Mikhaila Peterson on Trump, her Dad, Conspiracies, Religion, Marriage, Gender Roles

Tom Bilyeu sits down with Mikhaila Peterson for an eye-opening conversation on a wide range of topics from the controversial side effects of birth control to the profound impact of faith and personal transformation. Mikhaila sheds light on the misinformation surrounding birth control and its broader societal implications, urging better education over outright bans. Both Tom and Mikhaila delve into the intricate balance between free speech and censorship, the government's role in public health and food industries, and the pervasive influence of social media algorithms. We explore personal stories of faith, family transformations, and the nuanced dynamics of relationships, including Mikhaila’s unique perspectives as a libertarian, single mother, and conservative thinker. This episode also touches on the ever-evolving landscape of technology, AI integration in education, and the future implications for society. SHOWNOTES sing side effects and impacts of medications. 01:17:24 Take responsibility; avoid harmful engagement and regulation. 01:24:20 Monitor child's happiness; build resilience to negativity. 01:30:05 AI-enhanced courses improve accessibility and translation. 01:31:20 Willing to work hard, selective with collaborators. 01:36:47 Podcast urges reconsideration of his Twitter behavior. CHECK OUT OUR SPONSORS Range Rover: Explore the Range Rover Sport at https://landroverUSA.com https://landroverusa.com/ Miro: Bring your teams to Miro’s revolutionary Innovation Workspace and be faster from idea to outcome at https://miro.com https://miro.com/. Found Banking: Stop getting lost in countless finance apps and try Found for free at https://found.com/impact. Netsuite: Download the CFO’s Guide to AI and Machine Learning for free at https://netsuite.com/theory Shopify: Sign up for your one-dollar-per-month trial period at https://shopify.com/impact Factor: Get 50% off your first box plus 20% off your next month while your subscription is active at https://factormeals.com/impacttheory50 with code impacttheory50. What's up, everybody? It's Tom Bilyeu here: If you want my help... STARTING a business: join me here at ZERO TO FOUNDER https://tombilyeu.com/zero-to-founder?utm_campaign=Podcast%20Offer&utm_source=podca[%E2%80%A6]d%20end%20of%20show&utm_content=podcast%20ad%20end%20of%20show SCALING a business: see if you qualify here. https://tombilyeu.com/call Get my battle-tested strategies and insights delivered weekly to your inbox: sign up here. https://tombilyeu.com/ If you're serious about leveling up your life, I urge you to check out my new podcast,Tom Bilyeu’s Mindset Playbook https://open.spotify.com/show/47VE90Cittmo6TGGFqg2xf —a goldmine of my most impactful episodes on mindset, business, and health. Trust me, your future self will thank you. Join me live on myTwitch stream https://impacttheory.co/4fitmnJ. I'm live daily from 6:30 to 8:30 am PT athttps://cms.megaphone.fm/organizations/0482bfe8-8502-11ed-af5d-3bdc320068d7/podcasts/0a41f61a-9ddf-11ed-9eb7-dbb3a40775f5/episodes/8ac68366-8a85-11ef-bb65-abca3ffdcf54/www.twitch.tv/tombilyeuwww.twitch.tv/tombilyeu https://impacttheory.co/4fitmnJ LISTEN TO IMPACT THEORY AD FREE + BONUS EPISODES on APPLE PODCASTS:apple.co/impacttheory http://apple.co/impacttheory FOLLOW TOM: Instagram:https://www.instagram.com/tombilyeu/ Tik Tok:https://www.tiktok.com/@tombilyeu?lang=en Twitter:https://twitter.com/tombilyeu YouTube:https://www.youtube.com/@TomBilyeu Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices https://megaphone.fm/adchoices See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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

• 0:00Tom Bilyeu?

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• 0:45Tom Bilyeu?

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• 1:07Speaker 01

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• 1:22Tom Bilyeu?

  I'm Tom Bilyeu, and this is Impact Theory. Today, I'm sitting down with someone who never shies away from hard truths, Michaela Fuller. She's not just redefining education with an app that's already reached over 30,000 students. She's tackling the big controversial topics that most people are afraid to touch. Now, if you've followed me long enough, you know how much I value personal responsibility and believe that freedom of speech is one of the most important topics of our time. And that's why I was so excited to sit down with Michaela, as she has deep concerns of censorship that she has developed by watching up close the battles that her father, Jordan Peterson, has been going through. These are not abstract debates. This is real life, and it's affecting all of us right now.

• 2:06Tom Bilyeu?

  Governments crossing the line on what can and can't be said, that is just the beginning. This conversation is about some of the most important ideas that we face as a society, and taking the time to figure out exactly what you guys believe about this is going to be incredibly important. And now, without further ado, I bring you Michaela Fuller. Why do you think it would be bad to have a law against hate speech?

• 2:31Speaker 02

  I think my issue is I wouldn't want the government defining what they think is bad. Because, for instance, I'm not a huge fan of the food pyramid. Like, what happens if what the government deems is appropriate, they decide veers into hate speech or misinformation? I don't think the government as a body is smart enough to determine what hate speech should be, as we can kind of see in Canada now.

• 3:00Tom Bilyeu?

  So I think hate speech laws are about as dangerous as you're gonna get in terms of eroding a fundamental freedom that I think your dad has summed up better than anybody else. Speech is a form of thought. I've been saying for years, this is a quote, I wish I remember who said it, "But I speak not so that I can be understood, but so that I can understand."

• 3:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:20Tom Bilyeu?

  And I'm like, that's how my mind works. I process verbally. I have to say things out loud. I have to be able to test the idea. But I am terrified of a world in which we can't think out loud and that people will pass laws where now all of a sudden you really are in trouble because of something that you were just trying to think through. It violates a law and now, like you're saying in the UK, you wind up in prison. Like, that's insane to me. And this is not a vote for Russia, but this is definitely a vote against what's happening there. If the stat is to be believed, more, I think it was 10 times more people were legally pursued for hate speech in the UK than in Russia.

• 4:04Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 4:05Tom Bilyeu?

  And I was like, over the last year or something. And I was just like, wow, that scares me. So the last time I interviewed your dad, I think my opening question was like, imagine there was a doomsday clock that was counting down to authoritarian rule, kind of like the clock for atomic energy. What time would you put it? Now, we ducked the punch, and so I never got a time. Like, I don't know if I'm being overly paranoid and I should detach from it all and just live your life? Or you can take the meta approach and say everything is downstream of culture? So it's possible I'm just being overly paranoid. But does that idea of an authoritarian doomsday clock resonate with you? And if so, what time is it?

• 4:46Speaker 02

  Because of all the negative, all of the pushback against authoritarianism, I think we're switching directions.

• 4:55Speaker 02

  So I'm actually rather optimistic. If we're on the doomsday clock, I would say,

• 5:01Speaker 02

  I think we almost hit it and we're going the other way. But I probably live in a way where I, I live as if we're going in the other direction, but I have part of my focus on what if things really go badly. So I think politics have a lot to do with it right now. But I think there's a bunch of cultural pushback, like talking out against the really far-left woke culture now is different than it was in 2017. In 2017 or in 2016, people were like, that doesn't even exist. And then in 2018, 2019, it was like, okay, it's definitely here 2020. It's definitely here, but you can't talk badly against it. And then I think now to 2024, we're starting to realize, oh,

• 5:46Speaker 02

  maybe the downsides are quite evident.

• 5:50Speaker 02

  And I think there's quite a bit of pushback. I think you can see that too with the universities and all the protests and things and how crazy that's gone. Like, it's spread so far that I think there's enough pushback that we're going to go back towards the middle, I hope.

• 6:04Tom Bilyeu?

  You've said that you're concerned about your father, Jordan Peterson, his forced media retraining. You're worried about how that's going to end. What exactly are you worried about?

• 6:15Speaker 02

  I don't think they can let him keep his license. When this all started, I said, you know, give it, give it back, like relinquish it. Like, I don't know anybody else in, as a psychologist or a working professional that would be able to afford fighting back against something like this. And I think Dad basically made it more of a moral thing that he had to do, and he has the money to be able to put into lawyers to fight back against this, to kind of blow it up to show the world what's going on in Canada. And I left Canada. I moved because I could kind of see the direction it was going in in 2021. So I do think he'll end up losing his license, though. There's this fear in the air really since COVID in Canada. So if you're in the States and you go back to Toronto, which is

• 7:00Speaker 02

  where I'm from, and you land there, everyone's still a little bit, I would say, traumatized from COVID and being locked down, and you can feel it there. And then there were these rumors being thrown around about bills that would basically criminalize things you said on social media if they were deemed hate speech. And the definition of what hate, hate speech is,

• 7:23Speaker 02

  I mean dad definitely delves into that on occasion even if it's like talking about trans problems or criticizing the government like things that you should be able to discuss might be eventually deemed as hate speech and then that would be a criminal offense and they're toying around with the idea of passing the bill I don't know if they will so my concern especially with him fighting the court case in Canada was he was gonna be living there while he's doing it with the protests in London people were posting things on social media on Facebook in particular and getting arrested in London in the UK I think Canada and the UK are very similar in that way and I was like that would happen to my dad would be like par for the course at this point so it wasn't tongue in cheek but I think it's unlikely

• 8:08Tom Bilyeu?

  How do you think that's gonna play out so you said the election is gonna be important I very much agree sort of uh my take is that the the election is merely a mile marker in where culture is at so I don't think the election is going to change culture I think it's simply going to say whether we're slightly one way or the other what do you think will happen and what do you think will be the response?

• 8:33Speaker 02

  I think I would probably disagree that it's a reflection of where culture is at because I don't trust politics at all so I don't even know well I don't even know what's going on behind the scenes there so I don't even know can I say this can we are we going on YouTube does some of this get cut?

• 8:48Tom Bilyeu?

  Uh you say literally anything you want

• 8:51Speaker 02

  Uh I like I I'm I'm not sure I don't necessarily believe in in voter fraud but I'm not sure if I trust the system to count tickets properly

• 9:01Tom Bilyeu?

  Ooh

• 9:02Speaker 02

  Yeah I'm gonna I like I can go that far so I would say I think the country would go in a better direction if Trump won I don't know if he's going to win and I don't know how they're going to judge who's going to win and so I think that is gonna determine how the next year is gonna play out

• 9:18Tom Bilyeu?

  Okay whenever somebody says something like that I default to base assumptions I have a very hard time explaining to people what I'm trying to do so I'm really gonna take a minute and just say this all out loud it is more important to understand how somebody Comes to a conclusion than it is to understand the conclusion itself. So what you just said is going to be very inflammatory and people are going to go berserk in the comments. Either saying that you're right or you're wrong, but people will very much galvanize on one side or the other.

• 9:48Speaker 02

  Definitely.

• 9:48Tom Bilyeu?

  Um, so I want to build up what you see that leads you to that conclusion. So for the next few minutes, I just want to talk about base assumptions.

• 9:58Speaker 02

  Great.

• 9:58Tom Bilyeu?

  Um, so you have looked at the world and either have just had an intuitive emotional response that leads you to believe that that's true, or there's some set of facts that you've looked at that lead you to believe that that's true, or some combination thereof. Can you articulate what the things are that you've encountered that led you to believe that maybe, because you certainly didn't say it would be, but that maybe the election results won't be fair and open.

• 10:27Speaker 02

  So I, I don't have any knowledge of politics in that area. That's more intuitive and that intuition is based on what I've seen in the food industry. I would say mainly, which is also overseen by areas of the government. Yeah. So the food pyramid basically was built by huge influences from food companies pushing products. So at one point they were like sugars, a weight loss food, which is clearly not. Or fat is bad for you, you know, eat seed oils. So, and, and that's just starting it. Red meat is bad for you. High carb diets is how people should eat.

• 11:09Speaker 02

  Just the entire thing is so backwards and that was run partially by government oversight. And that was almost upside down. So if that's the kind of product they're pushing out, I don't necessarily believe anything else they're doing is true.

• 11:26Tom Bilyeu?

  Okay. Do you believe that the food pyramid is a result of malice or ignorance?

• 11:31Speaker 02

  A little bit of both, mostly ignorance. Like I'm sure the people pushing sugar didn't realize how detrimental that would be. And I'm sure the people saying saturated fat is bad for you didn't realize how detrimental that would be.

• 11:46Speaker 02

  But it was definitely influenced by corporate greed as well. People were gonna make money if their products sold more. So that's malicious. So both?

• 11:56Tom Bilyeu?

  What I'm trying to get to is, so take my last company, Quest. I realized at one point, hey, we're probably gonna have to start lobbying the government because they're anti-fat. And they're pro-sugar, and this is like, I'm realizing, hey, like, this is really problematic. Now, I attributed 99.99999% to ignorance. And back then, I would not have attributed it to malice. Now, going down the path, I get way more concerned that there... My overarching narrative is that the human animal is controllable, and therefore, people will rise to power that want to control people.

• 12:39Tom Bilyeu?

  Maybe for good. Maybe they really have people's best interests at heart. But because we are controllable, people that desire control will rise to the top. Okay, so that's one of my base assumptions, which makes me very nervous, because I don't think that... I don't think humans can be ruled well from the top down. So that's another base assumption for me. This is why I fear authoritarian rule. I just don't think it works. But that it worked, then hey, maybe I could get behind it. But I don't. So Quest teaches me a very similar lesson that your experience with food has taught you, which is the government should not be the arbiter of what we should eat, whether it's malice or not.

• 13:19Tom Bilyeu?

  But none of me looking at the food pyramid leads me to believe in voter fraud. So I know, first of all, people listening are gonna draw parallels with what you said. And so I'm just trying to tease out.

• 13:32Speaker 02

  There was more. So like, I was super sick as a kid. And when I realized that I could get all these health problems under control with my diet and no medication, I was really angry at the medical system. And that, I think, most of the people working in it, I think a lot of that is ignorance. They just don't know that there are other ways to treat people. But that crushed me for like four years. I was almost mad at every medical professional. So it was like, why don't you look into other alternatives? Like, how can you be telling these chronically ill people that have lifestyle diseases? That they're stuck being chronically ill for the rest of their lives? Like, how dare you take their own ability to research and fix themselves away from them by teaching them that they have no control?

• 14:14Speaker 02

  I was so mad. I don't trust the pharmaceutical industry, and not all of them. Like, I have a friend who runs a pharmaceutical company to treat rare diseases. Nothing wrong with that, right? But I think I have an institutional distrust, and that probably spreads over to like, what else is out there? Just like during COVID, a whole bunch of things that ended up being true were called conspiracies. And now, I even see conspiracies have gone off the deep end. It's like, well, this conspiracy was right, and you said this was a conspiracy, but it was true, and you said this was a conspiracy, and it was true. So maybe they're all true. So I mean, voter fraud could be pushed into a conspiracy, but I don't trust the government's ability.

• 14:57Speaker 02

  I just don't trust, I just don't trust them. It's probably, it's probably intuition and then based off my experiences with the food pyramid and the medical establishment.

• 15:07Tom Bilyeu?

  Uh, all right. Now, do you think that one side or the other getting elected is better or worse?

• 15:14Speaker 02

  I mean, I do. I do.

• 15:15Tom Bilyeu?

  Say more.

• 15:16Speaker 02

  Uh, like, I would, I'm, I'm Canadian, so I don't have a say, but I would vote.

• 15:21Tom Bilyeu?

  Is your husband American?

• 15:22Speaker 02

  He is.

• 15:23Tom Bilyeu?

  Oh, you have a say. I know how, I know how marriage works, homie. Uh, so yeah.

• 15:28Speaker 02

  I would have probably, I was a huge fan of RFK, but because I didn't think RFK could win, even though I really like him. Um, so I would, I would vote for Trump for sure.

• 15:42Speaker 02

  I don't even know how Kamala got to where she is running. And I'm not happy that they hid the fact that Biden was so sick and then like gaslit the entire nation. And then put some, somebody else up, like, oh, you're gonna vote for her instead now. I don't know. Seems pretty like what you would hear about in Russia. Throw Russia under the bus.

• 16:02Tom Bilyeu?

  What do you mean? That, is it manipulation that you're getting at?

• 16:06Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, propaganda. Just like nationwide gaslighting, like.

• 16:13Speaker 02

  Biden doesn't seem well. Maybe he's getting old. No, he's totally fine. It was like, oh, and then suddenly, okay, no, he's not fine. And we're going to put Kamala in instead, which is what everybody's been saying for like, at least a year and a half. And then the nation forgot. And then you know what reminds me of propaganda too? The messaging that Kamala is putting out now, where she's associated with joy, and it's just suddenly showing up in all the mainstream media newspapers, a whole bunch of different mainstream media newspapers at the same time, reminds me of propaganda I'd see coming out of a country I didn't trust, to put it bluntly.

• 16:52Tom Bilyeu?

  Sure. Do you think that it will be effective?

• 16:54Speaker 02

  So I didn't. I was like, there's no way people are falling for this after COVID. But then these kind of like propaganda newspapers are saying about Kamala being like, why would you vote for her? Oh, because she's going to make it more joyful. It's like, oh, my gosh, is that real? So I have no idea. Do you?

• 17:13Tom Bilyeu?

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• 19:25Tom Bilyeu?

  We're back, let's dive right in. I have a hypothesis, so I think this is about the architecture of the human mind. So the world is obscenely complicated. In fact, your dad has a quote about this.

• 19:40Tom Bilyeu?

  I'm gonna, I'm gonna have to paraphrase. You, you cannot adjudicate the world based on facts because there is a fact for every phenomenon. There's too many phenomena to build your world that way. This is why things like religion become useful because they distill the world down into a set of stories that tell you how to act. And then you know how to act. And if he's right about that, which I actually think he is, then we're just speaking to the need for the human mind to have a simple narrative that tells them how to move forward. And this is why it feels like we're living in this sort of great unmasking of the political process. I have a hunch and this admittedly, I am thinking through these ideas in real time.

• 20:22Tom Bilyeu?

  But I have a hunch that for all of recorded. History beyond like when you were a really small tribe that even then like even then, I think that to galvanize a group of people, you have to connect dots. And when I say connect dots, I mean tell a story. So you have to say, hey, all these things happened. It started raining and that means that God is happy, right? So you, you start connecting these stories, these dots into a cohesive story. And it allows people to share a worldview and to move forward. And the need to have a shared cohesive worldview is how this creature, humans, that can operate in such large and flexible groups are able to do what they do. But you need those simple narratives.

• 21:07Tom Bilyeu?

  So I think the reason that Kamala equals joy works is because people need a rule of thumb. They need a thing they can repeat to their friends to explain their emotion. But really it's just emotion. So when I look at the political process, I am like, I really just want to be happy and optimistic and tell people how great they can make their lives by taking personal responsibility and all that. And all of that's true, but uh, there is a trifecta of books, which I've talked about many times, which if you read them, you will suddenly be like, okay, that's true right now in the West, but it's not always been true throughout history, even in the West.

• 21:48Tom Bilyeu?

  And so if you read the Gulag Archipelago, brutal way that things can go. If you read the rise and fall of the Third Reich and if you read Mao, the unknown or untold story, I can never remember which, you realize, yo, in recent memory, we're just talking like the last hundred years. In recent memory, things have gone so badly that hundreds of millions of people die. Okay. So that's as terrifying as I needed to be to go, well, I just want to be optimistic. There is a reality to be faced with the architecture of the human mind, which leads them to be taken down a primrose path. And when it breaks, it breaks bad. Now eventually people right the ship, but wow.

• 22:26Speaker 02

  Oh, it can get dark first.

• 22:27Tom Bilyeu?

  It can get real dark first.

• 22:28Speaker 02

  Yeah. I, I completely agree. We're teaching all those three books you mentioned. We have courses being taught on them at Peterson Academy.

• 22:38Tom Bilyeu?

  They are

• 22:39Speaker 02

  Those are fantastic books.

• 22:40Tom Bilyeu?

  If I was going to give somebody a primer for what the human animal is capable of.

• 22:46Speaker 02

  I agree. I think it's naive not to know that history. Like, I kind of grew up, so I grew up with my dad as a dad. So he obviously like instilled those horrors early.

• 22:55Tom Bilyeu?

  What was that like?

• 22:56Speaker 02

  I was taught this is how bad humanity can get, and if you're not careful, you're gonna be on the bad side. You know, and I was told that at a young age, but I was also told every problem in your life is your responsibility and you have the ability to fix it. Which is really a hopeful message, right? It's not, you know, it's a little bit overwhelming if you realize everything going wrong is your fault somehow. But if you're also told it's your fault, but you can fix it, then it just opens up a world of possibility. So I think being taught at a young age not to be naive about history was incredibly valuable.

• 23:34Speaker 02

  But even me as a kid, I remember reading about Nazis or something and being like, well, that was in the 1940s. And we already went through that and like Mao and Stalin and and all that. We already went through that. Society learned. We're all taught it in school. Everyone will remember and it'll never happen again. And then and then things are feeling a little weird right now. I've got to say, I'm still optimistic that there we're turning directions. I've got a lot of Jewish friends. I think there's like a lot of antisemitism that's on the rise now. And and and some history rewriting that's going on on popular podcasts. It's like, maybe maybe the Nazis like, maybe they really did have good reasons to do what they did.

• 24:15Speaker 02

  And that's been then like, we're not allowed to talk about that, which is why no one ever talks about it. But maybe we should start talking about that again. And I didn't think I would see that kind of thing in the open in my life

• 24:29Speaker 02

  with the amount of support it has right now.

• 24:31Tom Bilyeu?

  So going back to base assumptions, what do you think is going on that leads people to back to that sort of weird point?

• 24:40Speaker 02

  Do you want to get, do you want to get super conspiratorial? I have no evidence of any of this.

• 24:45Tom Bilyeu?

  So full disclosure, intuition, conspiracy?

• 24:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, and I haven't talked about this before. I was going to on my podcast. I think and this could entirely be conspiratorial. I think China is trying to sow disruption in the US. And what we're experiencing now. is from that. And I think the main mode of communication they're probably using is TikTok. And that's why a lot of this political craziness is hitting younger people. It's not hitting like 50 plus, it's hitting TikTok users. But I I don't think China operates on the same time span as Americans operate. I think they operate on like 200 year time spans with like longer plans.

• 25:29Speaker 02

  Um, and I think they've been probably been at this for a while. That's my theory.

• 25:34Tom Bilyeu?

  Okay, let's push, let's push into the theory. So are you saying that China finds uh Jews to be a lightning rod thing that they're trying to leverage?

• 25:44Speaker 02

  I think what happened with the Hamas Palestine, Israel, like horror show. I think, this is my algorithm. So, so just come at it from my perspective. I'm politically, in this day and age, somewhat conservative, more libertarian, but somewhat conservative. I've programmed my TikTok algorithm to show me content I like. It's not really political, like most of it's, most of it's like neutral or makeup or something. But, but if I get a political post, it'll be something that's kind of conservative. It'll be like, like mostly like Christian or conservative or something like that. When the war broke out, my feed was completely flooded with dead babies.

• 26:30Speaker 02

  To a degree, I don't, I don't know if you, you've heard about this from anyone else. I asked my friends, so I have like a friend in Toronto and she's always on TikTok. She's, she's more, she's way more liberal than me and, and her feed was flooded. And she ended up being like, you know, this is horrible, this is horrible. A little anti-Jewish, just a little anti-Jewish. And, and I was like, you gotta be careful because this has happened many times for a very long time and you don't want to be part of the group that is like, maybe the Jewish people are the problem, right? Um, and she got that, I know she got that from TikTok. And I had to spend a good number of days saying, I don't want to see this, I don't want to see this, I don't want to see this on TikTok. Enough that it was like, I'm getting pushed this from something.

• 27:14Speaker 02

  And it was the platform because I wasn't interacting with any of the posts or anything. So I think that was a push to breed political disruption. And I think Jewish people were used as a scapegoat as they've been used many times before.

• 27:31Tom Bilyeu?

  knowingly conspiracy conspiracy but knowingly

• 27:36Speaker 02

  well it's funny like

• 27:36Tom Bilyeu?

  by the Chinese government

• 27:37Speaker 02

  yeah

• 27:38Tom Bilyeu?

  using TikTok

• 27:38Speaker 02

  and and maybe part of the reason they're like why why would they do that what one I think it's convenient and it's something that could breed

• 27:46Speaker 02

  problems politically like widespread in the US but they also have these Muslim concentration camps in China where they're sterilizing people a lot of people and that's not talked about anywhere so why isn't that talked about anywhere if the problem well I think it's because China's controlling TikTok

• 28:12Speaker 02

  I don't think it sounds that crazy either but I like I could be in my little like weird group of I don't know libertarian weirdos

• 28:19Tom Bilyeu?

  well so this is why I want people to pay attention to base assumptions so if um if I can get people to to walk along the path they will at least say okay it's possible that thing is happening so uh question number one would be do you believe that people will develop opinions based on what they see over and over and over

• 28:36Speaker 02

  oh my gosh

• 28:37Tom Bilyeu?

  think most people will say yes

• 28:38Speaker 02

  I mean I did throughout my life like I took certain things as the truth that I found out later weren't the truth it was just like how especially if everybody thinks the same thing and you probably experienced this with Quest and like the demonization of fat is it's kind of hard to get into the mindset of well everyone around me thinks this one thing but I know that that one thing isn't true and eventually eventually society will like shift over you know ketogenic diets being a fad too for a very long time and now it's like the number of research articles coming up about ketogenic diets and diseases skyrocketing but everyone for fifteen years was called a quack

• 29:17Tom Bilyeu?

  yeah so the the series that I think people have to walk down if you're just looking at it from base assumptions is anything you repeat is gonna get into people's minds if you repeat something enough it will seem true even if it's just because it's familiar uh algorithms create the ability to repeat something over and over and over uh that this if you can create a sense of

• 29:41Tom Bilyeu?

  Social proof around an idea that people are even more likely to believe that. And we know that algorithms can control what side of an issue you see, they can control the sequencing of the comments. So they can put comments that you're going to agree with at the forefront.

• 29:57Tom Bilyeu?

  And do governments manipulate their adversaries population whenever possible? Like if you say yes to all those sayings, then it's like, well, it's at least possible. You may not see any proof that it's actually happening, but it's like, there's a.

• 30:12Speaker 02

  That that would be, I mean, you spelled it out pretty correctly. That would be my, the logical framework at which I got to those conclusions. And we just saw with Meta and Mark Zuckerberg coming out and being like, yeah, we were pressured pretty badly. And saying, yeah, we did censor content, which I think maybe put yourself in his shoes as a human being. He's not like a, you know, some people think he's an alien, but, but he's not some like robot, right? If you have the FBI coming to you being like, do this. That's a, that's pressure that most people don't withstand. And especially with the limited information he had about like, well, maybe, I mean, the government is saying this information is really dangerous. And the FBI is saying, don't show it to anybody.

• 30:57Speaker 02

  Maybe even if I think it's right, maybe I could be wrong because I'm getting pushed back from these like authoritative government heads. I think it's good. He came out and said that they were censoring content. But the fact that Meta was censoring content, I mean.

• 31:15Speaker 02

  How can you not think that there's some weird things going on with TikTok? And I don't think every country infiltrates every other country to like, give them propaganda. But we know stories from like the CIA doing, you know, different things to different countries. Propaganda is definitely real. We've seen multiple examples of that. You can just take Nazi Germany as an example, like a prime example of that, or even Soviet Union. So we know propaganda happens. I just think maybe we don't necessarily think it's happening to us now.

• 31:47Tom Bilyeu?

  Yeah, if your dad is right and the world cannot be metabolized via facts, it has to be taken in as story and story is quite frightening. Propaganda is a story. It's I'm going to tell you the story that I want you to hear from the frame of reference that I want you to see things. And if you can control both what people look at and what they see, then you have a tremendous amount of control, which is utterly fascinating because that's the moment we're living in, where people are chronically on social media and it controls what you look at and certainly influences what you see. Yeah, it's really, really interesting. So the question becomes, what comes of all of this? What ends up being the societal reaction?

• 32:29Speaker 02

  What I try to do with my social media is follow people who are motivational and positive. Like, forget the politics. That like, really, I think that's what the average person should do. These wars too, that we're involved in, but we shouldn't be. I don't even think human beings can take on that kind of stress. Like, I take my friend, for example, in Toronto. She's a mom, she has two kids, she's being shown dead babies. I was like, what tribe would you have possibly been in where you wouldn't have PTSD after spending two hours looking at this? No human being is meant to be exposed to the entire world of pain that exists.

• 33:10Speaker 02

  So follow motivational people, follow business people. I follow Christian people. Follow people who don't drag you into these political battles that we're having and then try to reorganize your own life so that every day is a slight improvement from the last day, or at least your trajectory is up. And just ignore the politics for now. I think with the trans debate, that's worth talking about, but at a level you can tolerate. And I think most of your time should be spent on trying to fix your own life and looking at people who are motivational because I don't think people can handle how dark things can get. Like, I think you should read those three books that you mentioned and be aware

• 33:54Speaker 02

  that that's how society can go, but you don't need to be staring at it every day. This is like, when I was a kid, my dad wouldn't let us watch the news. He was like, the news was always like, serial killers loose in Toronto.

• 34:09Tom Bilyeu?

  It bleeds at least.

• 34:10Speaker 02

  And I remember like, oh, grade four, serial killers loose? Like, that's terrifying. Or, you know, so and so's been beaten, or robbed, or died, or something's on fire. And that was the news, right? And now, unfortunately, we have the news on social media on our phone all the time. And I don't think people's nervous system can handle it. This like, causes anxiety and depression, ruins your life. Follow people like you, like motivational people. Maybe you might delve into these like darker topics, but.

• 34:40Tom Bilyeu?

  My audience is screaming right now that I've gone so into world affairs, that that's a big complaint about my change. It's interesting. So I try to do things by platform. So if you want the motivational side, go over to Instagram or watch me stream video games. I actually do a lot of mindset stuff and video games. But I'm a big believer that it is very important to build a mindset so that you can point it at the biggest, most important things in your life.

• 35:11Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 35:12Tom Bilyeu?

  Because of this weird thing that I see happening in culture, I cannot help but try to look at those things head on.

• 35:19Speaker 02

  Fair enough.

• 35:20Tom Bilyeu?

  I think your advice is actually really solid. I want to talk about something that you said earlier. One of the things that you follow is Christian content. It has been from the outside utterly fascinating to watch the religious awakening of the Peterson household.

• 35:36Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 35:37Tom Bilyeu?

  Walk me through that because your dad started by saying, I act as if God is real. And then I recently heard you say, I'm paraphrasing, but I used to believe, but now I know the Bible is true.

• 35:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, okay.

• 35:54Tom Bilyeu?

  So this, this is a, from outside viewership, this is a big swing. Walk me through what happened. Hold tight, we're going to take a quick break.

• 36:04Tom Bilyeu?

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• 37:36Tom Bilyeu?

  All right, we're back. Let's get into it.

• 37:39Speaker 02

  It was a very big swing.

• 37:43Speaker 02

  So I think first what happened is, you know, my dad's always taught about how the Bible's important from a psychological perspective and that you should act like Christ because that's the best way a human can act. Terrible paraphrasing, but that's what he taught me as a kid. And then in 2019, my mom got really sick and she got cancer. And story, to shorten the story quite a lot, she goes, "I'm going to be healed by our anniversary." And I didn't, like, I didn't believe at that point. And she was in the hospital for, I can't exactly remember, but it was over two and a half months and there was a surgery and then there was a surgical kind of mishap and she had to be flown to the States and then they couldn't fix it.

• 38:29Speaker 02

  Um, and then on, so she was in the midst of them trying to fix a surgical injury that they couldn't fix. And then on mom and dad's anniversary, it fixed itself.

• 38:41Speaker 02

  I still get goosebumps from that because it was like, how as a more rational person, and I would say the more rational you are, the harder it is to have faith in something. Um, I was like, how can I figure that one out? Because she, I said, how did you know? And she said, God told me. And I was like, that's too coincidental for my rational brain to be likely, you know, what are the odds of that? Like, nothing, like, zero. The surgeons were all shocked.

• 39:08Tom Bilyeu?

  About when she said, God told me.

• 39:10Speaker 02

  I thought mom's on morphine. Literally, she was on painkillers in the hospital. I was like, as long as that's like giving her some hope, good, but it was like she's on morphine. That was my thought at the time.

• 39:21Tom Bilyeu?

  So then why not, when it does heal on the exact day that she said it would, why does your mind not immediately go to placebo or something like that?

• 39:30Speaker 02

  Um, oh, my gosh, because it couldn't have been placebo. It was like, to get into the details, they'd nicked a lymph duct. And there was lymph leaking into her and they were trying to fix it. And it's very difficult to find a leak. And they couldn't fix it. And so she came out of surgery and they're like, we couldn't find the, the, basically the nicked lymph duct. And then that was just kind of it. And then it just healed. And so she goes, you know, you know, God saved me. And then her disposition towards everything changed. Her demeanor changed. Uh, she spent the next couple of years converting to Catholicism, but it was the patience she had after that wasn't something I'd seen her have throughout my entire life.

• 40:16Speaker 02

  Like, she could be very short and irritable. Uh, and a bit unforgiving, and she won't even be mad at me saying this. And then her demeanor changed and it was like, you have way more compassion than you did. And I don't even thi- I don't think it was from the stint she spent really suffering. I don't think it was that. I think it was her being saved and her conversion that gave her that. And I watched that and I was like, I want that, whatever that is, whatever happened to her, I want that for me. And having my dad as a dad who's very rational as well, it was just like, doesn't, there's no logical explanation why. And um, I had this extremely,

• 41:00Speaker 02

  you know, extreme heavenly perspective, and it was basically you as a human don't have the ability to rationalize God. That's why you need to have faith. And I was just like, why did I never understand that? Like, everyone says have faith, and I didn't really understand that faith is believing without having evidence to prove it. Otherwise, you wouldn't need to have faith. And for some reason, and I don't know if that's going to resonate with anyone else, but that's what resonated with me. And then it was just like,

• 41:39Speaker 02

  floodgates open. And I was like, oh, that's what people mean. That's what like all these Christian weirdos that I've been around are talking about. This overwhelming feeling of forgiveness you get. I guess, once you once you get saved and have faith and all, and all these things just lined up for me in like, I don't know, thirty seconds. And then after that, like, my whole worldview changed. So, I was like, things make more sense. And this is what my dad has been talking about too, understanding things through a narrative. So even having my dad as a dad,

• 42:22Speaker 02

  I'm like, I'm a human being. I'm trying to understand things factually, being like, what can I see that's true that you can prove? Okay. There's one belief, and then what else can I see that's true that you can prove? There's another belief and then build on top of those. But I had a complete change in perspective that was like, We're living in a spiritual world where there are things people can't see, but maybe can intuit. The highest good is truth and truth down to its core. And then I I've realized what Christians were saying about sin and and what sin looks like. And I don't think I was able to recognize sin properly before I was Christian.

• 43:03Tom Bilyeu?

  I do want to go back and start now teasing some of these ideas apart.

• 43:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 43:09Tom Bilyeu?

  I had one line of questioning that I was gonna follow until you said, "Truth matters." And I mean, truth all the way down. So your dad and Sam Harris famously got bogged down in trying to define what is true. So what and that makes sense to me. I think it is shockingly difficult to actually define truth. So why does truth matter? And if it really does matter, how do we define it?

• 43:39Speaker 02

  OK, well, I guess I'll just go ahead and say it. I I think there's a like a spiritual war going around that we don't see that can kind of rear its head in politics and in in evil in the world.

• 43:54Speaker 02

  And I think the only way to combat that is by being 100% truthful. And if you're not 100% truthful, then you're contributing to that evil in the spiritual realm.

• 44:08Speaker 02

  So that's gonna be my answer.

• 44:09Tom Bilyeu?

  OK, truthful versus true seems very different. So truthful, to me, the way that I would define it is, I believe these things, and therefore, I'm gonna tell you exactly what I believe. But that person may not have identified truth. They could be completely off the rails.

• 44:25Speaker 02

  Well, even like this this theory about China infiltrating the US. I'm not gonna say that's true. I have no idea.

• 44:31Tom Bilyeu?

  So is it important to be truthful or to identify the truth?

• 44:36Speaker 02

  It kind of pains me to say this because my dad taught me this for my entire life. Said like, no matter what, you have to tell the truth. But I was like, yeah, but what if?

• 44:45Speaker 02

  What if your friend shows up and she's really happy and her hat is kinda ugly? But she's really happy with the outfit. Do you actually have to say? Do you actually have to tell her what you think? And I think yes now. And I'm not sure if I thought yes as hard as I do now before. I don't think you can know what is true without having a heavenly perspective.

• 45:07Tom Bilyeu?

  Say so much more. What does that mean?

• 45:10Speaker 02

  Like, I, I think, so the way I was acting before I got saved versus how I react to the world now. The way I was acting was how I thought a good person should act. And I think I was doing an okay job, but then God was like, you're not. Um, so I, I, and the problem with how I was acting before was I couldn't identify the micro sins I was doing. So like, even just kind of someone says something annoying and you're like, I don't have time for this. Even that I was shown isn't the way that you should act.

• 45:45Tom Bilyeu?

  Let me give you my definition of truth and then let me stab at what I think you're saying your definition of truth is.

• 45:51Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 45:52Tom Bilyeu?

  My definition of truth would be an accurate description of the physical world. So Einstein got close to truth. He didn't get all the way there because he doesn't have a theory of everything. That to me is what is true. It is the physical laws of the universe from which everything is born. Now, what I hear you saying what is true is accuracy to spiritual alignment with God's desire for you.

• 46:18Speaker 02

  Yes, that, yes. And I also, I do partly agree with you because there's like physical realities of the world. Um, but I do think, I do think I would put God above that.

• 46:31Tom Bilyeu?

  Okay, so there is truthfulness in terms of uh, almost a shame that we use the same word, but there is truthfulness that will keep your soul clean, aligned. I'm not sure what word will feel right there, but for for a reason I won't speculate on yet, God wants you to be that way. That will be better for you, better for society. If you're always truthful. The truth, capital T, the, capital T, truth. Uh, that is, God has a plan for how humans ought to be. And when you're in alignment with that, you're in alignment with the truth.

• 47:09Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 47:10Tom Bilyeu?

  Okay, cool. I now-

• 47:11Speaker 02

  That was pretty good.

• 47:12Tom Bilyeu?

  I now understand-

• 47:13Speaker 02

  That was better than me. This is the first time I had to stumble along that story. I wasn't quite prepared for it.

• 47:17Tom Bilyeu?

  We got there. So now I understand what you're saying because it drives me crazy when people have debates and they just didn't take time to define base assumptions.

• 47:24Speaker 02

  Dad's debate with, yeah.

• 47:26Tom Bilyeu?

  So, when, going back to the last interview I did with your dad, I can't remember if I said this on camera or off, but I was like, Jordan, I think that you're, I was very confused when you went from being the internet's dad to writing a book called We Who Wrestle With God. But because he is so bright and has really been a part of my sense-making apparatus, I was like, Chesterton's fence, before I say this doesn't make sense, let me make sure that I understand what he's doing, and then I can decide if this is the next logical step. Once I understood what I think he's doing, I was like, oh, I get why this is a continuation of, all right, I helped you get out of the mire of feeling lost and hopeless,

• 48:10Tom Bilyeu?

  but now that you're not lost and hopeless, you need an aim. And that aim is an aim that should make your life better, your family's life better, civilization's life better. Okay, cool. I get why he's now going over to religion. I really believe that humans think in stories. Religion, as far as I can tell, is the only meme medium by which good ideas can spread, not only across time and in any place on earth, but also across levels of intellect. So whether you're a literal by-definition moron, or you're a super genius, both of those people can encounter religion and, and see something that makes their life better.

• 48:53Tom Bilyeu?

  And it's like, oh my God, like I see the truth, right? And so, I'm utterly fascinated. I don't, I don't believe we have yet found anything that leverages the architecture of the human mind so perfectly to get us to work together in these large, flexible groups, okay? So I think religion is the only thing that's withstood the test of time. There are some new entrants into the field with religious-like ideology, but religion I know works.

• 49:19Tom Bilyeu?

  But then it begs the question of, am I missing a trick? If I act as if religion is true, but know that it's not, which is how I feel.

• 49:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 49:30Tom Bilyeu?

  Like, there's so many great ideas. If I live in accordance with the great ideas, but don't think that this is the word of God.

• 49:36Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 49:36Tom Bilyeu?

  Is my life somehow fundamentally worse than somebody who does all the same actions I do? But they also believe it's the literal word? In which case, if somebody is trying to help people to the max, they have to get you to truly take that leap of faith and belief.

• 49:54Speaker 02

  I think what my dad tells people is if you, even if you don't have faith, if you act in that way, and that's why the term cultural Christian is also popping up here and there. Then you'll improve your life dramatically, which I agree. And I think that's the best thing people can do. I think from my conversion, if you have faith, then you're in an entirely different realm than that. I had a fear of death that I don't have anymore. And it wasn't something that I was like up at night about because everybody knows they're gonna die and everything. But that's just gone. And it turns out that sucks, just for humanity to have that. So that's gone. And I wasn't even an anxious person before. Like, I have a number of successful companies, I have a podcast. I have my health issues under control. Nobody in my family is sick.

• 50:39Speaker 02

  I'm in a great relationship. Like, I have it. I am so grateful at how my life has turned out after a lot of years of horror. But even going from that to having faith has eliminated a lot of the existential, I guess, angst that just haunted me, being a human.

• 51:01Tom Bilyeu?

  How would you convince somebody that God is real?

• 51:07Speaker 02

  I would probably tell them the story about my mom and walk them through. You know, I totally get where people are coming from when they're like, "That sounds like a nice naive fairy tale for people who can't handle death and don't believe in evolution." Which is probably how I kind of characterized Christians. I was like, those are people that thought Harry Potter was evil. And um, so I'd probably say I was like that. Um, and then I saw what happened to my mom, which was, I couldn't rationalize. And then I started mimicking the steps of a Christian.

• 51:47Speaker 02

  Um, I didn't go to church very often, but I was watching sermons online and I was reading the Bible and I was praying. And I was like, this feels right, but I didn't like fully to my core have faith. And then, and then I got to a low, low point. And I think I was really struggling with like, how do I believe in something that I can't rationalize? Like, how are you supposed to believe that to your core if you can't prove it? Or if no one can prove it, that's, that's even harder. And then it occurred to me that like the entire, everything spelled out in the New Testament anyway, is you need faith. Wouldn't be called faith if someone could come to you and rationally explain it.

• 52:32Tom Bilyeu?

  Now, what do you think about Rollo Tomasi's read on that women find God in their late twenties when they can no, when they realize they can no longer compete with women who are in their early twenties?

• 52:46Speaker 02

  Um, I think Rollo Tomasi is a scumbag. That's like my, that's my main take. Um, and I think he hates women. So I think that is evident about like throughout what he teaches people and all his videos. So I'm not surprised he'd say something like that.

• 53:05Tom Bilyeu?

  He said it to you in your, the interview.

• 53:09Speaker 02

  I've blocked that out of my head so successfully. I, yeah, yeah, I know, I forgot about that. Um, I mean, I guess I don't really care what he thinks. He doesn't seem like a happy person. Plus, people say anything they want about me online. And I really, I really don't care.

• 53:26Tom Bilyeu?

  How do you deal with that?

• 53:30Speaker 02

  I think maybe in 2018, it bothered me more. But I mean, you know what I do? Okay, so we we launched this Peterson Academy company and there's been and for some reason that like criticism of that hurts me more than criticism of me, maybe because of maybe because it's new and I've gotten used to criticism of me. Yeah. Which is silly, I guess, but um, but then you look at Elon telling people he's going to launch a rocket to Mars. And the comments are just like, well, why don't you just cure world hunger? And it's like, who, why don't you cure world hunger? It's like, how about that's epic?

• 54:10Speaker 02

  Right? I figure if Elon Musk is getting criticism for his insane ventures and like bringing internet to everywhere, building underground tunnels, trying to make cars electric.

• 54:23Speaker 02

  So that we pollute less, like these huge things he's doing. Um, the AI stuff, you know, everything. If he's getting criticism, then I'm definitely gonna get criticism. And so I think I just know that people are critics and resentful people in particular that know that there are things in their own life that they could be improving and aren't, or like, well, why that person deserve that? I was like, I don't know, improve your own life. It's hard. Try it. So I guess I just don't. I guess I don't just don't care.

• 54:55Tom Bilyeu?

  Speaking of improving your life, you got divorced and you were on camera through it all and you were leaking a lot of anxiety about, I don't know if I'm gonna find anybody again. I'm okay being alone, but now you found somebody, you remarried, a new child. What was that process like? How especially somebody who's taken a lot of flak for being an alpha woman? Uh, how did that process go? How does an alpha woman find love again?

• 55:23Speaker 02

  I'm more of a libertarian, like there are certain things I don't like and certain things I like. But I think because I'm surrounded more about conservatives, I had this idea that because I had a baby and I was a single mom. You know, it scared me. I was like, my value is. It was like, who wants this amount of baggage? And so when he asked me to marry him, I literally told him all of that. I was like, okay, but like, you don't realize what you're getting into here. I'm not even sure if you actually want this. Like, I work very closely with my family and I don't plan on stopping. I work all the time. I have a kid.

• 56:06Speaker 02

  There was more things that I thought were an issue and he was just like, I don't care. I was like, wow. I know Rollo Tomasi talks about the statistics all, all the time about single moms and how awful they are. But there's also like, who left them? I think I was more anti-single mom, obviously, and then I became one. And maybe that was God being like, humble yourself. I've had, I've had other conservative women too, who have been worried about telling people they're divorced online because they're part of a conservative community and they think they're going to get completely lambasted by their audience for doing something wrong. And I've been telling them.

• 56:48Speaker 02

  First of all, I don't think the feedback is going to be as bad as you think it is. A lot of people experience divorce. And a lot of sane people experience divorce. It's not just troubled people who experience divorce.

• 57:00Tom Bilyeu?

  To the idea of the Overton window widening, I think we're moving away from these really sort of absurdly narrow definitions of the relationship between the sexes. But it is very interesting to see somebody who's a CEO of a very fast growing company, which by the way, congratulations.

• 57:18Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 57:19Tom Bilyeu?

  Uh, very exciting. And my wife has always been the standard bearer for me. She is a very tough woman. She's a great entrepreneur, the best business partner I've ever had. She's amazing, amazing. But if she didn't like being small in my arms, if she didn't want me to lead, then we'd have a problem. And so the interesting dichotomy there is you've got this bad bitch, girl boss, but her vibe has always been, but at the same time, I'm not competing with my husband for that role. And I'm curious if you're in a similar relationship

• 58:01Tom Bilyeu?

  or if you have a totally different dynamic that you think works, like, how does one navigate?

• 58:06Speaker 02

  There could be some outliers, but I do think women want to be with someone who makes them feel safe. And and that means that they can rely on them for to stay calm in stressful situations and to just deal with scary things and like make decisions, everything that comes with making a female feel safe. Um, allow like criticism in conversations. Like the one thing I really appreciate about my husband is I don't have to filter myself at all and I can be pretty like

• 58:39Speaker 02

  if I'm being extremely

• 58:43Speaker 02

  honest, I can be extremely blunt. And I, and the problem is if you're in a relationship where you can't be like blunt, if their feelings get hurt or something.

• 58:52Speaker 02

  It's just stifling. And so by the time I met him, I was like, I actually am fine by myself. Now I wasn't, I was lonely. But I was like compared to being in a bad relationship. I'm doing okay without some money, like I have a baby. Um, I had like a little kid at that point and I was like, I have career opportunities that have a successful podcast like I have opportunities like, okay. You know, it's not ideal. It's not how I thought I was going to grow up as a little kid, but I'm fine. And it's better than being with somebody that can't handle me or that's like you're too much. Like, or someone I can't communicate with, which is just horrible. Um, so I think I just got really lucky. I'm giving God credit for that one.

• 59:36Tom Bilyeu?

  So if you were going to explain to somebody in their late teens, early twenties, how good a relationship can be, what to look for, uh, how to find it, quite frankly, what advice would you give them?

• 59:48Speaker 02

  I would say if you're young, like that young, you should probably work on yourself for a while. I was naive for a very long time. But I was extremely naive, I think until I was 23. Um, I think if I could have given myself advice, it would have been to work on myself, definitely sort out my health because my health was a disaster. Read as much as I can. Pursue opportunity and and try to learn enough so you're a little bit wiser. Get your exercise in check, like, look into what your sleep schedule looks like. Like, get your drinking habits under control. So let's put that to the side for a second. Picture the person you want, and my dad really taught me this from a young age.

• 1:00:33Speaker 02

  Imagine your ideal person, just so you know what that looks like. And then I would say, try to build yourself into the person that matches who that person would be attracted to.

• 1:00:43Speaker 02

  That's probably what I would tell young people.

• 1:00:45Tom Bilyeu?

  And what do you think about saving yourself for marriage? Is that advantageous? Is that disadvantageous? I'm so curious to see how hard the pendulum is going to swing back now.

• 1:00:55Speaker 02

  I think it's a good idea because I think

• 1:00:59Speaker 02

  having casual sex is incredibly hard on women. And I think the pendulum is swinging back. Like, when I, when, when I was a teenager, it was really frowned upon upon if you weren't hooking up with people.

• 1:01:13Tom Bilyeu?

  Whoa, frowned upon?

• 1:01:14Speaker 02

  Oh, my gosh, like in Toronto, in an art school?

• 1:01:19Speaker 02

  I think we knew the one, yeah, oh, yeah. Is that not what it was like when you were growing up? It was pretty hardcore, like, have babies when you're forty, sleep around now, that's when you find, like, that's how you, first of all, you'll like it. None of that is remotely true. So I think, like, saving yourself is, is definitely the way to go, and I think the pendulum is swinging back towards that.

• 1:01:41Tom Bilyeu?

  Do you think there's any sense of sexual compatibility is a real thing? You brought that up, but how will you know if you're sexually compatible?

• 1:01:49Speaker 02

  I think if you're, I think if you're deeply, if you're actually in love with somebody, even if you guys have no idea what you're doing, you'll figure it out, like, we're humans. It's not like, oh, it's not good now, it's gonna be not good forever. It's like, that is very unlikely if you're madly in love with each other.

• 1:02:09Tom Bilyeu?

  So going back, just so there's context for this question. Uh, you talked about the truth as being in alignment with what God wants for you. Do you think the line for God is marriage? And that's gonna be the thing that's optimal for, now I'm using my words, human thriving? Or is it, because to me, there's a huge difference between casual sex and sex with a long-term committed partner with whom you are both wildly in love, but you're not married?

• 1:02:37Speaker 02

  I, I mean, I agree, there's a difference.

• 1:02:39Tom Bilyeu?

  So is there?

• 1:02:40Speaker 02

  I think, I think the ideal situation is You find somebody you're madly in love with and you get married. I think that's the ideal situation. Yeah, I do think that.

• 1:02:52Tom Bilyeu?

  Do you know anybody who did that?

• 1:02:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, I do. Actually, I've met people who've done that. So, so I do.

• 1:03:05Speaker 02

  And, and the reason, part of the reason I think that is because

• 1:03:09Speaker 02

  of the Bible and how it talks about it.

• 1:03:13Speaker 02

  I would say, I guess, from my rational perspective, if you guys are together and you're fully committed and you plan on getting married.

• 1:03:24Speaker 02

  I don't know, I'm having a hard time here because from a Christian perspective, you're supposed to wait till marriage. Uh, from a rational perspective,

• 1:03:33Speaker 02

  I think God would forgive you, but I'm not God. So that like, I don't know, I thi- I think like, try your hardest. I think the casual sex thing is a really bad idea. I think if you're committed to one another and there's no like, wiggle room of maybe there's someone better out there. You know, your eyes aren't kind of like half looking in one direction, then that's the ideal place to be. And I think marriage solidifies that.

• 1:04:00Tom Bilyeu?

  Let me run an idea by you. Tell me what you think.

• 1:04:02Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:04:02Tom Bilyeu?

  There's always somebody better. And

• 1:04:07Tom Bilyeu?

  if you are foolish enough to chase the somebody better, then you're gonna end up in a really dark place because the reality is there's somebody better than you. And so the the way I think people ought to think of it, but I don't come from a religious perspective, so the Christian God may hate this, but uh, the way that I think about it is you want to share a life with somebody. And to share a life with somebody, you need to be committed. You need to let them know, even though there will certainly, right now, today, there's people that are more attractive than you. And there will be people that are more attractive than you for sure as you get older. And I don't care. And that's not why I'm with you.

• 1:04:52Tom Bilyeu?

  Yeah, I think that will serve people more than trying to shut that eye off. It's like, you're always going to find people attractive. Again, I'm not speaking to what the Bible says. But for me, there would be no friction in, oh, my neighbor's wife is hot. I'm not going to sleep with her because there's no universe in which I would want to throw away sharing my life with my wife. But for me, that was like an unlock. When I told Lisa, I was like, look, you're always going to find other men attractive. That's okay. I'm going to find other women attractive. That's okay. And as long as we're both in this together and we want to share a life and we want to grow old together. I'm here for it.

• 1:05:31Tom Bilyeu?

  But if you want me to lie to you and say, I'll never find anybody attractive again, and I only have eyes for you. I think it deranges personally.

• 1:05:40Speaker 02

  And you know what? This might be from the conversion too and being saved. I don't have that perspective. I don't. I thought I, I thought I would, but I don't. And I'm not lying about that either because there are very attractive people out there. But I like, I don't think I have that perspective.

• 1:05:59Tom Bilyeu?

  Meaning you don't find other people attractive?

• 1:06:01Speaker 02

  No. I know what like, what looks good for sure on women and men. But like, I wouldn't say attractive for me.

• 1:06:11Tom Bilyeu?

  Very interesting. All right, I, I will read that as a hundred percent accurate to your experience. It, um, you were the first person I've met that made that claim. I will say that. So it doesn't feel super common to me. But what do you think it is about being saved? That has made it such that you only find your husband attractive? And can you define attractive? I have a feeling that we're using that word to mean different things.

• 1:06:42Speaker 02

  Not really. I mean, like.

• 1:06:44Tom Bilyeu?

  Cause you said I know what looks.

• 1:06:45Speaker 02

  Humor, looks, like, like everything. Everything.

• 1:06:50Tom Bilyeu?

  Do you mean drawn to?

• 1:06:51Speaker 02

  Drawn to, yeah, but I mean, yeah, okay, so let's do, let's do some definitions here. I do mean drawn to, but I also mean attractive in like a looks sense.

• 1:07:00Tom Bilyeu?

  So you could be flipping through a magazine full of six pack ad models and be like, oh, gross.

• 1:07:05Speaker 02

  No, no, no, I know, like, I know what looks good. But there isn't an attraction. So we do have to define attraction.

• 1:07:11Tom Bilyeu?

  Got it. So attraction has some sort of, I'm drawn to this person.

• 1:07:15Speaker 02

  And then there's none of that. I can still see what looks good. Like, I still watch makeup videos with cute women and like, I want that on me. That's with women, but like.

• 1:07:24Tom Bilyeu?

  Very different.

• 1:07:25Speaker 02

  Okay, but with, with men. I mean, I still know what an ideal, like, human body, like, I know what that looks like and how that looks good, but I wouldn't say there's an attraction to it.

• 1:07:37Tom Bilyeu?

  It's interesting.

• 1:07:37Speaker 02

  Also, like Jordan looks good. So that helps.

• 1:07:42Tom Bilyeu?

  It doesn't hurt. He is not ugly. I will say that. He's not ugly and nor is he short. Both of those things are true. Yes. Uh, okay, so, um, talk to me a little bit about the how men and women should be aligning, cause I think for a long time, call it the last ten years, we've really gotten some crazy ideas.

• 1:08:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:08:08Tom Bilyeu?

  How can men and women align?

• 1:08:10Speaker 02

  Ooh, this is tricky. So I think and you and Lisa seem to have it. I, I think if you're with someone who isn't going to compete with you, like, coming from a female perspective, it's hard to be with someone if they're trying to one up you all the time, cause you don't want to be in competition with the man you kind of want to lead you and feel safe with. Like, if it turns into a competition, it's like, this isn't even a competition I want to win, and why are you competing with me? Kind of like, you don't want that. So my perspective is coming from someone who's pretty dominant. My dad probably didn't help because he probably said, like, who's gonna put up with you? And I kind of felt the same way with, like, who's gonna put up with me if I like,

• 1:08:51Speaker 02

  want to work for 12 hours, cause I want to finish a project, or if I'm like, this isn't good enough. I think as a dominant woman, you need to. You know, work on yourself so that you can attract someone who is as dominant or more dominant than than you. That's at least what I needed.

• 1:09:10Speaker 02

  So I I think I think kind of what we were taught and what I was taught growing up luckily I had my dad as a dad was that you can kind of be your own man for lack of a better definition as a woman like you can reach the highest peaks in your career, which I I agree with. You can you could be a mom, you can have both, which I am iffy about.

• 1:09:35Speaker 02

  And you know, you don't need you don't need a man to help you. That's kind of what was surrounding me, but I found that I'm much happier.

• 1:09:45Speaker 02

  When I have someone I can go to and and be like this is hard or like I'm I know I'm worried about this stupid thing that I shouldn't be worried about, but like can you help fix it because it's bothering me even though it's not logical? And I I think every woman needs like a man who can help her through these problems.

• 1:10:06Tom Bilyeu?

  What does a a man need from a woman?

• 1:10:09Speaker 02

  This is what I've heard. Not a man, so I'm not sure. I think it's respect and recognition, I would say. You can tell me if I'm wrong, but I think it's recognition for like, look at all the little things I do for you. Because I love you. But like the they want the recognition for those little things that they do out of love, but I don't know. How does that sound?

• 1:10:34Tom Bilyeu?

  Well, from where I'm sitting, so I would use the word appreciation. I think that's huge. Men want to be appreciated with gratefulness. That hits the note for me as well. The one thing you might lump this into respect, but I've always said, if you really want to make a man happy, win him over, whatever the right phrase is, make him feel powerful and appreciated. If you make him feel powerful and appreciated, you're gonna be, he'll be good. But if he feels unappreciated or you can't sincerely look at him like he's powerful, like you don't sincerely believe it, you're gonna have problems for sure.

• 1:11:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, a hundred percent. And I I think too for for women, if they're in a relationship where they actually don't feel that way, like they don't feel respect or they don't feel power from the person they're with.

• 1:11:24Speaker 02

  That's tough to play out long term. You might need to be with somebody that you do respect and and you I like you do have to make sure the problem isn't you and that you're just not going to respect anybody. So and then that does happen to some women and it just happens in general, but um. If that's not the problem, if it's not you, then you should probably look for somebody that you do admire. This seems like baseline, you should admire the person you're with. That might come from both angles, I don't know, but I definitely. For women to men.

• 1:11:55Tom Bilyeu?

  Yeah, I think admiration is almost certainly something you want going both ways. I think it will clock from different things. The things that I admire in my wife are. Some of the things are going to overlap, that's for sure, but there's gonna be a difference. Most definitely.

• 1:12:13Speaker 02

  I I think the things that my husband admires in me. Aren't the things that I want to be admired for. We have that discussion quite and I might be I'm I might be a little bit like. Work inclined and and business inclined. So I'll get into work mode and he's like, you're in work mode like, yeah, my work brain's on. I don't have like another brain. This is my work brain, just like I'm focused. Um, and I think he admires the like. More feminine side. When I want to be like, look at. Look at the creation I made. So there's a little bit of a discrepancy there, but.

• 1:12:46Tom Bilyeu?

  What do you think about the trad wife movement?

• 1:12:51Speaker 02

  I think that there was going to be inevitable pushback to the. For lack of a better description, boss bitch movement.

• 1:13:00Speaker 02

  So I I like, I think I'm torn. I think it's all of, I think it pretty, it's pretty much a facade. There was this like brief period in the fifties where women stayed home and like had money and had kids and. Wore makeup and fancy clothes and got their hair done and life was good and it lasted like seven years and then it's never repeated itself again in history. So being like, this is how it used to be. It just isn't even. True in any, any way you describe truth. But I understand the pushback. I think it's kinda cute. I mean, I like it better than other, other movements, like any like man hating or woman hating movements. I think the trad wife movement is cuter.

• 1:13:41Speaker 02

  As long as they're like, you don't have to, you also don't have to be a like stay at home wife to be the ideal female partner. Now for some couples, that might work perfectly. That's like, it certainly doesn't work for me. But I've seen some people it does work for, so maybe it depends who you are.

• 1:14:01Tom Bilyeu?

  Have you ever seen an episode of Alone?

• 1:14:04Speaker 02

  I watched a whole season of Alone.

• 1:14:06Tom Bilyeu?

  Dude, that show's dope. Have you seen the couples one?

• 1:14:09Speaker 02

  That sounds horrifying. No, I haven't.

• 1:14:11Tom Bilyeu?

  It's pretty interesting. That show to me reveals the reality of our ancestors where every, like every movement you make, you have to decide in doing this, is it likely to yield more calories than it costs me to go do the thing? Because in, in a world where you have a grocery store, you don't even have to think about it. But all of a sudden, there's a real clarity between the husband and wife because it's like, the guy is almost certainly going to be physically stronger. And he's going to go out and do the sort of grunt labor, carrying the big logs, dragging them around. He'll do the more dangerous stuff, the fishing, whatever. But you learn real fast, my wife is going to be gifted in other things and I want to make sure that she's

• 1:14:56Tom Bilyeu?

  positioned to do the things that she's very gifted at. And I'm not going to complain that she's better than me at whatever, whatever, because we're just trying to stay alive.

• 1:15:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:15:05Tom Bilyeu?

  And so I have a feeling all throughout history, this was a lot easier because you needed your woman to be badass at something. No woman wanted a man that was like a child and no man wanted a woman that was like a child. You want people that can really carry their own. And that's been the secret weapon that Lisa and I have is I learned very early on before we got married that At first, I thought she would only be sexually attracted to me if I was better than her at everything. And then I realized, wait, who on earth would want to be in a relationship where they're worse at everything? Like, that would be a nightmare. You'd never get a chance to flex. You'd never get a chance to be celebrated. It would be very patronizing. And so, we mapped out, here are the things that you are obviously better than me at,

• 1:15:49Tom Bilyeu?

  and here are the things that I'm obviously better than you at, and even leadership, we're gonna hand off. So, when you know more about an area than I do, then I'm gonna follow, and why would I be weird about that? And vice versa. And that for us was like, mapping out, saying, here are the things where you have more credibility, or you're more effective, or whatever. And then, we ride in those lanes. And that goes back to the appreciation. It's like, the fact that, let's say, our food comes and it's messed up, and one of us is gonna get a good meal, and one of us is gonna get a bad meal. A hundred out of a hundred times, I'm gonna tell my wife, you take the good thing, and I will take the bad thing. Which, of course, she tries to divvy up and all that stuff, but like, that line is just hard and fast, like in Titanic.

• 1:16:31Tom Bilyeu?

  If only one of us can fit on the door, which I agree, they both would have fit, but if only one of us will fit on the door, of course, it's gonna be my wife, on and on and on and on and on. So, knowing what each other are good at, and then knowing what role you're gonna play, stating it, agreeing to it, so that everybody understands, like, oh, we do each have roles. Now, they don't have to be hyper-traditional or anything like that, but you better have complementary roles. There better be things each of you are being celebrated for, otherwise, it's gonna be nightmarish.

• 1:16:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's great. That's perfect, I think. I mean, I've, I've done the same thing, so Jordan's my husband. I've done the same thing with him. Which is just like, okay, you are better at certain things than me, which is great, cuz then we can work together, and it's almost like I'm better at them, right? Because if you're one team, then it's like, and you join with the right person, then suddenly, especially if you don't align perfectly in what each other are good at, then you have way more skills. So, it's like, okay, problem, this problem falls into this basket, you handle it. This problem falls into this basket, I'll handle it. So, like, a whole bunch of them, we work on together. But I, I think that's spot on. It, it just makes you into a more useful person if you can work as like this. Power couple.

• 1:17:41Tom Bilyeu?

  Totally agree. What are your thoughts on birth control?

• 1:17:45Speaker 02

  I am not a fan of birth control. Um, I had Sarah Hill on my podcast. She was really good. She's a researcher about the detrimental effects of birth control. Um, so a lot of it is from what I've read and what I've learned on that podcast. But I think almost everybody who takes it gets depressed. I think most people are prescribed around the age of 14 for like heavy periods or acne. And they're not even developed enough to recognize that the pill is causing depression because they haven't even lived enough life to be like, this is what it feels like to be a healthy teenager. They're just, as soon as they're a teenager, it's like, oh, I'm depressed, but that's because I'm hormonal. When really it's this little innocuous pill that isn't supposed to be bad for you that you're taking.

• 1:18:29Speaker 02

  One of the shocking things I, I learned was when women go through menopause, they're given bio-identical hormones to help symptoms through menopause. Those are bio-identical, which means your body, you inject them or you swallow them and your body thinks they're the hormone you're being given that's already in your body. In birth control, it's called like progesterone or something like that. It's actually not bio-identical, so it ends up working on testosterone and working on other neurotransmitters, other parts of your body that it wasn't supposed to work on. So even the way it's marketed, it isn't quite true. So I think the side effects are extremely detrimental. There's evidence that it shows mate attraction differences. So if That's crazy. It's crazy.

• 1:19:13Speaker 02

  So if you're a woman, you end up being more attracted to more feminine men. So like, what do you think that does to a society if, I don't know what it is, 60 or 70%? It's a large percentage, I don't know the numbers, of women who are going to be mating with other people are being attracted to more feminine men unnaturally? It'd be a disaster for relationships. And, I mean, a disaster societally. And I think the main problem just in, in, with couples is it, I think it makes most women really unhappy and miserable. And so they're depressed and whoever they're with is like, I'm with a psycho. And

• 1:19:57Tom Bilyeu?

  What do you think about women, though, that would protest pretty hard to hear any sort of societal pressure not to use birth control because of the level of control that it's given them?

• 1:20:09Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. Well, I mean, I totally get that. I totally get that. I think what would the logical thing would be to just have doctors explain the side effects. Like, when you're prescribed it, when I was prescribed it at 14, my mom was like, "It made me depressed." And I was like, "I'm already depressed, Mom. I don't care," uh, which was dumb, but like, that was my actual response. Uh, I would say you should be run through, just like any medication, especially like psychiatric medications, the serious medications, birth control, actually explain, "Hey, there's data indicating that if you're looking for a mate, uh, you may choose someone that you wouldn't necessarily be as attracted to." And even in Sarah Hill, it doesn't mean

• 1:20:51Speaker 02

  that relationship is doomed, because maybe you are still attracted to that person. It's just the overarching theme is women will pick slightly more feminine men. Um, you should just be shown all this data that shows, you know, maybe it's harder to lose weight, maybe it's easier to gain weight. Um, a huge percentage of people using it experienced really severe depression. You know, it can take a while for your hormones to recover. Like, you should just be told the truth before you take a medication. We shouldn't just take it away.

• 1:21:23Speaker 02

  Just like with foods. Like, it'd be nice to build this little country and ban some of these processed foods. Maybe some of the chemicals should be banned. I'm still on that board. But like, let people have it. Just tell them, if you overeat these things, this is what it leads to. I, I don't think removing access to things is the right answer. I think just people having more information is the right answer.

• 1:21:48Tom Bilyeu?

  Hmm. So, going back to your libertarian bent, you just said maybe some things should be banned. I know not too long ago, though, I am forgetting exactly who this was aimed at, um, something popped off on social media and people construed what you said as being-

• 1:22:03Speaker 02

  That was honestly, that was like mostly my fault. You know, I, I guess I felt that it was tricky because I know- With the Holocaust, there was an entire society of people that ended up murdering a bunch of people and Jewish people, and it was because the propaganda was so effective, and for whatever reason, the ideas were so attractive to the average resentful person, or maybe just the average, regular person, that it ended up massacring a bunch of Jewish people. What I should have said is, can we not push these, can we not push these Nazi ideas? Like, push them. I didn't mean censor them.

• 1:22:41Tom Bilyeu?

  Um, let me step back and think through a problem that I've not tried to think through yet. So, freedom of speech does not mean freedom of reach. I get that, especially if you are the platform. I think you should be optimizing for whatever your goals are for the company. Now, I think algorithms should be transparent, so people should understand what they are, they should, because it'll still be so complicated, most people won't understand, but it should be available for people that want to go through it and understand it, like the one on X's. So, anybody that's like, I think this is being manipulated, can actually go and check the live code, replicate the results for themselves, and see, yep, this, this is exactly what they said it was.

• 1:23:26Speaker 02

  Oh, cool.

• 1:23:26Tom Bilyeu?

  That makes sense to me. So, getting people to do that. I don't think the government should be putting their finger on the scales.

• 1:23:34Tom Bilyeu?

  Now, I think the platform should be able to optimize for whatever it is that they're trying to optimize for, buyer beware in that most of those algorithms are going to be optimized for your engagement. So, that means if outraging you is engaging, then outrage you they will. And so, this is where I think people need to take personal responsibility and say, if it's not making your life better, or it's not making your kids' life better, you have to stop. Now, I- Have pushed back on anybody that's like, well, there are going to be people that won't be able to navigate that well. I get it, but I think the nanny state is a thousand times more deadly than people making poor life choices. That is, I'm way more afraid of well-meaning people trying to um lie, trick,

• 1:24:20Tom Bilyeu?

  regulate into oblivion their behaviors. Now, I am not a libertarian, so I'm all for government. I would just like the government to be uh held accountable to their own stated KPIs. That's my official position, which does not have any home. But that's what I want. I want politicians to say, we're going to run this program. We're expecting this result and we're going to audit it in a year or two years, whatever reasonable amount of time. If it's not yielding those results, then we can all look at that and say, this was a failed experiment and we need to try something different. I don't think, I think the reality of politics is manipulation, so I don't think that's ever going to happen. But that's what I would like to see.

• 1:24:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, I wouldn't be a libertarian if that existed. That sounds fine. I don't think the idea of government is bad. I just think it doesn't seem to operate very well at all.

• 1:25:11Tom Bilyeu?

  Yeah, it's one of those, uh, what do they say? Capitalism is uh a terrible system, but it's the best of all the other worst systems.

• 1:25:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, something like that.

• 1:25:21Tom Bilyeu?

  You get the idea. Yeah, that is um, that's where I come down. I think freedom of speech is critically important. I'm not a free speech absolutist. I'm perfectly fine with the US government's take on that. You can't directly incite violence. But I am old school in the ACLU, God, this is back in like the 1960s, where they actually went to bat for the Nazis, believe it or not, that wanted to march through a small town in Wisconsin, uh, something like that. Some small midwestern town where there was a bunch of Holocaust survivors and the Nazis wanted to provoke them and go march to their streets. I believe it was the ACLU that said they should have the right to do that. And so now the question becomes,

• 1:26:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:26:05Tom Bilyeu?

  If we don't want a nanny state, then you're relying on people to stand up and say, I have a better idea. And so here's all the hate, like, you know, flashback, either late twenties or early thirties when Hitler starts rising to power. And You have to have somebody with better ideas. And so that's the terrifying part is sometimes things just go the fuck off the rails.

• 1:26:27Speaker 02

  So like my initial reaction to seeing all those was like, this is crazy and it's happening now. And they were popular posts. So it was like, people are liking these. And not all of these are anonymous. Like I was shocked because some of the popular posts were by doctors. And I was like, I never thought I would be in a world where you could say something that targeted Jewish people like that and be a professional. It's I don't have a problem with targeting individuals. I do have a problem with targeting races or or

• 1:27:02Speaker 02

  I would say like ethnic groups of people like that, given that we know people do have a propensity towards violence. For those groups of people, I don't remember what word I used. I might have used censor. I said something in a fever state that was that was stupid. But um, the problem is if you do censor those ideas, it doesn't really matter because people are still talking about them. So you can't suppress that out. So I guess it's better to see that they're being talked about and not be naive about it. I would like people to know that what they're shown on the internet could be propaganda and just be aware of that. Like we're not in a time that doesn't have propaganda. So don't just believe everything you see on the internet. Be hyper skeptical.

• 1:27:48Speaker 02

  Try to figure out what's true for yourself. Talk to different groups of people. So you get different perspectives. And if a platform suddenly shuts off one area that people are talking about, so like maybe COVID, for example, with Meta. Or if a platform suddenly shows you only content about one event, then maybe that's actually propaganda. If suddenly mainstream media says the same thing on every newspaper, like be a little bit skeptical about those things. I think that's the best thing we can do is just be skeptical. And and careful censorship, it not not only doesn't not work, but it can lead to

• 1:28:31Speaker 02

  terrible authoritarian states and you can't like you we don't want to risk that again after what we've seen can already happen.

• 1:28:39Tom Bilyeu?

  Hmm. What are you doing with your kids in social media or what will you do?

• 1:28:42Speaker 02

  Like you don't want to have that outcast kid that doesn't know how to use a computer. You know, especially with how fast tech is expanding. So I do want to teach her how to type and

• 1:28:54Speaker 02

  maybe code, like things that I think would be very valuable and teach her about AI and use that kind of as education. Um, for social media,

• 1:29:06Speaker 02

  I don't know what I'm gonna do. I'll probably wait until she's

• 1:29:13Speaker 02

  fourteen or sixteen, something like that.

• 1:29:16Tom Bilyeu?

  Have you read Jonathan Haidt's work?

• 1:29:18Speaker 02

  I haven't read it. I'm really familiar with that. It's scary. Does he suggest eighteen? What does he suggest?

• 1:29:24Tom Bilyeu?

  Don't remember the age, but he certainly doesn't want to see phones in schools. So at least at school, that takes you to eighteen.

• 1:29:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, my my daughter's schooled.

• 1:29:31Tom Bilyeu?

  I think his number is like absolutely not until sixteen. I think, but don't quote me on that.

• 1:29:37Speaker 02

  Well, it's

• 1:29:39Speaker 02

  I like luckily enough, I found a school where I'm at what that my my oldest is going to that's very like nineties education. So they're learning all the games I learned in the nineties and it's like, there's no ideology, really. It's just like basic education. Now they do learn how to type and they learn how to use iPads, but there aren't phones. I think a lot of the parents putting their kids in that school uh, aren't gonna allow phones. So I don't think it's gonna have the maybe pressure that's in public schools as a teenager to own a phone because I think a lot of parents are like, no, that's there's a better way. So I think I maybe found this little ecos

• 1:30:19Speaker 02

  where we wouldn't have to succumb to peer pressure. Um, otherwise, if I wasn't in that, I would probably say you can have half an hour. Just so they're not an outcast at school.

• 1:30:28Tom Bilyeu?

  A half hour on social media?

• 1:30:30Speaker 02

  And then, you know, communicate with the kid.

• 1:30:32Tom Bilyeu?

  With mom sitting next to her or her scrolled away in a room by herself weeping over the endless insults that we will all get hurled our way?

• 1:30:41Speaker 02

  Ah, maybe beside her at the beginning and then I would probably just monitor how she's doing and I can remember being on so MSN Messenger when I was in grade four or grade five. Being like MSN Messenger was the social media platform and it like it went even haywire as a kid or it was like that was not appropriate at all. Um, but I think if you're paying enough attention to your kid, you can understand when they're experiencing anxiety. So it was like, are they a happy kid or are they suddenly not a happy kid? And if they're not a happy kid? Like, is it something that happened at school? I don't know what teenager could have negative comments about them? And withstand it and not have it just repeat in their head all the time. So

• 1:31:24Speaker 02

  maybe try to build some resilience around it too and teach her like there are going to be negative people and people that don't like you. And like, that's okay. People do have to learn that. It's okay if people don't like you. Like, don't be a dick.

• 1:31:38Tom Bilyeu?

  No doubt, but it it social media and kids really scares me. As somebody who, when I was in high school, if you wanted to tell the whole school something, you had to paint it on the bridge.

• 1:31:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:31:50Tom Bilyeu?

  And that was bad enough. Like when it was your name up on the bridge is like ouch. Uh, but you could be blissfully unaware if people had beef with you as I was. Um, but man, if they can reach into your bedroom through your phone, God.

• 1:32:06Speaker 02

  Oh, and and putting vi- videos and things.

• 1:32:10Tom Bilyeu?

  Yeah, that's another.

• 1:32:10Speaker 02

  Oh, that but that would be that'd be a no. I would say no to that. Like anything that was going to be posted, I'd be like, I need to sign off on that.

• 1:32:17Tom Bilyeu?

  Oh, good luck. Would you let your kid have an AI friend?

• 1:32:21Speaker 02

  I think it would depend if like my daughter's best friend is an AI person, then we've got a problem. Like you that like that's not healthy. No, but I think I'm not going to be not exposing her to uh, the evolution of like technology. So I'd like, I think VR is going to be huge in. I don't know how long. How long do you think? Like three to five years?

• 1:32:46Tom Bilyeu?

  I wouldn't get too hung up on VR, but VR is probably five to seven. Uh, cause you need the, it's really AR is what you want. That's what Zuckerberg is working like a fiend on to get it into a form factor where it's just like these overlays of the world.

• 1:33:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, that, okay, okay, that. Start with that one.

• 1:33:01Tom Bilyeu?

  Very interesting. So call it seven years for sure. By the time she's fifteen, a hundred percent.

• 1:33:06Speaker 02

  Yeah. And I think being like, no, we'll keep her safe from all this will just mean that they're left behind. Like, I think you're gonna, I think it's gonna be hard for us to keep, keep up. You see, well, yeah, right? Things are getting crazy out there.

• 1:33:20Tom Bilyeu?

  AI, so I just heard Elon Musk say AI is advancing faster than any technology he's ever seen in his life. Now, this is a guy that's been at the nexus of technology for a very long time. And he said, it's not by a little, it's orders of magnitude faster than anything else. People do not understand, they are gonna be blindsided by AI, by AI in ways that they cannot even begin to understand yet. It is so fast. And there's actually, this is for sale right now, there's a medallion called Friend. And it's an AI that's always with you, always watching, always listening. And it will, um, make suggestions, it will comment on your clothes if you wanted to. I mean, it's, it's gonna get bananas. And that's, that's what it is today, Michaela.

• 1:34:05Tom Bilyeu?

  I want you to imagine five years. It's only been out, like ChatGPT was what, two years ago? Less? Eighteen months, nineteen months ago? So this is gonna be bananas by the time your daughter is a teenager.

• 1:34:17Speaker 02

  Oh, oh, yeah.

• 1:34:17Tom Bilyeu?

  Forget about your son. It's gonna be nuts. With your son, you're gonna be like, you cannot have sex with a sex robot anymore. Like, it's gonna be that, that crazy. Yeah, that, that one, I worry about that. Sex robots scare me.

• 1:34:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's gonna take a lot of people out, I think.

• 1:34:33Tom Bilyeu?

  Yeah.

• 1:34:33Speaker 02

  Yeah. No, no, I'm pretty like we're we're pretty on top of AI tech because we've got AI built into a number of PA features that mostly haven't been released.

• 1:34:43Tom Bilyeu?

  Oh, what can you talk about? Um. Don't tease and then not say anything.

• 1:34:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, I can't yet.

• 1:34:49Tom Bilyeu?

  Boo.

• 1:34:50Speaker 02

  We've got hu- we have huge ideas. Um, eh, like a bunch of it involves testing, some of it involves translations and then there's like, there's something else that I'm not allowed to talk about, so we're not gonna talk about it.

• 1:35:01Tom Bilyeu?

  Off camera, we'll trade AI ideas.

• 1:35:03Speaker 02

  Oh, okay.

• 1:35:03Tom Bilyeu?

  We we also have many.

• 1:35:05Speaker 02

  Ooh.

• 1:35:06Tom Bilyeu?

  Tell me about entrepreneurship. So you have launched a university via an app, if I'm not mistaken.

• 1:35:13Speaker 02

  Almost.

• 1:35:14Tom Bilyeu?

  Uh, you have at least at Lashak, you had over 10,000 students.

• 1:35:18Speaker 02

  Thirty.

• 1:35:19Tom Bilyeu?

  Good lord.

• 1:35:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:35:21Tom Bilyeu?

  You guys are growing fast.

• 1:35:23Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:35:24Tom Bilyeu?

  Say more. You're the CEO. How'd you do this?

• 1:35:27Speaker 02

  So about three years ago, um, I was having a

• 1:35:32Tom Bilyeu?

  By the way, congratulations, 30,000 is gangster.

• 1:35:36Speaker 02

  Been, there has not been a lot of sleep in a very long time.

• 1:35:39Tom Bilyeu?

  Fair enough, but you got the results for it.

• 1:35:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, like, and thank you to everybody who signed up. It's been a massive success. We have a whole bunch of features in development that we're gonna roll out in the next couple of months. Uh, and we have a mobile app in the next month, hopefully, should be about a month. Uh, but we have like exams coming out, quizzes, essays, note taking, study groups.

• 1:36:04Tom Bilyeu?

  How do you grade the essays?

• 1:36:05Speaker 02

  The essays are graded by AI.

• 1:36:07Tom Bilyeu?

  I was gonna say.

• 1:36:07Speaker 02

  It's not out yet. We're rolling it out. Yeah, there's a lot of evidence that LLMs can grade as effectively as a human, which isn't surprising, given

• 1:36:18Tom Bilyeu?

  Minus bias.

• 1:36:19Speaker 02

  Given that it depends on the human grading you, right? So a lot of this, and a lot of this has been possible. I mean, take, take something like easy. In our courses, uh, we wanted to have animations so that people with, for lack of a better description, people with ADD could sit through an eight hour lecture, basically. So I was like, and I like, I don't even watch video content very often. So I was like, I need to be stimulated watching these courses. And so now we have editors generating images with AI and then editing them and putting them in. But a lot of the building we've been able to do has been sped up by a factor of like, it's been made possible because of how AI is progressing. We're gonna be able to translate our courses. In the next, I don't know, six months, I would say.

• 1:37:04Tom Bilyeu?

  Oh, it's already possible.

• 1:37:06Speaker 02

  Speaking in their own voice in other languages.

• 1:37:08Tom Bilyeu?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:37:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's tricky. Most of the companies, it looks a little weird around the teeth. I don't know if you've seen.

• 1:37:13Tom Bilyeu?

  I love that you can be so nitpicky that you're like, I don't like the way when they're speaking in Chinese. I don't like the way their lips look around their teeth. It's like, when that's our problem, it's unbelievable.

• 1:37:25Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:37:25Tom Bilyeu?

  It's unbelievable. No, that's, I'm so close to this problem and find it utterly fascinating.

• 1:37:31Speaker 02

  It's so fun. And then it's like, oh, this is a problem now. Let's just give it three months.

• 1:37:35Tom Bilyeu?

  Yep.

• 1:37:35Speaker 02

  They'll fix that.

• 1:37:36Tom Bilyeu?

  For sure.

• 1:37:37Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:37:38Tom Bilyeu?

  For sure.

• 1:37:38Speaker 02

  It's really cool.

• 1:37:39Tom Bilyeu?

  What are your secrets to leadership?

• 1:37:41Speaker 02

  I would say I'm, I'm willing to like from managing my dad and building my own brand and doing a lot of podcast related things, which teaches you a lot about production. I was willing to do the grunt work. So in Peterson Academy, like I'm aware of everything from like how the courses are built, customer service, design of the platform, which took a number of years, like everything. And I like, nothing's beneath me. I'm pretty picky about who I work with. So if there's someone that you're having conversations with or about more than like five times is like, this happened and then this happened and then this happened.

• 1:38:23Speaker 02

  And then maybe they disappeared this day, or maybe they're bringing down this other team member. Then they just have to leave. So you can't have an issue with replacing people. If you're trying to grow a giant, which is what we're trying to do. And so I have no guilt with, it's like, it's not a good fit. It's not a good fit for you. Like you, you don't want to be the person that people are frustrated with all the time. Or if you're in a job you don't like, like go do something else, but you can't be here. So I have no problem with being like, that person needs, needs to be replaced or that person needs to be replaced. Um, and I think that's from a lot of really difficult experiences, trying to grow kind of my dad's brand and working with some bad eggs that really ended up causing me years of like legal problems.

• 1:39:07Tom Bilyeu?

  Hmm.

• 1:39:07Speaker 02

  I, I like, I, I think I have enough experience now that I can say that person is going to be an issue. We should stop this, give them a good severance, tell them to leave politely, and then we won't have to deal with that. So that's been really helpful. And then. I don't know, I've like, uh, had ideas for, I think I was so frustrated with my experience in university. Like, I went to two different universities, I got two half degrees, I never finished a full degree. I have a half a degree in classics and psychology and half degree in biomedical science. And I didn't have any professors I liked throughout both university experiences. It was full of ideology. I was learning Homer through a feminist lens in 2012. And I was like, that's not why I took Homer. Like, that's not what Homer was thinking.

• 1:39:51Speaker 02

  Um, and it was really disappointing because my dad had been like, go to, like, the greatest thing you can do as a kid is, like, go to university, get a PhD. It's like, you need a PhD to be taken seriously as a person, Michaela. Uh, and you also have to have kids young. That was a tricky, that was tricky to navigate. But, um, I, I've always had this, like, beautiful idea of what university is for people. And my experience was so bad, and I'm so annoyed about what they're teaching people in university. The amount of debt students are ending up with, so that they can end up in jobs that they don't even like? You can't even go to university and learn what you need to know in today's society. It's so tech-based. Not that PA is doing that yet.

• 1:40:35Speaker 02

  We're mostly focusing on humanities and we have, like, intro level courses in, in sciences. And we're gonna do marketing and things like that, but it's mostly liberal arts, great books, courses. Um, but it was just, it was just frustrating and it's like, there's this niche for people who go to YouTube to learn and watch podcasts to learn. And there's this niche to build a community around people who want to learn to improve their level of sophistication, to be taken more seriously in conversation, because that can improve your life tremendously, um, who want to learn about all these classic books and get a classical education and meet each other and...

• 1:41:17Speaker 02

  Uh, and then I guess I spent enough time being on Instagram trying to grow my dad's channels and I mean, he did the growth himself. I was, I posted. I'm not taking credit for the growth, taking some credit for the posting, but I think I spent enough time on different platforms being like, I think I can see it in my head, like what it should look like. And like my husband's been instrumental in it. And we have a great team. So it's just been, it's been so fun to build after spending my whole life dealing with like chronic health problems. It's just, it's way better not dealing with those things.

• 1:41:52Tom Bilyeu?

  Yeah, I, I would imagine so.

• 1:41:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:41:56Tom Bilyeu?

  Speaking of your dad and social media, talk to me about the way he engages on X, formerly known as Twitter. What do you think about it? Do you sometimes want to knock the phone out of his hand? Are you like, no, go crazy?

• 1:42:09Speaker 02

  Uh, okay. So i- i- it's actually switched. So for about four years, it was like, you gotta get off X. It's bad for you. It's toxic. All you see are negative comments. You get riled up. I mean, I went on like X a couple of months ago and saw a bunch of posts and was like, rah! And I was like, oh no. And I was like, well, I had the flu, but no one knows you have the flu. So it doesn't matter. It, it was like, you can't feed the algorithm, then get angry on what like about and feed off of what it's just. So I tried to get him off of it. My brother tried to get him off of it. My mom tried to get him off of it. We're all like this bad. Um, but now, I don't know. He seems to be upset about things that are relevant in like two years. So when he freaks out about something like dad, you're

• 1:42:54Speaker 02

  maybe overreacting a tad. And then sometimes it's six months later and sometimes it's two years later. I'm like, you know what? Maybe you were right. So, uh, he can just do whatever he wants. He's made it this far.

• 1:43:09Tom Bilyeu?

  It's interesting. He did a podcast about his friends trying to intervene, trying to convince him that this is a mistake. And I remember listening to it going, Jordan, please, take their advice. And not to get off of Twitter because I really do think you're right. I think he gets mad about a lot of the right things and I think history will vindicate him. But the way he tweets, like the, the words that he uses, and I've heard him justify it, I get it. And look, I, I am, your dad is a very important part of my sense-making apparatus. So this is somebody who's on his side being like, bruv, you're creating some of your own problems here.

• 1:43:53Tom Bilyeu?

  You're talking about the right things, but man, with slightly different words, you would have a much easier time.

• 1:44:00Speaker 02

  You are preaching to the choir here.

• 1:44:01Tom Bilyeu?

  Yeah.

• 1:44:02Speaker 02

  But I also like, who knows? He's a very smart man.

• 1:44:06Tom Bilyeu?

  That's true.

• 1:44:06Speaker 02

  Maybe there's something the, the majority of people aren't seeing. So I'm like, I don't know. I don't know. It's a little, I like, I basically told him it, it's such a, I'm not nearly as verbally fluent as my dad, but it's such a downer being on there. Like do something else. It's like, like now that, now that PA is out, maybe he'll go on that social media and just be on that. Uh, cause it's a lot more positive. So I was like, that's what you can do with your time instead of being on X and freaking out about things.

• 1:44:41Tom Bilyeu?

  If people want to follow you on social, where should they go?

• 1:44:44Speaker 02

  I'm Michaela Peterson on Instagram. I have a podcast that I'm starting again in September, uh, at the end of September, uh, which is just Michaela Peterson or Michaela Fuller on YouTube.

• 1:44:59Tom Bilyeu?

  Both of those work?

• 1:45:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think my name's Michaela Fuller, but my channel is at Michaela. I snagged the Michaela.

• 1:45:08Tom Bilyeu?

  Smart.

• 1:45:09Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm. And then I guess I have a website, Michaela Peterson dot com, which isn't that useful. I have diet stuff at lion diet dot com if people are interested in that. And then the Peterson Academy platform, social media platform and courses are at Peterson Academy dot com.

• 1:45:26Tom Bilyeu?

  I love it. Michaela, thank you very much for coming today and everybody at home. If you haven't already, be sure to subscribe and until next time, my friends, be legendary. Take care. Peace.

• 1:45:41Tom Bilyeu?

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