FULL INTERVIEW: Dr Jordan Peterson sits down with Piers Morgan

one of the most fascinating and controversial polemicists on the planet Dr Jordan Peterson's books became overnight hits Millions watch him online and his tools pack theaters across the world he's a clinical psychologist whose fan is pretty more like a rock star and tonight we go Toe to Toe and most definitely uncensored [Music] from London this is Piers Morgan uncensored well good evening from London and welcome to a special edition of Piers Morgan on Center Dr Jordan Peterson one on one he's a clinical psychologist turned culture Warrior at one of the world's most famous and Infamous intellectuals his books are instant bestsellers tens of millions watch him online Legions of fans sweared by his straight talking guidance what I've recommended to people is clean up your room but his outspoken views on issues like feminism The Taming of the wild man essentially by the by the desirable and virginal woman and if you think women don't want that then you better bloody well come up with an explanation for 50 Shades of Gray agenda you won't use my pronouns so I'm pretty sure you're my enemy yes yeah well I know you think that but I don't believe that using your pronouns is going to do you any good in the long run I've made him a lightning rod for controversy almost 40 million people have now seen this notorious interview with a British news show you're exercising your freedom of speech to certainly risk offending me and that's fine I think more power to you as far as I'm concerned so you haven't sat there and I'm just trying I've just tried to work that out I mean ha gotcha celebrity friends face criticism just for meeting him he's loved he's loathed but he's never ignored and tonight Jordan Peterson is uncensored well Jordan Peterson joins me now Jordan Peterson welcome thank you to Piers Morgan nonsense my first question and there will be people genuinely wanting a simple answer yeah but there's a bigger answer too who is Jordan Peterson well I'm a clinical psychologist and a professor and I'm doing that on a broader scale now I suppose and but it's an extension of what I've done since 1987 really I mean I I taught the same things I'm teaching although I've expanded them all throughout my academic career and my classes were very popular and and not popular exactly they the students found them extremely useful why have you become so notorious because I I look at it as I've actually watched a lot of your lectures I've listened to hours of you and Joe Rogan talking about stuff I don't see the devil that some people try and portray you as at all and it seems to me the one thing we may share in common is certainly not intellectual prowess where unfortunately I've many yards behind you but what we do share I think is a lot of people seem to have drawn an opinion about us based on either what they've seen in a tiny clip taken out of context a lot of the time or what they've been told to Think About You by other people yeah well that's some of it I mean I got tangled up in a political controversy in Canada I've been tangled up I put my foot in it to some degree because I wasn't very happy with what I regarded as Government overreach in relationship to who is in possession of my tongue and I decided a long time ago and really a long time ago that I was going to say what I thought and sort of independent of the outcome you know often people craft their speech you know I could come here on your show for example I spent half an hour thinking well what do I want out of this show but I don't think like that I wanted to come here and have a conversation with you actually make notes until before you're big I make notes but I generally don't use them so you have to prepare you know are they different when you go on tour is every night different yes I never do this how do you decide what to talk about well at the moment sometimes I'm taking questions from the audience and so I just do a q a but I don't look at the questions before I go on stage and I ask my wife who asked me the questions not to show them to me and then if I prepare a lecture I usually have a question in mind often that relates to one of the topics in my books but all but sometimes something I'm thinking about and then I use the lecture as an opportunity to explore that question and answer it well I'm watching the audience to see if my words are landing and so it's an opportunity to think on my feet and I think part of the reason the lectures are are well attended is because it's a high wire act in some sense because I never know when I go on stage whether I'm going to bring the lecture to something like a punch line to something like a conclusion so and I have no idea because I'll have a variety of ideas up in the air and I think strawberry you have no idea where it may lead to no no no it's an exercise a little scary I mean yes but you know there's an idea that the truth will set you free right and and that's a very strange idea because you could imagine that I could come here and I could decide there are things I want to do to promote my books let's say and I could tilt our conversation towards that or I could just say well I'm going to pay attention to what's going on here and I'm going to see what happens and I'm going to say what I think and then I'm going to assume that whatever the outcome is is the right outcome because it was based on something approximating the truth what is your ultimately what is your goal what is what is the point of Dr Jordan Peterson what do you hope to achieve through what is now huge Global Fame um I hope to encourage people other than that I want to see what happens you know I want to say what I believe to be true as clearly and and carefully as I possibly can and I want to see what happens as a consequence and what people don't understand about that in some sense is your happiness the purpose of your life is not going to be happiness sometimes it is sometimes that will come but there will be difficult periods in your life and happiness won't suffice that but what you can have in your life is an adventure you can have an adventure and the truth is the best adventure there's no doubt about that and there's a couple of reasons for that one is you don't know what's going to happen if you say what you think now I don't mean in cautiously and I don't mean provocatively or any more than necessary you don't know what's going to happen so that's very adventurous but also if it's you and your voice then it's your adventure and if it isn't like if you're crafting your speech or manipulating in any way or parroting or abiding by the dictates of the crowd then I don't know whose Adventure you're having but it's not yours on Free Speech it seems to me in my 57 years of being on this planet the Free Speech has never been under more ferocious attack not in places you would expect like authoritarian regimes but actually in in democracies I never thought I'd come to a day in my lifetime where people were literally being fired or in some cases imprisoned for expressing honestly held opinions even if I find those opinions grotesquely wrong or offensive you know it's worse than that people underestimate the significance of this because it isn't we're not having a fight about who has the right to speak freely that's nothing that's that's that's a peripheral problem even though that can be serious in and of itself we're having a fight about whether or not your claim that Free Speech exists is nothing but a masquerade for your willingness to dominate and use power and so if I was taking that attack I'd say it's all well and good for you to speak about Free Speech but look you're white and your middle class and you're British and you're and you're privileged and you have this theory about free speech that your ancestors drive but the only reason they ever derive that to begin with is so they could exercise their power there's no such thing as free speech that's just a lie to mask a power claim and that's a way worse cynical criticism of the notion of free speech then you can't speak because I don't agree with I mean it's a form of fascism isn't it I mean these people it's worse than that the kind of the ultra woke uh Brigade out there they they categorize themselves as liberals but there's nothing liberal about that mentality when you have a canceled culture which is driven by if you don't agree with what I say you're going to get shamed vilified canceled fired maybe even in prison that is actually what fascist regimes do to people to their policies yeah but the fascists are more straightforward about it because they basically come out and say something like shut up or we'll beat you right whereas the compassionate types who are narcissistic compassionate compassionate types they come out and say well we're really trying to save the world you know and we're we're acting in everyone's best interests and we think it would be better if if you should just you know regulate what you say because if you don't you're not you're not a good person and so that's it's much more I'd take the fascist bully over the narcissistic over the compassionate narcissist anytime they're way more straightforward I mean we live again in an era where the hashtag be kind yeah yeah almost invariably is used by people who are the least kind people I think I've ever encountered yeah otherwise people that love to be utterly vicious yeah well kind of idea they hide behind this fake persona of hashtag be kind yeah yeah well kindness is tricky you know because one of the things you deal with very commonly if you're a clinical psychologist apart from depression and anxiety is well Behavior therapists offer assertiveness training and now the people who need assertiveness training are all often people who are too agreeable compassionate polite by temperament now the problem with that is that they let every other they let people walk all over them because they don't they don't stand up enough for themselves and the consequence of that is they get resent full and then they get bitter and then they get conniving and then they get and then they'll mob and so because they're not they'll do anything for everyone else but they push themselves beyond their limits and they and then they won't even recognize the limits because they feel well if I'm not doing everything for you then then I'm not a good person it's like no a good person does a little for you like if I'm acting properly with you say in this conversation there's something in it for you and there's something in it for me right and we want that to be reciprocal and so the cost of me bending too far in your direction is that I'll become bitter and resentful and conniving and and that and resentment is non-believably toxic state of being it's like a show break I want to come back and talk to you about what a random collection of people Cristiano Ronaldo the most famous footballer on the planet the greatest in my opinion and also Olivia Wilde who's made a movie in which she said it's about you because you're the guy that drives some of the worst human beings on planet Earth yeah we'll talk about all those things off the brain foreign [Music] edition of Piers Morgan uncensored one on one with Dr Jordan Peterson so a weird thing happened uh about two weeks ago I was on Instagram I suddenly unpopped this picture and it was you with a friend of mine Cristiano Ronaldo the the Football Genius greatest player to ever play the game as far as I'm concerned and you'd be to see it uh just privately and he was saying how great it was that he'd met you and you'd gone there and all hell broke this he was bombarded with people saying this is outrageous Legend over Legacy finished none of which would have bothered him because he's heard all this kind of thing before but the Venom of it was from certain quarters were so pathetic it seemed to me so first of all what were you doing with Cristiano why why were you there well he invited me to come and see him and um he had had some a trouble in this life a few months ago and a friend of his sent him some of my videos and he said he had watched those and then he read my book one of my books and found them very helpful and he wanted to talk so I went out to his house and we talked for about two hours and he showed me all his equipment for keeping himself in Tip-Top condition and we talked a bit about his companies and but mostly we talked about what he wanted in the future and some of the obstacles that he's facing while pursuing that and so we had a strategic conversation I would say for for about on those topics for about 90 minutes were you in a way were you that the Ted lasso figure in his life well that's what it felt he didn't realize he was missing yeah well I think maybe he did realize that he was missing it because he seemed to have found it to some degree in those lectures and so and I was I I always like to hear not only what people are up to but what they want and I one of the things I loved about my clinical practice which was very much predicated on this like well you're miserable let's say not to say that he was because he has a good life in many ways but if you could Envision a path forward out of your misery let's say to somewhere better what would that look like and it's not a question people ask themselves with enough depth and then having developed that vision what are the strategies that might be put in place to make that more likely and again not in a manipulative way but if you had to conduct yourself in the proper manner to bring about this desirable end or at least to move towards it how would you how would you organize your behavior when someone like Cristiano who you know we know what the personal problem was he'd lost a baby he and his partner was incredibly sad for him and professionally after that a lot of turmoil as to whether he was going to stay at his club and so on and so on um it seemed to me talking to him in the last couple of days after he saw you he's in a much better place actually that's what happens when you hang out with reprobate like yes but really interesting to me that so you got and you and he both got criticized for just seeing each other um but actually it was clearly very helpful too well I hope so that would be lovely if it was true it's a weird position isn't it there's you Dr Jordan Peterson this guy that comes out of Canada lecturing students and then you're at the home of the greatest football player of all time and you'll genuinely helping him I mean Ronaldo is known as one of the most mentally strong athletes has ever been yeah right not just physically but mentally strong and yet he needed someone like you to help him I find that really fascinating well I don't know if he needed me because he's a pretty competent guy but but you know you can always and this is something that very competent people do you can always improve on the edge you know and so his life is very well put together and he had some trouble but people do but we talked a lot about what he wanted how he wanted his career to end in in the most graceful possible Manner and how that might be optimized and so I hope you told him very well to sign for Arsenal in the January transfer window did you Jordan no I didn't give it to Mike I don't give I try not to give people advice I'm curious on that because he's obviously reaching not not the end of his career by any means he's still the world-class player and he's incredibly fit so he could play for another three four years perhaps but what is an end game for someone who's achieved everything in the game yeah well it that's a good question it's hard for people who who have had a stellar career especially one that's to some degree predicated on youth to figure out what to do with the rest of their life now he's well set up because he's a very canny businessman and he has a young family and he has lots of friends and as far as I could tell on that front he situated himself extremely intelligently so I think it looks to me like the transition for him is going to be quite smooth so but that's a testament to his wisdom because he made sure that his life was was was founded on more than one dimension of of attainment and that was very wise does it make you feel good that even people like him confine great Solace from watching your lectures well all that makes me feel good I mean I do think that this is part of the reason I keep going on these lecture tours is that it seems to be doing people good so let me ask you about um kids what you done by kids I mean young adults really and then into their their 20s trying to form their way through life one of my favorite movie clips is Rocky Balboa it's probably the non-intellectual version of Jordan Peterson in many ways because he said this to his son he was getting a bit spoiled and entitled and moaning about being Rocky Summers on and he says this to him let me tell you something you already know the world ain't all sunshine and rainbows it's a very mean and nasty place and I don't care how tough you are it will beat you to your knees and keep you there permanently if you let it you me or nobody is going to hit as hard as life but it ain't about how hard you hit it's about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward how much you can take and keep moving forward that's how winning is done now if you know what you're worth to go out and get what you're worth but you got to be willing to take the hits and not pointing fingers saying you ain't where you want to be because of him or her or anybody cowards do that and that ain't you you're better than that I love that speaking yeah it's good what do you think of it well that ethos was what lifted up Sylvester Stallone to start him very rapidly with his first movie and what do I think about that I think that young people are literally dying for that message I really and I mean literally they're so demoralized it's just beyond belief and so one of the things that's been painful about what I've been doing with my wife as we've traveled around the world for the last number of years is to see how desperate people are for an encouraging word let's take a break and find out what that encouraging word should be I want to know why a lot of young people are very anxious about life why is that and what's the best way for them to come through it yep we'll deal with that after the break more from Jordan Peterson in a few minutes [Music] well welcome back to the special edition of Piers Morgan essential one-on-one with Dr Jordan Peterson we left them on the Cliffhanger with Rocky Balboa and his address to his son about how to grow a pair for one of a better phrase um this idea that actually your life is defined not So Much by success because you're everyone's friend when you're successful but by The Knocks you inevitably are going to get whether it's through losing loved ones losing a job you know losing a car whatever it may be you're going to get hit by blows in your life of differing magnitude and I've always believed that how you deal with the downside of life really defines how you lead the rest of your life well the clip is very interesting because it starts out with the admission that life is brutally difficult and sometimes unbearably brutally difficult and and you can see the progressives playing with that notion it's it's it it's warped into this sense of victimization but it does does reflect some understanding of the underlying tragic reality of life and so it's good to get that radar on the table to begin with say well you're miserable you have your reasons and they might be deep reasons but if you let the misery demoralize you and make you bitter and cynical and cowardly and make you withdraw then first of all that's a failure in the highest Sense on your part and all it's going to do is make everything worse and then you might think well what do you have to to to respond to that how do you respond to that catastrophe and Challenge and the answer is and this is what Rocky is telling his son in no uncertain terms it's like terrible as things are there's a lot more to you than you can possibly imagine and that if you face those things forthrightly and with some faith and courage then you can you can you can have the adventure of your life and Prevail even over catastrophe and that's true right I mean I I couldn't really get my head around why so many young people feel so anxious all the time compared to when I was young when it just that wasn't really a big thing amongst my friendship groups certainly but I I reckon there's two things one social media uh the constant bombardment of other people having a great time or looking great often of course imagery and like having to live up to false ideals but also a conversation I have with Dr Phil in America where his explanation for it was that he said you've got to understand that social media means that young people now are being bombarded all day long and all night long with quite shocking imagery and he gave an example he said when I was young he said if a crocodile ate somebody on a golf course in Florida the chances are I would never have heard about it it probably wouldn't have made the national news probably wouldn't have even made the state news and I wouldn't have heard about this incident now it's quite likely that a video of the crocodile eating this person would be whipping its way around social media within half an hour and young kids will be sharing it disseminating it and being exposed to this constant imagery all the time of quite quite unsettling and shocking imagery what do you think of that theory and that well I think that in itself was adding to a sense of everything's terrible well I think it's a corollary of an information overload Theory right I mean one of the advantages to having to having the computational power we have is that everything is at your fingertips and the disadvantage is that everything's in your face and by everything it might be 40 million pornographic images like that's a lot or an endless array of tragic scenarios and really endless and so that's a problem and the problem the fundamental problem is how do you handle the fire hose of information and no one really knows the answer to that but we should also point out that it's no wonder that young people are demoralized and anxious because we're doing everything we can to demoralize them and make them anxious so on the masculine front we we tell young boys that while the world's a terrible patriarchal tyranny and all of that patriarchal tyranny which is the whole explanation for history has done nothing but Oprah address and exploit people and destroy the planet and so that any manifestation of that masculine impulse on your part is equivalent to the world destroying Force when all masculinity now is branded toxic yeah and I remember I think that the key moment for me came when Gillette had always had these very masculine commercials with the big guy cuddling a baby or whatever it may be they suddenly switch gears and did a campaign where it started with a lot of me too imagery and basically the assumption that all men are awful until they can prove otherwise and I predicted in a column this would be a complete disaster for them and sure enough nine billion dollars later they did a screeching U-turn and went back to the big guy cuddling the babies because actually two things I think about that one most men are not awful actually and so not all the time oh no some better obviously um some women are pretty awful no but not most of them but if you try saying that and not getting canceled um but I think also this thing that you've got into trouble about which I don't understand why that you believe that most women probably quite like their men to be strong and confident I don't believe that all the data shows right clearly cultural samples and has for 50 years that's everywhere anecdotally most women I know I think would absolutely agree why is it that you've been so vilified for suggesting something which is so palpably true well I think first of all that annoys narcissistic women no end and it annoys people who thinks that think that there are no biological or cultural limits on how we manifest our behaviors and also it frightens a large number of women because many women have never had a good relationship with anyone masculine in their life and so the notion that they would need to establish a trusting relationship with a man especially if he's also in something approximating a superordinate position which is much what they might like to find him maximally attractive also implies that they're in some sense going to be under his Sway and if there's no trust there well that's absolutely terrible fine and I have some sympathy for that because there are no shortage of women out there who've never had a positive relationship with anyone masculine and so they're very they're completely unable to discriminate between narcissistic power and compulsion and confident competence and so because they can't distinguish that and they're afraid they put all of that in the same category which is something like the Predator category and and that's not good for them because well as you said all men aren't Predators all the time and they need to establish a relationship with a man right we're also in a very strange place where a lot of high-profile women will not say what they think a woman is yeah because they are potentially Brown Jackson the new member of the Supreme Court in her nomination hearings was asked a question this is what she said can I provide a definition no yeah I can't you can't not in this context so I'm not a biology it was a riveting moment because you're like you're going to be on Supreme Court of United States of America you're a woman you're the first black woman on the court and that in itself I know you've raised eyebrows about why did Joe Biden go out there and say we need to have a black woman why not just say we want the best person available and then if she's the best person get her on the court which I completely agree with but for her not to be able to commit to explaining what she thinks a woman is and then I had a moment on this show where Macy Gray the singer did stick her neck out and she said this I will say this and everybody's going to hate me but as a woman just because you go change your plots doesn't make you a woman right sorry you feel that I know that for a fact like if you want me to call you her I will because that's what you want but that doesn't make you a woman just because I call you or her I just because you got a surgery with chilling predictability Macy Gray stuck to her guns for a couple of days and then the onslaught was so overwhelming against us she had to go on National Television in America issue a groveling apology for everyone that she'd hurt with this statement of what many would think is just a statement of biological fact how have we got to this place where women are terrified of saying what a woman is and women who do say what they think it is I.E they're a clear biological distinctions between a man and a woman they get destroyed well we've accepted this Preposterous hypothesis that your identity is only subjectively defined and as I've tried to point out on some of my let in some of my lectures the only people who think their identity is subjectively defined are two-year-olds and I mean that technically because two-year-olds are egocentric which means they can't bring their identity in alignment with a social Norm which also means that two-year-olds can't play with other children they can play beside them but they can't play with them that doesn't happen until year three what happens when you're three if you're reasonably well socialized or start to move towards that is that you learn how to negotiate a social identity and then identity becomes obviously it has a root some roots in your subjectivity and in your biology for that matter but a sophisticated identity is not only socially negotiated as the constructivists know perfectly well but it's also it's got a dynamism about it because it has to be constantly renegotiated like as we're having a conversation here to some degree we're renegotiating our mutual identities because we learn something from each other right so we transform right we're also trying to figure out to some degree who each of of us is in this situation and then we're also trying to learn can we play together towards some productive end and you might ask well what do you mean play and say well we're trying to have an interesting conversation let's talk about the break I want to come back and talk to you about the royal family in this country and the huge seismic moment in history we've just had a little pieces not to break again [Music] [Music] welcome back for my final part with Dr Jordan Peterson the royal family and the death of this great Queen an extraordinary outpouring of love and respect not just here but around the world actually biggest event of its kind I think I've ever seen what did you make of it what do you think of a monarchy in the modern Asia is it survivable well I thought that what happened was extremely interesting psychologically because Queen Elizabeth stood for or embodied a whole set of Virtues which is the right way of thinking about it that aren't in the least bit fashionable but in fact they're the inverse of fashionable in some sense but are desperately needed and so you might say humility uh dutifulness uh careful emotional self-regulation discretion uh the antithesis of narcissism all of that and she managed it extraordinarily well for 70 years and so whenever things go too far in One Direction there's a tremendous unconscious or implicit desire for something that would set it right and that's what you saw happen and not only on on the personal front but there's also all the Pomp and ceremony which is also archaic and and unfashionable that was all part of that that you Brits managed so spectacularly that was all people are just dying for that for that for that beauty was I felt like the country before this happened two weeks before it felt like the whole country was in a shambolic state that everything was going wrong in our country and in a way the death of the queen unified us in a way we hadn't been for a long time yeah certainly since brexit um no one was talking about hot button political issues or social issues they're all talking about one thing and then it also reinforced our national identity oh yeah in a way they actually made the world look on with great awe about the the procession our military our royal family the country it made people feel good about Britain again yeah and therefore made British people feel good about themselves again yeah well you guys have lots to feel good about and that's not the standard Mantra of the modern world you know this is an unbelievably admirable country for all its flaws and so well now people about us English common law the the the tradition of free speech uh sardonic and self-effacing humor that's so much a part of the culture the our ability to cue for 13 hours yeah politely to see a woman lying a state is not even a member of our family right resilience well and to do that peacefully and to do that in the spirit of mutual Good Will and come to a place like London it's unbelievably ethnically diverse and yet it functions extraordinarily well and what are your best traits and what are the the worst traits of Dr Jordan Peterson well I think that it's been difficult for me to to optimally regulate my irritation at times over the last few years and I'm trying to get that right to figure out what the right because a lot of things that have happened have outraged me and then I'm not exactly sure what emotional tone to take as a consequence of that outrage and that's a very complicated thing to figure out and that's been exacerbated that problem by the fact that I have been my family and I have been the targets of very conniving um and and attacks and underground attacks and that isn't stopping I mean another time when your wife was fighting a deadly cancer yeah and so was I so yeah yeah so it's very difficult to regulate your your temper properly under those circumstances let's say and so I don't imagine where have you most improved yourself do you think as you got older I get better and better at listening you know and I'm better and better at finding my way forward with the words that I choose and that's just it's just a continual in some sense incremental expansion I probably got better too at seeking out corrective information so for example I got banned from Twitter recently for making a statement that I don't regret by the way but I had a friend of mine two friends of mine Grill me and I put that on YouTube that's called Mean Tweets the it was an hour and a half I said and one of them both of them are very very smart people one of them is more liberal than I am I would say and but a very good advocate for that liberal position and I I said well let's hash this out there's some things I've said that have made people angry and you think I made them unnecessarily angry and that I was unnecessarily harsh in my tone did they change their mind they changed my Approach you know because one of the things I decided was that I would try to be equally judicious in my words but that I would use a a calmer and more measured tone and I don't mean use instrumentally I mean that I would attempt to make the effort to take as much unnecessary emotion out of the statement as possible and so I started to do that in some of my more recent videos I mean I tried to do that before I think part of the reason that my interview with Kathy Newman went well was because I kept my head yeah and I didn't get irritated she's a good friend of mine and I watched it with great interest because I felt like you were slightly on parallel lines and that maybe she would do that interview differently if she had her time again I think that's highly possible yeah so so yes I changed my Approach quite dramatically and what happened was that I I read a telegraph article I recently published about Deloitte and it was a very cutting article and I was really worried about publishing it because I think it was the most cutting article I've ever written and I read it on YouTube very very calmly and carefully and what happened was I got the response was much more positive and much less negative so there was no downside to it so people didn't say some people said I you know I think that I like your tone when you were more aggressive especially on issues like this but by and large it had all it worked even better because I could be careful in what I was discriminating and then to Ally that with calmness actually made it more potent rather than less and so that was very interesting and yeah and I mean I mean we had a very serious discussion about this my friends and I I had a lot of people with me in Miami when this was happening across the political Spectrum we had a very healthy debate for a couple of hours about whether or not I had gone Beyond some reasonable limit in the way I was conducting myself Say on YouTube and Twitter and some people were very strongly advocating for more of what I was doing and even harsher and others were saying well you're alienating people that you could otherwise communicate with them it's interesting about the listening like one of my sons too my sons had come today because it's one of the listen to this very unusual and one of them's not even been to the studio before so he just said to me I said give me some advice you know you love Jordan Peterson what's the advice for the interview you said just listen more than you normally do so I've tried I've tried hard to ask a question and let you answer right and so I'm working progress and I've been interviewing people for 35 years but I do think the listening as I've got older I've felt the same thing yeah it's a real skill man this thing is a is a powerful tool actually oh yeah well there isn't peop there is nothing that people like more and need more than to be listened to you know and that's partly why the left clamors all the time you know it says look there's all these people who aren't being listened to it's like there are a lot of people who aren't being listened to they're absolutely right there's no doubt about that and I've dealt with people who were extraordinarily marginalized so to speak in my clinical practice and some of those people to straighten out their minds they need like 10 000 hours of listening because no one and I mean this literally I've had people in my clinical practice no one ever listened to them their whole life yeah and so when you they start talking they're all over the place they're disorganized they're hyper emotional having met me enough for an hour what would your initial clinical diagnosis be well you're probably optimally disagreeable for your for your profession you know because you can listen but you're also not a pushover and that's a very that's a very fine line right because if you're too assertive or aggressive then you get domineering but if you're not enough then you're a pushover and to be it and this was also the case with Kathy Newman she's quite disagreeable and that's that's a masculine trait by the way and it was one of the things on into it in a ways where we started the interview she'd gone into I think with a preconceived idea of what you would be like and sort of stuck to that yeah it's actually a very skillful journalist and interviewer and I was surprised the way that interview went when I was watching it I think it was because she just had an idea of what she thought you would be well I think she probably I think she also had an outcome an idea of what the optimal outcome of the interview might be and I think a lot of the journalists who've gone after me in some sense have that they think they there's part of them and thinks all all be the person that finally exposes him for what he is but then they find out that I'm not who they thought they that I am at least I'm not quite as demonic as they thought I might be well Professor Stephen Hawking before he died gave me his last television interview and he said that the biggest threat to the future of mankind was when artificial intelligence learned to self-design what do you think the biggest threat to mankind is narcissistic compassion now ai's you know it's a threat too but if we if we're if we had our act together ethically it's possible that AI could become a useful servant rather than a tyrannical master you don't want to automate your tyrannical Masters and that's the danger that's one of the dangers of AI I've got to wrap it up I don't want to but I have to I want to ask you just quickly the film director Olivia Wilde has a new movie out which she says it's based on you this insane man this pseudo-intellectual hero to the in-cell community in cell being these weirdo loner men uh who are despicable in many ways is that you are you the intellectual hero to these people sure why not you know um people have been after me for a long time by because I've been speaking to disaffected young men you know what a terrible thing to do that is I thought the marginalized we're supposed to have a voice it's making emotional talk about it well God you know it's very difficult to understand how demoralized people are and certainly many young men are in that category and you get these casual insults these these in cells is what does it mean it's like well these men they're they don't know how to make themselves attractive to women who are very picky and good for them women like be picky that's that's your gift man demand high standards from your man fair enough but all these men who are alienated it's like they're Lonesome and and and they don't know what to do and everyone piles abuse on them when she said that Olivia Wilde it stung you didn't it oh by that time you know that as far as as critic critiques go that was kind of low level I mean once I got painted as Red Skull you know magical super Nazi that was kind of the end of the insults there's no place past that so when Olivia Wilde made those comments the first thing I did was go look at the preview for a movie which I quite liked I thought I would go see that movie probably and perhaps I will it didn't really bother me my my family and I talked about it right away and we were able to respond to it with some degree of humor which then people completely misunderstood I said I hope that you know that if I had to be played by someone he's a very good looking man and so that seems all right you know and then I said something like I hope he gets my my uh fashion style choice right when he plays me and it was a joke all that was a joke you've been so controlled today and yet in that brief moment you got very emotional why it's really something to see constantly how many people are dying for a lack of an encouraging word [Music] and how easy it is to provide that if you're careful you know give credit where credit is due and to say you're a net force for good if you want to be do you believe you're not full so good net yes in all the details probably not you know no one's perfect so people make their mistakes as they stumble uphill Jordan's been a fascinating interview thank you very much Eve thank you you've got this new box set up yeah yeah I'm pretty happy about that 24 rules for life uh and Beyond order uh fascinating books they've sold how many millions now well 12 rules sold seven and I think Beyond order is approaching a million now so yeah they're doing just fine you ever think you'd sell that number of books I never thought any of this would happen you know I mean so I knew when I was teaching at Harvard and at University of Toronto that some of the things I were I was teaching were revolutionary I was surprised that I got along with it got away with it let's say as long as I did and so there's a way in which it doesn't surprise me and and I wouldn't say that's because of the Brilliance of my ideas it's because I'm I'm good at communicating ideas but the ideas that I've been developing their ancient ideas they're the oldest ideas we have in some real sense so they have a power right absolutely and just finally you're healthy you look healthy pretty good and much better your wife's doing a lot better than she was she's back better than she was before even and my daughter is not ill either so fancy that I mean that's an amazing turnaround from where you went that's for sure man it was pretty brutal yeah for a long time yeah you know my wife almost died every day for seven months so I'm very glad for you thank you sir I really am it's been a really a fascinating interview appreciate the time come back it's a pleasure to see you I feel like we've got a million more things I could talk to you about which I'm sure everyone thinks that when they talk to you well that's a good that's a good thing to have happen during an interview thank you you bet man well an extraordinary interview with an extraordinary character uh whatever you think of Jordan Peterson you can't listen to that and not be enthralled captivated maybe challenge maybe you don't agree with him I'm not sure he Minds if you disagree with him that's the whole point it's about stimulating ideas it's about challenging what you believe evolving as we both do as we've got older

Channel: Sky News Australia

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Length: 45min 44sec (2744 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 28 2022