The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast

I just saw a book of Oz Guinness called the Magnicator of Humanity which argues about the book of Exodus that it's a foundational...

His highly anticipated memoir Before and Laughter launched in September 2021 made the Sunday Times bestseller list.

and in my book is about this really it's a it's a a case for living through humor

and I think the best jokes the funniest things that have been said are not said by famous comedians they're said by you and your friendship group and your family they're in jokes and comedy at its best recreates the in joke of the tribe within within that space

I advocate in the book is comedians because one of the comedians kind of superpowers is failure

it's got a lot of kind of there's a lot of life advice in there and the hard choices now easy life later strikes me as the I mean all self-help basically says the same thing

...to The End of the Old Order Napoleon in Europe, 1805, 1801 to 1805 to Capitol Press 2006.

His book which we're going to concentrate on today at least to some degree is The Respondent exposing the cartel of family law to call to action and a necessary one to reform the one branch of our legal system that does not provide the presumption of innocence family law.

it's the defendant in a family law case and the petitioner is that person who actually instigates the proceedings so what happened to me in the span of I'd say around eight hours

it starts in the star chamber of family law whereas my story as you know it kind of that's the second it's in three parts part one is fear part two is loathing part three as a redemption and it moves into the second part into the system and the systematic institutionalized bias of how courts perceive how individuals within the court system judges charts psychologists perceive men and fathers um and the family unit um and this you know the neo-feminist kind of radical fourth way of feminism that does the devalues the patriarchy I don't want to go go to down that um uh discussion yeah but well it's worth it's worth

and I've just uh we've added we've been adding sound effects and ambience and atmosphere to that to make it to make it really feel like that hellish journey you know so you're actually there and present uh more so than just a regular like me reading the audio book and I've got a couple of great people who've helped with that and Dre Romano was one nine nine time any award winner uh she voiced direct did it and actually read as one of the psychologists at the end of the book so um hopefully hopefully

if we can get the suicide right down if my book can get to one person that they and they can feel like they're not alone well that's a big deal for people to know that they're not alone you know and they're not crazy how do you see enough I've got I had a uh military father who lost his legs in Afghanistan two chores at Tools of Duty was served with false allegations of domestic violence papers he came home homeless hasn't seen his kids I think for six years it's been representing himself and family law and I think about that Jordan and it just it makes me we talk about being punished for your virtues man whoa you said it you said it you know all right well mr. Alice looks good to see on your feet and through this piece of something too thank you very much I'm talking with you man

the only book I found was Alec Baldwin's book A Promise to Ourselves and I could only get 15 pages into that because and he emailed me and said this is the best I can offer right now read my book here's is literally it starts in the star chamber of family law

Dostoevsky had it right to some degree in The Grand Inquisitor because the do you remember that story The Grand Inquisitor yeah I mean I'm it's been been many okay well the remarkable actually read the book but well the remarkable thing about that story is Christ comes back to earth yeah and he does some miracles and it's the church himself that puts him in jail and then the head of the church comes to the jail and says what the hell are you doing back here the last thing we need is you we've got everything sorted out we know what's going on it's like we're going to put you to death tomorrow and the Christ kisses him on the lips and The Grand Inquisitor turns white and then when he leaves The Grand Inquisitor he leaves the door open and that was that's so brilliant and you know Dostoevsky was writing at the same time of his Nietzsche and had quite an influence on Nietzsche as it turned out and but because Dostoevsky was writing fiction he could go places that Dostoevsky couldn't go as a philosopher and one of the things he was trying to point out was that despite the proclivity to totalitarianism that you can lay at the feet of sectarian religion the doors left open and you know all of us have to come to terms with the fact that our institutions religious and otherwise tend to ossify into these totalitarian structures that are analogous socially I think in some ways to the default network that you just described they're trying to point to something beyond that but you know they degenerate and ossify and then but then we have to go underneath that too if we're going to get our criticisms right because as terrified as it's reasonable to be about religious sectarianism and totalitarianism it's also necessary to remember that chimpanzees go on raiding parties yeah and kill the neighboring tribe so to speak and they're not motivated by religious concerns and so to put that at the feet of religion even implicitly I think is I understand why that's an impulse but it doesn't face the problem deeply enough and it also obscures a potential solution I think because it tends it tends to throw the baby out with the bath water and I know you're trying to regain the baby yeah no I'm trying to save the baby yeah yeah no I love that baby

In her 2004 book The Truth About Drug Companies, How They Deceive Us and What To Do About It, she argued that the companies spent far more on marketing, administration, public relations and rebranding than they did on research and that they actually discovered very few new effective drugs. Instead they used quote, lures, bribes and kickbacks, close quote to get drugs taken up by physicians.

The latest edition of the standard textbook in the field, Plotkins Vaccine, has an excellent chapter on vaccine safety, which notes quote, because reactions that are rare, delayed or which occur in only certain subpopulations may not be detected before vaccines are licensed, post-licensure evaluation of vaccine safety is critical, close quote.

Donald J Savvow has written a book on this called Democracy in Canada the disintegration of our institutions it's only a couple years old it's a haunting book but he's one of the experts in governance in Canada and he's a scholar at University of Monkton and this is more or less his epic book he's written quite a few books on this over the years and this is a book that every thinking Canadian should read because it methodically and intelligently these are the ones that are in the middle of the world.

Dr. Ahmed is the author of two books linked in show notes titled Saul Krypki and Evidence Decision and Cousality.

The origins and history of consciousness is a remarkable book. And so is The Great Mother.

Peterson comments on another personal favorite author of his Mircea Eliade and his history of Religious Ideas.

he has a three volume history of religious ideas and it's also great work in my estimation. I really learned a lot from everything I read that Merchaya Eliella published and so for people who are interested in Neumann, he's another person to study and depth and the history of religious ideas.

It's an anthropological and sociological assessment of religion but it's also deeply psychological and it focuses on meaning so it's in the same vein of thinking and that's another book set of books that are very much worth pursuing for anyone that finds this kind of material captivating.

Values might not be [scientifically] defensible. Taken to the extreme, it might be hard to explain why existing is better than not

We believe that any credible 'ought' needs to be scientifically informed

The amazing rate of change we've created is itself deranging us and making it very difficult to understand and remember how to be human

It's not that progress is bad - the benefit of progress is often tremendous, but it almost always comes with important unintended consequences

Children will destroy your life and replace it with a better one

If you gave people everything they need so that they had nothing to do but eat cakes and busy themselves with the continuation of the species. If they were so happy that nothing but bubbles of bliss would appear on the surface of the water that they were in, they would smash it all to pieces just so that something adventurous and unique could happen.