Where you guys related. I guess this is another question I can't ask where you guys related to a three letter agency or something. This is what's going on here. Yeah, you can't ask me that. Okay.

But you know, it's weird. Like lately, everyone thinks I'm part of some three letter agency. It's like, I get accused of like, I've been accused of spying for like three different three letter agencies by now. Oh, really? Yeah.

Like, are you, you're an asset or a, what, what's the other

thing? Literally think I'm employed by them. Okay. Those were the accusations. Yeah.

How can you ever, you could never possibly disprove that. Exh,

well, like that's the

perfect. Have you stopped beating your wife? Kind of question. Yeah.

But there's a lot of questions like that, aren't there? Because a lot of times people will make an accusation and they're like, yeah, prove me wrong. And I'm like, how? And, and by the way, any evidence I present to certain people really doesn't do much in terms of dispelling any, any kinds of narratives. So, so I think they are not so interested in knowing the truth of things.

Narratives are a sticky

thing. They are sticky and then they stick and once, once somebody sticks once to you, it really sticks, doesn't it? Mm

hmm. Yeah. Do you, do you have like a favorite narrative that, that you entrauded yourself with or that you promote,

like you try to see what you're like to fulfill? I mean, there is a narrative that I've been promoting, which is, you know, speaking, having more tolerance, speaking to people who disagree with you more. So that's definitely a narrative that I've been promoting. I mean, I wrote a book called, No Apologies. It's really about that narrative about how, you know, how important it is to use your own voice and how dangerous it is to have people silence you in a society. And the harm that it does, whether it's in academia, art, science, and just generally your friendships are dishonest if you are not able to speak the truth of what you believe in. So that's been my narrative. I also have been promoting this narrative of it's good. It's really important for us to hear things that we might disagree with when they come in good faith, because, you know, then it challenges your own ideas. And either you improve, you understand better why you believe what you believe and have stronger, stronger arguments for it. Or you might change your mind a little bit, because maybe you're not exactly as right as you thought you were.

Yeah. You've been doing a lot of Twitter spaces or X spaces. I don't like the word X.

If you feel on here, as you say, Twitter, you know, he takes five karma points out of your account.

Oh, karma. Oh, really? From my account. I don't know where that karma that is. I wonder how many I have. I know. That's because you haven't collected any karma yet. No, I still haven't even gotten to that level of Twittering yet. Yeah,

yeah. It's the higher Twitter level. That's correct. Is this a pay

to win kind of thing? Or you just have to work really hard? Yeah, definitely. Yeah. What have your spaces been about? And spaces are just kind of audio chat rooms that are hosted on that platform. I've been doing, you know, I used to do a lot more, especially in the clubhouse days. I don't know if you're familiar with that app. Yeah,

I remember that. Yeah, it was a good audio app. That's where I kind of learned how to talk to people, but or practice rather. I don't know if I've learned. Like, you mean, do

you mean just to speak your mind to people to listen and speak your mind or to facilitate conversations?

All of the above, because I also started, I did a lot of, you know, I don't know what they were called. They weren't called spaces, but whatever they were rooms. I was doing a lot of rooms and different topics and I bring guests, special guests in. And I talked a lot about journalism, the state of journalism and things like that and freedom of speech. So it is where I sort of honed my chops, I guess. And then Twitter spaces. I do talk a lot. I mean, it was a great way to meet people that I probably would never have been in the same orbit with. But in terms of my own spaces, like I find them so time consuming. So I, people want me to do more spaces. But I don't do as many as I wish I could. But I've been doing them on different topics. Like, I think there was one recently that was about Kevin Spacey. But it was more about the idea of, like, as he was acquitted of his accusations. So there was like three trials, one in New York that he won. One in, I forgot Connecticut, I think. And that one he, the person who filed the complaint had mysterious, suddenly decided not to speak. So they dropped the charges and then not to testify against him. And then the third trial, which was in London, he had ended up winning, not with a full consensus. So anyways, what was interesting to me in that case is that how do we deal with somebody who is, you know, found innocent in the court of law. But in the public court of opinion, he still comes across quite guilty. A lot of people still believe his guilty and treat him as such. So how do we, as a society, deal with that when on the one hand, we should have, you know, he went through due process and he won. So should have been acquitted in all courts. But at the same time, we also know that there's many reasons why people win, sometimes on technicalities or lose, sometimes on technicalities, sometimes because sometimes it doesn't go to court because there's just not the right kind of evidence or too much time has passed and the statute of limitation has passed. There's many reasons as to why sometimes the courts fail, but at the same time. So do we hold, you know, we have a very high burden of proof to convict someone and, you know, legal court, as we should. But in the court of public opinion, should we have the same burden of proof? So I thought it was an interesting topic and it was quite an interesting discussion. It's also

something that was

in my book too, because I've had changed my views on some of the stuff myself because of the person that I interviewed who was specifically someone who was convicted in the court of opinion because of he was named his name is Stephen Elliott. And he was named as on this list that went around called the shitty, shitty media man list. Are you familiar with that? This is

from a few years ago. Was this the one that was released as

a Google Doc? Yes. And I

was like, I'm not the meaty movement. Yeah. Yeah. The height of that. Me too

thing. Yeah. Yeah. So I remember had I not heard his, him tell his own story originally. I don't know if I would have had the same point of view on him by hearing it. I think it really made me think about, you know, how we treat people, especially in his case, it was an anonymous accusation. So sort of the fundamental, mental idea of guilty until not guilty. Like, do we get the guilty people and let some innocent people go? Or sorry, and get some innocent people in the process? Or do we let some guilty people go so that we can prevent the innocent from going under? So I think that's a very fundamental question. And it's, yeah, I think seeing what sort of happened to him and understanding that anonymous accusation shifted my view more towards the, you know, it's sometimes better to let some guilty people go, but protect the innocent.

Well, what is the worth of public opinion? Like, what's its value? And what's this power? And what's power should it have? Who gets to who gets to decide this thing called public opinion? When I was embroiled in a controversy about a stupid blue dress that a man wore at a conference and a bunch of people had a very strong opinion that he shouldn't have done that because apparently it's fetish gear in their eyes and there weren't even there. They had no interaction with them. But they wanted to exert a lot of power on a conference that they had no relation to. And they were very strongly opinion about that opinion, about that opinion, about that. So, and when I engage with them, I think it was a very strong opinion that he should have done that. Because apparently it's fetish gear in their eyes and there weren't even there. They had no interaction with them. But they wanted to exert their power on a conference that they had no relation to. And they were very strongly opinion about that opinionated about that. So, and when I engage with them to ask, well, to what degree do we want to start to police dress? And how are we going to codify that? How are you going to enforce that? One thing that became apparent in arguing with the people who were in charge or designated themselves as those who are in charge of public opinion was that they constantly spoke as though they spoke for everyone. They would speak for women specifically when they weren't voted on by women. They were speaking for themselves and some other women and some other men. But they would appeal to this authority that they had. And, you know, there's an appeal to an authority, right, which is a fallacy, but it's an appeal to an anonymous authority. Like they claim, and this is what happens over and over again in every single, I think across the board in any given democratic politic, or especially in activist circles where the activists claim to represent this group of people that are then, you know, they're kind of bundled up into like this group of people are defined by the opinion that the activist has. And you see that with the discourse around what Hannah Jones, Hannah B. Jones, the woman who was in charge of the 1619 project, she eventually explained that there's the political black. You can be black. You can be racially black, but that doesn't mean you're politically black. There's this political blackness, which is what, you know, this mean and leftists are always kind of swapping out our activists are always kind of swapping out language like that, you know, so the Monten Bailey kind of thing. So I'm just, I'm asking who tells who to take whatever this public opinion thing is seriously. Oh, yeah.

I mean, seriously. I think the public does what the public does. I think it operates often like a mob where it's sort of there's an infection of infectious idea that sneaks through the mob. So whatever, you know, a few people with loud voices happen to say in a way that's somewhat effective because people hear it, then people start sort of leaning in those directions a lot of the times. And that becomes, I think, like a consensus culture aspect to it. But what role does it have? I mean, I think it has a massive role because for various reasons, I think one, we're very tribal animals. So I think people care probably losing their tribe is one of the most important things for a lot of people were having a tribe and having the tribe not judged them and not attack them. I mean, people are afraid of things like public speaking for a reason, right? Because they don't want to be judged, but it won't be changed. Putting yourself out there. So it's very important to people. And then when you have a professional role, the public can decide to take away things from you. You know, they can demand your head on a silver platter and you lose your job, but in a case of somebody like, say, Kevin Spacey, you know, he whether if the public embraces him, then he gets to be, you know, a movie star. And if the public hates him and shames him and believes that he is guilty, even though he was technically acquitted, then he doesn't have the opportunity to be a movie star. And it was interesting because the last time I saw him was on Tucker Carlson's, you know, whatever, X show. And he was a somewhat in character in it. And the comments, you know, obviously, most of the people who watch Tucker are going to be conservatives who seem to have been against cancel culture. But they, the comments were in their heads, you could tell they thought he was absolutely guilty and we're actually quite upset with Tucker for having him on his show. And I thought that was interesting. And again, and that's what made me think about it. It's like, okay, on the one hand, you've got a guy who is, he's gone through three trials. Right. So, and even in my head, I'm going to admit, I mean, there was an assumption of guilt. I don't think he's probably not the nicest person to be around, but, but you can't just convict people based on thinking that maybe they're a little inappropriate. You know, I do take people's careers away. Or predatory. Predatory, right. But there's criminal predatory in there is like, oh, I feel kind of icky around this guy. Which, look, I, if I, if somebody gave me the, what is it, the hippies, he bees, Geebees, as they say, but I want to hire that person to be around others. No, I probably wouldn't want that. But this level of punishment where someone has been accused of a, you know, terrible crime and then really had an opportunity to go through the court system. And despite that, again, the public still thinks he's not worthy of any kind of grace or any kind of return. So I don't

know, to me, it's an interesting dynamic to look at. Well, I mean, yeah, but we all know that the court system isn't strictly fair. I mean, there's a number of different very high profile cases where there's a lot of guilt there, but there's no technical way to prove it or the way that the technicalities fall out. And that's why I

said like sometimes people get away with things specifically on technicalities, right? Yeah. And we can kind of tell that they're guilty, but, and yet.

Well, here's, here's, here's kind of one of the issues for me. We have to exert pressure on our elite. And everybody has the opportunity and the responsibility and the so-called right to voice their opinion to put pressure on everybody else in order to conform to some norm. And who sets that norm? How rigid or how loose that norm is is one of the things that I'm interested in. And I can see that if we want to get slime balls or less slime bolly activity in our elite system, which would be media, journalism, politics, business, then the court of public opinion is one way to exert pressure on those systems and stuff like that. And Kevin Spacey is playing a very deft game there. If anybody has watched that clip, it's like a five or seven minute little joke interview where they go through it and unravels within itself. It's very postmodern. It's very self-referential about it being self-referential and he's deconstructing it. The character that Kevin Spacey is playing is that Frank Underwood from that show, that Netflix House of Cards, who is an evil person. He is an evil person and it's ironic or it's actually poking fun at the audience that this evil, we delight in watching evil or it's very popular. And it has been for a while since I think the Sopranos are one really big push towards the anti-hero. It's very popular to be sympathetic to the psychopath and Frank was being a psychopath. To what degree is Kevin a psychopath and to what degree do we delight in Kevin being a psychopath or allow him to be a psychopath because he does it so deliciously for own benefit and he kind of brings poetry to that thing. So there's this erosion of that fourth wall, but also it's asking us or the questions being opened up to what degree do we want to aspire to virtue and to what degree do we want to hold people to a virtuous standard. And again, how do we do that? How rigid? How loose that is? That is the discourse, but the problem with the mob mentality as you brought up or indicators that it's not really reasoned. It's the opposite of reasoned. It's reaction. And so it can't be sustained and it can't be codified and it can't be trusted because it will go wherever the emotions lead it.

It's the loss of reason. And it's very interesting because a lot of people that I talked to when I was researching the book and just in general were, would say that it is that a lot of times when people participated in mobs, they didn't actually remember that after. So there's this beeling that swoops in and it's very interesting to me that that could happen in something that's a social media mob as opposed to a physical mob. In a way, I can understand it better as a physical mob because you've seen how to what extent they become irrational and to what extent they sort of become wild and lose all reason. But you would think that in a social media landscape, the same thing wouldn't necessarily be true because why should be so emotional? Why should be you be so overtaken? Right? It's not visceral. But yet it seems to act the same way. And it was a bit surprising to learn that. A lot of times people just really didn't remember being part of it, didn't remember it at all. I mean, they could be lying, but it just happened so consistently. That maybe they're

not. Well, it's a loss of conscience and consciousness. I think they're probably tied together. When I was building the Evergreen documentary and going through hours and hours of footage of this protest, transcribing it all, going over and over and figuring out how to cut it and figuring how to make it make sense to an audience as a narrative, I just watch and expose over and over again these human beings acting like raving lunatics and going from being dangerous to cringy and just out of their minds and not treating other people as human beings. Everybody's kind of lost from this person to person connection. It makes sense on one level that if that part of your brain takes over, the other part of your brain is not functioning anymore. The part of your brain that probably builds your ego, sustains your ego or thinks of yourself as a good person would probably know about during those moments, you know, because you're not treating anybody like a human being. And so you kind of lose that part of you that's in command of that. So whether or not there's some sort of psychological defense mechanism around forgetting you. Acting like that. Or if acting like that just kind of erases that other thing. That's an interesting question. That is an

interesting question. I'm not sure. But the dehumanization aspect that you hit on, that is something that they

dehumanize themselves. We dehumanize ourselves in the process of dehumanizing somebody else. It happens over and over again.

Yeah, I think that's a really good point. And I think that is the case because to dehumanize someone else, I guess he would have to dehumanize yourself because you're no longer aspiring to values, which is sort of ironic because you're dehumanizing others because, I mean, in the minds of a lot of people, the reason that they are dehumanizing and justified and dehumanizing other people is because they view them as, you know, doing such offensive things that it's their threat to humanity. Their threat to humanity, exactly. And it's interesting how little one must do to be considered a threat to humanity. Oh, have

you been accused of

any crimes against humanity? I mean, I don't know if I've been, I'm sure I have. Yeah, I'm apparently I've been called. People have said the new comments that you're not supposed to read that I'm the reason everything is wrong with America, even though I'm

Canadian. Yeah, I was going to say, you're not even the reason. Yeah, well,

because to me, they saw me as just a reflection of an ideology they don't like. So in this case, I was on Tim Fool's show and it was more of a debate format. So I think some of his viewers have very strong points of views of how they see people on the left. And since I was representing that side, they, some of them were very vocal in their disapproval. I mean, they said things like, you know, I have eyes like a dead doll. What's wrong with with the, I do have dark eyes though. I mean, I have for lighting for my eyes. So I guess I understand that and the lighting there was really not good. So, yeah, he's got a very stark set. It's not inviting. I don't know. I know the lights come in from the top, which is a horrible way to light people. So it's just, it's not good lighting and it does make you. It did make me look a little more demon like I'll be honest.