paying salaries to people that don't really need to be there in the first place, and then giving people money to do a specific thing with it, is a much more convoluted and ridiculous system than just trusting people with money and saying, here, do what you want with it, and there's like an additional level of freedom.

• 1:00:50Speaker 02

  But I also just kind of reject the assumption that the welfare state is necessarily a, like, a reality of our country, even though it is right now. I think fixing it by making it just a different version isn't really where I would like to see the country go. But to your question about whether seeing problems, or seeing the same problems but having different solutions, is a good thing or a bad thing? I mean, I think... It's not even relevant anymore, in my opinion, because we're not even, like, we're just talking so far past each other that even though we are trying to solve the same problems and we do, like, you can look at, like, the war on drugs versus like the decriminalization efforts right now, which I think some of them have gone way too far,

• 1:01:35Speaker 02

  even though I'm generally understanding that the war on drugs and criminalizing people who are in terrible situations in the first place isn't the best solution. Like, both those parties, even though that's the opposite reaction to the same problem, looked at people who were suffering from drug addiction and looked at people who are who are living on the streets and tripping out and said, "This is a problem that we need to solve, and it's awful, and here's my best version of doing it." But I think we've just gone so far to an extreme where we're not even hearing each other and realizing, like, our hearts are in the same place, just our minds are going somewhere different. And I mean, anything to actually get some conversation and some compromise between

• 1:02:17Speaker 02

  these two polar extremes that we have right now, if it's the forward party, if it's just like inculcating the ideals of democracy and free speech and pluralism in public schools and teaching kids what that means to be a citizen and a responsible citizen in a democracy. Like, whatever we can do to get to the point where we can recognize again that we are solving the same issues, we all want life to be better for people, we all have different ideas, and maybe just fighting about our two different versions ad nauseam and never getting anywhere and gridlock is not the solution, and figuring out if there is some sort of moderation or compromise or kind of letting the marketplace of ideas duke it out a little more than it actually does right now

• 1:03:00Speaker 02

  would be a positive thing, but I don't think the fact that our hearts are all in the right place is helping right now, because we don't even really realize that or acknowledge it.

• 1:03:08Anthony Pompliano?

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• 1:04:35Anthony Pompliano?

  of the world's strongest security protocols with the easiest to use form factor and app. They have three-factor authentication and you can use your PIN and Arculus key card along with biometrics. They don't compromise your holdings by requiring a USB port, charging, or browser connections. With Arculus, you're protected from hackers and institutions freezing your access. Learn more today and buy it now at getarculus.com. You can use promo code POMP to save 15%. Getarculus.com, use promo code POMP. And remember, with Arculus, it's your keys, your crypto. Capitalism is the best jobs program. Is just like a, it's a way that I always just come back to like, yes, there's all kinds of great ideas, but at the end of the day, if you want to create jobs, like encourage capitalism,

• 1:05:19Anthony Pompliano?

  right? Encourage small, medium sized businesses, encourage the founding of companies, like allow for the incentives to take over. And that is a very specific example around jobs, but I think that you can take that exact same mentality and viewpoint and kind of bring it to these other issues. And what you realize is that the United States, like we got a hell of a lot of problems, but there's not a better system than a democratic capitalistic system. Like, if we saw another one, we might try it, but, but I don't see one out there. And so it feels like that really kind of hammers home. Like, maybe we should just focus on kind of encouraging the, the benefits of that approach, because it's gotten us to this place and we don't yet see something that's better.

• 1:06:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, I completely agree with that. And I'm very libertarian in my orientation, especially around free markets. And, you know, it's, it's like, it's something that I've been thinking about a lot. It's like, I think there's an idea that capitalism is this terrible system, because what we're looking at is actually like a crony capitalist system that isn't functioning as it's meant to. And we've increasingly intruded on it and then needed to kind of fix things on the back end and just dug ourselves deeper and deeper in. But I'm wondering, I mean, I don't know a ton about it, but I was, I was listening to a lot of people saying that, like, what happened in England with Liz Truss was like, the proof that the libertarian concept is not a great thing and that you can't just like, cut taxes and cut spending and just

• 1:06:47Speaker 02

  hope that everything works out. And I think her experimentation there seems to have proven that to be true under the system that we have right now. I wonder like, if, if we were to go down more of like a deregulation route, how do we untangle ourselves from all the areas of society that are dependent on the fact that we've moved so far away from that? I don't know. Do you have a take on the Liz Truss thing?

• 1:07:10Anthony Pompliano?

  Uh, not necessarily on Liz Truss specifically. I think just on, on the broader point, you know, one of the biggest problems across all economies and societies right now is the debt to GDP ratios. And so when you look, you know, in the US, we're 13140, globally around 400% or so, and Part of the problem is that when people talk about this, they only focus on the debt side. So there's obviously the raising of the debt limits and kind of the constant, should the government print more money? Should the government do this? Should the government do that? And when you look at that from a debt perspective, that then leads to this question of like, oh, well, how do we get more taxes? Right? And the taxes is just revenue to help pay for some of these sins. But the part of the conversation to me that's the most interesting is like, how the hell do we grow out of the problem? And now, you

• 1:07:55Anthony Pompliano?

  know, GDP growth in the United States is, you know, if we're lucky, two to 3% a year. It's been negative, obviously, for the first half of 2022, which is a recession, even though some may say it's not. But in order for us to grow out of this, like, we need to grow out like 10% a year. Pretty hard to do, right? But it doesn't mean that it is impossible. So I always come back to this idea of like, yes, we should focus on the debt side of the equation, but also we should focus on the growth side. And so if you look at, you know, her specific situation where they're cutting taxes and doing this stuff, the nuance is like, well, what taxes are being cut? What is the incentive that is actually being driven here? And if that was going to, over a five-year period, lead

• 1:08:38Anthony Pompliano?

  to, you know, great economic expansion and job creation and economic value that leads to more taxes and, you know, this whole like kind of chain reaction, great. But if it, to your point, is more like a crony capitalism type system where it's just like, hey, let's go find all the rich people and give them tax breaks so they can just sit on their money and they don't have to pay taxes, I think a lot of people are like, ah, that's probably not the right way to do it. And so what it ultimately gets at is if we gave a very simple economic test to politicians, like Economics 101, I don't know what percent would pass. Like, over or under 50% of the Senate and Congress in the United States passes an Economics 101 test. I fear that it is less than 50%.

• 1:09:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, totally. And some of the loudest voices in that front, I think, are the most removed from actual economic realities.

• 1:09:28Anthony Pompliano?

  I mean, gas station owners are terrorists in America right now. Like, like, literally, right? It's like, hey, why won't they bring the gas prices down? Or if you look at the grocery stores, like, they're price gouging. I mean, these are things that serious politicians have levied against people who, I think, the grocery store industry operates on less than a 5% profit margin. Right? And I think that they have been able to survive, literally when the government was ordering businesses to shut down, thankfully left them open. But you look at this and you just start to say to yourself, like, they can't be serious. They can't be trying to solve the problems. This has to be campaigning. This has to be a effort to remain in their position of power and influence,

• 1:10:10Anthony Pompliano?

  rather than actually solve some of these problems. Because if you're yelling at the gas station owners, like, I think we're just like past the point of seriousness.

• 1:10:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, the level of deflection on economics recently and like, I mean, some of the shocking arguments being made that it's like, all of a sudden, corporate greed is what's causing inflation because corporations just decided in 2022 that they would like some more money. Like, it's shocking. It's also like, I went to really great schools. I got a great education. I went to a boarding school in high school. I was taught so many of the same things over and over and over again. I know way too much about like Chinese and Indian history for some reason, and I was taught that like three separate years in my school. And I never was made to take an economics class, which is

• 1:11:03Speaker 02

  really interesting to me, or even just like a basic, like, here's not even at a national level, but like, here's what a check is, and here is how you like can budget out your spending. And here's the, I mean, just the very basics of how to be an adult. Were never taught. The very basics of how our economy works were never taught unless you specifically sought that out. And like, even coming out of NYU and doing two years there, the only reason that I've ever taken an economics class is because I specifically had to like pick a class outside of my program to do as an elective. Which I'm so glad that I did, because there were so many very fundamental things that

• 1:11:45Speaker 02

  I'm embarrassed in retrospect that I didn't really understand and were never taught to me. And it's amazing to me, so many so many things that are so relevant to our day to day life, like even just like nutrition and, you know, you eat free meals a day. And it would probably be a good thing if the school system, rather than teaching us like pre-algebra or like trigonometry or something that, I mean, if you're gonna go down a math field, please, by all means, take that class. But the idea that we're gonna like short-circuit kids' knowledge about things that are very important and very pertinent to their day-to-day lives, like economics with nutrition and not value education about that is just shocking. Like, I think the level of ignorance on it, on the economic front is unbelievable.

• 1:12:28Speaker 02

  And the only reason that I think some politicians certainly do know better, but they they realize that saying the convenient thing that corporations are suddenly greedy today is what's going to get votes and attention because it's, it's the bad guy that you can point your fingers at, rather than pointing your finger at the politician who created inflationary policies. And so, um, that ignorance from our education system is being preyed upon by politicians, in my opinion.

• 1:12:53Anthony Pompliano?

  It's still transitory, don't worry. It, it is a hundred percent transitory.

• 1:12:59Speaker 02

  And there's like the memory-holing of the whole idea that like, oh yeah, no, that never really happened. Like, even with a lot of COVID policies, like, there's a general shift towards pragmatism or a general shift towards acknowledging that inflation may be caused by spending. But then we kind of just like are supposed to forget all the things that happened before and all the other stances that people had in the past. I don't know if you've had that impression too, but it's, it's kind of interesting. Or like even deep on the police, like you have politicians who were, at the very least, playing into that narrative, if not explicitly saying it, who now are like, oh no, we're pro-cop. Like, what are you talking about? I don't remember that.

• 1:13:37Anthony Pompliano?

  There is, um, a number of people that I've seen give speeches recently who were like, we've known the entire time that not having children be in-person for education would stunt their educational, you know, whatever. And it's like, uh, that didn't seem like that was the narrative, you know, two years ago. Uh, the, the thing that I'm watching, and you know, this is a little bit of a, a moving target because it just happened. Uh, but I, I'm interested in your thoughts. So New York Supreme Court, I believe, uh, yesterday or the day before, came out with a ruling, uh, that stated any employee in the state of New York who is fired for not being vaccinated has to be reinstated to their job and given back pay. Now, I read through maybe twenty minutes yesterday and it appears that this is not the final say.

• 1:14:22Anthony Pompliano?

  This is, yes, a ruling, but there's an appeals process and, and so we don't know exactly where it'll end up. What's your take on this so far of like, that's a pretty damning conclusion, if that ends up standing for what's played out over the last, you know, two, three years?

• 1:14:39Speaker 02

  Do you know, is it, it's, I assume it's just city employees or public employees?

• 1:14:43Anthony Pompliano?

  Uh, that's a great question. I'll get you that answer in a second.

• 1:14:46Speaker 02

  Okay. Yeah. Sorry. I haven't done my research on, on this latest update. I just saw the headline like literally a few minutes ago. I've been underwater writing my book, so I forget the real world is happening. Um, but yeah, I, I was, I've been following the mandates closely as they've been coming out as a New York City resident. I like just disgusted by the way that the vaccine mandates were rolled out here personally. But, um, I mean, I think if I assume that just applies to public employees and I think that's certainly the right move. I mean, I spoke recently to the head of one of the major fire department unions here. And, um, just to get a sense of like what, what people are thinking about.

• 1:15:27Speaker 02

  They like, I think they were upholding the mandate and then they just lifted it for private sector employees only, and not public sector employees. So basically everyone was allowed to go back to work if they weren't vaccinated, except for public sector employees, which includes police officers and, and firemen, who were precisely the people who during the worst wave of the pandemic, had no choice but to expose themselves to COVID, were continuing to go out on the front lines. Most of them got it in the process and recovered. And, you know, there's questions about how long natural immunity lasts, but certainly it's a thing that they have the right to claim. Or even if like, I mean, they've just all been exposed a hundred percent.

• 1:16:12Speaker 02

  And they were the people who were made to make the greatest sacrifices. And then there's this vaccine mandate that is now only applying to them. And they've had so many, I was, I spoke to the union head who said they've had so many more retirements than, um, like typically in that period of time and that very many of them had just said like, I just, I don't want to get vaccinated. And this isn't the way that I, I want to continue working here. Like I'm out, I'm leaving. It's just so ridiculously unjust, the way that, that things have unfolded here and the idea that. Uh, local government officials who have no health, public health backgrounds like Bill de Blasio made a medical decision for a ton of people, including young people who it

• 1:16:55Speaker 02

  turns out some of them, like young men, might actually be at greater risk of myocarditis as an adverse effect, but we didn't know that yet. But Bill de Blasio decided that he could make them get vaccinated if they want to go to a gym or eat at a restaurant or just exist in the city. I mean, it's that, that's certainly if that, I mean, what I, I'm all for reversing that and giving people the respect and dignity that they deserve to make that choice for themselves.

• 1:17:21Anthony Pompliano?

  So the court, uh, found it is for government employees. Uh, there's about 1,400 or so, uh, who were fired, uh, for being unvaccinated earlier this year. Uh, it was a policy or a mandate that was, uh, established under Bill de Blasio. Uh, and I guess Mayor Eric Adams claimed that, uh, they would not rehire those employees. So de Blasio instated it and Eric Adams essentially looks like he has said, hey, we're going to continue this and not rehire the 1,400 people that we fired. Um, the court, there's two interesting parts. One, the reinstation, uh, reinstatement of all employees. Um, and they have to get back pay. But the second thing is it explicitly said, and this is a direct quote, being vaccinated

• 1:18:06Anthony Pompliano?

  does not prevent an individual from contracting or transmitting COVID-19, end quote. And so what becomes fascinating about this is I just read that. That is from the New York Supreme Court. In the back of my head, I am thinking there's a 50/50 shot whether YouTube is going to tell me we violated their policies.

• 1:18:27Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 1:18:28Anthony Pompliano?

  Right?

• 1:18:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:18:28Anthony Pompliano?

  There's a 50/50 shot whether videos will get taken down, whether conversations will be removed for stating a direct quote of what a court, a judge has said, which he is basing on what the CDC is now saying.

• 1:18:45Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 1:18:46Anthony Pompliano?

  And so when you get into this world, what you start to realize is like,

• 1:18:50Anthony Pompliano?

  Truth used to be very black and white. It has now become, there is truth and then there is what the gatekeepers, whether that's mainstream media, whether that's the platforms or anything else, want the truth to be. And those two things sometimes align and sometimes they don't, which is kind of a crazy thing to be living in a world where it's very obvious that they are two separate things that may or may not be in agreement with each other.

• 1:19:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, totally. I mean, there, there have been so many examples of that. The New York Post story that turned out to be true. And then there's just like the quiet little admission that like, oh yeah, maybe that laptop, that was fine. We didn't actually have to censor you all off Twitter and, and remove that. And yeah, like all the, all the increasing revelations about COVID that were once misinformation or like the, the lab leak theory, which is certainly very plausible, if not likely now, which used to be relegated to the dustbin. But I would say, actually, I wouldn't say that truth used to be more black and white. I think we used to have a different understanding of what like the pursuit of truth meant. Because obviously there are things that we believed that are totally untrue. And we look back on some like scientific facts or medical practices that we might've done, like bloodletting.

• 1:20:00Speaker 02

  And we're like, okay, like that was their version of black and white truth, but it's certainly not true now. And we know that and we've progressed. But I think we've lost touch with like the idea of epistemic humility and like the concept that we don't know everything. And the whole reason that we're wrestling with ideas and having conversations and talking about things is because we all want to get closer to truth. And the only way that we can do that is by letting ideas play out, by acknowledging that it isn't black and white, that it's something that we're striving towards, that right now, we're certainly saying things and doing things and believing things that people in the future are going to look back on and say, oh, that was wrong, or that was ridiculous, or that was immoral. And I think we used to acknowledge that.

• 1:20:44Speaker 02

  There's no one arbiter of truth and there's no like one gatekeeper that can say this is fact and this is fiction and we've drifted so far away from the idea that we need to let people duke it out and and have conversations and express themselves that we've just assigned these arbitrary institutions like social media companies or journalists that none of us have even heard the names of to decide that like this is what you can see and this is what you can't see and it's it's really shocking. I mean, I can't even I I think you're probably right on on the front of like reading something like that might violate their policies, which is just shocking and the idea that that would even be there in the first place or that we

• 1:21:25Speaker 02

  would entrust on company that like isn't a public health entity or let alone a public health entity to decide what is true and what is false. I mean, California has um some crazy new licensing law that they rolled out for medical professionals that says that um like misinformation or giving a a a patient misinformation about COVID could lead to losing their license, but there are so many things that are now known and accepted information pieces about COVID that were once misinformation. So um yeah, I completely agree. It's it's just it's shocking how arbitrary it is that we just decide that these certain institutions can can choose what is appropriate for people to be thinking about and wrestling with and talking about.

• 1:22:09Anthony Pompliano?

  Do we have a mental toughness crisis in America? Like so much of this feels like people are offended, people are uh somewhat weak minded, uh they have very little intellectual rigor in their thinking. I- is it just like kind of come back to hey, if we could teach people to be mentally tough, we'd be better off as a society?

• 1:22:29Speaker 02

  I mean, I kind of think so. Yeah, I that I think one of the most damaging things that has happened or like ideas that has risen up is that like words are harmful. Um and that's something that we we very carefully legally put like the fence around of like these very specific things are harmful, like defamation and direct incitement of violence and virtually nothing else that you can't say because we have a First Amendment for a good reason. And I think that like this, there's just this general idea that That exposure to different ideas is something that can endanger you. And I think also, um, especially in my generation, I see this all the time with, I think, like, the locus of

• 1:23:10Speaker 02

  control is moved where we're no longer telling people like how, like, yeah, the world is shitty and unjust and terrible things happen and people end up in different situations and, and some people have to climb up the ladder a whole lot higher just to get to the point where someone else started. And that's, that's, we can't change, I mean, obviously, we can make policies to ameliorate that fact, but we can't change that reality for people in, in right here and right now. And the only thing that they can do is assume responsibility and pull themselves up by the bootstraps despite the circumstances and not, like, there's no, there's no value to pointing to this and that. Of course, identify the systems that are holding you down and advocate for reform. But the idea

• 1:23:54Speaker 02

  that you can't do stuff for yourself, that, like, the victim mentality, rather than the individualistic, like, like, self, self-oriented, sort of, like, I, I can only control what I do, and so therefore, I'm going to make my actions as good and intentional and productive and hardworking as possible. I think that attitude is also a major issue. Um, but yeah, I would say, like, just the, like, there's just a lack of, um, of, like, self motivation and a, and a value that our society is placed on, the more kind of points of victimhood that you can say. And I mean, even being in, like, classrooms recently in a college, like, you'd hear so

• 1:24:34Speaker 02

  many points start with, as a woman, or as a member of the LGBT community, and like, you need to, like, kind of virtue signal that you're a part of something that has been pulled down. And I think that's just the most fundamentally backwards way of thinking about the world and thinking about how you can make your life better. If you're just looking at broad systems and you lose sight of yourself and the actions that are in your own control, I think that's a really dangerous thing. I also think that's what Peterson is kind of saying. And it shouldn't be, um, such a terrible idea to be espousing to young people to just derive some empowerment from themselves. But, um, I think that kind of all goes into this idea that we need to be protected from ideas.

• 1:25:16Speaker 02

  We need these institutions to decide what is real and what is false, because we can't be trusted to do it ourselves, which is really, really sad. I don't know. What, what's your take on that? What, how do you feel about the mental toughness?

• 1:25:29Anthony Pompliano?

  Oh, I think it's a huge problem. Um, you know, and look, I, I, uh, I grew up in a family of five boys. I was in the military. Like I've got like the most extreme, you know, version of, uh, that there just was no room for, uh, much else. Um, at the same time, I don't think that it should be expected. Like we should take everybody and like send them into the military. Uh, I don't think that we should, uh, like indoctrinate them into, you know, Jaco Willnix, uh, like school of, you know, Hard Knocks or anything like that. Um, but I do think that, uh, there is, um, responsibility that lays with parents. I think is a huge issue. Um, you know, I, I've said many times before, like, how many of our societal problems could be solved if we had, uh, better parents? I don't know what the percentage is. It's impossible to measure, but just like, it does feel like

• 1:26:14Anthony Pompliano?

  there's, um, you know, a lot of people. I've got a lot of friends that are having kids now and stuff. And like the conversation's all like, dude, I'm unprepared for this. Like I, I don't know what to do. Right? And so like, again, like what's the solution? I don't know. Like, are we gonna like put young adults through like parent training? Eh, that feels like that's probably unscalable and unlikely. And then you get in a whole debate of like, what should be taught, what shouldn't, whatever. But just like, there is some connection between, you know, you learn, uh, ethos and ethics and certain things from people, um, that are older than you, specifically your parents as well. And so like, there's something there. The second thing is, uh, we should make sure that people are offended earlier in their life. We should put them in tough

• 1:26:56Anthony Pompliano?

  situations. Right? And, and not because we want to harm them, uh, but actually for the opposite, because we love them, because we want them to be able to withstand whatever the world throws at them in the future. Um, and so it feels like by the, the coddling and, and kind of, um, the, the prevention of anything bad happening, we actually are doing more long-term damage than we are, uh, kind of long-term benefit. And then there's this element also of just like, the best ideas come from like the combat, the war of ideas and attrition and all these things that we know work. Why are we not forcing the people who want to engage? Again, if you want to be an artist and you don't want to participate in intellectual debate, or talk about, you know, certain topics, like, fine, do whatever you want to do.

• 1:27:41Anthony Pompliano?

  But for the people who do want to engage in this stuff, rather than coddle them, like, put them in the arena. And I think that what would end up happening is they would get offended, but they would become better at forming their ideas, at being able to defend their ideas, at understanding the other side. Like, that's one of the things that always cracks me up is, you know, I'll talk to a friend and they'll be like, "I can't believe, you know, ABC thing, you know, about some topic, about the current thing." And I'd be like, "Cool, you ever talked to anyone that believes like the opposite?" And they're like, "No." I'm like, "Okay, so hold on a second. You've got a lot of opinions and they seem pretty strongly held about this thing that you only have your perspective on. Like, you have no clue what the other side thinks about this."

• 1:28:24Anthony Pompliano?

  And so, it's hard, right? It's uncomfortable. It requires a degree of intellectual honesty, but also just like, like a pain threshold. Nobody wants to be told that their ideas are wrong, right? Nobody wants to go and seek out and have a conversation with someone who's like, "You're dumb." But like, maybe that's what we need. Maybe that would actually push us forward as a society, is to like, go do the uncomfortable, hard things.

• 1:28:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, totally. I mean, there have been so many interesting thinkers on this topic. Like, the book Anti-Fragile is kind of about that. Like, you need to kind of chip away at yourself in order to build it back in a better and stronger sense. And I think the parenting is a huge thing here, in my opinion. A friend of mine, Lenore Skenese, like founded this movement called the Free Range Kids Movement, which is not actually that crazy and revolutionary an idea. It's just like, treating kids how we did just a couple generations ago, or even a couple decades ago, not even a couple generations ago, where you let your kids go outside, you let them scrape their

• 1:29:29Speaker 02

  You let them go and play on their own. You don't need to bring them to a piano lessons in order to keep them them like active. You let them go and and play pretend and screw up and fall out of a tree and grow and develop and build. Like build themselves in an independent way. You don't, you you know, you you don't ask your kid to help. Bake something with you and then do everything for them and and crack the eggs and stuff like you let kids actually mess up and fumble and develop and grow. And go outside and you don't have to coddle them and protect them and be a helicopter over them. And I think that like uh raising a whole generation like that. Has had serious consequences because people need their hands held now, like with their professors even like.

• 1:30:13Speaker 02

  I've heard from people who lead companies who say I've hired these young kids like just graduated from college. To answer problems and to solve things and now they're coming to me and they're asking me like, how do I solve this problem or what should I do or how should I attack this? And it's like, well, that's your job. But unfortunately, this is what happens when you have professors who are saying, well, here's how you write the assignment. And you have parents who say, oh, I'll I'll do that for you. Don't worry. You don't have to bother yourself to do that. Like, I I can protect you. Or I'll I'll pave the jungle for you and make sure that everything is okay and and you have. I think it's it's a born out of good intentions to make life easier for kids, but we've just totally short circuited like self-development. And I I've seen the consequences personally. Um, I've I I think.

• 1:30:58Speaker 02

  Again, having like an older parent was super helpful to that because my dad's like, I remember World War Two, like I don't really want to hear about that you're offended, like it's fine. Um, so, yeah, I even wonder, um, like the next generation, I think will be even worse of the kids who grow up with like iPads. And plugged into um, technology and like this alternative world and never even really went out and explored at all, period, let alone. Um, explored in a way that built some fortitude and some independence. But I don't know, have you like, are are like? People that you know had this iPad kid conversation?

• 1:31:35Anthony Pompliano?

  Oh, yeah, yeah, I I've got a uh, I've got a daughter. Uh, a bunch of my friends have, you know, kids under the age of, um, I don't know, ten years old or so. Uh, and the three things that everyone uh discusses, not everyone agrees on what the solution is, but it's like, you know, electronics. Uh, how much time in front of it or what do they do? Uh, the second thing is, um. My version of describing it is like, what happens if your kid can just ask Alexa what the math problem is and you know, get an answer? What if they can like use AI to like write their essay? Like, are we just gonna have like stupid people who, who are actually going to be skilled if they can just use the tools? But like, that's kind of a weird thing. And then the third thing frankly is, do you send your kids to school? And this

• 1:32:20Anthony Pompliano?

  is like a taboo topic, but like, I don't know, I gotta, I gotta always go, my daughter's only about one years old. So I got some time to kind of change my mind, learn more, whatever. But like, there is zero chance my daughter's going to a regular school where you don't know what's happening. Forget like what the extreme, you know, kind of examples we've heard of the stories where it's, you know, this thing happened, we're like, how could we let that happen? Or this other thing, or they're reading this book, or whatever. The bigger thing to me is just, you have no clue what is happening inside that school. And we now are hearing stories where the school is actively telling parents one thing and they're doing something else. And so it's like, growing up in a world where myself, you, many people who are listening to this, we had some increase of transparency into

• 1:33:05Anthony Pompliano?

  things that our parents or grandparents didn't have. So we have Google, we understand that there's reporting, like, like, there's all these things that occur. And things like Twitter, etc. gave us access to information faster, whatever. I actually think it scares the shit out of us to be like, oh, I'm going to send a child to a place where I actually don't know what happens inside of that school. I can't, you know, put up cameras, there's no like, Twitter feed that's live covering what's going on in the school that day. Like, it literally is a black hole to some degree. And so, I think for young parents, there's a lot more questions than answers, which, you know, at least they're talking about it. Maybe it's like the positive way to look at it. But at the same time, like, maybe our parents and our grandparents had the same problem. Maybe they were like, you know,

• 1:33:49Anthony Pompliano?

  hey, I gotta get my kid into a good school so they don't go to this other school that's like, you know, teaching crazy stuff. I don't know. But it just feels like, that's not very well covered right now in the media. But a lot of young parents are sitting there saying like, what do we do? And I don't think it's a clear answer.

• 1:34:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, definitely. I mean, I can only imagine if I had a kid right now, I'd be thinking about the same thing. But, I mean, I just don't feel like it used to be as big of a problem. I mean, I also don't think people have the luxury of thinking about it. But the idea that politics would in any way be involved with especially young children, or that not, I mean, obviously, there's like very basic politics of like, these are our common values as a nation. But the idea that some like partisan, controversial, not cut and dry, clear political motives would be coming out on by teachers, on children, on impressionable children, I think is something that, um, you know, I, I think 2020 clarified it for people.

• 1:34:51Speaker 02

  But I saw it rise myself. I never felt that way when I was a kid, growing up and going to school. And then sometime around like 2014, 2015 was the first time that it's like, okay, something's, something's clearly political here. And I'm not being, like, I'm not being told the whole truth, in a sense. Um, like, I remember my, my freshman year of high school. On MLK Day, it was a boarding school, so they didn't want to let kids have like long weekends where they'd go to New York City or like do something stupid because they're responsible for them. And so they kept us busy with like activities that day. And they, on MLK Day, split us up by affinity groups, which is, I know, not like such a shocking thing anymore.

• 1:35:34Speaker 02

  Because we hear these stories all the time of kids getting split up by race to talk about race in different, different rooms. And that's just kind of a thing that happens. But that happened in 2015 or 2014, whenever I was in school at that point. And that was like, one of the earliest iterations of something like that, which I remember at the time was shocking to me on MLK Day that I'd be in a different building from kids and basically just undermine the idea of common humanity in the first place. Um, and I remember there was some pushback at my school, which now has gone like totally down that route where it's, um, that's just like, it's so politically extreme, but this was the first kind of intrusion that I ever felt. And I remember a lot of alumni and parents were upset that that had happened.

• 1:36:14Speaker 02

  Um, and so I watched it become more and more politically extreme, um, during my time in school. And I, I mean, I was never that sort of thing, or the idea that like a teacher in my K to eight schooling would ever. Be like overtly political without at the very least saying like this is my political opinion and people feel another way is totally foreign to me. And so I think that parents right now are dealing with a totally novel situation. I'm so grateful that I was insulated from that in my more formative years. And by the time I ran into those sorts of things where it was just blatant indoctrination and blatant political tilt in my education, I was old enough to at the very least say this doesn't feel right and I'm gonna remain mindful of it. Um, I mean, I, I can't

• 1:36:59Speaker 02

  even imagine being a parent right now. I mean, homeschooling is not an easy thing to do and requires a huge amount of sacrifice and dedication. And the idea that there are people who feel like there isn't even a suitable school option for them is so sad. Like I, I worked for Megyn Kelly and she left the city because her, her kids at all, like she, she had some at all girl's schools and all boy's schools and all of them had terrible experiences and they ended up moving up to Connecticut at a school that they feel is better aligned with them. But it's like, the question shouldn't even be, is my school aligned with me? You know? I don't know. Are you leaning one way or another with your daughter in terms of school or just gonna?

• 1:37:36Anthony Pompliano?

  We're chill, we're chilling. I, I'm, I'm in wait and see mode. The, the only thing um, that I feel pretty strongly about in terms of educating of young kids is like the single most important thing you can teach them. Uh, there, there's many important things, but like probably the single most important is just to be a good decision maker.

• 1:37:53Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:37:53Anthony Pompliano?

  Right? And it applies to everything from all the po- politics and kind of crazy cultural controversy stuff to literally just like what food do you eat? Who do you hang out with? You know, what uh, uh, industry you choose to do? Uh, every single thing you do, if you have good decision making ability, uh, I feel like you can kind of level up your life. The hard part is like, how do you teach a kid that? Right? And, and so, uh, uh, I haven't figured that out yet. Um, but, but I do think, uh, if you can help them be a good decision maker, then like that, that's half the battle or some, you know, material percent. Um, but the school thing's weird and there's a lot of young people who are talking about it. And, you know, I mean, and you, you mentioned Megyn Kelly is like a great example where, uh, they're willing to

• 1:38:34Anthony Pompliano?

  move now. I thi- I think previously people were a little less like, uh, that they felt, and they felt strongly enough about it to take action. Maybe they sent a letter to the teacher or they went met with the principal or whatever. It was like, hey, stop, you know, knock it off type stuff. But now that you have people like actually moving with their feet and, uh, with private schools, boarding schools, a lot of stuff like moving with their dollars. That feedback is is pretty strong if you know if you're watching your attendance inside of a private school drop by 10%. That's a material hit, right? And so you start to pay attention to that stuff. Public schools, obviously, are a little bit different. There's people trying to do different things there. So I don't know. It's worth paying attention to, though.

• 1:39:14Anthony Pompliano?

  And I think that the way that you're thinking about it is probably right, that people are going to, you know, this is going to become a bigger topic in the future.

• 1:39:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, totally. I mean, it's the Yonkin effect down in Virginia. Like, it can win an election, probably, more or less, looking at that. And I think it's a good and healthy thing that parents are taking more ownership over their kids' educational paths. I think it's a sad thing that they have to and that they feel like they can't trust teachers. And I think that, for the most part, most teachers can be trusted and are people operating in good faith. But the sad thing is that there are some, a very, a minority that are highly ideological. And if your kid ends up in a class like that, like, that's can be confusing and traumatizing. And I, I mean, coming home and feeling like you, like, values that you have at home are not reflected in the teacher that you look up to and admire, or that the teacher that

• 1:40:06Speaker 02

  you look up to and admire are saying that the things that your family believes and your family's values are bad or wrong or backwards, or who they voted for is the wrong person. It's just a really, a really sad thing. But I, I mean, I give parents credit and I give you credit for, like, wanting to make sure that that's not something that that happens to your kids. But it is a really, really tough thing. Like, I went to this awesome K-8 school that I, I loved, and I have so many friends from there still. And I was so sad, I heard the other day from people that, like, they were, they were just the best values as a school. I had a great experience. And then I heard that parents are pulling their kids from that school as well, because it went totally off the deep end. And they have, like, a D E I thing, and they're talking about potentially doing affinity

• 1:40:49Speaker 02

  groups with, with kids who are still in elementary school. Like, it's, it's really sad that even the institutions that I thought, like, oh, maybe one day I'll send my kids there, are also falling to the wayside here. But hopefully, the market pressure and, like, in the public schools, the voting pressure with school boards will help sort this out, and parents leaving from private schools will too. One can only hope. I guess it remains to be seen.

• 1:41:14Anthony Pompliano?

  Absolutely. Ricky, I really enjoyed talking with you. I feel like we could talk for hours. If people want to follow up with you, where can they read some of the stuff that you're putting out at New York Post and then also follow you on Twitter?

• 1:41:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, so my handle on Twitter is just Ricky Schlott, my name, and I tend to post most of my New York Post stuff there. So all the important stuff will end up there. And then I also co-host a podcast called The Lost Debate Podcast. I'm the resident libertarian and my co-host is a former Red Bull staffer. And we try to have good, pleasant debates and figure out if we can find some common ground. So those are my two main platforms that people can find me on.

• 1:41:52Anthony Pompliano?

  Awesome. Thank you so much for taking the time to do this and we'll definitely do it again in the future.

• 1:41:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, totally. Thanks for having me.

• 1:41:58Anthony Pompliano?

  Thanks so much for listening to today's episode. I really hope you enjoyed this one. Make sure you're subscribed on Apple, Spotify, or your favorite podcast player. And if you're looking to transition into a brand new job in the Bitcoin or crypto industry, we've got you covered. Head over to thecryptoacademy.io. My team and I have been working with the top HR teams in the industry to develop an intensive three-week training program with over 50 live events. We teach you exactly what you need to know to break into the industry, including live interview prep and resume review. Our students have been hired at over 75 of the world's best Bitcoin and crypto companies. Go to thecryptoacademy.io to learn more. Again, that's thecryptoacademy.io. If you enjoyed today's episode, make sure you share it with your friends and I'll see you all for the next episode.