Ben Shapiro Puts Politics ASIDE To Talk About PERSONAL GROWTH!| Lewis Howes

as I get older I think that the mark of a good person at least a person who's trying is a person who wakes up in the middle of the night worried about the mistake that made the previous day and how do you and how do you fix that and the mark of a person who's gonna have problems is a person who wakes up in the middle of the night angry at what somebody else did to them all right welcome everyone back to the school of greatness we've got Ben Shapiro in the house appreciate it very excited about this as we were talking before we just started I don't know anything about politics I don't follow politics I'm probably the most the least ignorant person or the most ignorant person about the topics that you cover so this gonna be interesting yeah yeah not that I really need to go into politics I'm more fascinated about you as a person and how you think and how you work and how you solve problems because as I started going down the rabbit hole of your video content I became just so impressed with your ability to communicate a message make a point and win your point you know you're really great at debate and winning your arguments and your ideas based on facts and our feelings which is what you talk about what is it what do you say facts don't care about your feelings I don't care about your feelings and you ruffle a lot of feathers for people I already know just by having your name in the title of my show again I mean it's so much fatigue I had Jordan Peterson on oh wow and I had so many people were just like unsubscribe I can't believe you would associate with this person yeah but so you're just jumping on every landmine you like this is gonna be a bomb for me already knows I'm gonna get a lot of a great attention and people are gonna be unsubscribing just because they're not willing to listen because they see a name and a title and they're not willing to see what happens yeah and I was telling people you know what join a Pearson if they just listened there was nothing negative that we talked about anything yeah positive stuff and but you're very controversial and some of the things you talked about people call you a lot of different things and we don't need to to that but I'm more fascinated about how you became so smart I also love I watched a video of you playing violin even I was very impressed with my brother's a number one jazz violinist from the world oh really ok no this is a round violin every single day and watching this and he's performed all the world but I'm curious about the way you think and why you're so passionate about sharing your message speaking around the world your company your media content you put out there and and why you think it's important for you to continue sharing the message the way you do well you know I think that there are certain eternal values that we've lost politically but also just interpersonally and so for me the idea of building back up a social fabric where we actually have some values in common is really important and politics is one means of discussing that politics is basically the stuff we fight about at the tip of the iceberg but the stuff I actually like to discuss is the stuff below that and that's why when I'm discussing ideas or debating in in a college setting for example I'm much less interested in debating sort of the vagaries of what's going on in the White House and much more interested in sort of route issues as to how do we balance things like our desire for liberty and our desire for a communal commitment and capacity these are things where we actually have to have serious conversations about what matters does so that we can reach any sort of conclusion or at least clarify where we stand on the issues because what you find usually is that there's just not a lot of clarity and political conversation and so my job is to try and drill down and not only make as clear as possible what I'm saying but also try and elicit from the person I'm talking to what is their root core position and what is there for me to disagree with or agree with and this is the part I've always found a little bit frustrating about you know the level of controversy that's associated with me is that when I was at Harvard Law School my favorite professors were all people who are on the Left I took I got a recommendation for law firm jobs from Lani Guinier who's this far on the left as it's possible to be issue so far left that when he was Clinton nominated her for Under Secretary of Housing and Urban Development I believe she was rejected by a Democratic Senate cuz she's so far to the left but she and I got along great I mean the idea that you have to hate the person that you're talking to is something that I think has really pushed a lot on social media if you do that you can't get to the root of the our conversation Yeah right if you hate example talking to your coming you're basing things off of emotions right and it's emotionally charged as opposed to let me hear what you're saying and then back it with facts right and it means that you can't have a conversation because the entire conversation is your judgement of the other person's character and this is why I've always maintained that the first move in any conversation has to be to take that off the table the otherwise no judgment yeah right I mean about about the assumption that the person is motivated by something bad because probably the motivated by something good and they're just coming from a different premise that doesn't mean you're gonna leave the room and agree on everything but it does mean that you're at least gonna know what you disagree about because our tendency as human beings is to because because we're cognitively biased it's all it's very easy for us to fall into the trap of thinking I disagree with this person and that's because this person is a bad person and this is super true in politics I don't agree with how they their judgment of character or how they handled a certain situation or their viewpoint out one thing so they're bad at everything right exactly and and the truth is that we wouldn't treat any of our friends that way we wouldn't treat anybody we dealt with in regular life that way on social media we treat each other that way and in politics we definitely treat each other that way it's a lot easier to suggest that your political opponents a bad person than it is to actually have the necessary conversations about where you guys differ mm-hmm so you'd say you take away the judgment first when you're going into a debate or some type of conversation how do you take away that judgment of the other person or you try to eliminate that judgment of them onto you well I mean both I mean so we all fail with this so I try to in my myself I try to say okay I'm going to assume this person isn't a bad person and now I have to try and drill down what is what it is that makes them tick and for them if somebody comes in with a preconception about me being a nasty terrible human being then my first move has to be pretty good kind of harsh which it has to be you don't have any evidence I'm a bad person other than we disagree and if that's your feeling that I'm a bad person just because we disagree then you are actually the person acting like a bad person if you are if you are suggesting that I'm evil or nasty or cruel simply because you heard someone one time say that I'm evil nasty or cruel without you examine a team in examining my material or you've examined my material and what you take away from that is that I'm poorly motivated as opposed to we just have a fundamental disagreement on root issues well then that's you attempting to avoid the conversation altogether so that that's that that's the first step yeah and and then then you can then you can have the conversation maybe doesn't go anywhere maybe it does go somewhere but you're not gonna know until you get out of the headspace where the other person is is an Aussie when you when you try to go into a place where you know it's heated then were you like this person has said online they don't like me or they're completely against me or you just have a gut feeling like this is probably not gonna be good based on whatever what do you think about going into a speech at updates an interview where you know there could be some emotionally charged expressions happening how do you prepare yourself mentally for that so first of all I treat debate like like a game it's it i watch game tape in other words so so before I leave athlete yeah when it comes to this stuff yeah when it comes to debating somebody I actually will sit there and I will watch how they debate what are their tactics what are their favourite tricks to use one of their favourite facts that they cite maybe they've got a point and I haven't considered that point so do I have to adjust my viewpoints in order to make room for that point but you actually have to study this stuff and I think most people know in debate and they just think okay well I'm just gonna go out there and say I don't want to say you actually have to know what the lead tactic is before the person uses it so for example the most famous debate that I was in probably was the one with Piers Morgan that was sort of the initial kind of boost to to top-line status from his 2013 there was Ray after Sandy Hook and so gun control was being talked about a lot and so he had been doing this thing where it is very intellectually dishonest thing where he's having on a bunch of people who disagreed with him on gun control and then he would lead by saying if you disagree with me on gun control it's because you don't care about these Poole slaughtered children and that to me was exactly what we're talking about it's you attacking my character not attacking my argument now we can disagree and gun control what's effective what's not do we think certain solutions work in certain solutions don't what are the rights versus the risks we can do all of that stuff and that's important conversation to have well we can't do is I sit down and the first thing you say to me is you disagree with me because you're evil that's not something so I I went into that debate knowing that I was going to that he's gonna lead with that and before he could lead with that I essentially punched him in the throat right I mean he basically think whose it was things like I mean it was the Mike Tyson thing right like that the Emperor he's got a game plan until they get hit Mel yeah and that was that was that and he started off by saying you know you've called me a bully why have you called me baloney I said well piers it's because when it comes to these sorts of debates you stand on the graves of children in order to push your political agenda and he got very offended and I said well if you don't have a conversation about the topic we can do that but if you're going to suggest that I don't care about dad kids I just agree with you then we can't have a conversation you're just being a jerk and there was no place for him to go because that was his only tactic because he think he wasn't qualified to have the conversation which is why he was misdirecting to the character assault now then as you say I think I watched a video where you talked about this that he was going to bring out a kid like after the break yeah this is right he he brought out a kid who had been crippled in a had been really hurt you know and I gun violence situation and his plan was to swivel and have me say okay make all your arguments to this kid who's been who's been wounded and from my point of view that's a dishonest thing to do because the arguments of the argument does not change based on who it is that you're talking that's an emotional appeal that's not an argument an emotional appeal so you can do it but it's intellectually dishonest to do it I mean there's there's arguments that we make on politics every day and those political arguments affect any number of people in any number of given ways the question that you have to ask is an intellectually honest person is what is the best solution understanding that bad things happen in the world and if your argument changes because you're talking to one our audience versus another audience there's a level of dishonesty to that and so once I did that once I said you know basically you're emotionally manipulating your audience by stacking the deck against me he couldn't do that anymore because the trick had been called down I mean it's like watching David Copperfield make an airplane disappear but once you know what he's doing you can't you can't unsee it right once you know how the woman is being sawed in half you understand that there's actually you know a that the ones not being sawed in half at the table has a deeper part of it right and you can't unsee the trick Wow do you ever go into a situation where you cut them through the M&M eight-mile like yes I've said this and yes I've said this and I'm bad here or whatever 100% yeah I do that one all the time because as a person who's been writing a syndicated column since OH 17 years old sure I've said some really dumb stuff right a man said some stuff that I regret I've said some I have a full column that I put online called here's a giant list of all the dumb stuff I've ever said right because I think that it's important to do that and some of that stuff was set a year ago or two years ago as human beings it's our job to grow and change and not only that to evaluate where we've gone wrong in the past one of the things that's kind of nasty about our current political environment is that people made a mistake ten years ago and now they don't hold by that they've never provided any evidence that they double down on that and now we're going back 10 years ago and taking up stuff that they said in order to destroy their careers I mean the most obvious example recently was Kevin Hart where you go back and you find a tweet that he wrote in 2010 and then we can't host the Oscars in 2018 was it summer back in 2010 he tweeted something about how it was it was an anti-gay tweet or he suggested that his I think it was that he suggested his five women wanted five-year-old son to be gay something like that and then so people got all over him for that well he can't host the Oscars now well number one there's no evidence that he's ever done anything actually anti-gay number two we actually have to if we're gonna do this we actually have to evaluate the question as to whether you should be barred from hosting the Oscars if you would prefer that your five-year-old son be heterosexual versus homosexual which i think is actually an interesting conversation but more than that regardless of all that it's know eight years later and you're diggin back through some guys history because you saw he's gonna host the Oscars she saw the Heisman Trophy winner right the husband Trophy winner and within a day they're digging through his old tweets and they find some he called one of his friends gay when he was 14 or something and now he's forced to apologize okay if he if he'd committed a murder at 14 yeah then it would have been expunged from his record when he had 18 right he was done it is a juvie but he tweeted something when he's 14 and now we're going to go back and ruin everything ruining if we as a society if we don't have the the compassion to say people make mistakes yeah it's gonna be very difficult to move forward is your goal to ruin other people or is your goal to actually forward the conversation and so to that end if somebody calls me on something and I feel like I've done something wrong I'm more than happy to repent for I mean as a religious person I repent three times a day to God so I'm more than happy to repent for stuff that I've that I've said in the past that I think is bad or stupid or wrong I write as I say I have a full three thousand one column bad when people alert me to stuff that I don't member everything I've ever said when people alert me to stuff that I that that's then I've said that's dumb then I'll go back and I'll update it means a constantly updated list what is the moment where you you wish you would have taken back something you said you're like you know what that was really one of the dumbest things I've ever said or done or interacted with you know maybe I shouldn't have pushed it that fall so I mean the source stuff happens all the time I mean first of all because I was writing when I was 17 there are several columns I wrote when I was 18 19 20 years old that are half-baked stupid mm-hm you know ridiculous and what am 18 year old was saying right exactly and and so I've said that was dumb shouldn't have done that I've actively rejected my own writing on that score in terms of kind of interpersonal relations you know I so a few weeks ago was it take an example there was a there was a speech that I did at a particularly University I'm not gonna mention the University for reasons that are gonna become obvious as the story continues and it's in front of a couple thousand people and a transgender person gets up and is asking me about my position on transgenderism which is the men are men and women are women and women can't become men and men can't become with very controversial but that's the way I feel about this and then so it happens to science in any case where we're discussing this and this transgender person very nice person is is really pressing me on the issue and we're going back and forth and at one person at one point this person brings up his personal stories it male who is a transgender woman and when I speak publicly about my rule when I used pronouns is that when I'm speaking publicly about the issue because I believe that because I believe the gender is biologically based and that he and she are descriptions of biological status not a subjective mental state because of that when I speak publicly about this I use biological pronouns in the same way I've always used biological pronouns as have most human beings virtually all human beings throughout in history and anyway so a transgender woman you were saying I will I will say he for a transgender woman even if they ask we use she it depends on the scenario so it's so right so it depends if it's public or not so if it's personal one-on-one it's one-on-one for sure gosh right because because then it's just being rude not to but if we're discussing it in the context of should I use trans pronouns or be forced by society dudes transgendered pronouns than the answer is no so on national TV I've done that right and been physically accosted for doing it yeah exactly so the my my position is that in interpersonal relationships and I've done I didn't entered with Blair white a transgender woman specifically about this we were out to dinner and Blair and I were out to dinner I would be calling Blair she if there are a third person at the table because why be a jerk but it's not the same thing when you're talking about as a society what should our standard be for he and she are these subjective terms or do these actually mean something in any case the this conversation goes on and the transgender woman starts telling his personal story and I said I really don't want to do personal story stuff because personal story stuff there's no way to avoid this becoming offensive you're not emotionally charged and this person insisted on telling a personal story and at a certain point at a certain point this this transgender person said something and I said something and the person we can very offended and and started to cry and walked out of the room and I regretted how the entire exchange what so I mean perfectly so in that case what I did is I knew the organizers of the event the organizer of the event turns out knew this person I called this person I had the I asked them if they wanted this removed from the video version of the tape because I didn't want this to go out and embarrass and it turns into a Ben Shapiro destroys video or something nasty like that and so we cut it out of the tape I had breakfast with the person the next day to make sure that they were okay right I mean when when I when things don't go the way that they should then I want to make sure that they do so I mean I think this is what anybody a good heart should be trying to do and we all make mistakes in that process yeah so you had a one-on-one with this person and they felt this mine yeah exactly it was your position and you're not gonna all greet no not always exactly but then we can still treat each other civilly and be nice people to each other and just because we disagree on a public position even one as broad as that doesn't mean that we we can't be human beings to each other absolutely what who was the most influential person in your life growing up well I would say that my parents obviously my dad was extremely influential so my home life was was my parents have been married for let's say they were married for nearly 40 years at this point so thank God I grew up in a laughs I know there forty years actually um I grew up in a very stable home it was great my mom worked my dad stayed at home so that was unusual my dad was a musician he came out and my parents came out to LA so he could write for film in TV that didn't really work out but my mom ended up as a film exact so having a degree in education so my dad was home with me and so that meant that and I had three younger sisters so he was home with all of us and so that meant that I was constantly talking with my dad about ideas and and him recommending books for me to read and be reading books that he didn't recommend and and him because using musician I got very good music and I was a very highly trained musician and so some of my younger sisters actually and so he was really influential in in my life obviously continues to be influential in my life as far as sort of other folks who were influential I would add certain teachers along the way I had a third grade fourth grade teacher in public school named Miss Jeannette II who's I believe now at the Burbank Unified School District and she and she was just wonderful I mean really focused in on kind of being creative in how I was educated because I just get certain grades I skipped third and eschaton ninth so when I skipped into her grade she was really great about about that and she also understood that that she had to that she could be exacting with me and so she one of my people asking like what's the most memorable thing that somebody's ever said to you the most memorable thing somebody ever said to me is I was so I was in fourth grade I'd skip third so I was probably seven or eight years old and she said don't let potential be written on your tombstone so this is and it says pretty you know deep stuff for a kid who's eight maybe and but she was she was like that she was great the principal the school Carolyn Brahm was also terrific and then I had a teacher in high school who was named Anthony Miller who was a really good writer and had studied at Trinity College in Dublin and so he he was really creative in his writing and that had an impact on me and I wrote well what was since her dad was with you a lot during the days what was the biggest the greatest lesson he ever taught you well I think that the biggest lesson he ever taught me is to take everybody you talk to seriously so there with my dad there really is no gap I mean folks you folks who know him and a lot of folks where I work know my dad they know that he treats everybody exactly the same so he whether it's a member of his family or whether he's the kind of person where if you get in an elevator with my dad he will have your entire life story but it's time to get out of calibrator matter exactly it doesn't matter if it's one floor he'll be your best friend by the end of like he has met so many people on airplane rides that's how my dad is but he was also like that with us his kids meaning that if I had a question he took it extremely seriously and tried to get the best answer he always addressed me as though I were an adult when I was a kid and he and he took that stuff very seriously and so for me that's always been the case and I think that's one of the reasons why my show and the stuff that I do has particularly appeal to young people because I'm treating these ideas seriously and I'm not dumbing them down for young people I think there's this perception first of all number one I'm still relatively young right I'm only 34 still but part of that is also in politics people who think they know a lot about politics tend to think okay well if I translate this into second grade level then Pete that's what people really need they need me to dumb this stuff down to a level they can understand I think people are capable of understanding a lot more than they think they're capable of understanding if they're treated with respect and how this stuff is presented I mean when I present I'm presenting at a relatively high level yeah I mean I used some $5 words and I and I cite philosophers and I and I cite data from actual from an actual think tanks and and people like that people want that people are hungry for that yeah they're sick of nostrums I mean politics is all nostrils it's oh it's all a bunch of people who are just spitting at you slogans bumper sticker slogans and we all instinctively know it's appealing just the way that any advertising slogan is appealing but we all instinctively know it's [ __ ] mmm and deep down we all know that that when somebody says that they can fix all your problems it's just garbage right and when and which is also one of the other messages that I think my dad my parents inculcated which is if you've got a problem the proper order is that you first look within and see if you can solve it yourself right that that accepting that my parents weren't the type of people were if we had a problem at school they blame the teacher right they were there the they were there first question was okay did you do it right and can you change it how can you respond differently to it yeah and this is my pet peeve with people I deal with in family friends society is if good piece of advice is given to you do you ignore the advice mm-hmm do you fight against reality are you any more angry at reality then you are willing to change yourself because if that's the case you're doomed to lead a pretty miserable life because reality is not changing now doesn't mean there are certain social circumstances that we can't all work together to change but if you're running smack into certain baseline realities such as some people are smarter and some people are not as smart and some people earn more money and some people are in less money and you're living in a free society and you're running into reality like I mean I mean a bunch of bad decisions in my life and now I'm poorer than I otherwise would be or I made a bunch because of those decisions that in society's fault maybe you thought the government's fault that's right maybe you ought to get your stuff together yeah I mean there was a joke going around that if that if I were to run for president my slogan would have been solve your own problems because because for every politician is I'm gonna solve your problems and this is something I despise on all sides of the aisle right I think that president Trump's take an example campaign on the basis that you have a dying factory town it's been dying because technology is ripping away those jobs and because the market doesn't doesn't help create new jobs in this particular area well we're not gonna say that you should leave your town and go to a different town where the jobs are and treat your life is an adventure and go forth instead we're gonna say no we're gonna bring those jobs back because it's the Mexican and the Chinese who stole those jobs that's nonsense ok when you hear the same thing from politicians like Elizabeth Warren who recently spoke at a historically black college and she said to a group of black students that America is inevitably stacked against you and I'm thinking these are people go into a top-level college who majored in probably useful things and will get a job after that major mm-hmm no I mean if it's one thing to say that I can cite a specific example of somebody who has discriminated against me done something bad here's a specific law that disadvantages me if your solutions focused then you should be asking okay what is the problem and what is the solution but I think that we as a country and just generally human beings we're oriented toward being problem focused meaning that something bad happens and we think okay how can we complain about this problem how can we blame this problem on somebody who's not me as opposed to okay how can we solve this problem how can we get ownership yeah okay yeah right how can we how can we do something about it and you know my wife and I have a basic rule that if this applies in relationships also so my wife and I have a basic rule that it came up very early in our marriage so my wife was a lovely person and as my listeners know doctor she is she does the thing that I think many women do and she she will want to talk to me about a problem and as a man my first instinct is okay here's what we should do Thanks yeah and she gets pissed right she doesn't show you what the problem solved she just wants to talk to me about the problem cuz it makes her feel better why can't you listen more YK and so I said to her that's fine but I need to know up front in the conversation is this a problem-solving conversation or is this a me hearing you converse yes tell me so you understand right so this is an actual rule in our house and when we start addressing a problem I'll say to her and she doesn't get offended cuz she's awesome I'll say to her is this a you want me to give you a solution problem or is this a you just want me to listen to you and very often shal say I just want you to listen great okay good now I know because what's the worst for guys as you say right so here's the problem and I here's three ways you can solve a are you talking about worry so yeah I think that's true and politics also we mix up what it is that we want out of our politicians we pretend that what we want out of our politicians is solutions what we actually want out of our politicians is sympathy the problem is that sympathy does not create solutions sympathy is just a way for people to pander to you for votes and money sympathy like you should be viewing your politicians like you view your plumbers do they solve the problem you should give you a mic right you shouldn't be doing them like you do your psychotherapists do they hear me do they listen to me Wow you know it's interesting because about 10 years ago I was I was playing a professional football kind of like minor league football is getting 250 bucks a week so it wasn't like I was making a lot of money but I was doing what I loved and I got injured now sleeping on my sister's couch for about a year and a half afterwards I didn't have a college degree yet this is in 2008 when the economy was pretty bad and people with degrees weren't even getting jobs and I remember thinking at the time I was like how am I gonna get out of this and can someone help me out and this is gonna be a struggle you know I was thinking like there's got to be a better way for people like me who can get taken care of and then I realized after my sister you know lovingly kicked me off her couch after a year and a half she was like you need to started paying rent getting kid a good job do something I remember saying okay what if I could solve this problem as opposed to being a victim too society what happened to me or whatever what if I could solve this problem and being complete ownership of every decision I've made up to here and I think one of the reasons I don't follow politics or watch the news or do any of that stuff is because I tried to instill what you talked about with people on this show which is like how do we overcome our own challenges by not putting the blame on someone else by not hoping for someone else to save us or rescue us or to give us a higher minimum wage or whatever maybe but how can we develop skills but the society we're in how can we develop new skills be more valuable to society so that we can earn more how can we take care of our health better so we're not sick in needing medicine or someone to supplement that through whatever may be some financial aid through men through medicine how can we just take care of our lives better and improve the quality of our life and I think when we can focus more on improving the Clawd of our lives the political things don't really matter as much well this is right what's happening in the world doesn't matter but John Adams said and I think this is right is that the Constitution of the United States and what he meant by this is freedom is really only built from moral and religious people what he meant by that really is that if you've got a group of people who are waiting around for somebody else do you save them externally you can't have a system where even we can take care of each other right there are gonna be situations in which the community needs to come together and take care of people who legitimately can't take care of themselves or going through a rough stretch understood oh that's right but if you don't have a group of people who are motivated not to take advantage of that or who are not being told by politicians that that you know they should be taking advantage of it or that society has a duty you know why don't we focus on our own duties more than we focus on everybody else's duties to us we focus a lot on rights in our society we have a right to X Y & Z we focus very little on what are our duties to ourselves and to society and that doesn't make us happier it makes us more depressed once the difference between rights and duties so rights are so there are a couple different visions of Rights and I think that this is where we actually get political so I think that there there are two different visions of rights according to people on the on the right on conservatives what rights are are things that you you you have a right to do X without government controlling you so basically these are called negative rights this is the the power ones that sort of used is that you have a right against the government so for example have a rights of free speech what that really means the government not have the ability to compel me to speak in a certain way or what I say right anything at all right even threats were well not threats because that that sexual assault but but something but anything that's not indicating violence for example I have a right to say because the government does not have the power to encroach upon that all right so that someone grabs you by the throat and says you're gonna be in an ambulance if you keep speaking right that's like that happen that's illegal yeah that's that's it that's actually a violation of the law right but me saying something that offended that person is not a violation of law right and the government can't compel that so the idea for people who believe in sort of traditional constitutional freedoms is that the Bill of Rights is an expression of a bunch of negative rights for the most part things where you write to the freedom of religion means the government can't impose upon you things that would exist in what John Locke would call the state of nature that if there were no government you just lived in a community with your families or whatever that the government wouldn't either to impose things on you so what would you have without the government imposing anything on you so right to bear arms as the government does not have the right to take away your arms now what what people on the Left have said is that those rights are not sufficient you need actual material goods to provide you with a sense of well-being sufficient that you can lead a happy life so for example a right to health care that's something that we have to force somebody to provide for you whether it's through taxation or forcing a doctor to take care of you a right to health care is an affirmative duty on someone else a right to free speech is an affirmative duty or if I'm just sitting here I have a right to free speech have I forced you to do anything the answer is no if I have a right to health care and I get hurt now I have to compel somebody to provide that health care for me right because I have a right to it which means that it doesn't imagine if I'm just sitting here the health care doesn't just arrive there has to be a doctor qualified to take care of me and if that doctor doesn't want to take care of me he has to be forced to take care of me or she has to be forced to take care of me so that's true for rights to healthcare right to education right to any of the right to housing many of the rights that folks on the left side so when I say rights versus duties this applies broadly to virtually all rights but particularly it's important for people who believe in a positive version of right so the right to free speech comes along with the duty if you want to have a functioning society is what I'm talking about the right to free speech comes along with a duty not to be a generalized jackass because if you do that it wrecks the social fabric right so if you're just going around like I believe that you have a right to call somebody an ethnic slur you do have a right it's not illegal if you do it it's a right but it's not it's a bad thing to do right a wrong it's a right but it's wrong like you can be wrong in your use of rights people do it all the time people do stuff I don't approve of all the time that's legal that's good I'm glad it's legal but if the but if they act if people act like jackasses within the bounds of their rights all the time there's no social fabric we can't live together right if you're just offending people all day long then what's the point of being here right exactly and and if the offense comes at the point as in we have to actually have to have a substantive conversation that's one thing this is a conversation I had a lot during 2016 about President Trump and also a conversation I had about a couple of folks who are kind of all right in my leg Annapolis for example is they would say things that were deliberately taboo just to say I want to say something that's taboo because we have to break political correctness so what I said was political correctness is only bad if it's trying to bar speech that is valuable meaning that if there's politically correct taboo against using the N word agree very bad to use the N word no one should use the N word I'm not gonna say the N word just to violate the politically correct taboo because it's bad to say the N word but if you're going to tell me that it's political that political correctness says that I am no longer allowed to say that male and female are biological categories that's a valuable thing that has ramifications for society they're an anti political correctness so that's so that's an example of you have a right to say bad things but you shouldn't do them just to be a jerk the same thing holds true in when it comes to positive rights and even and I think the left is failed to recognize this particularly when they say for example the Nordic countries they'll say well there's a right to health care okay let's assume that you're right I disagree I don't think there's a right to health care I don't think you can compel somebody else to provide your health care I think that's wrong but let's take your point of view for a second that there's a right to health care well this should come along with a consonant duty to take care of yourself so if you are so if you are smoking and drinking and never move your body and you're eating junk food all day then you're not taking care of yourself right and then you are throwing the obligations the externalities onto this entire other group of people well sorry view right and the reason that one of the reasons that you've been able to support practically speaking a larger social welfare state in places like the Nordic countries that Bernie Sanders likes you know I'm not a standard places like Sweden or Norway or Denver is because they have a very strong social fabric where everybody is for everybody no yeah people know their neighbors they feel an obligation like to take an example they help each other right you saw Cinderella man so the movie with Russell with Russell Crowe okay with Jim J Braddock okay so so chemistry Braddock is this this champion boxer who rises from being our you know welfare right okay so remember there's a scene in it where he's been on the welfare rolls and now he's the champion of the world right and he goes back into the welfare office with a roll of cash and he hands it back to the welfare agent well then they said well you don't have to do this no I do have to do that cuz I that's a duty that I owe to you right I no longer need them all right right it listen is right right duty right it's it's a duty for me to bring that cash back to you that's something that I think Americans have lost in it's something that also happens in the context of government taking care of us because the government is by nature faceless the government is a barrier between you and your fellow citizen when you get a check from the government you tend to think ah the government it's what's giving me the check the government doesn't have any cash providing auspices of its own the government is taking money from another human well if the we don't think about that way in our churches or synagogues right like I belong to a synagogue when somebody in our community has a financial problem we all get together and we contribute to the person via the rabbi he'll go to the rabbi the rabbi will come to us and say this person is having a rough month we need to pay his rent can we go get together and do that well that's good in the sense that this person knows who exactly is giving him the money and he feels an obligation to all those people not to mooch off of them because we all share a community together well that sort of social fabric has to exist that feeling of obligation has to exist if we are to have functioning rights in the first place and that includes people who believe that you have a right to other people's stuff yeah I love this now I'm curious what was the biggest lesson that your mom taught you growing up so my mom is really different for my dad and for a variety of reasons and she is eminently practical so unless she is she was grabbed the artist exactly exactly and visionary in that's the dream and my mom was like okay yeah but who's gonna sign it and so that that's where my mom comes in and so you know I'm a little I'm a lot less generalist than my dad even my dad talks even more than I do and my mom is a lot more kind of to the point the the warden in yet is just tackle is she's like she's very like down to the meat of it and so from her it's more a manner of we're not gonna waste time we're going it right to the point we're gonna get things done and so she's because she's very practical and so I would say that the lesson that I that I learned from her is just like go do it now I stopped talking just just go do it right now like if you don't have an excuse then you shouldn't be wasting time doing that and so my dad's had a lot of kind of life lessons about morality and decency and my mom was much more about like you got to take action now you need to you need to go out and need to move and make a plan like this is always honestly I've had you know depressed folks in my family and I know we have friends who have been depressed before and to me you know when you're not talking about clinical depression obviously where you need actual care but if you're talking about just you're down the number one thing you should do is make a plan literally get a piece of paper goals and a pencil and write down a bunch of goals and then write concrete steps through this is correct and then when you're going through your Sims way yeah exactly and I think honestly I don't think it's Jordans way or my way or I think it's everybody's way right did these successful people in life make lists of things they want to do and then if you really want to be successful then what you do is you take the little things first you cross those off it gives you a feeling of momentum and then you can tackle the big things I think it's a big mistake for people to think okay well my goal is to be president and so here's a list of a hundred things I'm gonna do how about take out the garbage first yeah I think you're bad right as Jordan says yeah exactly yeah I think the key is it that's why routines and habits are such a big hot topic right now it's just like when you have a routine where you do something every day you build momentum you start to feel better you feel less depressed and if we don't have something to aim at then we are aimless yeah I feel like we're just wandering in no-man's land and the worst comes to us as opposed to us creating the best for ourselves exactly and I think this does have some deep philosophical roots so I have a book that's coming out in March and talks sort of about why suicide is up and why depression is up and my basic my basic thesis is that we're sort of living so I talk to the very beginning values I think there's certain eternal values that undergird are free and prosperous civilization and we're living on the fumes of those values having undermined a lot of those values maybe maybe a few of the core values you're talking about okay so I think that there I think that there are four things that human beings need to be happy you need individual purpose so you're alone on a desert island what do you do today what gives you meaning so you need individual purpose you need individual capacity so you need to feel like you have the capacity to do something you that and you live in a world where you have freewill where you can make a freely willed decision where your reason is capable of understanding things you can think things through and make a good set of decisions on your own right you have to you have to believe that the universe is predictable enough that things aren't magically changing around you and harming you and victimizing you so you need that on the individual level and then you need the same on a communal level you need to feel that we together have something to do right as Americans we have something to do right or as a religious community we have something to do or as a group of friends we have something to do and then you need to feel like there's communal capacity we as a group of people can do it without violating the rights of the individual now my view is the Western civilization was really good at creating a system where people had all four of these things based on historically speaking a unique set of circumstances that Springs from Jerusalem and Athens so judeo-christian values these ideas that there is freewill that you can act with in the world that that there is a creator who stands behind a rational universe I think you have the capacity to understand that universe if you apply your thinking to that universe that you are made you have an estimable value right you are made in God's image these are things that come from the judeo-christian value system and they have an obligation to your fellow man to treat your fellow man in certain ways and these are things that come again from the judeo-christian values and then on the other hand the other Athens which is the the idea that reason and logic can allow you to delve into the depths of the universe and really understand the world around you and to apply that reason to even the biblical rules that you receive where you can say okay well new evidence has arisen that means that we may have gotten our original interpretation of this rule wrong so let's reinterpret the rule in a way that meets the evidence so for example the most obvious example is if you are a biblical believer there are a lot of people now who are creationist I'm not a creationist so when I'm a creationist in the sense I believe God stands behind the creation of the universe but there are people who believe literally that God created the universe in six 24-hour days in exactly the order described by the Bible I don't believe that I believe that the evidence shows that that's not the case which means that God was giving a document if as a religious person is a religious Jew God is giving a document to human beings in language we can understand at the time but that doesn't necessarily mean it's not the literal word it's the interpretation well right the interpretation was always taken for granted because human beings that's what we do anytime I say something to you you're interpreting so if God says something to me I'm also interpreting and God knows that because he's omniscient so the the basic interplay the tension between faith and reason is what created the West because without certain core assumptions then you couldn't actually feel as though you have a capacity to operate in the world so I think we've ripped away a lot of these things I think we've ripped away the judeo-christian value system we've said that you don't need to go to church the Bible is worthless not only that it's oppressive it's repressive it sets up all these standards in you you have the capacity to make your own meaning people suck at making their own meaning but you have the capacity to make your own meaning and you can make your own world your own set of morale your own set of morals well the problem is that the same book right the same set of values that created the set of morals and meaning also says that you are made in God's image that you have inestimable value as a human being that separates you from the animals that you are not just a series of firing synapses adapting evolutionarily to your environment okay take all that stuff away - now explain to me how you are a freely willed creature who can make a difference in your world and the answer is you can't now your meatball wandering through space so how so they think that what happened over the course of the last couple centuries is that Western civilization got rid of all the basis for why human beings are unique which are religious assumptions and then it substituted reason but reason requires certain religious assumptions and so what we ended up with is we are a bunch of emotional creatures who are manipulated by our environment and so that being the case you actually don't have the power to do anything in your life you're just what you are right you may think you're willing things but you're not willing things you're you're basically you're here you're doing the stuff just because you're doing stuff and let doesn't have any higher meaning there's no purpose to serve even getting married and procreation and all this stuff like that's just that's it that's pleasure but that's not actual meaning that's not actual purpose well pleasure can be a purpose but it is not a purpose high enough to actually drive people to do the right thing and it also doesn't explain why you should be altruistic why you should I should help out other people why you should worry about what happens after you die right why you should I'm not even preaching the afterlife here I'm preaching that there are certain values inherent to being a human being that say that you should care about something beyond yourself as a society we focus very much in order we're very subjective now meaning is made by us biology apparently is defined by us we get to we get to define the world around us in our own personal terms and again we suck at it we are not good at it people don't create their own meanings you either feel that there is meaning that is discoverable out there in the universe and that it's your job to go find it is where Jordan I are really on the same page or you are sitting in a chair trying to convince yourself that the meaning was made by you yeah and it wasn't and if it was then why is your meaning any better than anybody else's meeting right is that what you think people are suffering and more depressed and than ever right now I think that's the class without them knowing it I think that the question is what gets you up in the morning what's your mission today and I think that we've been basically as long as you don't look at it you're okay right as well as long as you don't look too deeply at the problem you're all right so you just say okay well what my goal is to act morally today can you say okay well where do morals come from then we all get very uncomfortable right I'm wrong I know what's right I'm a nice person okay define nice define person I mean define all these terms if you but those having no roots that's why if you strip three layers down then none of it makes any sense it's and so I think they you've seen this manifest in basically well I'll let everybody do what they want I'll do what I want now I'll be happy and that's that's not right I mean happiness according to judeo-christian values was in service of God and in in Greek thought happiness was at least in large part living in in coordination with reason and so we've said we don't have to live in coordination with reason to be happy no we've said we don't need to serve God or our fellow man in order to be happy so what exactly is it that's supposed to make us happy food I mean even if those who are watching or listening are not religious or don't believe in God I'm sure that you've done the research on just the studies of what brings people happiness right you know this religion is one of these things by the way I mean it is deeply it is deeply tied at our core belief system right I believe something later than yourself and this is the thing people are religious even if they don't want to be so if you're not a you you are going to be religious about a thing the question is what are you going to be religious about and when people mean communists were the most religious people on planet earth they religiously believed in an ideal of a new utopia that was going to be created was gonna take effect over time and if we have to murder a few million people do it we'll do it it's every people need people need a vision of what life is supposed to be and they need a vision of what meaning is supposed to constitute the number of people who are honest enough to just say okay well you know what I'm a nihilist f it that's that's five people and their lives don't end up being very good none of this is is a suggestion that you have to be religious in order to be moral at all right I think that there are plenty of people I know who are atheists which I understand who are moral human beings my contention is there's a lot of religious people who are deeply deeply immoral yeah for sure for sure the question is what can you build a civilization on I don't think you can build a civilization on mirror on mere matter I don't know how to say like the world's just made up of stuff and then stuff happens does exist but somehow we end up in a system that directly mirrors the judeo-christian value system built over 3,000 years like I I think this is it's a question I see I'm here and some friends with salmon and we did a podcast together and at one point I said to him you know Sam you and I hold ninety-five percent of the same values but you're an atheist and I'm a religious person so why is that where did your values come from and he said well you know I've studied all these different philosophies and religions and then I came up with with this moral system that I think makes sense for me and I said right that explains why you think that you think that these things are true but why is it that we have such overlap here isn't it more plausible that the overlap exists because you and I grew up like 10 miles from each other in Los Angeles after three 3,500 years of common history that developed to this point people living in the same environment having grown up in the same civilization do have certain commonalities but I think what we're seeing right now is that even most basic commonalities are being ripped away and I think this does have political overtones or at least undertones and one of the one of the most devastating lines that I heard in modern politics came in 2012 when when President Obama during his second inaugural address said you know we in the United States we don't have to have the same definition of Liberty we can need you to find Liberty in our own way and I thought well then you can't have a society because if we can't agree on what the Brit is mm I don't know how you can say that we have a free society together I mean your your definition of Liberty is inherently gonna conflict with mine right so we at least have to have a very baseline definition for Bernie's constitutes yeah I mean it's it's like nobody justice for all what does that mean right if we if we don't share that definition then what exactly's are an interpretation of what it means right I mean if we if we all decide that we're gonna go out to ice cream then you tell me that by ice cream you meant that you want to go to the salad bar then we don't actually all want to go out to ice cream this is serious Prado and you want regular ice cream it's different yeah maybe even there you can say okay well gelato is within the giant category advice from here but if we're saying that that like polar opposites my Liberty involves me taking anything from you because I'm not free unless I have that thing and my Liberty involves you not being able to take that thing from me we now have directly conflicting visions of what Liberty is right now I'm fascinated by I keep coming back to your childhood because I'm fascinated by this you skipped a couple grades 3rd and 9th I think you said and you went to UCLA it's 16 yeah the right start at UCLA 16 and I'm swimming you took like college credit classes when you were like 13 I'm assuming they probably took some advanced credits early in your in your your high school years what was that like jumping the first grade was there a big difference like going from 2nd to 4th and being with kids older than you there or was it harder when you jump from middle school until your sophomore year in high school right also like when I'm when I skipped the first grade I was merely a little bit younger than all the students when it's good the second grade I was a lot younger than all the students also I didn't hit my growth spurt until I was basically a senior in high school so I spent most of my my high school years 5 - and 105 so that's so you know that that made a bit of a difference also because I'd gone to a private Jewish day school for high school the a lot of the Clinton already informed so my family only became like fully religious in terms of being Orthodox Jews when I was like eleven so a lot of these other kids had been in that their whole life so they all had friend groups I only went to a fully Jewish school full time I did for a couple of years earlier but I only went to a fully Jewish school when I was high school so all the cliques in our even formed mm-hmm does an outsider coming in that school right this is like a few hundred students a couple hundred students on the whole Heights right well there's a boy school in a girl's school they kept him separate which is typical in Orthodox Jewish day schools and so it's probably 200 students in the boys school and 200 students in the girls schools nothing like that so it was small we lived in the in the valley and the schools in the city so that meant that most all the students were from the city so I didn't know anybody and so yeah socially it was it was pretty difficult and also I was you know it's a little smartass I mean I think I was as you know one of the smarter kids in the class even after having skipped and so that you know that that's not conducive to leading a a rich social life sure sure so that was so the high school is Rafi and what was the biggest challenge for you was it that you kept speaking our you didn't like you can share your voice because people were making fun of you or I mean mostly it was that you know how kids are that if you're not part of the in-group you're part of the out-group or there is no outgrowth even it's this religious loving doesn't matter does not community experience people are still people religion is based on the assumption that people are still people and religion proves it out yeah I think there are a lot of religious people who treat each other viciously and this is particularly true when you're talking about teenagers who are just buying it by and large I mean you're the worst version of you aside from when you're too which I know aside from aside from when you're to and you're completely immersed here yeah from the until you hit adulthood and actually experience responsibility when you're like 14 or 15 and mom and dad are taking care of all your bills and you can and and your laundry and your food and give it and when you're going to an upper-class Jewish school they're giving you a car right I mean like it's it's like that for you to have to pay for yeah right exactly like that that does not tend to breed particularly great behavior and it does breed a certain group mentality also then there's a herd mentality among kids obviously and among people generally but it is very strong among teenagers so you spent two years in high school then essentially right three three years so yes I'm 11 12 eh oh where did you feel like you're the outside of the whole time yeah and were people saying or doing deal oh yeah I mean it was it was yeah I mean I was the outside of the whole time for sure I mean I'd be physically physically accosted there was one situation where I was on there's kind of a weekend getaway and there was one situation where guys legitimately like held me down annabet inhibit with belts yeah there's a situation where and then that concluded with them like somebody brought one pair of handcuffs they dragged the bed frame outside the cabin and then handcuffed me to the bed frame in front of like the entire school so yeah it was good times the guys and the girls while the girls weren't there so this is just guys but it was it was you know so horrible but you're mashing some guys oh you know if girls been there would be the worse but I was having my own fun success with the girls as well so right so they were hitting you with belts coming you down and hitting with belts and then they handcuffed you to a bed outside yeah those the next morning yeah and because and so you know high school was was not a lot of fun for me was that your first year sophomore year that would have been yeah I think news you the sophomore junior year Wow I can't remember did he get better did he get worse did you um it got better than that I mean it was it wasn't like that every day that was definitely the low point but it was you know was unpleasant you know a lot of the again I don't think most of the kids there were like that because you've been this group mentality when it's like everyone's rallying against a cause right right and it's puttin in school the cause is always somebody it's always okay yeah exactly and so you know I was that for a while and I was excited to get out of high school I mean I enjoyed like the learning aspect of it but I was I was very excited to leave and when I got to college I was so I was so happy especially because when I was in college I lived at home so that meant I wasn't like with the other students full-time I was spending a lot of time commuting but I would go to class and I'd learn stuff and then I'd leave and then I'd go write essays and read and then I'd go back to school and it was great like it was great and I got along with people in college there's nobody in college cares how old you are really yeah there's no you're smarter you're kind or whatever right exactly you know I love college I thought college is great and then when I went to law school I loved law school too so the high school was was the worst of it for sure but the the question was you know again it was just the mentality was what do you do about it and overcoming during high school I just put my head down and pushed I mean it was and I never shut up I mean I never I never did it was it was not like I just kind of receded into silence or being sullen or anything like okay well you know this is how life is gonna be okay you take a few punches and you keep moving and you know that that had been inculcated a little bit younger because when I went to middle school even I used to wear a yarmulke in middle school it was a public middle school so there was some issues there as well so where you going one where y'all oh yeah it was it yeah and there's Walter Reed middle school not a lot of Orthodox Jews going there so it was it so I was kind of a social outcast there too and so again you sort of learn to grow a thick skin and you either just basically say to these people go F off you know or or you or you knuckle under to it did you have any close friends middle school or high school or you could confide in their talk no no zero not one kid no not one kid your age that ya be like hey let's talk at lunch or let's no I mean I had people I was acquainted with but no I woulda had any strong close friends so did you get invited like birthday parties at the kids at school did you go occasionally but it had been not really I mean that wasn't search kids like anything so no I mean I honestly I spent most of my childhood talking to adults he knows that was really kind of like most of the people I was having conversations with were 45 so that meant number one level conversation was better but no I've never been a friend's person I'm a very family-oriented person so I spend almost all might like my best friend is my business partner but if but aside from that all of the people that I'm closest to are my parents who live a mile and a half away from me my wife who I spend 95% of all waking free time with and my two kids who I spend an enormous amount of time with and I think I do think people are either built one way or the other I think there are people who are kind more friends people and social and they like to be out with friends and they want to spend time with friends but I'm the kind of i'ma kind of jerk who could go to a party at Harvard Law and we'd go to we go to a party and I would bring a book with me because if it because if people were boring I was not going to waste the two hours it's your time to read right now yeah exactly I gotten a lot of good reading at these parties so it's so yeah if I ever call you up and say hey you wanna hang out I'm gonna get the X right away um I mean I'm a mess my husband unless my wife and kids right now yeah basically that's it that's that is the reality because for me every interaction has to be weighed against the the opportunity loss sorry the so for your mom it's very practical exactly like it there's a certain there's a certain economic cost foregone yeah in in every conversation in every bit of time that you spend sure and so I you know I turn down dinner invites like it's very difficult to get me to go out to dinner even with people who are prominent because I don't want to like a you have to make the case as to why I should be spending the time with you as opposed to spending the time with my two kids who I like a lot better than you right and that's making that my kids are great my wife is great I picked them they're fantastic and so you know and you feel like you uh kind of got robbed from your childhood then in a sense I suppose I mean I high school wasn't fun so if childhood is supposed to be kind of like fun then yeah but it was an alternative use of time for me I spent a lot of time reading and a lot of time writing and a lot of time involving myself and stuff I wanted to be involved with so I considered my childhood pretty happy without I just it just was not social you had a focus you had goals early on because you're a mute you're yeah I mean I was I was in your professional musician I was probably a nice nd with one of the top ten teachers in the world at the time violin in viola and piano tuner and a piano my dad's a professional pianist so we'd play Brahms together and like that so we're used to zukie trained yea rigidly yeah and then and then I moved on to a teacher named Abram Stern who's a Russian top level Russian teacher who lived out here in West LA and then the and then I felt with that I would fill it with again a lot of reading and a lot of conversations it was a good time to to pick up on my movie-watching so I've seen every oscar-nominated film since 1933 Wow so you know that's it's how you create the cultural knowledge base your for doing a show it all pays off in the end sure sure but it's it but yeah I mean in the sense that that I was getting invited to the cool kid parties all right then yeah that was disappointing and upsetting and it was much more disappointing at the time than it is now yeah and and I will say that it is amusing just people are human beings are amusing and I'm sure you know this that I'm sure you've experienced the same thing is that people treat you very differently when you are when you are less successful than when you are more so now they're all coming back and be like you remember us in high school yeah yeah I do remember you [Laughter] what was your your most proud moments growing up well I mean the best meant like growing up is when I caught a foul ball at an archery game but my my most proud moment growing up hmm I know you'd have to say before college and after college right before this hole so I mean before before college I would say that my mmm I still think my most proud moments are doing nice things for people huh so like I try to do nice things for people not and not talk about them is that new things that I can't talk about them sure um it's but as far as you know I was I was proud that when I was in high school I was right like I was 14 and I want a 10-minute play contest from Princeton like that that kind of stuff I'm gonna play contest yeah I have a picture like a throne play like this or play oh wow that's cool so that was kind of fun cool yeah that kinda stuff was neat yeah um you know there there's you know there's the occasional school fight that you win right those are always proud is it dude those are always proud moments there's always some point where I fought back exactly exactly or there's you know a sports moment where you finally make one move play basketball like it uh when I was in junior high for some reason I just got incredibly hot and you know 15 shots in a row and the coach was right there he's like why don't you try for the basketball team or the case yeah I'm lucky yeah I'm terrible yeah so yeah I mean there's that kind of stuff and then you know post college obviously my proudest moments are getting married having my kids you know taking care of my family things where I've stepped in to help people and that's that's all the stuff that I that I actually can and then listen I'm very proud of the stuff that I do on a daily basis where I feel like I'm actually reaching I get a lot of letters from folks saying that because they've listened to the show that it's changed their life in some material way and it's made him think about something differently and that's great to hear especially because my show is so political yeah writes its political entertainment so if I get a letter from somebody saying that I changed the way I got one the other day from a guy who said that he was he his girlfriend gotten pregnant and he wasn't think about marrying her and she was think about having abortion and he listened to the show and I'm very pro-life and so I had he'd listen to the show and he went to her and said listen I think that we ought to have the baby and I think that he and I'm also obviously for a very pro marriage and I said you should and he said I think we ought to have the baby and I think we ought to get married and they got married and they had the baby and they couldn't afford it and didn't matter and he said we're happier now that we've ever been in their lives I've gotten letters from people who say that they were drug abusers and they listened to the show and then because the constant message is you couldn't get up off your ass and that doesn't mean that we won't help you out if you need it right like well I give a lot of charity people should give a lot of charity but the first step has to be you right I mean the first the first step in the morning has to be getting out of the bed and so I get a lot of letters from people who have been addicts who have gone to 12-step programs because they feel the necessity to change their lives and materialism I mean that's the stuff I'm really I'm really proud of the all the other stuff is just ancillary I think yeah it's funny I feel in some ways very similar to you because I was picked on a lot growing up even though it doesn't look like because I'm like this big I would never say hell yeah because you know I was always I was the complete opposite of you you were like the smartest kid in the class I was the dumbest kid in the class so I was in the bottom for every year through high school and middle school I had tutors my whole life I was in special needs I had a second grade reading level in eighth grade laughs so I was a kid that they would call the teacher would call in front of class to speak and read and I couldn't read the first like lines and I was just stutter and mumbled so I was just made fun of constantly for being the most ignorant kid and I used that kind of frustration and anger of being picked on to be like I'm gonna be the best athlete I can lead to like prove everyone wrong and like show you guys right and so when I got into high school I was one of the better athletes as a freshman I was kind of like the opposite of you like the smartest yeah and I was like better athlete so I was with on varsity in my freshman year of every sport and so everyone was 17 18 I was 14 so I was the one they picked out I was the one they picked up right and so every year I was just like the younger one that they picked on and kind of like razzed and you know hazed or whatever mm-hm until I was a senior then all of sudden I was like oh all the people I was hanging out with they're gone and I remember having a moment going into my senior year I was like all my friends and the like picked on me the whole time are gone I can either be like them to up to lower classmen but I was like that feels horrible to me I don't want to just repeat what they did so instead I said I'm gonna focus on trying to connect with everyone like the geeks the science people the I was in choir I was in like musical plays I try I did tap-dancing I didn't you know everything I was just like I'm gonna try to connect with all humans and learn about people and not repeat what happened to me my whole childhood and I think hearing you say like your most proud moments and when you give and when your your kind of people and when you're in charity it values my brand but yeah I think it's really inspiring to hear because the same thing for me it's like I don't feel good when I'm just constantly you know making money as fun and having these comments are nice but it's like the times that I'm in the most flow and the most love and fulfillment is when I'm in service to someone else yeah or in service to humanity which is what my mission is and that's also that's also the big thing I think is that learning from your own mistakes and mistakes other people have made dealing with you do you learn from that and you decide to react against that in a way that's better or do you just react to it and lash out because of it and decide that because somebody else did something bad you also get to do something bad and you know I think that the mark as I get older I think the mark of a of a good person or at least a person who's trying here's a person who wakes up in the middle of the night worried about the mistake that made the previous day mm-hmm and how do you and how do you fix that and the mark of a person who's gonna have problems as a person who wakes up in the middle of the night angry at what somebody else did to them yeah because there there are certainly cases where somebody's really victimized you in a serious way and that's something we should all worried about and try and do something about but most problems are not gonna be overcome by by being angry at it stuff that's happening in the past or reacting in a native way now I'm curious if you had this normal childhood let's say right you didn't skip grades like kids were nice to you yeah they invited you to birthday parties they like celebrated you as opposed to put you down and like whipping you with belts and crazy stuff do you think you would be as driven as a human being that you are today and it's focused on you know building everything you're building and having all these hype and I doubt it I doubt it I mean really because one of the things that you learn when you get beat on a lot is that you either have to care what people think or you really don't care what people think and I think that it is a it's something that doesn't help you when you're in high school not to care what people think because caring what people think so it makes it popular in high school I'm trying to cater to that crowd and leave it yeah going into the herd as opposed to being like screw you guys right exactly but because I was sort of out of the herd from the time that I was young it was like okay well I don't care and and you say that enough to you at the beginning you do care obviously but a certain progress right and then a certain point you're like you know what but I actually don't like it my life is not materially worse because I'm not dealing with these people and having followed them would have been done my hanging out with it would I want to and so I feel that same way about politics and principles like I'm not somebody who is typically tended to move with the herd and that's true on specific issues and it's true you know insofar as things like elections right in 2016 I took the most unpopular position you could take out and vote for either major candidate I did that if you announced it and I said that out loud I said it repeatedly I was extraordinarily critical of president Trump's character and personality I still AM and it's not my job to please people I mean if people are pleased with me then great but it's not my job to please people it's my job to say things that I think are true and if I start sacrificing what I think is true in favor of pleasing people then I'm not doing my job I'm not I'm not being true I'm not being honest and people can sense that I mean you become a politician right exactly authenticity is about saying a bunch of unpopular stuff which is why politicians are generally inauthentic because their job is to stay stuff that people want to hear or you don't win yeah ain't bad I guess Trump proved us wrong by saying a lot of things that people didn't want to hear but yeah I mean I think I think that's right but I think they will find out whether that's a lasting try I mean not to get into 2016 election analysis but I would say that President Trump won I would say Hillary Clinton lost the election much more than president from one and wanted yeah so it's so you know I think that and and she and it is it is true that in politics there is this weird thing where people want to hear what they want to hear but they also hate inauthenticity mm-hmm and so so here's a here's authenticity his authenticity trumped her inauthentic right that Obama was an authentic politician he tended to all the things that he was saying it didn't feel like he was pandering as much even though I think no he was you know I think he was but he was he was Obama is who Obama is I think I'm not even sure that Hillary Clinton knows who Hillary Clinton is and I think it's a problem for her in 2016 Trump is exactly who he is for better and for worse right I mean for all of things good bad and all things bad about him that dude is authentically what Donald Trump is and people sense that and so when they had the choice between not even choosing between Hillary and Trump because I don't think that's how most people came down to it I don't think most people were like gosh I choose wonder should I choose the other I think it was people who are like should I go to the polls today or not right and for people who thought Hillary was in authentic like me she's probably one anyway I really want to waste my time today I really owe that to her yeah and for people who thought Trump was authentic but yeah yeah I'm right I'm going to the polls today that dudes authentic you say what I think and then that was that was sort of the feel in 2016 yeah wow so you think if you had more of a normal childhood where you weren't as bullied or or picked on or these things where do you think you would be today what would you be doing I'd probably be a successful lawyer right that's what you did you went to law school right and then then it went to a law firm and you know part being a law firm requires you to be part of the social group because otherwise working a lot from really blows it's it's a terrible job especially they were leaders and for me it was like well I don't care about any of this stuff and I was like I was the guy who yeah and and so the authenticity has its upside and downside when I was interviewing for law firm jobs I was way too authentic for the interviewers and it did not work well I won't I had the worst law school interview I had little Moore's law firm interview record of anybody I've ever heard of at Harvard Law oh and I had 32 law firm interviews and I got one offer and I graduated [ __ ] laude from Harvard so and I'd written three books at the time so my resume was pretty good you got one on I got one offer but that's because I would be asked questions like somebody would say I remember one one interview they would say something like well why do you want to work in corporate law now look we all know the answer why you want to work here over at law right you've got $200,000 dead $150,000 of debt and no one no one grows up thinking you know what I really want to do with my life I want to spend the next four years of my life directly out of law school reading for page numbers and for missing commas and indents that which is what you do you work 2,100 2,200 billable hours at a major law firm you were there from 8:00 in the morning to 9:00 at night reading for page numbers and paginations and i and so they said you know why do you want to why do you want to work at in corporate law I said for the money and which is the true answer but not the good answer right because I want to help people who are you know wrongfully you but that's any what you do at a corporate law firm right so you couldn't even say like oh I want to be Atticus Finch or something instead it's like what do you want to do what the answer they want is because I want the intellectual stimulation and because I really like the back-and-forth and I love the court system and I'm Billy and I really enjoy reading case law and all the stuff in house like that okay like that's that's why you're here aren't you I mean like what are you doing here you're making a million dollar years a partner you can be doing this for one hundred thousand dollars a year I mean and that that was for me always an issue when I came to jobs was the money actually was maybe this is because I so I grew up middle class but middle middle class not not poor not rich very middle class and so like my first home where I lived until I was 11 was probably an 1,100 square foot home in Burbank where we had one bathroom for 64 and I shared and I shared a one-bedroom with three of my sisters so it was so not poor but like we were fine but but not loaded or anything and so because of that I was never really afraid of either living like that and also because I grew up with the solid education I wasn't afraid of like falling completely off the ladder completely and because I'd made decent decisions I wasn't really afraid that listen again it's the biggest privilege you can have an American life is twofold two biggest privileges in American life being born here having two parents at home those are the two biggest privileges and I had both of those things so I wasn't really that afraid of non-earning tons of money or anything and so when I never had to be forced into a position of I need to take a job just for the money like I worked at a law firm for ten months and the money they the initial pay at the law firm you know this is not like private informations it's true for every major law firm as of like 2007 when I when I joined the initial pay at these law firms one hundred eighty thousand dollars a year and I first dollar which is a great for salary a lot of money I mean it's a great second salary it's a great salary right thousand dollars here's a lot of money and I worked there for 10 months and I hated it hated it I mean just despised it and after ten months I walked in and I quit with no job lined up and a mortgage because I just bought a condo with my wife here nowhere was this a yeah as a no I and and I walked in it quit and I took a job but a couple months later working for talk radio network which was a syndicator for michael savage and laura ingraham for less than a third of the pay and that was just the way because I didn't feel fulfilled I hated it I mean I remember turning to my that she was then my fiancee I'm in returning to her and saying I hate this so much I'm miserable I mean I've lost weight like I wasn't eating and I said a miserable guy yeah exact I was down to like you know I'm like my normal weight is like 160 165 I was doing like 138 and I and I and I turned and turned my wife and I'm like I'm just miserable and she won't you should quit and her parents like no don't quit hurt her like don't do it don't do it you're making lots of money and I was like no I quit well the funniest part of that is when I quit I walked into the senior associates office and I'm Doug and there's an in I said you know I can't get with this this is just the worst I'm try and he and he was trying to convince me not to do it and he brought in another senior associate who had played minor league baseball and this guy you know was still young I mean a senior associate that means he's like 31 32 minutes and at this way yeah this when I was 20 yeah 24 mm-hmm 23 23 and so yeah and 24 it's in any case I had we all sat down and Doug is trying convince me not to quit and then Anna is trying to Menace me not to quit and I'm saying what guys this is miserable the hours suck the work is boring all the people here are jerks and and and about five minutes into the conversation and returns to Doug and he says you know what maybe I should quit and he was dead serious Andrew was the other senior associate you turn to turn to the others he's like maybe I'll go back to playing ball man I hate this it's a turn from them trying to stop me from quitting into one guy trying to stop - you guys convinced me that he eaten enough quitting I think he had a mortgage - but then I walked in in the punch line to the store as I walked into the boss's office the guy come around the branch and I said I'm quitting and he said you'll never make as much money as this again you're blowing it you're never gonna make anything like this money again I said well then I guess I'll never make this kind of money again I've wanted him to send my tax return to send him my cash that's the that's the bullied kid in us that wants to prove people wrong right it's like the I always did that - for you all my 20s people said I wasn't gonna make it as a pro athlete they said all these I wasn't gonna make money when I was broken my sister's couch all these things and now success is great revenge it really is the emails I get the messages I get on Facebook from people from like back in the past I'm like this is just so funny to me it's so funny but it's all good I used to be so motivated to prove people wrong and it worked I would achieve everything by proving people wrong and prove them wrong and then I realized like wow this doesn't actually bring me fulfillment right happiness right it wasn't it's only when I hit 30 when I started to shift at all and say you know what I'm just gonna start lifting people up and like serving people and not focusing on the five bullies in high school or middle school or the person who did this and that right and focus on like now no that's exactly right I mean you've seen Back to the Future 3 remember their training Back to the Future 3 where they keep throwing in these kind of incendiaries into the train and it changes the color of the smoke coming out I think is it boosts like a higher speed each nights so anger can be that boost but it can't be the actual baseline fuel that you're using to run the train yes so it gives you that temporary high and same time to go out and do something today but what actually makes you go do the work on an increasing level over over at an amount of time is the actual purpose and meaning exactly I've only got a few minutes left with you so I've got a few questions what is one since you just mentioned purpose and meaning what is your purpose and mission moving forward so I'm deeply interested in revitalizing the values that I think we all ought to hold in common and that undergird the idea of god-given rights in a limited government so on a political level I've always been very committed to the idea that freedom is based on we as individuals are made in the end of image of God and that means that we have certain rights that go along with that the right to speech the right to freedom of religion the right to economic the right to economic freedom we get to make decisions with our own money without somebody sitting over our shoulder and telling us what to do all of that is rooted in certain fundamental values that require us also to have a social fabric so we need to help other people we need to we need to live in communities where we have a common set of rules we need to stand up against discrimination when we see it and we need to also stand up against pandering politically when we see it I'm I've always been committed to the idea that we need to change people how people think in order to in order for them to change how they live and so I've that's basically I'm dedicated to it's it's it's what I hear butchers where their thing yeah and think more in terms again it's everything we've been talking about change the mindset from you know I why is that why is the world big mean to me too okay here's where the world is now here's how I'm gonna succeed and here's why I should succeed and so you know I think that as a religious person I think that I'm here to fulfill a godly purpose in doing all of those things but I don't think that I have to speak specifically in godly terms in order to justify why I do that stuff so it's why whenever I talk on my show or politics or in my lectures I never cite the Bible I never cite religion I tend to say values and principles but I don't tend to think that I have to well I believe that as a religious person I'm doing something that I think is in the service of God I think that it also can be secularly justified as something that's in the interests of a functioning civilization that humanity and that's why you are very detailed on your research and your facts to try to back these things as opposed to religious well again the argument from Authority cuts no ice with people who don't accept the authority right if I say the Bible says it acts and somebody doesn't believe it but I was gonna go so right there right I mean that's that that is a so question yeah but if I say okay you should believe this because here's the reason right here's the data and that's a different thing it's harder than I data yeah amazing this question is something I asked everyone at the end of my interviews it's called the three truths so imagine it's your last day on earth and you get to choose the last day whenever you want it to be it could be hundreds of years whenever it could be whatever it is and you've achieved everything you want you've achieved all your dreams you your family is thriving everything is great and I hope it all goes great for you but whatever reason it's got to be the last day you've got to say okay this is my last like moments and you've said your goodbyes but everything you've created up until that time you have to take with you and your death you have to take it with you so no one has access to the videos or the books you've written or anything you've ever said it's no longer that access but you get to write down on a piece of paper three things you know to be true about your life and the lessons that you would leave behind that people would have to remember you by and I call it the three truths so what would you say are the three truths that you would leave behind to to the world three lessons or truths this is all they would have you as a human being have inherent meaning and I don't just mean that you have a something to live toward but that you actually are a meaningful thing that your life matters and the decisions that you make matter that being number one number two would be that you as that person you have obligations to yourself and others that can only be achieved through you making actual decisions reasonable decisions that you can accept that you can explain the reasons for it should be based on knee-jerk reaction Airy emotion you should actually try and think through why you're doing what you're doing and if you do here too likely to come up with a better result and three money's in the banana stand um I mean that the the third would probably be that you are going to be that the the power that you have been given in using that reason and being made with that inherent value mean that everybody else has given that reason and made with that inherent value too and so you ought to respect their ability to have a conversation with you and use your powers of reasoning in order to convince rather than to compel because compulsion is the is the compulsion is the sign of a weak argument if you have to compel it's because that you've made a bad argument you haven't you haven't better anybody through a compulsion mmm convinced events don't come out yeah those are great troops thank for those I wanna acknowledge you for a moment for a moment and for for your authenticity man very authentic and you show up as yourself you know I love that you have a clear mission for your life that your mission is to serve people to support people to help people a little better life and I don't think you're as bad as the guys people call thank you that's the nicest thing anyone's ever said today yeah yeah so I acknowledge you for I acknowledge you for also overcoming a lot of challenges I'm sure there's a lot of things that you didn't talk about that happen growing up that I can only imagine the amount of insecurities or or guilt or shame or whatever that you felt and it's like knowledge for not destroying your own life in in though in those challenges but actually saying how can I improve my life how can I master skills and with my music with my art with my debate skills you know my intellect you dove into mastery as opposed to depression and I think of those two options and I'm glad you did thank you I appreciate it cuz you're doing a lot of good things so I already know I'm gonna get a lot of people giving me flatness ready knowledge already man these guys I'm not saying I agree with everything that Bette has said so just putting that out there but I acknowledge you for who you become and your your work in the world is trying to make it a better place you were like a personal growth expert it would have knew that that's really what your mission is it's like to better people even in controversy and even when people disagree with you I think your mission is to better people I hope so how can we follow you online how can we support you you guys book coming out in March yes I'm a book coming out in March it's called the right side of history so that comes out completely right now I should be able to pre-order that at Amazon and that's that's all about these questions these specific kind of meaning purpose history of civilization questions and then if you want to check out my podcast you can go to iTunes or any other place you get podcast for the Ben Shapiro show yeah and if you want to subscribe over it daily wire you get stuff behind the paywall come January you have two extra hours of the show every day behind the paywall so wow yeah I'd be fine your Sunday Sunday specials thank you everyone yeah yeah because they're not as political so exactly the other stuff but those are really good so I appreciate anything you bring out some interesting people and talk about some why hasn't anybody pretty much I mean yeah it's really cool yeah thank you it's really cool final question for you is what is your definition of greatness so my definite so can I get two sure okay so I think that there's greatness as in you are presented with a crisis in your life and you make a decision that is that is valuable moral and and decent that's the that you you you make a change though you're Winston Churchill you're faced with the terrible crisis and and then you take you stands up and you make a strong stand and you've done something great that's that's greatness in one sense and I think the other sense of greatness is I think a more important sense and that's that's just goodness it's yeah I said this about George HW Bush I don't think that George HW Bush was a great president I'm not even sure that he was a good president what I think is a good man and it's a lot harder to be a good person than it is to be a great person to be a great person requires you to stand up in a crisis and it's what its kind of thrust upon you there's a moment in time you have to stand up and now's the time when you make that heroic move and that's what makes you a great man or a great woman or a great person but being a good person which is the process of making decisions that are beneficial to you and your family and moral every day knowing that you're not going to be remembered right knowing that all your friends and family will eventually die and nobody's gonna remember you know we go to people's funerals today I will remember grandma 4x you won't in two generations nobody's in remember Oh gramma did right I know because I don't know my great-grandparents I didn't know them I barely know their names but your legacy and being a good person lives on in the promulgation of a civilization of which you were a my new part and so being a great person really means being a brick in the wall that is a civilization that is in and of itself great thanks man appreciate it thank you

Channel: Lewis Howes

Views: 2,961,832

Rating: 4.8517632 out of 5

Keywords: lewis howes, ben shapiro, donald trump, decision making, problem solving, daily wire, ben shapiro debate, decision making in management, decision making process, problem solving strategies, lewis howes joe dispenza, ben shapiro show, the ben shapiro show, jordan peterson, ben shapiro interview, ben shapiro conservative, self help, jordan b peterson, inspirational video, success motivation, ben shapiro vs, ben shapiro (author), ben shapiro obama, ben shapiro speech, advice

Id: ZETvBSlu1tg

Length: 83min 23sec (5003 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 07 2019