Cancelling Cancel Culture w/ Greg Lukianoff & Rikki Schlott

This week Scott is joined by authors of the new book "The Cancelling of The American Mind", Greg Lukianoff and Rikki Schlott. The three discuss cancel culture's effect on human psychology and how to course correct a society intent on cancelling itself. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
There's a profound naivete around the idea that censorship can
somehow fix the problem of human evil. I think, ultimately,
despite the fact that some ideas might make you uncomfortable,
that ultimately it's a very good thing about human civilization
that I ideas to a degree can't be stopped.

Speaker 2 (00:22):
Today, it's my great pleasure to welcome Greg Lukianoff and
Ricky Schwatz to the podcast. Greg is an attorney and
the president of FIRE, which stands for a Foundation for
Individual Rights in education. Ricky is an author, journalist, and podcaster.
Together Greg and Ricky wrote the new book The Canceling
of the American Mind. Cancel culture undermines trust and threatens

(00:43):
us all, but there is a solution. Personally, I've known
Greg for quite some time. He first came on my
radar when he co authored The Calming of the American
Mind with Jonathan Heights. That book was seminole in showcasing
how young people are essentially learning the opposite skills of
cognitive behavioral therapy. For example, they're learning that it's good
to catastrophize, have black and white thinking, and to jump

(01:04):
to conclusions with emotional reasoning. Ricky came on my radar
more recently when we all do an event together at
the Comedy Cellar along with Greg and Jonathan, in which
we discussed the role of truth telling in comedy. Greg
and John hold Ricky in high esteem, and I see why.
As you'll see in this interview, she is quite wise
and nuanced in her thinking about such an important topic.

(01:26):
And yes, this is a very important topic in America.
At the moment, things seem to be getting worse and
worse when it comes to cancel culture. And we're not
just talking about canceling conservatives. Everyone seems to be stepping
on Eggshelsey's days, scared to speak their mind or real opinion.
As Greg and Ricky argue in their book and in
which you'll see in this episode, they argue that cancel

(01:48):
culture is not the right path forward for democracy. Thankfully,
they offer solutions to get us back on track. So
let's get into it. I bring you Greg Lukianov and
Ricky Schwat Greg and Ricky, thank you so much for
coming on the Psychology Podcast.

Speaker 1 (02:03):
Thanks for having me Scott John with you.

Speaker 2 (02:06):
Yeah, it really is. Congratulations on this new book. First
of all, how do you guys feel about.

Speaker 1 (02:10):
It real good, Like we were really pleased to see
so many great endorsements kind of fled in, you know,
over the past day. I mean, my co author John
Heights had wonderful things about it. But it was also
nice to see you know, every from everyone from John
mcwarter too, counter feel John's, yeah, all the John's, you know,
like it's it's it's been very heartwarming, you know, to

(02:31):
see people come out to recommend it to people.

Speaker 3 (02:34):
What do you think, RG, It's just been really bizarre
for me. It's like the first time that I opened
up the box full of books in the flesh as
a first time author. That was kind of insane. So
I'm just I'm enjoying the ride. I'm thrilled. I'm really
proud of the work that we did together and couldn't
have a better co author to be on this journey with,
so the same.

Speaker 2 (02:56):
That's I love that. Ricky. Let me double click on
you for a second. You know, how did you come
into this picture? From what I understand you, you wrote
this article called the Crisis of self Censorship when you
were what were you like nineteen years old or something
like that.

Speaker 3 (03:11):
I was, I was a junior at n YU at
that point in time, so I was probably like twenty,
and I wrote an op ed about about n YU
and my experience there and how I felt that there
was just a lot of self censorship, that that free
speech is not healthy, and that was something that I
met John Hype through. But I actually met Greg through

(03:31):
a separate article that I wrote for The Post, which
was also one of my like first four there, where
I thought, you know, maybe we could uncoddle gen Z
with the pandemic and it would be a fortifying, generation
defining event. And I contacted Greg and we talked about
that possibility, and I still think it's wishful thinking. Greg's
a little more optimistic that maybe some of us will

(03:52):
come out for the better as a result. But yeah,
so that was that was how we first crossed paths,
and then that became a fellowship, and then the fellowship
at Fire became writing a book together and really leaning
into our intergenerational common values. And I think that's an
interesting and unique perspective that we've been able to kind
of like meld our minds into this book together.

Speaker 2 (04:12):
I love that. I love this origin story. And in
Jonathan's forward to your book, he writes in writing this book,
Greg has made a smart move in trading me and.

Speaker 1 (04:27):
Hardly Look.

Speaker 2 (04:27):
I love your modesty, Ricky, as long as I've known you,
which has not been that long. But you are consistently
self effacing.

Speaker 3 (04:39):
It's hard not to be.

Speaker 1 (04:41):
And and she's been perfect to work with the you know, like,
I definitely got some funny looks when I told people
I was, you know, writing a book and signing a
contract with a twenty year old which by the way,
I hadn't actually met in person until after we had
the contract signed for months, you know. So, and I
remember first seeing her and being like, oh my god,
you really are a kid.

Speaker 2 (05:01):
Well, Ricky, are we You're twenty two years old now.

Speaker 3 (05:04):
I'm twenty three. And I think was the first time
that we met Greg the night that we did the
comedy Cellar.

Speaker 1 (05:09):
Yeah, yeah, that's I.

Speaker 2 (05:11):
I got you guys together.

Speaker 1 (05:14):
I thought you were someone's daughter. Well I guess you are,
she is.

Speaker 2 (05:19):
But did I bring you guys together in person for
the first time?

Speaker 1 (05:22):
We Wow?

Speaker 2 (05:25):
Okay, Well, I just love this universe. Okay, So this
idea of cancel culture, well, how do self censorship relate
to the idea of cancel culture. Can you make a
link between Ricky's original article and the definition of cancel
culture you have in your book.

Speaker 1 (05:45):
Sure, and that our definition of cancel culture is the
uptic of campaigns to get people fired, deplatformed, otherwise punished,
et cetera since twenty fourteen and accelerating in twenty seventeen,
and the culture of fear that results. Now people have
always and this has been a frustrating part of the
debate on self censorship. And there's all these sort of

(06:07):
baked in ways of sort of rationalizing cancel culture. And
when you see these questions coming out like are you
self censoring your political point of view? And you know,
sixty percent of Americans. I can't remember what the actual
stat was, but the New York Times, you know, published
this say yes in our article where they said, oh,
by the way, cancel culture is real. All the data
indicates that it is the sort of lazy response. And

(06:30):
there's so many lazy responses to cancel culture, included kind
of like well, self subship it's a good thing, you know,
and it's like no, when fire asked this question, in particular,
in most places, they're actually not asking like are you
telling little white lives to not be rude. They're asking,
are you withholding your authentic political opinion in a lot
of these cases, And that's not very healthy for a democracy,

(06:51):
and that existed already on campus, even just by social force.
But when you add into it even the slightest possibility
that you might lose your job or get expelled or
otherwise just have a horrible, horrible year, you know, become
a pariah. Have her heard, for example, or some nightmare
stories about that. That leads to a situation where people

(07:13):
are less authentic, less willing to say what they really think,
less willing to engage in thought experimentation, devil's advocacy, all
these things that make thinking better. And it's utterly toxic,
particularly to academia. But it's also not good for democracy either.

Speaker 3 (07:27):
Yeah. And I would also add to that that I
think there's a generational element to this as well, where
a gen z I mean myself included. I pretty much
only remember, in any advanced mature way, the post kind
of twenty sixteen meltdown world where cancel culture was very
very much on display. And when you're a young person
growing up in that sort of context and you see

(07:48):
people getting torn down for one off tweets or videos
that emerge decades down the line, or even teenagers losing
their college acceptances. That preemptively makes you self censor to
the point where you never even were authentic in the
first place, which is something that I experienced myself having
gone to n YU, showed up there, was terrified by
the concept of being canceled by the people that I

(08:09):
needed to live with and in a new city, and
nervous and socially anxious, and so I was hiding books
under my bed, like quite literally because I was. I
was self censoring and fearful of the potential consequences of
being politically authentic.

Speaker 2 (08:25):
Usually, when I think of this, these charges of cancel culture,
I think of people on the right who feel like
they can't authentically express themselves in environments where it's predominantly
people on the left. I guess I don't really hear
two me instances of people on the left complaining about

(08:46):
cancel culture, because tell me a little bit more about
like about that, like, is there an asymmetry here?

Speaker 1 (08:52):
Sure? Well, I mean there is any symmetry, particularly because
the institutions that we're talking about that are that where
it's the worst are over Well, they're not just majority
left leaning, they're super yeah, you know when it comes
to administration, when it comes to professorate. So yeah, I mean,
like there is there is more of it on the left. However,
we spend a lot of time talking about cancel culture

(09:13):
on the right as well. And it's also very worthwhile
to explain that a lot of the professors, a lot
of those professors who are getting punished are on the left,
and about one third of the of the punishments are
initially encouraged by you know, Fox News, by off campus,
you know, right wing institutions. A turning Point, USA is
horrible professor watch list like this. This stuff actually does happen.

(09:37):
But of course, when it comes to who actually does
the firing on campus, it's usually someone who's more left leaning.
But a lot of the professors who are targeted by
the left are on the left. They're just not sufficiently
so according to some of the activists. And most importantly,
people miss this. Yes, one of the reasons why cancel
culture got so intense and why so many professors have

(09:58):
lost their jobs over the last ten years is partially
because this big uptick around twenty seventeen of student petitions
to get people to get professors fired. But your audience
needs to understand a lot of times those are encouraged, by, facilitated,
by cheered along by administrators. So a lot of the
reason why it's gotten so bad on campus is not

(10:19):
just that administrators were bad on free speech since my
career started in two thousand and one, and suddenly students
became bad on free speech in twenty fourteen, it said
in a lot of cases that administrators are actually cheering
some of the stuff on and making it possible to
cancel people with things like bias related incident programs where
you can literally report your professor and your friends for
that matter, sometimes anonymously on a hotline.

Speaker 3 (10:41):
Yeah, at NYU, it was quite literally on the back
of our ID cards right underneath like nine to one one,
the student Health Center, the campus police, and like all
the very important phone numbers that you might need as
a person on campus, and then the Bias Respouts hotline
for if your feelings are poked and prodded, which I mean,
of course, perhaps there are limited instances of legitimate bias

(11:04):
on campus, but I think the idea of a hotline
and institutionalizing it demonstrates that there's an institutional apparatus that
is willing to respond to speech, and apparently people are
so aggrieved on campus that that's necessary, which I actually
think sen's a really terrible message. It's one of the
most progressive schools in the country, I think, where I've

(11:26):
had an overwhelmingly welcoming and open minded class of peers
and students around me. I don't think that bias is
a mass issue at a place like NYU. Of course,
if it pops up, I would I would hope that
an administrator would respond to that adequately. But the idea
of a hotline and that we need it plastered on
the back where I d cards around the back of
bathroom door stalls is really chilling, I think, in my opinion,

(11:50):
because who knows what one person might think bias is.
And internal reports from n YU showed that some of
the examples of things that people had called in included
someone saying that the photos of students used in promotional
material for n YU did not reflect the diverse student
body enough. Apparently that's something to call the hotline about.

Speaker 2 (12:13):
So I think that essential thing about this is that
a lot of is the whole notion that ideas can
make you can make you feel unsafe, right, I mean
that seems to be what this is about, you know,
and uh and and from a compassionate point of view,
I mean, I actually that makes sense to have a
hot line if something makes you feel unsafe. You of

(12:33):
course you would call hotline if you feel physically unsafe.
So now, if ideas can make you unsafe, then you know,
that's obviously the extension that that that's their logic, that's
their logic. But where do you this This is so
tricky in trying to really logically and compassionately think through
the lines. Where are the lines between ideas that can

(12:57):
that can generally we devile against people like you, you know,
whatever group you're part of, and ideas that make you
feel unsafe, where everyone or out on the outside is
like that is overreacting, but on the inside it doesn't
feel like you're overacting. It really does make you distressed.

(13:17):
How do you sort through that swamp?

Speaker 1 (13:19):
We should be thankful that there's no way to stop ideas. Really,
I think ultimately, despite the fact that some ideas might
make you uncomfortable, that ultimately it's a very good thing
about human civilization that I ideas to a degree can't
be stopped. And one thing that I think there's a
there's a profound naivete around the idea that censorship can

(13:42):
somehow fix the problem of human evil. And one thing
that I really want people to understand. And this is
where the combination of my First Amendment specialization and also
my obvious intense interest in social psychology, you know, which
you could see in Coddling the American Mind. I've I'm
obsessed with that stuff really kind of come together because
in First Amendment law there was this idea that you

(14:02):
should allow even odious opinions to be aired, because otherwise
they go underground, they fester. And the reason why I
don't love that analogy is because it's not strong enough.
Because we know about group polarization. We know about group polarization,
you know through lots of studies that essentially if you
tell people to go to places where because first of all,

(14:24):
no censorship changes nobody's minds. Nobody's like, oh, you're saying
it's illegal to have this opinion, Well, I guess I
don't have that opinion anymore. Bs they realize that they
should talk to people they agree with, but we all
know and the research is strong on this. If you
end up in a group of people who are all
on your political fence, and I think we've had this
experience too, that you know, you get together and you
talk political issues and you leave much more radicalized in

(14:47):
the direction of the opinion, and that this replicates. But
one cool thing about the book that I probably should
mention more we got some really interesting data from the
National Contagion Research Institute about what happen when people were
kicked off Twitter for being offensive or being pro Trump
or whatever. All these different sort of mass expulsions from

(15:09):
Twitter resulted in and it meant that they all went
to GAB and the research also indicated they all got
much more out of touch, much more radicalized. So there's
an actual danger to society from the naive belief that
we can actually deal with bad ideas by shutting people up.
As I often say that you are, the most important
thing about freedom of speech is that we're engaged in

(15:32):
the project of human knowledge. And part of the project
of human knowledge is knowing the world as it is.
But you can't know what the world as it is
unless you know what people really think and if you
believe you're safer for knowing less about what people really think,
you're deluding yourself.

Speaker 3 (15:47):
Yeah, and I would say right now. I mean, I've
just been thinking about this recently. Greg and I were
talking about truth social today, and I mean, you couldn't
have a more perfect example of how censorship does not
actually remove bad ideas or ideas that someone might consider
bad if you're not a fan of Trump's. I mean,
all that that really did kicking him off of Twitter
is gave him his own little echo chamber of people

(16:10):
who only agree with him and the rest of us,
I mean, or at least I can speak for myself.
I don't really know what he's truth socialing unless I
see a screenshot from somewhere else. And yet he's the
front runner candidate of one of the two major political
parties in this country, and the censorship did nothing to
actually stop that. If anything, it just insulated him from

(16:30):
criticism and insulated everyone else from actually understanding what a
large faction of the country believes. At this point in time.

Speaker 2 (16:36):
It just bogs my mind. We don't need to go
down their whole rabbit hole Trump, but it bogs my
mind that he you know that literally the definition of
speech that incites riots or violence, and he's like king
of that. He's like king of speech that incites violence
and riots and he doesn't get in trouble for it.
So if he's not getting in trouble for it, who

(16:57):
is who is going to get in trouble for it?

Speaker 1 (16:59):
That's interesting to be in the First Amendment field? Is
was January sixth tech technically incitement? I think you know,
I've discussed this a lot with David French about like
if that's not it. I don't know exactly what it
is exactly, but there are a lot of First Amendent
lawyers and they didn't quite get there.

Speaker 4 (17:15):
And it's like because they're paid to argue that they're
getting a fancy check to make that argument.

Speaker 2 (17:24):
I want to talk a little about Pandora's toolbox.

Speaker 4 (17:27):
Can we do that?

Speaker 2 (17:27):
Can you tell me a little about Pandor's toolbox?

Speaker 1 (17:29):
Oh? Thanks, yeah, No, I think the I've noticed that
we've gotten some harsh reviews from London conservative British papers
my mother's British that it hurts my feelings a little bit,
But the main thing that they seem to not like
are the allegories and literary devices that I love using,
you know, Like, so we opened up Coddague the American Mind.

(17:51):
The opening to Coddling the American Mind, it talks about
going to a guru who gives us terrible advice. And
this came out of a point when Height and I
were working together and we're getting so in the weeds
on hers actionality. I told them, we're starting to write
a book that I don't want to read, and that's
a bad story. So I like allegories, and I know
that they don't always work, but in this case, I like,

(18:12):
I help, but I think it helps bring people in,
you know, by having a story that actually encapsulates the
whole idea. So the idea is that there is a
society in which the Sorceress Pandora, that that's that's dysfunctional.
The sorces Sorceress Pandora takes away everybody's ability to make
ad hominem arguments to to to to avoid the topic.

(18:35):
Everybody actually has to be truthful and everybody has to
be engaged in like the rules of argumentation where you address,
you know, the actual topic. And this society absolutely explodes
successfully like it becomes you know, the most innovative place
in the country, in the world. All the scholars go there.
It's able to solve problems because people don't dodge around,

(18:56):
they just get right to the point. But after like
a hundred years of this people her magic starts waning,
which is our image of like that it kind of
like people missing the point, you know, like to a degree,
and the city starts to be divided against itself. We
call it Nossopolis, which is city of knowledge because we're
you know, and and on either. So her two granddaughters,

(19:17):
you know, one represents like the east side when the
the west side that are at each other's throats, and
she tries to encourage them to bring the people together,
and they're like, no way, Granny, Like, we we want
those weapons back. We want we want the ad hominems,
we want the things that let you win every argument,
because I want to own you libtards, but I want
to you know, get you groomers. And so we just

(19:38):
like in in colleague in the American mind, we sort
of like introduce a little bit of humor to it.
But it's a way of saying that's kind of where
I feel like we are. If you can't argue towards truth.
You're wasting tremendous cognitive energy on cancel culture, cat videos
and just figuring out a way to not actually hear
what the other side saying.

Speaker 2 (19:56):
Ricky like cat videos though, well I love cat because
we love cats. So cancel culture is Does you argue
that cancel culture is part of a strategy to win
arguments without actually winning arguments? Yeah, so can you explain

(20:20):
what that means?

Speaker 1 (20:22):
You know why actually bother. One of the reasons why
we have so many rules for like formal debate is
because we want to actually, you know, get to the
point of an argument, have substantive discussions, but it's much
easier to engage. So we talk about rhetorical fortresses, and
we talk about everything from logical fallacies to add hominem
attacks to demographic dismissal. We call one the perfect rhetorical

(20:44):
fortress and the other one the efficient rhetorical fortress on
the right. But cancel culture is the most extreme version
of of a dodge, because if you can scare someone
out of saying what they really think, or get them
punished for saying what they really think, you might not
ever have to have that argument with anyone again because

(21:04):
they don't. Actually, I don't want to be the next
person who gets fired for that, So cancel culture. We
try to make people understand that they should see it
as part of only the most dysfunctional part of a
dysfunctional way to argue that we've known is dysfunctional. Going
back centuries, like we had rhetorical you know, ideas of
what a good argument looks like, going back well before

(21:27):
the ancient Greeks, probably but definitely you know, back with
the ancient Greeks and Romans and cancel culture, you know,
like what kind of like with the allegory of Nososopolis,
kind of what what we're saying is we're regressing to
these these habits that are very predictable in human nature,
and if we let people use them, they'll use them

(21:47):
like crazy. But they get you nowhere, they get you
less than nowhere.

Speaker 3 (21:52):
Yeah, And I one thing that's interesting, having been on
a college campus recently, when we talk about these ad
hominem attacks of people's immutable carearacteristics and saying, oh, you
can't or you have no right to say that because
you're X or Y or Z or whether it's race, gender, sexuality,
whatever it may be is I've seen it just that
that reality is so entrenched on especially on campuses, that

(22:14):
when I was in discussion based philosophy courses especially, I
would hear all the time people preface their arguments almost
as a way to like buttress themselves against criticism by
saying as a woman X y Z, or as a
person of color or whatever it might be. Because we've
we so fundamentally know that we will get attacked based

(22:35):
on our characteristics, or that our characteristics have something to
do with the ideas that we're presenting, that we try
to like buttress ourselves at the same time, which is
like almost the inverse of the ad hominem attacks in
a kind of funny way.

Speaker 2 (22:48):
You can't be like as a cisgender white man, I
you know, listen to my perspective, I feel like that
one doesn't.

Speaker 3 (22:55):
All I have is the woman card.

Speaker 1 (22:57):
But you know, I mean probably a different cards.

Speaker 2 (23:00):
That's my point. My point is that there are different
cards and.

Speaker 1 (23:03):
When and we take it through the perfect rhetorical fortress.
One point that we make because the perfect rhetorical fortress.
One of the reasons why it's perfect and it's so
complex is because since it comes from the left, it's
largely been adapted on campus where there's just exquisite ways
to kind of dodge arguments. And so the first one
is if you can label someone conservative, it doesn't matter
if they are. You don't have to listen to them anymore.

(23:25):
And I can attest even back when I, you know,
started law school back in nineteen ninety seven at Stanford
kind of like you can dismiss somebody like that was
well established, Like arguing someone's conservative was kind of the
same thing as arguing that they were wrong. And we
still do this very much, you know, on Twitter. It's
embarrassing and ninety nine percent of people can be accused

(23:46):
of it. I mean, it's one of the reasons why
you started seeing the ACLU being accused by some activists
of being right wing or in that New York Times
it's like, well, it's worked on everyone else before. They
hate being called this. But then we go down what
we call the demographic funnel, which we had some fun with.
Height actually encourage me not to not actually put the
demographic numbers on it, but I insisted, in part because

(24:07):
most Americans don't understand what the demographics of the United
States actually looks like, so we go through all the
race dismissial, gender identities, dismissals, et cetera, et cetera. And
by the time you're done, you get down to about
point nine percent of the population of the country. But
here's the trick, here's the kicker. If you're in that
point nine percent, like so like a trans, non white person,

(24:30):
and if you have the wrong opinion, you're still wrong,
and actually you might get even greater frustration because people say,
you have internalized transphobia, you have internalized misogyny, you have
internalized depression, et cetera, et cetera. You actually might be
up for greater hate. So like basically, and we've got
examples and quotes of people saying this. It's like, there's

(24:53):
a great quote that we have in there from Coleman
Hughes of a black independent thinker who sometimes called dismissed
his conservative but he's an amazing, amazing, thoughtful dude, and
he says he makes the point that it's like, I'm
often being told that essentially the color of my skin
is the most important thing to give me credibility on
any number of topics. But as soon as I have
the wrong opinion. I get told that I'm not really black,

(25:17):
So you see, it's perfect, like either I have the
right opinion or I'm not really black. John mcwardar said
the same thing. Well Will for Riley, Like every black
conservative and most black moders we talked to, he said,
they've been told, and I think often by white people
they're not really black for their opinions. And that's what
makes the rhetorical fortress perfect because it's kind of like
there's no way to get out of it, you know,

(25:39):
being legitimate.

Speaker 2 (25:40):
Ricky, do you want to touch that?

Speaker 3 (25:42):
Oh yeah, I mean I'm I walk off any clip.
I have no sensitivities with that at all, whatsoever. But
it's funny. I was. We did Jordan Peterson's podcast, which
I don't think either was expected would concentrate so much
on toxic femininity, but.

Speaker 2 (25:56):
Oh boy, that was a little super was obsessed with that.

Speaker 1 (26:00):
I was looking. I was looking at that, and it
clearly seemed like he was directing it. Partially because you know,
my co author's a young woman, and I liked watching
the expression on her face as this was coming at her,
agatting a little bit like okayus up.

Speaker 3 (26:13):
I was just I was very I was nervous, but
I actually I listening back, it was a really interesting conversation.
I thought it was discussing a lot of things that
that you otherwise maybe would not have been able to
discuss if there was not a woman at the table,
which I don't actually think is that productive of a reality,
to be honest. But I also, of course like got
all the accusations as a result that it's like my

(26:35):
internalized misogyny that I might agree with him on some points.
I didn't agree with him on everything that he said,
but there's certainly that accusation that even if I can
participate in the conversation because I am a woman, but
then even if I have a different or more heterotopus
opinion on some things and not the expected opinion as
a woman, then i've I must have internalized some sort

(26:55):
of external bias, which is I don't believe to be
the I just might think about it a little bit
differently regardless of my my immutable characteristics.

Speaker 1 (27:05):
My favorite version of this is actually directed at Peter Teal,
and we mentioned it in the book, which is that
Peter Teal is a gay conservative, and there was an
article that we quote in the in the book making
the argument that Peter tele is not in fact gay,
he is a man who has sex with men because
his politics are wrong, and that somehow makes them magically
not gay. It's like great, like just congratulations, You've created

(27:30):
a perfectroal firds.

Speaker 2 (27:32):
So do you think there's a lot of gas lighting
of the American Mind?

Speaker 1 (27:38):
Do you want to answer that, Ricky, because that's a
softball question.

Speaker 3 (27:42):
I'll let you answer it, because that was one of
our original titles that I think we were going to
do before I was canceling, right, that was.

Speaker 1 (27:50):
That was actually one of the titles were originally thinking about.
You know, got a I've never liked the title Coddling
of the American Mind, but now I feel like I'm
stuck with a formula. So it's always Jared the American
Mind something. But we went with canceling in this case
to make it clear it's about cancel culture. But we
have a chapter called Gaslighting of the American Mind, and
it's talking about this absolute blow up on Twitter of

(28:12):
just people freaking out, Keith Oberman getting really mad, former
and New York Times reporters saying that they wouldn't work
for that organization anymore if they if they were there,
they'd quit right away.

Speaker 3 (28:23):
And what was this?

Speaker 1 (28:24):
In The New York Times had committed. They wrote an
article citing actual data that cancel culture is real. They
point out that cancel culture also comes with the right,
which we take on in multiple chapters in the book.
By the way, to be clear, we don't dispute that
they're saying things that, as best I could tell, were
obviously true from personal experience and also from the data.
It's the New York Times, and people flipped out. And

(28:47):
by the time that even the New York Times, can't
you get completely roasted for saying something that's obviously true
by people are saying this can't possibly be true. I'm like, no,
that's that's called gaslighting. You're telling the whole rest of
the country that were not actually seeing what we're seeing
with their own eyes.

Speaker 3 (29:01):
Yeah. And I would add to that, if you look
at the actual statistics across different age groups what their
view is of cancel culture, it's older people have a
more negative view, Younger people have a more positive view.
Millennials or super gung how and love it apparently, and
then it completely inverts when you get to gen Z,
and actually gen Z has the most negative view of
any generation, so they completely break that pattern. And I

(29:24):
think there's a lot of gaslighting with young people in
particular because we grew up so mired in cancel culture.
And like, if you're a young person trying to explore yourself,
figure out who you are, where you want to fit in,
go to a new college, start a new job, like,
there's so many places where you can fumble and screw up.
And I think growing up with no grace or forgiveness
on that front really fundamentally shaped a generation. I think

(29:46):
there's a massive authenticity crisis with young people that I
felt myself for a long while, and so I would
say young people are particularly gas lit.

Speaker 2 (29:57):
I think that it's important to point out that this
issue goes far beyond K through twelve and universities. So
in your book, you cover psychotherapy, you cover social media
science and medicine, and my favorite comedy. But so let's
double click on two two of my favorites psychotherapy and comedy.

(30:22):
A lot of comedians need psychotherapy. Trust me, I say
that as someone who dabbles in the comedic realm. Tell
me a little bit about how is this Infiltrating How's
cancel culture infiltrating psychotherapy? Let's start there.

Speaker 1 (30:35):
Oh man, that was probably the most depressing chapter for
me to write, for us to write, and the and
partially it's the fact that I have, you know, I
know people who are getting their clinical psychology PhDs. I
know people who are in various programs and they're afraid
to complain about any of this to their classmates. And

(30:56):
one thing that comes up all the time is that
they're they're one of their nights mercenaries. Is what if
it turns out I'm treating someone who's like a Trump supporter,
What if I actually find out that they're actually kind
of right wing? Like what do I do? Like do
I just immediately cancel it? And of course, you know
the people I know are kind of like, well, then
you treat them, you help them, you know, like you're
like you're supposed to. And we've heard this from multiple sources.

(31:18):
But also there was a therapist talking about Sam Barry
Weiss and Camille Foster talked to us about this too,
about being in a therapy session and having your therapist
correct your point of view on something like take time
out of the thing you're paying for, which makes it
even worse. But to correct to point out like, oh,
that might be internalized racism, And I think about, you know,
the thing that led me down this entire road was

(31:40):
that led to coddling in the American mind. And this
whole weird adventure i'd been on was you know, getting
ready to kill myself back in two thousand and seven
because I got clinically terribly depressed, partially because of the
Culture War, which is one of the reasons why I
actually take all this stuff so seriously. And I think about,
what if at the time I went in to talk
to to my therapist and they started judging me on

(32:04):
the observations that I was having that were just true
coming out of constantly being in the culture world all
the time, Like I'm literally not sure i'd still be here,
and that's no exaggeration. So the expansion of some of
this sort of like I have to correct your thoughts
or I don't have to treat people who are you know,
fifty percent of the population if I don't like them.
That's dangerous stuff for the mental health of the country,

(32:26):
and it certainly creates horrible ethical dilemmas for the profession.
But actually, have you heard any stories about this, Scott? Oh?

Speaker 2 (32:35):
Yes, what I see is a lot of ironically implicit
bias within the psychotherapy profession. I'm turning it back on them.
You know that phrase implicit bias. But you know, there's
almost like greater compassion for certain kinds of client, like
immediate without even knowing their life story. You know, certain
like like oh my gosh, you know, I'm treating this
person of color, so therefore I need to treat them

(32:57):
more delicately and show them more compassion, you know, just
pre judging things without which I thought the sort of
aim of psychotherapy lest the car Rogers unconditional positive regard.
Humanistic psychology approach that I take is that you care
about the individual experience more than anything else. You know,
you want to get to know a whole person, you know,

(33:20):
and not pre judge them. So it seems to go
be the opposite of that. You know, there seems to
be a lot of implicit bias in the field, is
what I've noticed. Shall we talk about comedy? Should we
lighten things up a little bit? This is this is
a heavy topic. You know, you guys wrote a heavy book.
You know you know it.

Speaker 3 (33:40):
You know it.

Speaker 2 (33:41):
I don't tell you that, but but comedy, so thank
God for comedians, right? Can we all agree? Can I
get an amen? That might be the last amen, the
last truth speakers that we that we allow, you know,
but you're saying, maybe we don't allow it anymore, and
maybe they are even they are being canceled. What have
you found in your work there?

Speaker 3 (34:03):
Yeah, I mean there's example after example of comedians being
protested or shut it down or asked to stop in
mid routine due to sensitivities that people have. I think
one of my favorite examples was Constantine Kissing at one
point in the UK was invited to do some sort
of charity event I think, and he was doing stand

(34:25):
up there and I asked him to preemptively write or
sign a contract that would say that he wouldn't offend
people based on race, religion, gender, etc. Before you even
showed up, which I then he pulled out of the event.
I don't blame him, because that's certainly, I mean, you
have to risk being offensive if you want to be comedic. Frankly,

(34:46):
I mean, I think it's a place where or a
cultural space where we can lean into some of the
most controversial and uncomfortable reality is in a kind of
cathartic way and share of laughs, and this is one.
But this definitely is one that gave me a little
bit of in the course of writing it. It's like,
uniquely probably the only case study in our book where
I feel like there is maybe light at the end

(35:06):
of the tunnel, because it's so egregious to see cancel
culture in this area that I think I think some
people who might be more sympathetic to it creeping up
in other crevaces of society are more allergic to the
idea of censoring comedians. Because there's two examples that I
think we're heartening. One was the Dave Chappelle Netflix protest.
A lot of their employees protested a special on which

(35:29):
he made jokes about transgender people. But the company in
the end changed their entire policy and kind of like
workplace manual to say, you know, we're going to say
things in publish things that you're not going to like
because we're a publishing platform, and if that's a problem
for you, then this is not the company for you,
which I think is a really great standard to put
forth because it requires everyone to put their own personal

(35:50):
politics and sensitivities aside. Then the other example that was
really heartening was Andrew Schulz had to run in with
a major streamer. I don't think he ever said publicly
which one where they wanted to cut out a few
jokes in a special that they bought from him, and
he bought it back and sold it on his own
and actually ended up making a ton of money on it.
I mean, of course, these are people who already had

(36:13):
very well established platforms, which puts them in a much
better position to be able to fight back against the
cancel culture versus someone who's up and coming. But I
do think this is one place where it's just like
a lot more people have been willing to say no,
like not not here.

Speaker 1 (36:28):
And you do improv, right, right, Scott?

Speaker 2 (36:31):
Improv, but also stand up in an alter.

Speaker 1 (36:34):
Ego, Yes, what's the environment like in your opinion?

Speaker 4 (36:40):
Well, it helps having an alter ego that no one
can recognize that has a mustache in an afro. I
don't even know if I'm a lot to say afro
to be honest, a jufro and maybe that's more Oh wow.

Speaker 2 (36:55):
But now the environment, you know, I still find that
comedians you know, one of the greatest joy is amongst
comedians is offending each other. Like when I hang out
with my friends who are comedians, we enjoy offending each other.
Is that taboo to say that? I mean, I feel
like that's just like part of the exercise.

Speaker 1 (37:16):
Well, that's been one of the things that I found
really funny about sort of like the rewriting of history,
or when I look at people getting offended by like,
you know, Sarah Silverman's you know, old TV show back
in the two thousand and seven. I remember looking at
the content of Comedy Central back in two thousand and seven,
and it was also edgy. I'm kind of like, you
know what, the situation for free speech can't be that

(37:38):
bad if this kind of stuff is like people get
that all this stuff as a joke. And then I
kind of like I saw this kind of look at
looking back, you know, offense archaeology stuff that we talk
about in the book, the idea of like looking backwards
in time to try to find something that was wouldn't
be acceptable today, to for example, get Sarah Silverman in
trouble for her for some of the racy bits that

(38:00):
she did in her in her short lived comedy Central
piece and getting her canceled. Meanwhile, I watched that show,
and the whole joke was that, you know, because she
was constantly making out of herself. The joke was that
Sarah is a horrible person and she's selfish and narcissistic
and does offensive things and doesn't even know they're offensive.
Like so it was actually really funny. But sometimes you

(38:20):
get the sense, when critically from younger people looking back,
it's like you didn't know that there were multiple levels
of things going on in this, Like we knew this
was offensive. That was part of the joke. But the
joke wasn't that, haha, this is offensive, It was what
kind of idiot would actually say something that stupid?

Speaker 3 (38:38):
Yeah, I mean, I think, honestly, no offense to the
SNL people, but I think embracing a lot of the
piece e stuff actually has made comedy considerably worse. Like
I think about just how in my own lifetime watching
SNL growing up, like it's just gotten considerably less funny
because they're not willing to call out very obvious excesses

(38:59):
on their own side. And then all of a sudden,
once in a blue moon, there will be some degree
of self awareness or like a political joke that pokes
fun at the left, and that'll be the thing that
goes viral because we make fun of the right pretty
constantly in forums like that, and I think from time
to time it's a little bit of like self referential
comedy has become something that we've also pulled away from

(39:20):
as well, in fear of being politically incorrect. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (39:25):
Really, you guys are making really good points. It seems
to me like the ability to develop the capacity to
laugh at yourself or to not take everything so personally
should be something we should teach people, not exact opposite.

Speaker 1 (39:37):
You know what I mean.

Speaker 2 (39:38):
It seems like a great skill, like to be able
to harness the skills of not taking rejection so seriously
and to look at your floibles and you know, being
able to laugh at them a bit. It seems like,
you know, a great skill.

Speaker 1 (39:52):
Absolutely. It's one of the things that you can tell
when I was really depressed back in tw thousands, someone
was actually a dangero myself. The one thing that you
you Scott would not have recognized about me was I
couldn't joke and I couldn't laugh And as far as
like my it's my major coping, you know mechanism and

(40:13):
if I if I'm not if I can't laugh, I'm
I'm in trouble. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (40:17):
Yeah, I see therapists because I have trouble taking anything seriously.
But that's that's a condition all on its own. It
seems like Americans are really losing trust in science. It
is it's in the air. It's you know, you see
on Twitter, like like everyone just immediately dismisses any science,

(40:40):
any scientific study. Now, can you tell me a little
bit about how we're seeing cancel culture effect you know,
our our mistrust of information?

Speaker 1 (40:51):
Yeah, I mean, this is a major theme of the book,
is about how cancel culture actually affects you, whether you
know it or not. Because, like you know, I I
this example a lot, partially because I know her. But
have you ever interviewed Carol Hooven formerly of Harvard.

Speaker 2 (41:06):
Yep, She's been on my podcast and I was at
a conference with her recently.

Speaker 1 (41:10):
Very thoughtful person. She's an evolutionary biologist. She wrote excellent,
I mean, honestly, like, I love you know the art
of popular nonfiction. It's just such a delightful read. While
being full of information called tea about testosterone and you know,
a controversial topic. You know, who could have seen that coming,
you know, fifteen years ago, that as controversial as was.

(41:30):
But she went on Fox News because you know, a
lot of other places don't want to talk about a
book that could be perceived as controversial. And she gives
this really compassionate explanation of you know, you should use
trans people's pronouns. You should be respectful, you should be empathetic,
you should be compassionate. But biological sex is real, and
we can't pretend it's not real. It's real, and it's important,

(41:50):
it has medical implications. And she did it. She did
seemed to do her best to really be the brilliant
but also compassionate person she actually is. And immediately a
DEI administrator at Harvard, you know, starts calling her out. Immediately,
students start organizing, and often times could be clear often
the student organizing is very much encouraged by administrators as well,

(42:13):
you know, to sign petitions, you know, to punish her.
So eventually nobody would be her ta, which Harvard should
have came in and said, no, we're not gonna you know,
get we stand by this professor. But the only person
who really did that was actually Steve Pinker, who's on
our board and as you know, a champion of back

(42:33):
at mcfreedom free speech. And she felt very isolated and
she got very depressed. She talks about in the book
about for the first time actually having suicidal ideation. And
she left Harvard. She came back to work for a
Pinker for a bit, and she's going to AI now.
And how does this relate to trust and expertise? It
relates to trust and expertise because if you're someone in

(42:53):
the public and you see this happen and you're like,
wait a second, someone just said something that is best
I can tell is always in a biolog that has
been a scientific fact for my entire life. She says
something that I think should be kind of uncontroversial, and
Harvard students and administrators ruined her career. So I don't
think science is owning enough how much it's done to

(43:15):
undermine its own credibility in the past ten years.

Speaker 2 (43:17):
What a really good point. Yeah, Ricky, do you want
to elaborate that all?

Speaker 3 (43:22):
Yeah, I mean, I think the pandemic was just like
the most clarifying instance of this because we went into
it with I mean, I think we like, over the
course of the pandemic, institutional trust went from like what
even to me in the beginning was a surprising high
to a really dismal low. Like I think back to
the two weeks to Sow the spread sort of time

(43:44):
period where I almost everyone I knew was a fan
of Anthony Fauci and trusting him and trusting institutions, and
yet we saw instances where people who had differing opinions
on whether it was Jay Bodatariev pointing out lockdowns or
Jennifer say out a school closures being an issue, or
you know, Vina Persod I think just recently had a

(44:08):
speech of his or a conversation that he was supposed
to have somewhere get canceled because he's had like heterodox
COVID opinions as well, and or the lab week theory.
I mean, that's pretty much probably, I guess, the lowest
hanging crew on something that seemed evident or very potential
to potentially possible to people, and yet there was a

(44:28):
total cancel culture teardown of anyone who had a heterodox
view on any of these issues. Plus you add in
the fact that people had more time than ever on
their hands in lockdown to actually analyze some things for
themselves and hold competing ideas in their head. And then
you have a one way or the highway sort of
public discourse, which I think is just one way to

(44:49):
just totally and almost irreparably, in my opinion, devastate trust
and voices of authority in a way that I mean,
I feel that way personally, but I don't. I'm not
reddling in that I don't think that's a positive in
any way, shape or form.

Speaker 2 (45:03):
To what extent is a lot of this Does it
come down to righteous indignation so much? Because I really
I'm want to read one of my favorite quotes and
link it to what we're talking about. The shortest way
to work up a crusade in favor of some good
cause is to promise people they will have a chance
of maltreating someone, to be able to destroy with good conscience,
to be able to behave badly, and call your bad

(45:26):
behavior scare quotes righteous indignation. This is the height of
psychological luxury, the most delicious of moral treats. Aldus Huxley
in Chrome Yellow. I feel like I'm seeing this everywhere
right now. Yeah, And I mean everywhere. I will this
will left right up down, you know, that's everywhere.

Speaker 1 (45:44):
Now what why yeah, I mean what one caveat we
actually found out that wasn't from Chrome Yellow. It is
from like the forward to some of that. I hadn't
I hadn't heard of it.

Speaker 2 (45:54):
It was Huxley, right, But it's Huxley.

Speaker 1 (45:55):
It's real. It's a real quote, and it's I couldn't
believe we didn't see it until after the book was done,
because it's like, oh wow, Huxley again for the when
I mean just completely right. You know, I think this
is one of the things that we're trying to actually
establish that Cancel culture should be understood as this historical period,
partially because every historical period has its own weirdnesses, you know,

(46:16):
like and one of them is the massive reliance on
social media changing the entire way we argue, you know,
in some ways much for the much much worse. And
that you know, that's why we are definition of has
a historical like beginning date. But these instincts, you know,
that lead to it, they're part of us. They are hardwired.
But righteous indignation, I mean it just like Huxley says,

(46:38):
I mean it's calling yourself a hero, you know, just
for the way you feel and how much you disapprove
and how much disgust you can muster. And it's so tempting.
It's so tempting to feel that superiority over someone, particularly
when you think your cause is righteous. And it's one
of the reasons why humility and checking yourself and one

(47:00):
of those things both Ricky and I repeat all the time,
taking seriously the possibility you might be wrong on this,
and knowing beyond a shadow of a doubt you're wrong
about an awful lot of stuff, So you know, before
you go decide to campaign to burn that which you know,
to have a moment of being like, have I been
wrong about stuff before? And if your answer is no,
you never have been, well, I don't think I can

(47:21):
help you very much.

Speaker 3 (47:22):
Yeah, I mean, I think one thing that really stuck
out to me in writing this book was an idea
that Greg had about called censorship gravity, and how our
society or all society is based on the fact that
this is our human nature is just naturally inclined to
being pulled down towards towards censorship. It's not a fallacy
in this case, to say that it's a slippery slope.

(47:43):
And I think, like an analogy, that he brought the
censorship gravity idea to the table, and I complimented it
with an analogy in the book about slouching. And I
think it's really important to realize that it takes a
degree in the same way that like you need to
be purposeful in standing up straight and actually realize when
your shoulders are slagy. It does take a degree of
of buy in and and and personal discipline to make

(48:07):
sure that you don't indulge those instincts. And I don't
think that's something that we really teach anymore. I have
those the idioms of live and let live and to
each their own. I think those have really gone to
the wayside with my generation and and I mean not
just my generation, but in the past couple of decades
in our culture, and we're seeing now the consequences of that.

Speaker 2 (48:27):
No, you, you, you really are far beyond your years. There,
Icky you, I think I feel like you, really, you
really belong here. I don't want to see any more
self deprecation. I think I think you you know, you're
very you are very wise and uh and great really
did make a great choice, this idea of I've been canceled.

Speaker 4 (48:47):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (48:48):
I think I hear everything you're saying, and I agree
with basically all of it. But I do see sometimes
a sort of victim mentality amongst some people who say
I've been canceled, And when you look a little bit deeper,
they haven't really been canceled. They've been maybe even just
criticized by someone on the left, you know. And I

(49:08):
really think we need to make these important distinctions about
what canceling really is versus those who claim canceling. But really,
you know, when you look deeper, some of them actually
even use it as ways of increasing their money, getting
money in platform. They scream, you know, I've been canceled,
support me at Patreon, you know, and then they become
richer than anyone else. But there are some people where

(49:30):
I feel like they they could easily have made the
choice to not have a victim mentality over it and
move forward with their lives very productively in a way
that they weren't really actually technically canceled. But what are
some of your thoughts. I know you have strong opinions
about this.

Speaker 1 (49:45):
Yeah, I mean, our definition of cancelation is very close
to our definition of censorship. So if you got harshly
criticized so what you know like that, that's not cancelation.
If you lost your job because of a campaign because
people were mad at you, that's cancelation as far as
far as we're concerned. If you got if you got
your paper rescinded, if you couldn't give a speech you know,

(50:06):
because you were shouted down, we count censorship. Our definition
of censorship and cancelation is very close.

Speaker 3 (50:12):
I'll also add to that that I had a point
of realization when I obviously was like just a kid
on campus that no one really gave a shit about,
and then all of a sudden, I'm writing op eds
and newspapers and some people did not like that and
came for me. But then I started realizing, like, no,
I am developing a victim mentality, where like if my

(50:35):
friend hasn't texted me back for an hour, like, well,
maybe it's because they hate me now, or maybe it's
because they're canceling me. And I definitely, for a period
of time assumed that you know, anything that might have
been negative or ambiguous directed towards me was for that reason,
and in retrospect, I remember just like one morning I
woke up and I was like, hey, oh gosh, I

(50:55):
totally have a victim mentality over this right now, and like,
yes he did lead some friend, but certainly not everything
bad that's happening is because they wrote not bad in
the New York Post's that's for sure.

Speaker 2 (51:06):
Yeah, well that's a great realization. It seems like an
important realization for your own mental health. I'm going to
just cover a couple more of these misconceptions that you
cover in the appendix. Because you tie your definition of
cancel culture to protected speech under their First Amendment, doesn't
that mean you're saying that people can dance nude in
the workplace, call each other racial epithets, and burn flags

(51:27):
at the office.

Speaker 1 (51:27):
Absolutely, that's exactly what we're saying. And I put that
in there very specifically because we have a couple of
critics who actually make arguments like this. And the reason
why this ended up in the appendix was because I'm like,
I don't want to waste any serious person's time with
arguments this silly. The reason why we tie it to
First Amendment is because it brings in a lot of
complexity and nuance to a short definition it recognizes, for example,

(51:51):
you know, incitement is not protected, defamation, it's not protected,
true threats or not protected. Except it allows you to
have a lot of complexity in a short definition, introduces
a tremendous amount of nuance to it, and your company
has the right of freedom association to decide I don't
want to work with this person. I don't want this
person representing me. But here's the problem from a culture

(52:15):
free speech, from a national and a perspective. If every
employer decided that they're both a widget factory and by
the way, they have a right or left political point
of view that if you disagree with you can get fired.
That may be something technically they can do, but it's
terrible for our democratic republic. It's terrible for democracy because
you'd have a situation where technically you have a First

(52:37):
Amendment right, but you can't actually say anything because because
you can't, you won't be able to work. So I
like having that as part of the definition. It doesn't
it's not too hard to explain. But as far as
like the actual objection, that's why I ended up in
the appendix.

Speaker 2 (52:55):
I gotcha. I'm glad that I asked it to you,
because I think that's important your answer. One more question,
I just really quick one to ask, and maybe maybe
Ricky can kind of take this have the last word
in this one. But isn't you know calls of oh,
I've been canceled only for the privileged, I would say,
it's not a position of power. Okay, explain a little bit.

Speaker 3 (53:15):
I mean, there's we have so many examples. I think
I just have friends that were canceled in high school.
I kind of consider myself among them of people who
are attacked, and when they're literally teenagers. I mean, the
people who who make that case, I think often just
completely ignore the fact that that high school and even
middle school campuses now. I mean I hear that often

(53:35):
from parents who tell me that, like, they're middle schoolers
being attacked. How does politics even have a place in
middle school at this point in time? And I mean,
there's just so many instances of random people here and
there just being torn down by mobs since the beginning
of cancel culture, and across all age groups and demographics.
I think there's a certainly a misunderstanding that it's minority

(53:59):
groups teaming back power or only attacking the privilege. The
chair downs have been pretty indiscriminate if you ask me,
and I think the case studies that we have throughout
the book demonstrate that fact for sure.

Speaker 1 (54:12):
Yeah, it kind of feels like the argument is, well,
it seems like I'm only reading about famous people in
the news. When it happens to famous people, it's like, right, because.

Speaker 2 (54:19):
They're famous people.

Speaker 1 (54:20):
That's what gets in the news. Like the like the
little person getting toward down, which happens all the time,
particularly in freaking high school, that's just not going to
get in the New York Times.

Speaker 2 (54:29):
Wonderful. Well, guys, I just want to say again, congratulations
on this book. I am honored to consider you all
my friend, uh and I wish you all the best
in this crusade to have more free speech and also
you know these things are not all at alledge there
more free speech, but also more compassionate in the world,

(54:50):
absolutely each other. I mean, these things do not have
to be mutually incompatible, right, So thank you, thank you so.

Speaker 1 (54:57):
Much, Scott, And check out the fire and out of Ork.

Speaker 3 (55:01):
What