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

Can I say this? Can we Are we going on YouTube? Does some of this get cut? Uh you can say literally anything you want. Why do you think it would be bad to have a law against hate speech? I think my issue is I wouldn't want the government defining what they think is bad. Because for instance, I'm not a huge fan of the food pyramid. Like what what happens if what the government deems is appropriate they decide veers into hate speech or misinformation. I don't think the government as a body is smart enough to determine what hate speech should be. As we can kind of see in Canada now. So, I think hate speech laws are about as dangerous as you're going to get in terms of eroding a fundamental um freedom that I think your dad has summed up better than anybody else. Speech is a form of thought. Um I've I've been saying for years, it's a quote, I wish I remember who said it, but I speak not so that I can be understood, but so that I can understand. Yeah. And I'm like, that's how my mind works. I process verbally. I have to say things out loud. I have to be able to test the idea. But I am terrified of a world in which we can't think out loud. Mhm. Mhm. And that people will um pass laws where now all of a sudden you really are in trouble because of something that you were just trying to think through. It violates a law and now like you're saying in the UK, you wind up in prison. Like that's insane to me. And this is not a vote for Russia, but this is definitely a vote against what's happening there. If the stat is to be believed, more I think it was 10 times more people were um legally pursued for hate speech in the UK than in Russia. Oh, yeah. And I was like over the last year or something. And I was just like, wow, that scares me. So, the last time I interviewed your dad, I think my opening question was like imagine there was a doomsday clock that was counting down to authoritarian rule, kind of like the the clock for atomic energy. What time would you put it? Now, we ducked the punch, and so I never got a time. Like, I don't know if I'm I'm being overly paranoid, and I should detach from it all, and just live your life, or you can take the meta approach and say everything is downstream of culture. So, it's possible I'm just being overly paranoid, but does that idea of an authoritarian doomsday clock resonate with you, and so, what time is it? Because of all the negative all of the pushback against authoritarianism, I think we're switching directions. So, I'm actually rather optimistic. If we're on the doomsday clock, I would say I think we almost hit it, and we're going the other way. But, I probably live in a way where I I live as if we're going in the other direction, but I have part of my focus on what if things really go badly. So, I think politics have a lot to do with it right now. Um, but I think there's a bunch of cultural pushback. Like, talking out against the really far left woke culture now is different than it was in 2017. In 2017 or in 2016, people were like, that doesn't even exist. And then in 2018, 2019, it was like, okay, it's definitely here. 2020, it's definitely here, but you can't talk badly against it. And then I think now to 2024, we're starting to realize, oh, maybe the downsides are quite evident. And I think there's quite a bit of pushback. I think you can see that, too, with the universities and all the protests and things, and how crazy that's gone. Like, it spread so far that I think there's enough pushback that we're going to go back towards the middle. I hope. You've said that you're concerned about your father, Jordan Peterson, his forced media retraining. You're worried about how that's going to end. What exactly are you worried about? I don't think they can let him keep his license. When this all started, I said you know, give it give it back. Like relinquish it. Like I don't know anybody else in as a psychologist or a working professional that would be able to afford fighting back against something like this. And I think Dad basically made it more of a moral thing that he had to do, and he has the money to be able to put into lawyers to fight back against this to kind of blow it up to show the world what's going on in Canada. And I left Canada. I moved because I could kind of see the direction it was going in in 2021. Mhm. So, I do think he'll end up losing his license, though. There's this fear in the air really since COVID in Canada. So, if you're in the States and you go back to Toronto, which is where I'm from, and you land there, everyone's still a little bit I would say traumatized from COVID and being locked down, and you can feel it there. And then there were these rumors being thrown around about bills that would basically criminalize things you said on social media if they were deemed hate speech. And the definition of what hate hate speech is, I mean, Dad definitely delves into that on occasion, even if it's like talking about trans problems or criticizing the government, like things that you should be able to discuss might be eventually deemed as hate speech, and then that would be a criminal offense, and they're touring around with the idea of passing the bill. I don't know if they will. So, my concern, especially with him fighting the court case in Canada, was he was going to be living there while he's doing it. With the protests in London, people were posting things on social media, on Facebook in particular, and getting arrested in London, in the UK. I think Canada and the UK are very similar in that way, and I was like, that would happen to my dad. It would be like par for the course at this point. So, it wasn't tongue-in-cheek, but I think it's unlikely. How do you think that's going to play out? So, you said the election's going to be important. I very much agree, sort of. Uh my take is that the the election is merely a um mile marker in where culture is at. So, I don't think the election is going to change culture. I think it's simply going to say whether we're slightly one way or the other. Um what do you think will happen and what do you think will be the response? I think I would probably disagree that it's a reflection of where culture's at because I don't trust politics at all. So, I don't even know Well, I don't even know what's going on behind the scenes there. So, I don't even know Can I say this? Can we Are we going on YouTube? Does some of this get cut? Uh you can say literally anything you want. Uh I like I I'm I'm not sure. I don't necessarily believe in in voter fraud, but I'm not sure if I trust the system to count tickets properly. Ooh. Yeah. I'm going to I like I can go that far. So, I would say I think the country would go in a better direction if Trump won. Um I don't know if he's going to win and I don't know how they're going to judge who's going to win. And so, I think that is going to determine how the next year is going to play out. Okay. Whenever somebody says something like that, I default to base assumptions. I have a very hard time explaining to people what I'm trying to do. So, I'm really going to take a minute and just say this all out loud. It is more important to understand how somebody comes to a conclusion than it is to understand the conclusion itself. So, what you just said is going to be very inflammatory and people are going to go berserk in the comments, either saying that you're right or you're wrong. But, people will very much galvanize on one side or the other. Definitely. Um so, I want to build up what you see that leads you to that conclusion. So, for the next few minutes, I just want to talk about base assumptions. Great. Um so, you have looked at the world and either have just had an intuitive emotional response that leads you to believe that that's true or there's some set of facts that you've looked at that lead you to believe that that's true or some combination thereof. Can you articulate what the things are that you've encountered that led you to believe that maybe cuz you certainly didn't say it would be, but that maybe the election results won't be fair and open. So I I don't have any knowledge of politics in that area. That's more intuitive and that intuition is based on what I've seen in the food industry, I would say mainly, which is also overseen by areas of the government. Yeah, so the food pyramid basically was built by huge influences from food companies pushing products. So at one point they were like sugar's a weight loss food, which it's clearly not, or fat is bad for you, you know, eat seed oils. So and and that's just starting at red meat is bad for you. High carb diets is how people should eat. Just the entire thing is so backwards and that was run partially by government oversight. And that was almost upside down. So if that's the kind of product they're pushing out, I don't necessarily believe anything else they're doing is true. Okay, do you believe that the food pyramid is a result of malice or ignorance? A little bit of both, mostly ignorance. Like I'm sure the people pushing sugar didn't realize how detrimental that would be and I'm sure the people saying saturated fat is bad for you didn't realize how detrimental that would be. Um but it was definitely influenced by corporate greed as well. People were going to make money if their product sold more. So that's malicious. So both. What I'm trying to get to is so take um my last company Quest. I realized at one point, hey, we're probably going to have to start lobbying the government because they're anti-fat. Yeah. And they're pro-sugar and this is like I'm realizing, hey, like this is really problematic. Now, I attributed 99.99999% to ignorance. Yeah. And back then, I would not have attributed it to malice. Now, Yeah. going down the path, I get way more concerned that they're my my overarching narrative is that the human animal is controllable and therefore people will rise to power that want to control people. Yeah. Maybe for good. Maybe they really have people's best interests at heart. But because we are controllable, people that desire control will rise to the top. Okay, so that's one of my base assumptions. Mhm. Uh which makes me very nervous because I don't think that it I don't think humans can be ruled well from the top down. So, that's another base assumption for me. This is why I fear authoritarian rule. I just don't think it works. But that it worked, then hey, maybe I could get behind it. Mhm. But I don't. So, uh Quest teaches me a very similar lesson that your experience with food has taught you, which is the government should not be the arbiter of what we should eat, whether it's malice or not. Yeah. Um but none of me looking at the food pyramid leads me to believe in voter fraud. So, I I know first of all, people listening are going to draw parallels with what you said. And so, I'm just trying to tease out There was more. Sorry, like I was super sick as a kid. And when I realized that I could get all these health problems under control with my diet and no medication, I was really angry at the medical system. And that I think most of the people working at it, I think a lot of that is ignorance. They just don't know that there are other ways to treat people. But that crushed me for like 4 years. I was almost mad at every medical professional. So it was like, why don't you look into other alternatives? Like, how can you be telling these chronically ill people that have lifestyle diseases that they're stuck being chronically ill for the rest of their lives? Like, how dare you take their own ability to research and fix themselves away from them by teaching them that they have no control. I was so mad. I don't trust the pharmaceutical industry and not all of them. Like, I'm I have a friend who runs a pharmaceutical company to treat rare diseases. Nothing wrong with that, right? But I think I have an institutional distrust and that probably spreads over to like, what else is out there? Just like during COVID, a whole bunch of things that ended up being true were called conspiracies. And now, I even see conspiracies have gone off the deep end. It's like, well, this conspiracy was right and you said this was a conspiracy but it was true and you said this was a conspiracy and it was true. So maybe they're all true. So I mean, voter fraud could be pushed into a conspiracy but I don't trust the government's ability. I just don't trust I just don't trust them. It's probably It's probably intuition and then based off my experiences with the food pyramid and the medical establishment. Uh all right. Now, do you think that one side or the other getting elected is better or worse? I mean, I do. I do. Say more. Uh like, I would I'm not I'm Canadian so I don't have a say. But I would vote He is. Oh, you have a say. Uh I know how I know how marriage works, homie. Uh so, yeah. I would have probably I was a huge fan of RFK but because I didn't think RFK could win even though I really like him. Um so, I would I would vote for Trump for sure. Um I don't even know how Kamala got to where she is running. And I'm not happy that they hid the fact that Biden was so sick and then like gaslit the entire nation. And then put some somebody else up, like, oh, you're going to vote for her instead now. I don't know. Seems pretty like what you would hear about in Russia. Throw Russia under the bus. What do you mean? That Is it manipulation that you're getting at? Oh, yeah, propaganda. Just like nationwide gaslighting, like Biden doesn't seem well, maybe he's getting old. No, he's totally fine. It's like, okay, and then suddenly okay, no, he's not fine and we're going to put Kamala in instead, which is what everybody's been saying for like at least a year and a half. And then the nation forgot. And then, you know what reminds me of propaganda, too? The messaging that Kamala's putting out now, where she's associated with Joy, and it's just suddenly showing up in all the mainstream media newspapers, a whole bunch of different mainstream media newspapers at the same time, reminds me of propaganda I'd see coming out of a country I didn't trust, to put it bluntly. Sure. Do you think that it will be effective? So, I didn't. I was like, there's no way people are falling for this after COVID. But then, these kind of like propaganda newspapers are saying about Kamala, I'm like, why would you vote for her? Oh, cuz she's going to make it more joyful. It's like, oh my gosh, is that real? Well, so, I have no idea. Do you? I have a hypothesis. So, I think this is about the architecture of the human mind. So, the world is obscenely complicated. In fact, your dad has a quote about this. I'm going to I'm going to have to paraphrase. You you cannot adjudicate the world based on facts, because there is a fact for every phenomenon. There's too many phenomena to build your world that way. This is why things like religion become useful, because they distill the world down into a set of stories that tell you how to act and then you know how to act. Yeah. And if he's right about that, which I actually think he is, then we're just speaking to the need for the human mind to have a simple narrative that tells them how to move forward. And this is why it feels like we're living in this sort of great unmasking of the political process. I have a hunch and this admittedly, I am thinking through these ideas in real time. But I have a hunch that for all of recorded history beyond like when you were a really small tribe, that even then, like even then, I think that to galvanize a group of people you have to connect dots. And when I say connect dots, I mean tell a story. So you have to say, "Hey, all these things happened. It started raining and that means that God is happy, right?" So you you start connecting these stories, these dots into a cohesive story and it allows people to share a worldview and to move forward. And the need to have a shared cohesive worldview is how this creature, humans, that can operate in such large and flexible groups are able to do what they do. But you need those simple narratives. So I think the reason that Kamala equals joy works is because people need a rule of thumb, they need a thing they can repeat to their friends to explain their emotion, but really it's just emotion. So when I look at the political process, I am like I really just want to be happy and optimistic and tell people how great they can make their lives by taking personal responsibility and all that. All of that's true, but uh there's a trifecta of books which I've talked about many times, which if you read them, you will suddenly be like, "Okay, that's true right now in the West, but it's not always been true throughout history, even in the West." And so if you read The Gulag Archipelago, brutal way that things can go. Uh If you read The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich and if you read Mao: The Unknown or Untold Story, I can never remember which, you realize, yo, in recent memory, we're just talking like the last 100 years, in recent memory things have gone so badly that hundreds of millions of people die. Okay, so that's as terrifying as I needed to be to go, "Well, I just want to be optimistic." There is a reality to be faced with the architecture of the human mind which leads them to be taken down a primrose path and when it breaks, it breaks bad. Now, eventually people right the ship. But wow. Ooh, it can get dark first. get real dark first. Yeah. Yeah. I I I completely agree. We're teaching all those three books you mentioned, we have courses being taught on them at Peterson Academy. They are Those are fantastic books. If I was going to give somebody a primer for what the human animal is capable of. I agree. I think it's naive not to know that history. Like I kind of grew up, so I grew up with my dad as a dad. So, he obviously like instilled those horrors early on. like? I was taught, this is how bad humanity can get and if you're not careful, you're going to be on the bad side. You know, and I was told that that at a young age, but I was I was also told, every problem in your life is your responsibility and you have the ability to fix it. Which is really a hopeful message. Right? It's not, you know, it's a little bit overwhelming if you realize everything going wrong is your fault somehow, but if you're also told it's your fault, but you can fix it, then it just opens up a world of possibility. So, I think being taught at a young age not to be naive about history was incredibly valuable. But even me as a kid, I remember reading about Nazis or something and being like, well, that was in the 1940s and we already went through that. And like Mao and Stalin and and all that, We already went through that. Society learned. We're all taught it in school. Everyone will remember and it'll never happen again. And then and then things are feeling a little weird right now. I've got to say. I'm still optimistic that there we're turning directions. I've got a lot of Jewish friends. I think there's like a lot of anti-Semitism that's on the rise now. And and and some history rewriting that's going on on popular podcasts that's like maybe maybe the Nazis like maybe they really did have good reasons to do what they did. And that's been and then like we're not allowed to talk about that which is why no one ever talks about it but maybe we should start talking about that again. And I didn't think I would see that kind of thing in the open in my life with the amount of support it has right now. So going back to base assumptions, what do you think is going on that leads people to back to that sort of weird point in this Do you want to get super conspiratorial? I have no evidence of any of this. So full disclosure, intuition, conspiracy. Yeah, and I haven't talked about this before. I was going to on my podcast. I think and this could entirely be conspiratorial. I think China's trying to sow disruption in the US and what we're experiencing now is from that. And I think the main mode of communication they're probably using is TikTok and that's why a lot of this political craziness is hitting younger people. It's not hitting like 50 plus. It's hitting TikTok users. But I I don't think China operates on the same time span as Americans operate. I think they operate on like 200 year time spans with like longer plans. Um and I think they've been probably been at this for a while. That's my theory. I want to talk to you about our sponsor Found Banking. The biggest waste of a founder's time is the mind-numbing hours spent jumping between banking apps, expense trackers, and tax software. That's why I am very excited about Found Banking. 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I've programmed my Tik Tok algorithm to show me content I like. It's not really political. Like most of it's most of it's like neutral or makeup or something. But But if I get a political post, it'll be something that's kind of conservative. It'll be like like mostly like Christian or conservative or something like that. When the war broke out, my feed was completely flooded with dead babies. To a degree, I don't I don't know if you you've heard about this from anyone else. I asked my friends, so I have like a friend in Toronto and she's always on Tik Tok. She's She's more She's way more liberal than me. And And her feed was flooded. And she ended up being like, you know, this is horrible. This is horrible. A little anti-Jewish. Just a little anti-Jewish. And And I was like, you got to be careful because this is happened many times for a very long time. And you don't want to be part of the the group that is like, maybe the Jewish people are the problem, right? Um and she got that. I know she got that from Tik Tok. And I had to spend a good number of days saying, I don't want to see this. I don't want to see this. I don't want to see this on Tik Tok. Enough that it was like, I'm getting pushed this from something. And it was the platform because I wasn't interacting with any of the posts or anything. So, I think that was a push to breed political disruption. And I think Jewish people were used as a scapegoat as they've been used many times before. Knowingly conspiracy conspiracy, but knowingly Well, it's funny like by the Chinese government using Tik Tok. and maybe part of the reason they're like, why? Why would they do that? What One, I think it's convenient and it's something that could breed problems politically like widespread in the US, but they also have these Muslim concentration camps in China where they're sterilizing people. A lot of people. And that's not talked about anywhere. So, why isn't that talked about anywhere? If the problem Well, I think it's because China's controlling Tik Tok. I don't think it sounds that crazy either, but I like I could be in my little like weird group of I don't know, libertarian weirdos. Well, so this is why I want people to pay attention to base assumptions. So, if if I can get people to to walk along the path, they will at least say, "Okay, it's possible that thing is happening." So, question number one would be, do you believe that people will develop opinions based on what they see over and over and over? Oh my gosh. most people will say, "Yes." I did throughout my life. Like I took certain things as the truth that I found out later weren't the truth. I was just like, how especially if everybody thinks the same thing and you probably experienced this with Quest and like the demonization of fat, is it's kind of hard to get into the mindset of, "Well, everyone around me thinks this one thing, but I know that that one thing isn't true." And eventually eventually society will like shift over. You know, ketogenic diet's being a fad too for a very long time and now it's like the number of research articles coming up about ketogenic diets and diseases skyrocketing. But everyone for 15 years was called a quack. Yeah, so the the series that I think people have to walk down if you're just looking at it from base assumptions is anything you repeat is going to get into people's minds. If you repeat something enough, it will seem true even if it's just because it's familiar. Uh algorithms create the ability to repeat something over and over and over uh that this if you can create a sense of social proof around an idea that people are even more likely to believe that. Uh and we know that algorithms can control what side of an issue you see. They can control the sequencing of the comments, so they can put comments you're going to agree with at the forefront. Uh and do governments manipulate their adversaries population whenever possible. Like if you say yes to all those things, then it's like, "Well, it's at least possible." You may not see any proof that it's actually happening, but it's like there's a That that would be I mean, you spelled it out pretty correctly. That would be my the logical framework which I got to those conclusions. And we just saw with Meta and Mark Zuckerberg coming out and being like, "Yeah, we were pressured pretty badly." and saying, "Yeah, we did censor content." Which I think maybe put yourself in his shoes as a human being. He's not like a you know, some people think he's an alien, but but he he's not some like robot, right? If you have the FBI coming to you being like, "Do this." That's a that's pressure that most people don't withstand. And especially with the limited information he had about like, "Well, maybe I mean, the government is saying this information is really dangerous." And the FBI is saying, "Don't show it to anybody." Maybe even if I think it's right, maybe I could be wrong cuz I'm getting pushback from these like authoritative government heads. I think it's good he came out and said that they were censoring content. But the fact that Meta was censoring content, I mean how can you not think that there's some weird things going on with Tik Tok? And I don't think every country infiltrates every other country to like give them propaganda, but we know stories from like the CIA doing, you know, different things to different countries. Propaganda is definitely real. We've seen multiple examples of that. You can just take Nazi Germany as an example like a prime example of that or even Soviet Union. So, we know propaganda happens. I just think maybe we don't necessarily think it's happening to us now. Yeah, if your dad is right and the world cannot be um metabolized via facts, it has to be taken in as story and story is quite frankly propaganda is just story. It's I'm going to tell you the story that I want you to hear from the frame of reference that I want you to see things uh and if you can control both what people look at and what they see, then you have a tremendous amount of control, which is utterly fascinating because that's the moment we're living in where people are chronically on social media and it controls what you look at and certainly influences what you see. Yeah, it's really really interesting. So, the question becomes what comes of all of this? What ends up being the societal reaction? What I try to do with my social media is follow people who are motivational and positive. Like forget the politics. That like really I think that's what the average person should do. These wars, too, that we're involved in, but we shouldn't be. I don't even think human beings can take on that kind of stress. Like I had take my friend in for example in Toronto. She's a mom. She has two kids. She's being shown dead babies. I was like, what tribe would you have possibly been in where you wouldn't have PTSD after spending 2 hours looking at this? No human being is meant to be exposed to the entire world of pain that exists. So, follow Motivational people, follow business people. Uh I follow Christian people. Follow people who don't drag you into these political battles that we're having and then try to reorganize your own life so that every day is a slight improvement from the last day or at least your trajectory your trajectory is up. And just ignore the politics for now. I think with the trans debate, that's worth talking about but at a level you can tolerate. And I think most of your time should be spent on trying to fix your own life and looking at people who are motivational because I don't think people can handle how dark things can get. Like I think you should read those three books that you mentioned and be aware that that's how society can go. But you don't need to be staring at it every day. This is like when I was a kid, my dad wouldn't let us watch the news. He's like the news was always like serial killer's loose in Toronto and and I remember like grade four serial killer's loose like that's terrifying or you know, so-and-so's been beaten or robbed or died or something's on fire and that was the news, right? And now unfortunately, we have the news on social media on our phone all the time. Uh and I don't think people's nervous system can handle it. This is like causes anxiety and depression, ruins your life. Mhm. Follow people like you. Like motivational people. You know, maybe you might delve into these like darker topics but My audience is screaming right now that I've gone so into world affairs that that's a big complaint about my change. It's interesting. Uh so, I try to do things by platforms. So, if you want the motivational side, go over to Instagram or watch me stream video games. I actually do a lot of mindset stuff in video games but um I'm a big believer that uh it is very important to build a mindset so that you can point it at the biggest, most important things in your life. Yes. Uh because of this weird thing that I see happening in culture, I cannot help but try to look at those things head-on. Fair enough. is actually really solid. Um I want to talk about something that you said earlier. One of the things that you follow is Christian content. It has been from the outside utterly fascinating to watch the religious awakening of the Peter Peterson household. Walk me through that because your dad started by saying, "I act as if God is real." And then I recently heard you say, um I'm paraphrasing, but uh I used to believe, but now I know the Bible is true. Yeah. Okay. So, this this is a from outside viewership, this is a big swing. Walk me through what happened. It was a very big swing. Um So, I think first what happened is you know, my dad's always taught about how the Bible's important from a psychological perspective, and that you should act like Christ because that's the best way a human can act. Um terrible paraphrasing, but that's what he taught me as a kid. Uh and then in 2019, my mom got really sick and she got cancer. And uh story to shorten the story quite a lot, she goes, "I'm going to be healed by our anniversary." And I didn't like I didn't believe at that point. And she was in the hospital for I I can't exactly remember, but it was over 2 and 1/2 months, and there was a surgery, and then there was a surgical kind of mishap, and she had to be flown to the states, and then they couldn't fix it. Um and then on So, she was in the midst of them trying to fix a surgical injury that they couldn't fix. And then on Mom and Dad's anniversary, it fixed itself. I still get goosebumps from that cuz it was like, how as a more rational person, and I would say the more rational you are, the harder it is to have faith in something. Um I was like, how can I figure that one out? Cuz she I said, how did you know? And she said, God told me. And I was like, that's too coincidental for my rational brain to be like, you know, what are the odds of that? Like nothing. Like zero. The surgeons were all shocked. she said, God told me? I thought Mom's on morphine. Literally, she was on painkillers in the hospital. I was like, as long as that's like giving her some hope, good. But it was like, she's on morphine. That was my thought at the time. So then why not when it does heal on the exact day that she said it would, why does your mind not immediately go to placebo or something like that? Um Oh my gosh, cuz it couldn't have been placebo. It was like, to get into the details, they'd nicked a lymph duct, and there was lymph leaking into her, and they were trying to fix it. And it's very difficult to find a leak, and they couldn't fix it. And so she came out of surgery and they're like, we couldn't find the the basically the nicked lymph duct. And then that was just kind of it. And then it just healed. And so she goes, you know, you know, God saved me. And then her disposition towards everything changed. Her demeanor changed. Uh she spent the next couple of years converting to Catholicism, but it was the patience she had after that wasn't something I'd seen her have throughout my entire life. Like she could be very short and irritable. Uh and a bit unforgiving, and she won't even be mad at me saying this. And then her demeanor changed, and it was like, you have way more compassion than you did. And I don't even think I don't think it was from the stint she spent really suffering. I don't think it was that. I think it was her being saved and her conversion that gave her that. And I watched that and I was like I want that. Whatever that is, whatever happened to her, I want that for me. And having my dad as a dad who's very rational as well, it was just like doesn't there's no logical explanation why. And um I had this extremely you know, extreme heavenly perspective and it was basically you as a human don't have the ability to rationalize God. That's why you need to have faith. And I was just like, why did I never understand that? Like everyone says have faith and I didn't really understand that faith is believing without having evidence to prove it. Otherwise, you wouldn't need to have faith. And for some reason and I don't know if that's going to resonate with anyone else, but that's what resonated with me and then it was just like floodgates open and I was like, oh that's what people mean. That's what like all these Christian weirdos that I've been around are talking about. This overwhelming feeling of forgiveness you get I guess once you once you get saved and have faith and all and all these things just lined up for me in like I don't know, 30 seconds. And then after that like my whole world view changed. So I was like, things make more sense. And this is what my dad has been talking about, too. Understanding things through a narrative. So even having my dad as a dad I'm like, I'm a human being. I'm trying to understand things factually. Being like, what can I see that's true that you can prove? Okay. There's one belief, and then what else can I see that's true that you can prove? There's another belief, and then build on top of those. But, I had a complete change in perspective that was like, we're living in a spiritual world where there are things people can't see, but maybe can intuit. Uh the highest good is truth, and truth down to its core. Um and then I I've realized what Christians were saying about sin and and what sin looks like, and I don't think I was able to recognize sin properly before I was Christian. I do want to go back and start now teasing some of these ideas apart. So, um I had one line of questioning that I was going to follow until you said truth matters, and I mean truth all the way down. So, your um dad and Sam Harris famously got bogged down in trying to define what is true. So, what and that makes sense to me. I think it is shockingly difficult to actually define truth. Um so, why does truth matter? And if it really does matter, how do we define it? Okay, well, I guess I'll just go ahead and say it. I I think there's um a s- like a spiritual war going around that we don't see that can kind of rear its head in politics and in in evil in the world. And I think the only way to combat that is by being 100% truthful, and if you're not 100% truthful, then you're contributing to that evil in the spiritual realm. So, that's going to be my answer. Okay, truthful versus true seems very different. So, truthful, to me, the way that I would define it is I believe these things, and therefore I'm going to tell you exactly what I believe. But, that person may not have identified truth. They could be completely off the rails. Well, even like this this theory about China infiltrating the US. I'm not going to say that's true. I have no idea. So, is it important to be truthful or to identify the truth? It kind of pains me to say this cuz my dad taught me this for my entire life. Said like no matter what you have to tell the truth. But I was like, "Yeah, but what if what if your friend shows up and she's really happy and her hat is kind of ugly. But she's really happy with the outfit. Do you actually have to say do you actually have to tell her what you think? And I think yes now. And I'm not sure if I thought yes as hard as I do now before. I don't think you can know what is true without having like a heavenly perspective on life. Say so much more. What does that mean? Like I I think So, the way I was acting before I got saved versus how I react to the world now, the way I was acting was how I thought a good person should act. And I think I was doing an okay job, but then God was like, "You're not." Um So, I I and the problem with how I was acting before was I couldn't identify the micro sins I was doing. So, like even just kind of a someone says something annoying and you're like, "I don't have time for this." Even that I was shown isn't the way that you should act. Let me give you my definition of truth and then let me stab at what I think you're saying your definition of truth is. Okay. My definition of truth would be an accurate description of the physical world. So, Einstein got close to truth. He didn't get all the way there cuz he doesn't have a theory of everything. That to me is what is true. It is the physical laws of the universe from which everything is born. Now, what I hear you saying what is true is accuracy to spiritual alignment with God's desire for you. Yes. That. Yes. And I also I do partly agree with you because there's like physical realities of the world, um, but I do think I do think I would put God above that. Okay, so there is truthfulness in terms of uh, almost a shame that we use the same word, but there is truthfulness that will keep your soul clean, aligned, I'm not sure what word will feel right there, but for for a reason I won't speculate on yet, God wants you to be that way. That will be better for you, better for society, if you're always truthful. The truth, capital T the, capital T truth. Uh, that is God has a plan for how humans ought to be, and when you're in alignment with that, you're in alignment with the truth. Yeah. Okay, cool. I now pretty good. I now understand Hey, the first time I had to stumble along that story. I wasn't prepared for it. got there, so now I understand what you're saying cuz it drives me crazy when people have debates and they just didn't take time to define basic assumptions. That's the debate with Yeah. So, when going back to the last interview I did with your dad, I can't remember if I said this on camera or off, but I was like, Jordan, I think that you're I was very confused when you went from being the internet's dad to writing a book called We Who Wrestle With God. But, because he is so bright and has really been a part of my sense making apparatus, I was like, let Chesterton's fence. Before I say this doesn't make sense, let me make sure that I understand what he's doing, and then I can decide if this is the next logical step. Once I understood what I think he's doing, I was like, oh, I get why this is a continuation of, all right, I helped you get out of the mire of, um, feeling lost and hopeless, but now that you're not lost and hopeless, you need an aim. And that aim is an aim that should make your life better, your family's life better, civilization's life better. Okay, cool. I get why he's now going over to religion. I really believe that humans think in stories. Religion, as far as I can tell, is the only um meme medium by which good ideas can spread not only across time and in any place on Earth, but also across levels of intellect. So, whether you're a literal by definition [ __ ] or you're a super genius, both of those people can encounter religion and and see something that makes their life better. And it's like, "Oh my god, like I see the truth, right?" And so, I'm utterly fascinated. I don't I don't believe we have yet found anything that leverages the architecture of the human mind so perfectly to get us to work together in these large flexible groups, okay? So, I think religion is the only thing that's withstood the test of time. There are some new entrants into the field with religious-like ideology, but religion I know works. But then, it begs the question of am I missing a trick if I act as if religion is true, but know that it's not, which is how I feel? Like there's so many great ideas. If I live in accordance with the great ideas, but don't think that this is the word of God, Yeah. is my life somehow fundamentally worse than somebody who does all the same actions I do, but they also believe it's the literal word, in which case, if somebody is trying to help people to the max, they have to get you to truly take that leap of faith and believe? I think what my dad tells people is, if you even if you don't have faith, if you act in that way, and that's why the term cultural Christian is also popping up here and there. Um then you'll improve your life dramatically, which I agree, and I think that's the best thing people can do. I think from my conversion, if you have faith, then you're in an entirely different realm than that. I had a fear of death that I don't have anymore. And it wasn't something that I was like up at night about cuz everybody knows they're going to die and everything, but that's just gone. And it turns out that sucks just for humanity to have that. So, that's gone. And I wasn't even an anxious person before. Like I have a number of successful companies, I have a podcast. I have my health issues under control, nobody in my family is sick, I'm in a great relationship. Like I have it. I am so grateful at how my life has turned out after a lot of years of horror. Um but even going from that to having faith has eliminated a lot of the existential, I guess, angst that just haunted me being a human. How would you convince somebody that God is real? I would probably tell them the story about my mom and walk them through. You know, I totally get where people are coming from when they're like, "That sounds like a nice naive fairy tale for people who can't handle death and don't believe in evolution." Which is probably how I kind of characterized Christians. I was like, "Those are people that thought Harry Potter was evil." And um so I'd probably say I was like that. Um and then I saw what happened to my mom, which was I couldn't rationalize. And then I started mimicking the steps of a Christian. Um I didn't go to church very often, but I was watching sermons online and I was reading the Bible and I was praying. And I was like, "This feels right." But I didn't like fully to my core have faith. And then and then I got to a low low point. And I think I was really struggling with like, "How do I believe in something that I can't rationalize? Like, how are you supposed to believe that to your core if you can't prove it? Or if no one can prove it? That's That's even harder. And then it occurred to me that like the entire everything spelled out in the New Testament anyway is you need faith. It wouldn't be called faith if someone could come to you and rationally explain it. Now, what do you think about Rollo Tomassi's read on that women find God in their late 20s when they can no when they realize they can no longer compete with women who are in their early 20s? Um I think Rollo Tomassi is a scumbag. That's like my That's my main take. Um and I think he hates women. So, I think that is evident about like throughout what he teaches people and all his videos. So, I'm not surprised he'd say something like that. I could like to you in your the interview. I've blocked that out of my head so successfully. I Yeah, yeah, I've No, I forgot about that. Um I mean, I guess I don't really care what he thinks. He doesn't seem like a happy person. Plus, people say anything they want about me online. And I really I really don't care. How do you deal with that? I think maybe in 2018, it bothered me more. But I mean, you know what I do? Okay, so we we launched this Peterson Academy company and there's been And for some reason that like criticism of that hurts me more than criticism of me. Maybe cuz of Maybe cuz it's new and I've gotten used to criticism of me. Yeah. Which is is silly, I guess. But um But then you look at Elon telling people he's going to launch a rocket to Mars. And the comments are just like, "Well, why don't you just cure world hunger?" And it's like, "Who Why don't you cure world hunger?" It's like, "How about that's epic, right?" I figure if Elon Musk is getting criticism for his insane ventures and like bringing internet to everywhere, building underground tunnels, trying to make cars electric so that we pollute less, like these huge things he's doing. Um the AI stuff, you know, everything. If he's getting criticism, then I'm definitely going to get criticism. And so, I think I just know that people are critics and resentful people in particular that know that there are things in their own life that they could be improving and aren't, are like, "Well, why that person deserve that?" Mhm. It was like, "I don't know, improve your own life. It's hard, try it." So, I guess I just don't I guess I don't just don't care. Speaking of improving your life, you got divorced and you were on camera through it all and you were leaking a lot of anxiety about I don't know if I'm going to find anybody again. I'm okay being alone, but now, you found somebody, you're remarried, a new child. What was that process like? How, especially somebody who's taken a lot of flak for being an alpha woman, uh how did that process go? How does an alpha woman find love again? As a business owner, I'm guessing you're afraid of making bad decisions. I get it, but here's the truth. Slow decisions are more likely to kill your business than wrong ones. The only mistake is standing still. The problem is most companies are running on five different systems making speed impossible. NetSuite solves this. NetSuite brings your entire business into a single source of truth giving you the visibility and control to make quick decisions. Over 40,000 companies trust it because you get real-time insights that let you spot opportunities before your competition. While they're still closing their books from last month, you're already acting on next quarter's opportunities. Want to move even faster? Learn how AI is revolutionizing business decisions. Download the CFO's guide to AI and machine learning at netsuite.com/theory. The guide is free, just go to netsuite.com/theory to get your copy. Again, that's netsuite.com/theory. I'm more of a libertarian. Like there are certain things I don't like and certain things I like. But I think because I'm surrounded more about conservatives, I had this idea that because I had a baby and I was a single mom, you know, it scared me. I was like, "Am I value is I was like, "Who wants this amount of baggage?" And so when he asked me to marry him, I literally told him all of that. I was like, "Okay, but like you don't realize what you're getting into here. I'm not even sure if you actually want this. Like, I work very closely with my family and I don't plan on stopping. I work all the time. I have a kid. Um there was more things um that I thought were an issue and he was just like, "I don't care." I was like, "Wow." So I know Rollo Tomassi talks about the statistics all all the time about single moms and how awful they are, but there's also like who left them. I think I was more anti-single mom, obviously, and then I became one and maybe that was God being like, "Humble yourself." I've had I've had other conservative women, too, who have been worried about telling people they're divorced online because they're part of a conservative community and they think they're going to get completely lambasted by their audience for doing something wrong and I I've been telling them First of all, I don't think the feedback is going to be as bad as you think it is. A lot of people experience divorce. And a lot of sane people experience divorce. It's not just troubled people who experience divorce. To the idea of the Overton window widening, I think we're moving away from these really sort of absurdly narrow definitions of the relationship between the sexes, but it is very interesting to see somebody who's a CEO of a very fast-growing company, which by the way, congratulations. Very exciting. And my wife has always been the standard-bearer for me. She is a very tough woman. She's a great entrepreneur, the best business partner I've ever had. She's amazing, amazing. But if she didn't like being small in my arms, if she didn't want me to lead, then we'd have a problem. And so, the interesting dichotomy there is you've got this bad [ __ ] girl boss, but her vibe has always been, but at the same time, I'm not competing with my husband for that role. And I'm curious if you're in a similar relationship or if you have a totally different dynamic that you think works. Like, how does one navigate? could be some outliers, but I do think women want to be with who makes them feel safe. And and that means that they can rely on them for to stay calm in stressful situations and to just deal with scary things and like make decisions. Everything that comes with making a female feel safe. Um allow like criticism in conversations. Like the one thing I really appreciate about my husband is I I have to filter myself at all. And I can be pretty like if I'm being extremely honest, I can be extremely blunt. And I And the problem is if you're in a relationship where you can't be like blunt, if their feelings get hurt or something, it's just stifling. And so by the time I met him, I was like I actually am fine by myself. Now, I wasn't. I was lonely. But I was like compared to being in a bad relationship, I'm doing okay. I have some money. Like I have a baby. Um I had a like a little kid at that point. And I was like I have career opportunities. I have a successful podcast. Like I have opportunities. Like okay, you know, it's not ideal. It's not how I thought I was going to grow up as a little kid, but I'm fine. And it's better than being with somebody that can't handle me or that's like you are too much. Like or someone I can't communicate with, which is just horrible. Um so I think I just got really lucky. I'm giving God credit one. So if you were going to explain to somebody in their late teens, early twenties how good a relationship can be, what to look for, uh how to find it quite frankly, what advice would you give them? I would say if you're young, like that young, you should probably work on yourself for a while. I was naive for a very long time. But I was extremely naive I think until I was 23. Um I think if I could have given myself advice it would have been to work on myself, definitely sort out my health cuz my health was a disaster, read as much as I can, pursue opportunity and and try to learn enough so you're a little bit wiser. Get your exercise in check. Like look into what your sleep schedule looks like. Like get your drinking habits under control. So let's put that to the side for a second. Picture the person you want. And my dad really taught me this from a young age. Imagine your ideal person just so you know what that looks like, and then I would say try to build yourself into the person that matches who that person would be attracted to. That's probably what I would tell young people. And what do you think about saving yourself for marriage? Is that advantageous? Is that disadvantageous? I'm so curious to see how hard the pendulum is going to swing back now. I think it's a good idea because I think having casual sex is incredibly hard on women. And I think the pendulum is swinging back. Like when I when when I was a teenager it it was really frowned upon upon if you weren't hooking up with people. Woah, frowned upon? Oh my gosh, in like in Toronto in an art school? I think we knew the one Yeah, oh yeah. Is that not what it was like when you were growing up? It was pretty hardcore like have babies when you're 40, sleep around now, that's when you find like that's how you First of all, you'll like it. None of that is remotely true. So I I think like saving yourself is is definitely the way to go, and I think the pendulum is swinging back towards that. Do you think there's any sense of sexual compatibility is a real thing? You brought that up, but how will you know if you're sexually compatible if you wait till you're married? I think if you're deeply if you're actually in love with somebody even if you guys have no idea what you're doing, you'll figure it out. Like we're humans. It's not like oh, it the it's not good now, it's going to be not good forever. It's like that is very unlikely if you're madly in love with each other. So going back just so there's context for this question, uh you talked about the truth is being in alignment with what God wants for you. Do you think the line for God is marriage, and that's going to be the thing that's optimal for now I'm using my words human thriving, or is it cuz to me there's a huge difference between casual sex and sex with a long-term committed partner with whom you are both wildly in love, but you're not married? I I mean, I agree there's a difference. So, is there difference. I think I think the ideal situation is you find somebody you're madly in love with and you get married. I think that's the ideal situation. Yeah. I do think that. But I But I also think did that? Yeah, I do, actually. I've met people who've done that. So, so I do. Um And and the reason Part of the reason I think that is because of the Bible and how it talks about it. I would say, I guess, from my rational perspective if you guys are together and you're fully committed and you plan on getting married I don't know. I'm having a hard time here because from a Christian perspective, you're supposed to wait till marriage. Uh from a rational perspective I think God would forgive you, but I'm not God. So, that like I don't know. I I think like try your hardest. I think the casual sex thing is a really bad idea. I think if you're committed to one another and there's no like wiggle room of maybe there's someone better out there you know, your eyes aren't kind of like half looking in one direction, and that's the ideal place to be. And I think marriage solidifies that. Let me run an idea by you. Tell me what you think. Okay. There's always somebody better. And if you are foolish enough to chase the somebody better, then you're going to end up in a really dark place because the reality is there's somebody better than you. And so, the the way I think people ought to think of it, but I don't come from a religious perspective, so the Christian God may hate this, but uh the way that I think about it is you want to share a life with somebody. And to share a life with somebody, you need to be committed. You need to let them know even though there will certainly, right now today, there's people that are more attractive than you. And there will be people that are more attractive than you for sure as you get older. And I don't care. And that's not why I'm with you. Yeah, I think that will serve people more than um trying to shut that eye off. It's like you're always going to find people attractive. Again, I'm not speaking to what the Bible says. Um but for me, there would be no friction in oh, my neighbor's wife is hot. I'm not going to sleep with her because there's no universe in which I would want to throw away sharing my life with my wife. Um but for me, that was like an unlock. When I told Lisa, I was like, "Look, you're always going to find other men attractive. That's okay. I'm going to find other women attractive. That's okay. And as long as we're both in this together and we want to share a life and we want to grow old together, uh I'm here for it. But if you want me to lie to you and say, 'I'll never find anybody attractive again and I only have eyes for you,' I think it deranges, personally. And you know what? This might be from the conversion, too, and being saved. I don't have that perspective. I don't. I thought I I thought I would, but I don't. And I'm not lying about that, either, cuz there are very attractive people out there, but I like I don't think I have that perspective. Meaning you don't find other people attractive? No. I know what they like what looks good, for sure, on women and men, but like I wouldn't say attractive for me. Very interesting. All right. I I will read that as 100% accurate to your experience. It um you are the first person I've met that made that claim. I will say that, so it doesn't feel super common to me, but um what do you think it is about being saved that has made it such that you only find your husband attractive? And can you define attractive? I have a feeling that we're using that word to mean different things. really. I mean like intellectually, humor, looks, like like everything. Mhm. Everything. Do you mean drawn to drawn to Yeah, but I mean Yeah, okay, so let's do let's do some definitions here. I do mean drawn to, but I also mean attractive in like a looks sense. So you could be flipping through a magazine full of six-pack ab models and be like, "Ugh, gross. Gross." no, no. I know like I know what looks good. But there isn't an an attraction. So we do have to define attraction. Got it. So attraction has some sort of I'm drawn to this person. And then there's none of that. I can still see what looks good. Like I still watch makeup videos with cute women and like I want that on me. That's with women, but like different. Okay, but with with men I mean I still know what an ideal like human body like I know what that looks like and how that looks good, but I wouldn't say there's an attraction to it. I also like Jordan is good looking. So that helps. It doesn't hurt. I suppose. He is not ugly. I will say that. He's not ugly and nor is he short. Both of those things are true. Yes. Uh okay, so um talk to me a little bit about the how men and women should be aligning cuz I think for a long time called the last 10 years we've really gotten some crazy ideas. How can men and women align? Ooh, this is tricky. So, I think and you and Lisa seem to have it. I think if you're with someone who isn't going to compete with you, like coming from a female perspective, it's hard to be with someone if they're trying to one-up you all the time cuz you don't want to be in competition with the man you kind of want to lead you and feel safe with. Like if it turns into a competition, it's like, "This isn't even a competition I want to win, and why are you competing with me?" Kind of like you don't want that. So, my perspective is coming from someone who's pretty dominant. My dad probably didn't help because he probably said like, "Who's going to put up with you?" And I would kind of felt the same way with like, "Who's going to put up with me if I like want to work for 12 hours cuz I want to finish a project?" Or if I'm like, "This isn't good enough." I think as a dominant woman, you need to, you know, work on yourself so that you can attract someone who is as dominant or more dominant than than you. That's at least what I needed. Um So, I I think I think kind of what we were taught and what I was taught growing up. Luckily, I had my dad as a dad was that you can kind of be your own man for lack of a better definition as a woman. Like you can reach the highest peaks in your career, which I I agree with. You can You can be a mom. You can have both, which I am iffy about. Um Um And you know, you don't need You don't need a man to help you. That's kind of what was surrounding me. Um but I found that I'm much happier when I have someone I can go to and and be like, "This is hard." Or like, "I'm I know I'm worried about this stupid thing that I shouldn't be worried about, but like can you help fix it because it's bothering me even though it's not logical?" Um and I think every woman needs a like a man who can help her through these problems. What does a a man need from a woman? This is what I've heard. I'm not a man, so I'm not sure. Uh I think it's respect and recognition, I would say. Um you can tell me if I'm wrong, but I think it's recognition for like, "Look at all the little things I do for you." because I love you. But like the they want the recognition for those little things that they do out of love, but I don't know. How does that sound? Well, from where I'm sitting, so I would use the word appreciation. I think that's Men want to be appreciated, but gratefulness, that hits the note for me as well. Um the one thing you might lump this into respect, but I've always said, if you really want to um make a man happy, win him over, whatever the right phrase is, make him feel powerful and appreciated. If you make him feel powerful and appreciated, you're going to be he'll be good. But if he feels unappreciated or you can't sincerely look at him like he's powerful, like you don't sincerely believe it, you're going to have problems, for sure. Yeah. 100% And I I think too for for women, if they're in a relationship where they actually don't feel that way, like they don't feel respect or they don't feel power from the person they're with, that's tough to play out long term. You might need to be with somebody that you do respect and and you I you like you do have to make sure the problem isn't you and that you're just not going to respect anybody. So I And that does happen to some women and it just happens in general. But um if that's not the problem, if it's not you, then you should probably look for somebody that you do admire. This seems like baseline, you should admire the person you're with. That might come from both angles, I don't know. But I it definitely for women to men. Yeah, I think admiration is almost certainly something you want going both ways. I think it will clock from different things. The things that I admire in my wife are pre Some of the things are going to overlap, that's for sure, but there's going to be a difference. Most definitely. I I think the things that my husband admires in me aren't the things that I want to be admired for. We have that discussion quite and I might be I will I might be a little bit like work inclined and and business inclined. So I'll get into work mode and then he's like, "You're in work mode." I'm like, "Yeah, my work brain's on. I don't have like another brain. This is my work brain." Just like I'm focused. Um and I think he admires the like more feminine side. When I want to be like, "Look at Look at the creation I made." So there's a little bit of a discrepancy there, but What do you think about the tradwife movement? I think that there was going to be inevitable pushback to the for lack of a better description boss [ __ ] movement. Um So I I like I think I'm torn. I think it's all of I think it pretty it's pretty much a facade. There was this like brief period in the 50s where women stayed home and like had money and had kids and wore makeup and fancy clothes and got their hair done and life was good and it lasted like 7 years and then it's never repeated itself again in history. So being like, "This is how it used to be." It just isn't even true in any any way you describe truth. But I understand the pushback. I think it's kind of cute. I mean, I like it better than other other movements. Like any like man hating or woman hating movements, I think the tradwife movement is cuter. Uh as long as they're like, "You don't have to. You also don't have to be a like stay-at-home wife to be the ideal female partner. Now for some couples that might work perfectly. That's like it certainly doesn't work for me. But it I've seen some people it does work for, so maybe it depends who you are. Have you ever seen an episode of Alone? I watched a whole season of Alone. Dude, that show's dope. Have you seen the couples one? That sounds horrifying. No, I haven't. It's pretty interesting. That show to me reveals the reality of our ancestors where every like every movement you make, you have to decide in doing this, is it likely to yield more calories than it cost me to go do the thing? Because in in a world where you have a grocery store, you don't even have to think about it. But all of the sudden, there's a real clarity between the husband and wife because it's like um the guy is almost certainly going to be physically stronger and he's going to go out and do the sort of grunt labor, carrying the big logs, dragging them around. He'll do the more dangerous stuff, the fishing, whatever, but you learn real fast, my wife is going to be gifted in other things and I want to make sure that she's positioned to do the things that she's very gifted at and I'm not going to complain that she's better than me at whatever whatever because we're just trying to stay alive. Yeah. And so I have a feeling all throughout history this was a lot easier because you needed your woman to be badass at something. No woman wanted a man that was like a child and no man wanted a woman that was like a child. Like you want people that can really carry their own and that's been the secret weapon that Lisa and I have is I learned very early on before we got married that at first I thought she would only be sexually attracted to me if I was better than her at everything. And then I realized, wait, who on earth would want to be in a relationship where they're worse at everything? Like that would be a nightmare. You'd never get a chance to flex. You'd never get a chance to be celebrated. It would be very patronizing. And so we mapped out, here are the things that you are obviously better than me at and here are the things that I'm obviously better than you at and even leadership we're going to hand off. So, when you know more about an area than I do, then I'm going to follow, and why would I be weird about that? And vice versa. And that for us was like mapping out, saying, here are the things where you have more credibility, or you're more effective, or whatever, and then we ride in those lanes. And that goes back to the appreciation. It's like, the fact that let's say our food comes and it's messed up, and one of us is going to get a good meal, and one of us is going to get a bad meal. 100 out of 100 times, I'm going to tell my wife, you take the good thing, and I will take the bad thing. Which of course she tries to divvy up and all that stuff. But like, that line is just hard and fast, like in Titanic. If only one of us can fit on the door, which I agree they both would have fit, but if only one of us will fit on the door, of course it's going to be my wife, on and on and on and on and on. So, uh knowing what you each other are good at, and then knowing what role you're going to play, stating it, agreeing to it, so that everybody understands, like, oh, we do each have roles. Now, they don't have to be hyper-traditional or anything like that, but you better have complementary roles, there better be things each of you are being celebrated for, otherwise it's going to be nightmarish. Yeah, that's great. That's perfect, I think. I mean, I've I've done the same thing, so Jordan's my husband, I've done the same thing with him. Which is just like, okay, you are better at certain things than me. Which is great, cuz then we can work together, and it's almost like I'm better at them. Right? Cuz if you're one team, then it's like, and you join with the right person, then suddenly, especially if you don't align perfectly in what each other are good at, then you have way more skills. So, it's like, okay, problem this problem falls into this basket, you handle it. This problem falls into this basket, I'll handle it. So, like, a whole bunch of them we work on together. But I I think that's spot on. It just makes you into a more useful person if you can work as like this power couple. Totally agree. What are your thoughts on birth control? I am not a fan of birth control. Um I had Sarah Hill on my podcast. She was really good. She's a researcher about the detrimental effects of birth control. Um so a lot of it is from what I've read and what I've learned on that podcast, but I think almost everybody who takes it gets depressed. I think most people are prescribed around the age of 14 for like heavy periods or acne. And they're not even developed enough to recognize that the pill is causing depression cuz they haven't even lived enough life to be like, "This is what it feels like to be a healthy teenager." They're just as soon as they're a teenager it's like, "Oh, I'm depressed, but that's because I'm hormonal." When really it's this little innocuous pill that isn't supposed to be bad for you that you're taking. One of the shocking things I I learned was when women go through menopause they're given bioidentical hormones to help symptoms through menopause. Those are bioidentical, which means your body you inject them or you swallow them and your body thinks they're the hormone you're being given that's already in your body. In birth control it's called like progesterone or something like that. It's actually not bioidentical, so it ends up working on testosterone and working on other neurotransmitters, other parts of your body that it wasn't supposed to work on. So even the way it's marketed it isn't quite true. So I think the side effects are extremely detrimental. There's evidence that it shows mate attraction differences. So if That's crazy. It's crazy. So if you're a woman you end up being more attracted to more feminine men. So like what do you think that does to a society if I don't know what it is, 60 or 70% it's a large percentage. I don't know the numbers of women who are going to be mating with other people or being attracted to more feminine men unnaturally. It'd be a disaster for relationships. And I mean I just disastrous And I think the main problem just in in with couples is I think it makes most women really unhappy and miserable. And so they're depressed and whoever they're with is like, I'm with a psycho. And What do you think about women though that would protest pretty hard to hear any sort of societal pressure not to use birth control because of the level of control that it's given them? Oh, yeah. Well, I mean, I totally get that. I totally get that. I think what would the logical thing would be to just have doctors explain the side effects. Like when you're prescribed it, when I was prescribed it at 14, my mom was like, it made me depressed. And I was like, I'm already depressed, Mom. I don't care. Uh which was dumb, but like that was my actual response. Uh I would say you should be run through just like any medication, especially like psychiatric medications, or serious medications, birth control, actually explain, "Hey, there's data indicating that if you're looking for a mate, uh you may choose someone that you wouldn't necessarily be as attracted to. And even in Sarah Hill, it doesn't mean that relationship is doomed because maybe you are are still attracted to that person. It's just the overarching theme is women will pick slightly more feminine men. Um you should just be shown all this data that shows, you know, maybe it's harder to lose weight. Maybe it's easier to gain weight. Um a huge people using it experience really severe depression. You know, it can take a while for your hormones to recover. Like you should just be told the truth before you take a medication. We shouldn't just take it away. Just like with foods. Like it'd be nice to build this little country and ban some of these processed foods. Maybe some of the chemicals should be banned. I'm still on that board. But like let people have it. Just tell them, if you overeat these things, this is what it leads to. I I don't think removing access to things is the right answer. I think just people having more information is the right answer. Mhm. So, going back to your libertarian bent, you just said maybe some things should be banned. I know not too long ago though, I am forgetting exactly who this was aimed at. Um something popped off on social media and people construed what you said as being honestly that was like mostly my fault. You know, I I guess I felt that it was tricky because I know with the Holocaust there was an entire society of people that ended up murdering a bunch of people and Jewish people and it was cuz the propaganda was so effective and for whatever reason the ideas were so attractive to the average resentful person or maybe just the average regular person that it ended up massacring a bunch of Jewish people. What I should have said is can we not push these can we not push these like Nazi ideas? Like push them. I didn't mean censor them. Um let me step back and think through a problem that I've not tried to think through yet. So, freedom of speech does not mean freedom of reach. I get that, especially if you are the platform, I think you should um be optimizing for whatever your goals are for the company. Now, I think algorithms should be transparent. Yeah. should understand what they are they should cuz it'll still be so complicated. Most people won't understand, but it should be available for people that want to go through it and understand it like the one on X's. So, anybody that's like I think this is being manipulated can actually go and check the live code, replicate the results for themselves, and see yep, this this is exactly what they said it was. Oh, cool. I know makes sense to me. So, getting people to do that, I I think the government should be putting their finger on the scales. Um now, I think the platform should be able to optimize for whatever it is that they're trying to optimize for. Buyer beware in that most of those algorithms are going to be optimized for your engagement. So, that means if outraging you is engaging, then outrage you they will. And so, this is where I think people need to take personal responsibility and say, "If it's not making your life better or it's not making your kids' life better, you have to stop." Now, I have pushed back on anybody that's like, "Well, there going to be people that won't be able to navigate that well." I get it, but I think the nanny state is a thousand times more deadly than people making poor life choices. That is I'm way more afraid of well-meaning people trying to um lie, trick, uh regulate into oblivion their behaviors. Now, I am not a libertarian. So, I'm all for government. I would just like the government to be uh held accountable to their own stated KPIs. That's my official position, which does not have any home, uh but that's what I want. I want politicians to say, "We're going to run this program, we're expecting this result, we're going to audit it in a year or two years, whatever reasonable amount of time. If it's not yielding those results, then we can all look at that and say this was a failed experiment and we need to try something different." Uh I don't think I think the reality of politics is manipulation, so I don't think that's ever going to happen. But, that's what I would like to see. Yeah, I wouldn't be a libertarian if that existed. That sounds fine. I don't think the idea of government is bad. I just think it doesn't seem to operate very well at all. Yeah, it's one of those uh what do they say? Capitalism is uh a terrible system, but it's the best of all the other worst systems. Something like that. the idea. Yeah, that is um that's where I come down. I think freedom of speech is critically important. I'm not a free speech absolutist. I'm perfectly fine with the US government's take on that. You can't directly incite violence. Um but I am old school in the uh ACLU God, this is back in like the 1960s where they actually went to bat for the Nazis, believe it or not, that wanted to march through a small town in Wisconsin. I something like that. Some small Midwestern town where there was a bunch of Holocaust survivors and the Nazis wanted to provoke them and go march in their streets. I believe it was the ACLU that said they should have the right to do that. And so now the question becomes if we don't want a nanny state, then you're relying on people to stand up and say I have a better idea. And so here's all the hate like you know, flashback at the late 20s or early 30s when Hitler starts rising to power. And you have to have somebody with better ideas. And so that's the terrifying part is sometimes things just go the [ __ ] off the rails. So like my initial reaction to seeing all those was like this is crazy and it's happening out and they were popular posts. So it was like people are liking these. And not all of these are anonymous. Like I was shocked because some of the popular posts were by doctors and I was like I never thought I would be in a world where you could say something that targeted Jewish people like that and be a professional. Um it's I don't have a problem with targeting individuals. I do have a problem with targeting races or or I would say like ethnic groups of people like that given that we know people do have a propensity towards violence for those groups of people. I don't remember what word I used. I might have used censor. I said something in a feverish state that was that was stupid. But um the problem is if you do censor those ideas, it doesn't really matter because people are still talking about them. So, you can't suppress that out. So, I guess it's better to see that they're being talked about and not be naive about it. I would like people to know that what they're shown on the internet could be propaganda and just be aware of that. Like, we're not in a time that doesn't have propaganda. So, don't just believe everything you see on the internet. Like, be hyper skeptical. Try to figure out what's true for yourself. Talk to different groups of people so you get different perspectives. And if a platform suddenly shuts off one area that people are talking about, so like maybe COVID for example with Meta, or if a platform suddenly shows you only content about one event, then maybe that's actually propaganda. If suddenly mainstream media says the same thing on every newspaper, like be a little bit skeptical about those things. I think that's the best thing we can do is just be skeptical and and careful. Censorship is not only doesn't not work, but it can lead to terrible authoritarian states and you can't like we don't want to risk that again after what we've seen can already happen. Mhm. What are you doing with your kids and social media? Or what will you do? Like, you don't want to have that outcast kid that doesn't know how to use a computer. You know, especially with how fast tech is expanding. So, I do want to teach her how to type and maybe code. Like, things that I think would be very valuable and teach her about AI and use that kind of as education. Um for social media, I don't know what I'm going to do. I'll probably wait until she's 14 or 16, something like that. Have you read Jonathan Haidt's work? I haven't read it. I'm really familiar with that. It's scary. Does he suggest 18? What does he suggest? Don't remember the age, but he certainly doesn't want to see phones in schools. So, at least at school that takes you to 18. Yeah, my my daughter's school I think his number is like absolutely not until 16. I think, but don't quote me on that. Well, it's I like luckily enough I found a school where I'm at where that my my oldest is going to that's very like 90s education. So, they're learning all the games I learned in the 90s and it's like there's no ideology really. It's just like basic education. Now, they do learn how to type and they learn how to use iPads, but there aren't phones. I think a lot of the parents putting their kids in that school uh aren't going to allow phones. So, I don't think it's going to have the maybe pressure that's in public schools as a teenager to own a phone cuz I think a lot of parents are like, "No, that's there's a better way." So, I think I've maybe found this little ecos where we wouldn't have to succumb to peer pressure. Um otherwise, if I wasn't in that, I'd probably say you can have half an hour just so they're not an outcast at school. A half hour on social media? And then, you know, communicate with the kid sitting next to her or her scrolled away in a room by herself weeping over the endless insults that we will all get hurled our way. Maybe it beside her at the beginning and then I would probably just monitor how she's doing. And I can remember being on it so MSN Messenger when I was in grade four or grade five being like MSN Messenger was the social media platform. And it like it went even haywire as a kid where it was like that was not appropriate at all. Um but I think if you're paying enough attention to your kid, you can understand when they're experiencing anxiety. So, it's like, are they a happy kid or are they suddenly not a happy kid? And And they're not a happy kid, like is it something that happened at school? I don't know what teenager could have negative comments about them and withstand it and not have it just repeat in their head all the time. So, maybe try to build some resilience around it, too, and teach her like there are going to be negative people and people that don't like you. And like that's okay. People do have to learn that. It's okay if people don't like you. Like, don't be a dick. No doubt, but it it social media and kids really scares me as somebody who, when I was in high school, if you wanted to tell the whole school something, you had to paint it on the bridge. Yeah. Yeah. And that was bad enough. Like, when it was your name up on the bridge, it's like, "Ouch." Uh but you could be blissfully unaware if people had beef with you, as I was. Um but man, if they can reach into your bedroom through your phone, god. Oh, and and putting vi- videos and things. Yeah, that's another one. that would be that'd be a no. I would say no to that. Like, anything that was going to be posted, I'd be like, I need sign-off on that. Oh, good luck. Would you let your kid have an AI friend? I think it would depend. If like my daughter's best friend is an AI person, then we've got a problem. Like, you that like that's not healthy. No, but I think I'm not going to be not exposing her to uh the evolution of like technology. So, I like I think VR is going to be huge in I don't know how long. How long do you think? Like, 3 to 5 years? get too hung up on VR, but VR is probably 5 to 7. Uh cuz you need the It's really AR's what you want. That's what Zuckerberg is working like a fiend on to get it into a form factor where it's just like these overlays of the world. Okay. Okay, that. Start with that one. very interesting. So, call it 7 years for sure. By the time she's 15, 100%. Yeah, and I think being like, "No, we'll keep her safe from all this." will just mean that they're left behind. Like, I think you're going to I think it's going to be hard for us to keep keep up. You see Well, yeah, right? Things are getting crazy out there. So, I just heard Elon Musk say AI is advancing faster than any technology he's ever seen in his life. Now, this is a guy that's been at the nexus of technology for a very long time. And he said it's not by a little, it's orders of magnitude faster than anything else. People do not understand they are going to be blindsided by by AI in ways that they cannot even begin to understand yet. It is so fast. And there's actually, this is for sale right now, there's a medallion called Friend. And it's an AI that's always with you, always watching, always listening, and it will um make suggestions, it will comment on your clothes if you want it to. I mean, it's it's going to get bananas. And that's that's what it is today, Michaela. I want you to imagine 5 years. It's only been out like, Chat GPT was what? 2 years ago? Less? 18 months? 19 months ago? So, this is going to be bananas by the time your daughter is a teenager. Oh, yeah. Forget about your son. It's going to be nuts. With your son, you're going to be like, "You cannot have sex with the sex robot anymore." Like, it's going to be that that crazy. Yeah, that that one I worry about that. Sex robots scare me. Yeah, that's going to take a lot of people out, I think. Yeah. Yeah. No, no, I'm pretty like, we're we're pretty on top of AI tech cuz we've got AI built into a number of PA features that mostly haven't been released. Oh. What can you talk about? Um Don't tease and then not say anything. Yeah, I can't yet. Boo. huge We have huge ideas. Um like, a bunch of it involves testing, some of it involves translations, and then there's I there's something else that I'm I'm allowed to talk about. it. we're not going to talk about that. we'll trade AI ideas cuz we we also have many. Ooh. Tell me about entrepreneurship. So, you have launched a university via an app if I'm not mistaken. Almost. Uh you have at least at LashaK you had over 10,000 students. 30. Good lord. Yeah. You guys are growing fast. Yeah. Say more. You're the CEO. How'd you do this? So, about 3 years ago um I was having a By the way, congratulations. 30,000 is gangster. been There has not been a lot of sleep in a very long time. Fair enough, but you got the results for it. Yeah. Like and thank you to everybody who signed up. It's been a massive success. We have a whole bunch of features in development that we're going to roll out in the next couple of months. Uh and we have a mobile app in the next month, hopefully. Should be about a month. Uh but we have like exams coming out, quizzes, essays, note-taking, study groups. grade the essays? The essays are graded by AI. going to say. And that's not out yet. We're rolling it out. Yeah. There's a lot of evidence that LLMs can grade as effectively as a human, which isn't surprising given Minus bias. Given that it depends on the human grading you, right? So, a lot of this And a lot of this has been possible I mean, take Take something like easy In our courses uh we wanted to have animations so that people with for lack of a better description, people with ADD could sit through an 8-hour lecture. Mhm. Basically. So, I was like and I I don't even watch video content very often. So, I was like I need to be stimulated watching these courses. And so, now we have editors generating images with AI and then editing them and putting them in. But a lot of the building we've been able to do has been sped up by a factor of like It's been made possible because of how AI is progressing. We're going to be able to translate our courses in the next, I don't know, 6 months, I would say, and just have the lectures speaking in their own voice in other languages. Yeah, it's tricky. Most of the companies, it looks a little weird around the teeth. I don't know if you've seen. I love that you can be so nitpicky that you're like, "I don't like the way when they're speaking in Chinese, I don't like the way their lips look around their teeth." It's like, when that's our problem, it's unbelievable. that's unbelievable. No, that's I'm so close to this problem and find it utterly fascinating. It's so fun, and then it's like, "Oh, this is a problem now. Let's just give it 3 months." Yep. They'll fix that. For sure. Yeah. For sure. It's really cool. What are your secrets to leadership? I'd say I'm I'm willing to, like, from managing my dad and building my own brand and doing a lot of podcast-related things, which teaches you a lot about production. Um I was willing to do the grunt work. So, in Peterson Academy, like, I'm aware of everything from, like, how the courses are built, customer service, design of the platform, which took a number of years. Like, everything and I like nothing's beneath me. I'm pretty picky about who I work with. So, if there's someone that you're having conversations with or about more than like five times is like, "This happened and then this happened and then this happened and then maybe they disappeared this day or maybe they're bringing down this other team member." Then they just have to leave. So, you can't have an issue with replacing people if you're trying to grow a giant, which is what we're trying to do. And so, I have no guilt with. It's like, "It's not a good fit. It's not a good fit for you." Like, you you don't want to be the person that people are frustrated with all the time or if you're in a job you don't like, like, go do something else, but you can't be here. So, I have no problem with being like, "That person needs needs to be replaced or that person needs to be replaced. Um and I think that's from a lot of really difficult experiences trying to grow kind of my dad's brand and working with some bad eggs that really ended up causing me years of like legal problems. I like I I think I have enough experience now that I can say that person's going to be an issue, we should stop this, give them a good severance, tell them to leave politely, and then we won't have to deal with that. So, that's been really helpful. And then I don't know. I've like uh had ideas for I think I was so frustrated with my experience in university. Like I went to two different universities. I got two half degrees. I never finished a full degree. I have a half a degree in classics and psychology and half degree in biomedical science. And I didn't have any professors I liked throughout both university experiences. It was full of ideology. I was learning Homer through a feminist lens in 2012 and I was like, that's not why I took Homer. Like that's not what Homer was thinking. Um and it was really disappointing because my dad had been like go to you like the greatest thing you can do as a kid is like go to university, get a PhD. He was like, you need a PhD to be taken seriously as a person, Michaela. Uh and you also have to have kids young. That was a tricky that was tricky to navigate. But um I al- I've always had this like beautiful idea of what university is for people and my experience was so bad and I'm so annoyed about what they're teaching people in university, the amount of debt students are ending up with so that they can end up in in jobs that they don't even like. You can't even go to university and learn what you need to know in today's society. It's so tech-based. Not that PA is doing that yet. We're mostly focusing on humanities and we have like intro level courses and in sciences and we're going to do marketing and things like that, but it's mostly liberal arts great books courses. Um but it was just it was just frustrating and it's like there's this niche for people who go to YouTube to learn and watch podcasts to learn and there's this niche to build a community around people who want to learn to improve their level of sophistication, to be taken more seriously in conversation cuz that can improve your life tremendously, um who want to learn about all these classic books and get a classical education and meet each other and uh and then I guess I spent enough time being on Instagram trying to grow my dad's channels and I mean he did the growth himself. I was I posted. I'm not taking credit for the growth. Taking some credit for the posting, but I think I spent enough time on different platforms being like, I think I can see it in my head like what it should look like and like my husband's been instrumental in it and we have a great team. So it's just been it's been so fun to build after spending my whole life dealing with like chronic health problems. It's just it's way better not dealing with those things. Yeah, I I would imagine so. Speaking of your dad and social media, talk to me about the way he engages on X formerly known as Twitter. What do you think about it? Do you sometimes want to knock the phone out of his hand? Are you like, nah, go crazy. Uh okay, so it it it's actually switched. So for about 4 years it was like you got to get off X, it's bad for you, it's toxic. All you see are negative comments, you get riled up. I mean I went on like X couple months ago and saw a bunch of posts and was like, "Rar!" And I was like, "Oh no!" And I was like, "Well, I had the flu." But no one knows you have the flu, so it doesn't matter. It It was like you can't feed the algorithm and get angry on what like about and feed off of what It's just So I tried to get him off of it. My brother tried to get him off of it. My mom tried to get him off of it. We're all like this bad. Um but now I don't know. He seems to be upset about things that are relevant in like 2 years. So when he freaks out about something, I'm like, "Dad, you're maybe overreacting a tad." And then sometimes it's 6 months later and sometimes it's 2 years later. I'm like, "You know what? Maybe you were right." So uh he can just do whatever he wants. He's made it this far. It's interesting. He did a podcast about um his friends trying to intervene, trying to convince him that this is a mistake. And I remember listening to it going "Jordan, please take their advice." And not to get off of Twitter because I really do think you're right. I think he gets mad about a lot of the right things and I think history will vindicate him. Um but the way he tweets, like the the words that he uses. And I've heard him justify it. I get it. And look, I I am your dad is a very important part of my sense-making apparatus. So this is somebody who's on his side being like "Bro, you're creating some of your own problems here. You're talking about the right things, but man, with slightly different words uh you'd have a much easier time." to the choir here. Um but I also like who knows? He's a very smart man. That's true. That's Maybe there's something that the majority of people aren't seeing. So like I don't know. I don't know. It's a little I like I basically told him it it's such a I'm not nearly as verbally fluent as my dad, but it's such a downer being on there. Mhm. Like do something else. Like Like now that now that PA's out, maybe he'll go on that social media and just be on that. Uh cuz it's a lot more positive. So I was like, "That's what you can do with your time instead of being on X and freaking out about things. If people want to follow you on social, where should they go? I'm Michaela Peterson on Instagram. I have a podcast that I'm starting again in September. Uh, at the end of September, uh, which is just Michaela Peterson or Michaela Fuller on YouTube. Um, Both of those work? Yeah. I think my name's Michaela Fuller, but my channel is @michaela. I snagged the Michaela. Smart. Mhm. And then I guess I have a website michaelapetersen.com, which isn't that useful. I have diet stuff at liondiet.com if people are interested in that. And then the Peterson Academy platform, social media platform, and courses are at petersonacademy.com. I love it. Michaela, thank you very much for coming today. And everybody at home, if you haven't already, be sure to subscribe. And until next time, my friends, be legendary. Take care. Peace. If you liked this conversation, check out this episode to learn more. When you have power, obviously, you're looking to solidify your power. One of the things that I I always say is, you know, capitalists make the best socialists, for example, right? Once you've climbed the ladder and like you've via capitalism, like say you're Jeff Bezos, I'm just using him as an example, I'm not putting