Maintenance Phase - Jordan Peterson Part 2： The Moscow Diaries

00:00:00.000 hi everybody and welcome to maintenance phase the podcast where we have the meat

00:00:15.700 no you've been practicing that are you i have not been practicing that i have specifically

00:00:22.760 not been practicing it but it's been in my head i'm aubrey gordon i'm michael hobbs if you would

00:00:27.520 like to support the show you can do that at patreon.com slash maintenance phase and today

00:00:32.040 michael hobbs i'm very nervous about what comes next in our two-parter about jordan peterson

00:00:37.380 the thrilling conclusion we did a lot of build-up last time i know that's the thing i've i've i've

00:00:42.920 set your expectations too high and now we're just gonna fizzle out like a long-running tv show

00:00:48.400 prepare to be disappointed so tell us uh tell us where we are what what do we know about this

00:00:55.520 Jordan Peterson guy so far? Jordan Peterson is a professor out of Toronto. He is very aligned

00:01:03.960 with sort of academic frameworks around moral absolutism. He talks about having felt depressed

00:01:09.760 and anxious and finding comfort in that moral absolutism. Yes. And so he has a daughter named

00:01:16.540 Michaela who has rheumatoid arthritis and convinces him to join her on her all meat diet. And that is

00:01:24.520 beef salt water the end that is all you eat and jordan peterson has gone on joe rogan's show

00:01:32.000 to spread the good word what do we know about mr peterson politically what are his beliefs uh his

00:01:38.560 politics are categorically completely unaligned with mine yes he is wrong about everything and

00:01:44.900 you are right about everything that's a good rubric as a short as a shortcut is that a fair

00:01:50.540 recap yes that is exactly where we are we should also start with a brontosaurus of a content note

00:01:56.980 because we're talking about jordan peterson this episode is going to involve transphobia

00:02:02.200 uh suicide some holocaust stuff it's impossible to talk about this man without getting into really

00:02:10.140 rough territory really quickly yeah so we left you with a little cliffhanger about a reaction

00:02:16.980 that he has to food. We are going to start with a clip of Mr. Peterson describing that reaction.

00:02:23.620 A little background. In early 2016, his daughter talks him into doing this pretty restrictive diet

00:02:29.540 that is just basically beef and chicken and greens. So he mentioned in the last episode,

00:02:34.980 it was like cucumbers and broccoli and maybe some spinach or something. But he's basically,

00:02:38.720 he's already down to five foods. And Jordan Peterson has been taking antidepressants, SSRIs,

00:02:45.060 for most of his adult life in 2016 he stops taking them because the diet that he's already on is

00:02:52.560 working such miracles it will later work more miracles when he switches to only beef but he's

00:02:57.540 already seeing very positive developments from this very restrictive diet that he's on

00:03:01.780 and that is roughly where we find him in this clip this is a clip from the same joe rogan show

00:03:10.780 that we watched last time but slightly later in the interview we're going back to joe rogan back

00:03:18.040 to life what's fascinating to me is i haven't heard any negative stories about people doing this

00:03:25.160 well i have a negative story okay okay one of the things that both mikaela and i noticed was that

00:03:31.580 when we restricted our diet and then ate something we weren't supposed to the reaction to eating what

00:03:37.680 we weren't supposed to was absolutely catastrophic what did you do what did you switch to or what

00:03:42.860 did you eat rather well the worst response i think we're allergic to or allergic whatever

00:03:46.980 the hell this is having an uh an inflammatory response to something called sulfites and we had

00:03:52.060 some apple cider that had sulfites in it and that was really not good like i was done for a month

00:03:56.940 that was the first time i talked to sam harris you were done for a month oh yeah it took me out

00:04:01.220 for a month it was awful apple cider like what was it sulfites in it what was it doing to you

00:04:06.300 oh it it produced an overwhelming sense of impending doom and i seriously mean overwhelming

00:04:13.480 like there's no way i could have lived like that if that would have lasted for

00:04:16.380 see michaela knew by that point that it would probably only last a month and i was like a month 0.92

00:04:21.580 yeah a month fucking cider oh i didn't sleep that that month i didn't sleep for 25 days 0.88

00:04:27.280 i didn't sleep at all i didn't sleep at all for 25 days how is that possible i'll tell you how 0.99

00:04:32.600 it's possible you lay in bed uh frozen in something approximating terror for eight hours 0.97

00:04:38.380 and then you get up oh my god oh yeah not good and this is some fucking cider from that's what 0.94

00:04:43.360 we thought yeah boy oh boy yeah this is a phrase i didn't expect to say here pretty sure in this 0.98

00:04:51.200 case joe rogan is right as usual the most cursed sentence i have ever uttered i don't think you

00:05:00.720 can stay up for 25 days. Yeah. But I also do know that there have been times when I thought I didn't

00:05:09.700 sleep, but then sort of go back through my night and go. Yeah, yeah. Like I remember looking at

00:05:14.520 the clock at 1am and then again at 4am, but I don't know what was happening for those three

00:05:18.780 hours. So I must have dozed off or something. But in terms of like, is this actually what happened?

00:05:24.640 It seems unlikely. You are saying things that are written down like word for word in my notes.

00:05:29.660 I'm not going to debunk this.

00:05:31.160 Like the recorded, I don't want to say world record, but like, yeah, world record for staying up is 11 days.

00:05:38.100 Like that's the longest time anyone has been documented to stay up without sleep.

00:05:42.060 But also we've all been in this case, right, where it feels like you were up all night.

00:05:47.260 Yeah.

00:05:47.760 His point is I felt really bad for a month.

00:05:50.620 This episode puts us in the uncomfortable situation of having human sympathy for someone who I deeply dislike.

00:05:55.860 yeah and who i fundamentally disagree with on like every level this sounds like it just 0.83

00:06:00.220 uncomplicatedly sucks like he had this i guess allergic reaction he says it's to something

00:06:05.380 called sodium metabisulfates that they put in apple cider to stop the fermentation process 0.83

00:06:09.760 that seems like something he got from michaela it's not clear if that's kind of true or if it's

00:06:14.600 because this diet was so restrictive that his body just like couldn't process anything other

00:06:19.060 than water as a liquid ultimately it doesn't really matter it sounds like these 25 days are

00:06:23.320 just hell he's like he's not sleeping he almost faints when he gets up he says he's cold all the

00:06:28.980 time no matter what so he goes to the doctor and the doctor puts him on clonazepam which is known

00:06:36.800 as clonopin yeah i used to have a prescription for that stuff oh wait really yeah oh this is

00:06:41.860 very relevant to this episode i mean it's it's benzos expensive i know they work really well

00:06:46.880 i have a different thing now to replace my clonopin okay most of the health care providers

00:06:52.380 that I have seen since I was regularly on Klonopin have been like, oh, yeah, we don't do that anymore

00:06:56.380 because that's extremely addictive. And we should like super not be prescribing those to people.

00:07:02.060 Aubrey, spoilers. Stop spoiling. Stop spoiling the episode. You're doing it again.

00:07:09.820 Am I fired now? I usually fire you.

00:07:12.800 So yeah, I mean, what do you know about Klonopin? Like, what do you know about benzodiazepines?

00:07:15.840 Okay, so more than usual. So Klonopin is part of a drug class called benzodiazepines. It's in there with drugs like Ativan and Xanax. They all have different acting times. I think sometimes people say panic attack, and they mean like episodes of high anxiety. I was having like the kinds of panic attacks where it's like, you think you're having a heart attack, so you call an ambulance.

00:07:39.920 Oh, my God.

00:07:40.680 So that's what I took them for was like, they're like, okay, when you feel yourself heading into that territory, take one of these and you won't have to do all that.

00:07:47.780 Oh, so you were taking them regularly.

00:07:48.820 You were taking them like acutely, like when you felt something coming on, you would take one.

00:07:52.500 Yeah, totally.

00:07:53.320 Totally.

00:07:53.640 Interesting.

00:07:54.100 Okay.

00:07:54.540 So like, that's the basic thing is that it's designed to pull the ripcord on all of your sort of physiological fight or flight responses.

00:08:03.120 Yes.

00:08:03.520 So it's designed to like stop erasing heart.

00:08:05.460 It's designed to manage all of these physiological symptoms that get triggered when you're in

00:08:11.380 a state of extremely high or acute anxiety.

00:08:14.680 One of the descriptions I came across said that it slows down the messages between the

00:08:18.640 brain and the body.

00:08:19.640 It works on something called the GABA receptors, which stands for something, but I don't know

00:08:24.420 what it is, that is like how stimulated your nervous system is.

00:08:28.080 Just kind of takes the foot off the gas.

00:08:30.820 And it works very similar to alcohol, actually.

00:08:33.320 Another piece of foreshadowing.

00:08:34.940 it just kind of makes you calmer on every level a valium is another benzodiazepine yeah so jordan

00:08:40.580 peterson is a licensed psychologist right he he didn't he's not a psychiatrist he didn't go to

00:08:45.700 medical school but like he's a medical provider right and his doctor puts him on a daily clonopin

00:08:52.340 and he like doesn't really think about it he's just like i had this crazy allergic reaction

00:08:57.740 then my doctor gave me this thing so that i'm not anxious and like it worked really well i'm

00:09:02.340 sleeping better all my symptoms whatever this allergic reaction was that's all gone and like

00:09:07.060 whatever he just kind of moves on this is also this is the time when he's getting very famous

00:09:12.100 we talked last episode about he basically has very standard conservative beliefs in 2016 2017

00:09:20.260 when all this begins he's known as somebody with he's got this weird kooky book this academic

00:09:25.140 unreadable mess then he becomes a public figure on this political correctness stuff is out of

00:09:30.080 control. Then he puts out basically like a self-help book. It's called 12 Rules for Life.

00:09:35.400 And it's like, we didn't really go into it in any great detail because it's just like extremely

00:09:38.420 standard. Sub Rachel Hollis, like, put your shoulders back, stand up straight, like bootstraps,

00:09:45.340 bootstraps, bootstraps. It's just like very standard self-help stuff.

00:09:48.780 Right. I mean, standard self-help stuff, but delivered by a moral absolutist.

00:09:54.660 Exactly. 0.93

00:09:54.980 I would venture a guess that it's, like, even more, like, shitty and dismissive than usual self-help books. 0.51

00:10:02.060 Yeah.

00:10:02.540 The line that I still cannot get out of my head is he's referring to an old childhood friend who's staying with him and is, like, struggling with depression and alcohol, and I think he's going through a divorce.

00:10:11.460 And he refers to his friend as having the smell of the unemployable. 1.00

00:10:16.300 Holy fuck, what? 1.00

00:10:18.040 And then his friend kills himself. 1.00

00:10:19.780 What?

00:10:20.220 it's like supposed to be this like touching story and it's just like oh this is how you

00:10:25.240 talk about your friend who died wait why is it a touching story to tell about your friend's death

00:10:30.520 by suicide well it's like it's like it's supposed to be like we reconnected as people and i understood

00:10:36.080 him and blah blah blah and then he like links it to climate change it's we don't have time

00:10:42.100 aubrey we don't have time we don't have time there's too much even in a two-parter i struggled 0.76

00:10:47.740 with like how to cover that book because i read the whole fucking thing and like we really didn't 0.53

00:10:51.080 talk about it last episode but it's like it's just pretty standard right-wing stuff and pretty 0.89

00:10:55.500 standard self-help stuff yeah ultimately it's like we can hammer it and like belabor it into

00:10:59.460 the ground but like it's ultimately just not that interesting even though people keep trying to make

00:11:05.020 it interesting i just kept reading through it like nope nothing new nothing unique here really

00:11:09.880 just normal like rachel hollis but without any of like the writing talent or the likability

00:11:14.540 but then as he becomes more famous two things start to happen one track is there's all of this

00:11:22.520 media coverage of him that is like essentially making him seem a lot more respectable and like

00:11:28.660 a lot more unique than he is there's an la times article called hate on jordan peterson all you

00:11:35.720 want but he's tapping into frustration that feminists shouldn't ignore oh god there's also 0.69

00:11:41.920 another one in The Atlantic. The headline is, Why the Left is so Afraid of Jordan Peterson.

00:11:48.320 The Canadian psychology professor's stardom is evidence that leftism is on the decline

00:11:53.160 and deeply vulnerable. Oh, good. It's feminists and leftists' fault that this right-wing person

00:11:58.440 is popular. And I think this is very telling. So in this Atlantic article, it says,

00:12:04.040 there are plenty of reasons for individual readers to dislike Jordan Peterson. There are

00:12:08.200 many legitimate reasons to disagree with him on a number of subjects, and many people of goodwill

00:12:12.780 do. But there is no coherent reason for the left's obliterating and irrational hatred of Jordan

00:12:19.080 Peterson. Oh, I'm tired. So this is like very typical of the media coverage at the time. It's

00:12:27.680 like, what's everybody so worked up about? Like this guy's just telling the truth. Like what were

00:12:32.660 the critiques that folks are responding to at this point? Well, this is the other track that

00:12:37.340 is happening is that as he becomes more of a public figure right he's doing interviews he's

00:12:42.160 on tv he's tweeting he's writing blog posts as more information and content comes out of this man

00:12:49.620 it becomes clearer and clearer that like not only does he have a bog standard set of conservative

00:12:55.580 opinions but he has like actually pretty far right opinions oh so like he has bad gender stuff

00:13:01.200 he says the idea that women were oppressed throughout history is an appalling theory

00:13:06.520 cool he says feminists avoid criticizing islam because they unconsciously long for masculine

00:13:13.860 dominance oh neat not sure how we prove or disprove that my longing for masculine dominance is very

00:13:20.860 suppressed at this point that's the first thing i say about you when people like who's this co-host

00:13:24.960 of yours i'm like her longing for masculine dominance she actually very high longing yeah

00:13:29.700 she doesn't know it but we all know it yeah am i right fellas

00:13:35.440 that's the voice i do around straight people he of course blames feminists for the rise of trump

00:13:43.720 and like this much harder right conservatism he says if men are pushed too hard to feminize

00:13:49.340 they will become more and more interested in harsh fascist political ideology cool so ladies

00:13:55.520 if you hadn't been so shrill the men would not be like lighting tiki torches it's on us there's 1.00

00:14:01.560 obviously some like appalling race shit he has a video called white privilege is a marxist lie 1.00

00:14:08.240 oh i'm interested he says islamophobia is a word created by fascists and used by cowards to 1.00

00:14:18.020 manipulate morons which isn't even his quote that's something that he took from someone else 0.98

00:14:23.680 but he like tweets it out oh that's cool for him to like plagiarize that ableism and islamophobia 0.99

00:14:30.020 to just like yoink it from somebody else that's where i draw the line that's where i draw the

00:14:35.580 line one of the things that also drives me nuts is that there's always these debates about like

00:14:39.240 what does he really mean because he's kind of further to the right in some interviews than

00:14:42.620 others but like he's extremely consistent on having wildly retrograde views on trans people

00:14:48.240 so i have listened to many interviews with this man in almost all of them he brings up his very

00:14:53.660 fervent belief that trans people do not exist are you familiar with this autogynophilia are you 0.75

00:14:59.000 familiar with this yes i hate it it's so gross dude it's this decades old myth that they used 0.96

00:15:04.420 to say about gay people there's no such thing as gay men all they are is they're people who get 0.96

00:15:08.720 turned on by themselves they get turned on when they look in the mirror so they've created this 1.00

00:15:13.240 whole fantasy where it's like i'm gonna date other men because all they want is to be turned 0.99

00:15:17.080 on by themselves it's this bullshit myth that like boy oh boy it was like too homophobic for 0.99

00:15:20.520 Anita Bryant right and it's now been resurrected as a transphobic thing that trans women are just 0.98

00:15:26.700 basically men who have a fetish for dressing up in women's clothes and like they take it too far 0.96

00:15:30.960 that's the theory right there's no evidence for it's like complete garbage yeah this is a concept 0.98

00:15:35.500 that is like too transphobic for a lot of like the transphobes like a lot of quote-unquote gender 0.97

00:15:41.600 critical people don't even bring this up because it's like too fucking hardcore yeah and Jordan 0.88

00:15:46.060 peterson is like on joel rogan's podcast all these places saying that like this is what's going on

00:15:51.400 he also i found a really interesting piece in haretz about jordan peterson doing very consistently

00:15:57.820 some light holocaust denial what well okay so to be clear he's never done full on like the holocaust

00:16:06.520 didn't happen stuff but what he does is he he repeats a number of myths that appear in holocaust

00:16:13.360 denial rhetoric and are kind of like an on-ramp to Holocaust denial. So one of them is that,

00:16:20.040 you know, he does this thing where he's like, you know, obviously Hitler was a monster, 0.85

00:16:24.060 obviously atrocities, but, you know, you have to give him credit for saving the German economy in

00:16:30.020 the 1930s. You know, you might not like his policies, but, you know, there were some good

00:16:34.100 things about the regime as well. This is what Haaretz says. The economic wonder of Nazi Germany

00:16:40.340 is a nazi propaganda myth economic problems were rife already by late 1934 this is a year after 0.82

00:16:46.260 hitler came to power and only got worse from there hitler's many aggressive foreign policy actions

00:16:51.140 and his accelerating persecution of the jews during the second half of the 1930s were partly

00:16:55.660 intended as distractions from the poor economy it's not true that like you have to give you have

00:17:02.040 to give it to hitler on this one like you really don't actually ever on anything he also does this

00:17:07.900 fake like hard truths thing like you gotta admit about the nazis being elected like you know hitler

00:17:14.120 was elected and like no in the last free and fair election that they had in germany he got 37 percent

00:17:19.920 of the vote yeah totally this is another one um peterson uses a false narrative of concern with

00:17:25.220 health and cleanliness to argue that hitler in 1933 initiated mass tuberculosis screenings which

00:17:30.900 actually turned out to be a good thing so again we're in the like oh you got to admit hitler did

00:17:34.980 some good stuff it says but no such massive screenings for the benefit of public health

00:17:39.620 occurred the nazis considered tuberculosis a sign of racial inferiority and often referred to jews 0.99

00:17:44.780 as racial tb infecting the body politic holy motherfucking shit i know screenings were not a 0.99

00:17:51.620 good thing but were used to identify people deemed unworthy of life tuberculosis was effectively used 1.00

00:17:57.440 as a biological weapon in the ghettos and concentration camps during the war holy fuck

00:18:02.380 Again, it's like he's never really leaned into like where this stuff goes, but these are the kinds of arguments that get people curious about this stuff, right? 0.83

00:18:11.480 And get people in this frame of like, well, maybe the mainstream media isn't telling the full story about the Nazis, right? 0.99

00:18:18.740 It's like you got to be really careful with this shit. 0.98

00:18:21.080 And it also plays into this, like, bizarre fantasy that he would have to be bad at everything in every moment for him to be considered a bad leader, right? Like, the implication here is that, like, committing genocide is not enough to be considered a bad leader. This feels like a bananas thing to be saying, that I'm like, hey, everybody, it's okay to write off Hitler. 0.99

00:18:46.740 I mean, to me, it's like kind of a metaphor for the role that Jordan Peterson ends up playing, right, where he's not officially far right, right? He stops just short, but he's like a little sampler platter, right? He makes a lot of the same arguments, right? Of like, aren't black people like lying about racism? And like, aren't women lying about sexual harassment? And like, aren't there questions to be asked about the typical narratives of history that we hear?

00:19:14.420 he's someone who just like inserts doubt into all of these areas and he like he kind of shepherds

00:19:20.060 you over not all the way over to the far right but it's like he walks you to the door of the

00:19:25.800 house party and he's like have a good night yeah like there's actual research on this researchers

00:19:30.860 have looked at commenters if you look at youtube commenters you can see like well first they

00:19:34.740 commented on this video and then they commented on this video and then this one and 40 of the

00:19:40.340 people who comment on like super far right like white nationalist videos on youtube began in this

00:19:46.580 intellectual dark web that like jordan peterson is personifying so you can't draw a straight line

00:19:53.060 from jordan peterson to the far right right but it's like a lot of people who ended up on the far

00:19:58.260 right did start in the place that jordan peterson is like picking them up sure it's like gateway

00:20:03.920 drugs aren't real but this is the gateway drug exactly but then what's what's amazing to me is

00:20:08.600 like by 2019 his links to the far right are like really out in the open so he goes to hungary and

00:20:16.820 meets with victor orban this like super far-right authoritarian leader he goes to norway and goes

00:20:22.980 to a party hosted by their like mega far-right anti-semitic party takes a bunch of selfies with

00:20:28.200 their party leaders he says that he didn't get a grant because of like oh due to my political

00:20:33.220 beliefs i missed out on this grant and then of course all these other researchers are like uh

00:20:37.720 Yeah. I have also lost grants. Like, you don't get every grant that you apply for, right? There's no actual evidence that it was due to his political views. And then a far right website called The Rebel sets up a GoFundMe, essentially, for him. And then he ends up earning more than $100,000. And he was going to get $200,000 from the grant. And then this is the most bananas one. He does a video called The IQ Problem.

00:21:01.900 oh no i will let you speculate in your mind as to what the contents are with have you ever heard of

00:21:08.660 stefan molyneux no he's like a full-on white nationalist i i was gonna read you some quotes

00:21:14.900 to like show you just how bad this guy was but all i will tell you is that he has been permanently

00:21:20.420 banned from youtube twitter mailchimp soundcloud and paypal what does it take to get banned from

00:21:28.620 MailChimp. Boy, oh boy. You're going to be like, he got banned from Safeway. He got banned from

00:21:36.080 the post office. This guy is too racist for fucking PayPal. And Jordan Peterson is doing 1.00

00:21:42.220 videos with him. Boy, oh boy. So looking back, I remain really mystified and frustrated by the

00:21:47.740 fact that these two tracks existed simultaneously. That on one hand, you have pretty mainstream media

00:21:54.220 sources who are constantly expressing bewilderment that liberals are mad at jordan peterson there's

00:22:01.120 literally another atlantic article called why can't people hear what jordan peterson is saying

00:22:07.640 and it's like why can't you yeah he's making very straightforward appeals to far-right people he's

00:22:14.400 being openly embraced by the far-right he's saying things that are like indistinguishable from far-right

00:22:20.220 arguments. It's actually not weird at all. Yeah. If we're already in this like bad faith,

00:22:25.120 shitty conversation about like, oh, what are people so fired up about? Is he really that bad?

00:22:31.180 Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. That's someone who thinks it's not. Yeah. And is posing it as a

00:22:35.580 question so that they don't feel like as much of a jerk. Right. If you really want to find out, 0.99

00:22:39.900 is it really that bad? Then actually looking to what's the work that you cite and source and like,

00:22:45.920 right whose sort of models are you following and that kind of thing actually can be really

00:22:50.640 illuminating and can really matter so that okay that was the part of the episode where i make you

00:22:54.480 really hate this guy well it seems pretty earned yes exactly this is the part of the episode where

00:22:58.720 i make you hate this guy by telling you things that he has said and done by accurately reporting

00:23:04.240 his beliefs and actions yes but then this is the really annoying part where now we have to go back

00:23:09.660 to sympathizing with him as a human being. So he starts having kind of weird side effects from the

00:23:17.000 benzodiazepines. He starts getting like numbness on the side of his, on like the left side of his

00:23:22.880 body. He starts getting kind of lightheaded, but he doesn't really link any of the health effects

00:23:28.220 to the fact that he's now taking Klonopin. So in January of 2019, his daughter Michaela has to have

00:23:35.020 surgery on her foot because apparently the ankle replacement that they had done when she was a kid

00:23:39.400 didn't take or like it had been done poorly so they have to put in a new one and according to

00:23:44.560 him there's a question of how well this is going to take so there's a chance that she's never going

00:23:49.000 to walk again so this is just like a very stressful thing to go through as a father

00:23:52.480 two months after that his wife is diagnosed with cancer it's a mild fairly routine form of kidney

00:24:00.600 cancer she's going to get a third of her kidney removed they go in for the surgery they're like

00:24:05.760 oh yeah it's a routine surgery it's really not that big of a deal after the surgery they sit

00:24:10.000 down with the doctor and they're like you know how did everything go get like debrief and the

00:24:14.460 doctor says it turns out you actually don't have a mild form of cancer you have a severe form of

00:24:20.040 cancer and you have one year to live oh christ and it's apparently it's like a super rare form of

00:24:25.740 cancer so then he he describes the next six months as just like a never-ending nightmare there's like

00:24:30.800 more surgeries that she has to have. Nobody knows anything about this weird, rare form of cancer.

00:24:36.140 So they're like traveling to different cities and countries to get specialists to look at it. I mean,

00:24:40.520 it just sounds like all of a sudden, your life is just completely thrown into turmoil. And he

00:24:45.560 talks about like sleeping on the floors of emergency rooms. I mean, this sounds like a

00:24:49.500 genuine ordeal as a husband. Yeah, I mean, it sounds fucking horrible. This is like a horrible 0.98

00:24:53.780 human experience for everyone involved. And it's not something that anybody should have to go

00:24:58.500 through but all kinds of people do and boy oh boy it's terrible and so luckily they come out of the

00:25:05.140 other end of this his wife has her entire kidney removed her lymphatic system is removed and it

00:25:10.720 seems that she's fine now okay so everything returns to quote-unquote normal but yeah his

00:25:16.720 anxiety what's called breaks through the benzodiazepine he also starts getting super

00:25:22.960 depressed. So he goes to the doctor, he increases his dosage, but then the extra Klonopin makes him

00:25:30.120 more anxious. It's not totally clear why this happens, but sometimes taking a medication for

00:25:36.020 anxiety can actually make you more anxious. So the doctor says, okay, that means we need to up

00:25:40.640 the dose again. So they've now increased his dosage twice, but it seems that his anxiety

00:25:45.780 symptoms and his depression are both getting worse. So in May of 2019, he decides to stop

00:25:54.000 cold turkey. His benzos? Yeah. Something that it doesn't appear Jordan Peterson's doctor ever

00:25:59.520 told him is that benzos are extremely addictive. And effectively, the only way to get off of them

00:26:05.760 is to do what's called a taper. So you take three quarters of the pill for two weeks and then half

00:26:09.960 the pill for two weeks, et cetera, et cetera. I spent a lot of time for this on there's various

00:26:13.860 forums for people going through benzo addiction and trying to get off and it's really hard and

00:26:19.500 people talk about still taking one sixteenth of a pill like a year later yeah like if you have

00:26:25.540 been on benzos for two years like jordan peterson has yeah it's like a really long and slow process

00:26:32.060 to get off of them and like needs to be very strictly controlled and monitored by a doctor

00:26:37.160 it feels very there before the grace of god go i because if i had uh taken these medications as

00:26:42.540 they are more commonly prescribed, which is the way that they were prescribed to Jordan Peterson,

00:26:47.800 I totally could have been in that same addiction and dependency boat, you know?

00:26:52.060 Also, the idea of going to your doctor, you're like, I have this symptom. They're like,

00:26:54.900 take this drug. And you're like, yeah, okay. And like, you just don't really think that much of

00:26:58.440 it, right? You're like, I had a thing, my doctor gave me a pill, and now I'm better. And you don't

00:27:02.660 really think of like the consequences of that or what it would mean to stop taking it. It doesn't

00:27:07.600 seem that it was ever described to him, like, how big of a deal this was. And it also doesn't seem

00:27:12.860 like anybody explained to him that, like, going off of a benzodiazepine cold turkey is really

00:27:18.120 risky. Yeah, totally. You know, there's insomnia, you can have psychosis, you can have really severe

00:27:24.520 seizures, and then people oftentimes vomit during their seizures, and they choke on it, and you can

00:27:30.480 die. Yeah, I've I've had loved ones go off of antipsychotic medications. And it's not an

00:27:37.780 uncommon experience for people who are medicated for a particular mental illness or mental health

00:27:44.920 condition to think, well, what's the big deal? Like, I don't want to do this anymore. Why can't

00:27:50.140 I just not take medication? Nobody else I know takes medication, or I'm tired of this side effect.

00:27:55.560 And it's not an uncommon decision to make to just be like, I'm just going to go cold turkey.

00:28:01.040 Yeah. Another funny thing about going cold turkey is that it takes a while

00:28:04.220 for the withdrawal symptoms to start happening because the drug has a half-life. It sits in

00:28:08.700 your system for like kind of a long time. So Peterson stops taking this medication,

00:28:14.060 but at first he's like, what's the big deal? I stopped taking the benzo. No big deal, right?

00:28:18.460 Because like a day, two days later, you're basically fine. He finally starts getting

00:28:23.020 withdrawal symptoms after a couple of days and they're quite severe he has this thing called

00:28:26.920 akathisia which is basically restless leg syndrome but for your entire body like you can't not move

00:28:33.360 and it hurts to sit in chairs it hurts to lie down it hurts to have anything on you so you just have

00:28:38.040 this overwhelming restlessness and you kind of need to move at all times but also you're super

00:28:43.360 tired so it's like you can't sleep but you can't not sleep it sounds absolutely awful so he starts

00:28:48.860 getting these really severe withdrawal symptoms, but he doesn't think that they're benzo withdrawals

00:28:53.840 because he didn't think going off the benzo was like a big deal. He's like, whatever, I stopped

00:28:56.900 taking this pill that my doctor gave me. So he thinks all of these symptoms are due to his

00:29:01.280 depression, not due to getting off of the benzo. So he starts taking ketamine, which is this

00:29:10.500 experimental drug that they're using for treatment-resistant depression. So if you've

00:29:16.480 kind of tried everything for depression, it seems like ketamine treatment can kind of break through.

00:29:21.900 Sure. It's the same set of sort of experimental treatments that's been happening with

00:29:25.940 psilocybin, which is mushrooms, and LSD, microdosing, all that kind of stuff. Yeah,

00:29:32.600 there's this whole sort of world of psychedelics in particular for treatment of like PTSD,

00:29:39.680 depression, all kinds of stuff. All of this stuff actually seems relatively promising to me. But

00:29:43.880 also this isn't what jordan peterson has he doesn't have treatment resistant depression right

00:29:48.040 he has benzodiazepine withdrawals so he he does the ketamine he says it's like the worst 90 minutes

00:29:53.400 of his life he waits a couple days he does it again he says it's awful again there's been a

00:29:58.860 couple of like monday morning quarterback doctors and journalists that have looked into this and

00:30:05.660 kind of like what happened to this guy right because it's like he's all of this is very weird

00:30:09.260 He's very famous. He's a psychologist. And this is when he basically falls off the radar,

00:30:15.120 like he isn't seen in public. And what doctors say when journalists contact them, and they're

00:30:19.820 not commenting on his case specifically, but in general, they're like, something really went

00:30:24.680 wrong here. In the space of three months, Jordan Peterson had two increases in the dosage of his

00:30:32.200 benzodiazepine then stopped taking it cold turkey then got two ketamine treatments and according to

00:30:40.260 peterson this was all like under some sort of medical supervision like there it's not clear

00:30:45.340 what that supervision was but it's like no one at any point like told him what was actually going on

00:30:50.540 there really is like some sort of system breakdown here right this is a series of things that on

00:30:57.000 their own, each of these moves calls for somebody who knows more than just the person using the

00:31:04.940 drug, right? Like someone who's dealt with more than one person giving you a heads up about like,

00:31:10.080 okay, here's what comes next. And that seems like really important information to have as you're

00:31:15.860 making a series of health decisions for yourself, especially when I'm guessing that a lot of

00:31:21.580 healthcare providers would say that's a really risky decision to make. Please don't do it.

00:31:25.320 I mean, one of the things I can't get over about the story is it's like a random family

00:31:29.900 friend who's like, hey, Jordan, I think you're going through benzodiazepine withdrawal.

00:31:34.900 This sounds like very textbook benzo withdrawal to me.

00:31:38.940 And so Peterson starts taking his benzodiazepine again.

00:31:43.080 But are you aware of something called the kindling effect?

00:31:45.980 No.

00:31:46.620 Tell me about the kindling effect.

00:31:47.980 It's a very well-known thing, apparently, for people who've gone through these kinds

00:31:52.460 of withdrawals.

00:31:53.000 if you go cold turkey off of a medication oftentimes if you start taking it again

00:31:58.480 the symptoms of the withdrawal don't actually go away yeah these GABA receptors in your brain it's

00:32:03.440 like you've it's like running your car engine without oil yeah it's grinding there's smoke

00:32:08.860 coming out it's awful and like if you do that for long enough you can't just like pour oil in your

00:32:13.520 engine and then be like oh it's fixed now right right you're gonna have to replace a bunch of

00:32:17.440 other stuff you're gonna have to do some deeper work if we're going with the car metaphor right

00:32:21.600 And the withdrawals are going to be harder next time.

00:32:25.640 This is something the more times you go through this, the harder it gets, apparently.

00:32:28.560 I think this is kind of like dieting, to be honest.

00:32:30.240 This is so rough.

00:32:31.540 Yeah, it's rough.

00:32:32.340 Yeah.

00:32:32.960 So he starts taking his benzos again, but he's also like sleeping an extra four hours a night.

00:32:39.540 And he still has anxiety and he kind of still has benzo withdrawal symptoms, even though he's taking benzos.

00:32:44.880 So sometime in the fall of 2019, he checks himself into a detox clinic for benzodiazepine

00:32:54.180 withdrawal and it doesn't work.

00:32:56.780 They're tapering him down, but this is something that happens.

00:32:59.960 Like a lot of people continue to have withdrawal symptoms, even as they're taking benzodiazepines.

00:33:05.680 One thing that they do is they often switch you to a different benzodiazepine, which is

00:33:11.300 less addictive.

00:33:11.900 So sometimes they'll switch you to like, I think, Valium or Xanax.

00:33:14.880 And then you can taper off of that easier.

00:33:18.580 So he says that by the time he gets out, he's taking more drugs than he was when he went in.

00:33:23.140 He like really objects to this.

00:33:25.440 And in November of 2019, he goes back to Toronto where he checks into another rehab facility.

00:33:32.940 That one doesn't work.

00:33:34.380 It seems at this point that the family, like the entire family is just completely desperate.

00:33:38.540 That he's got these terrible withdrawal symptoms.

00:33:40.740 He's also got the depression.

00:33:42.140 he's still addicted to benzos right so he's got like the worst of all worlds yeah this is when

00:33:48.920 the narrative gets very murky because from december of 2019 to february of 2020 jordan

00:33:56.220 peterson does not remember anything the only thing he remembers is he wakes up in a hospital

00:34:01.380 in moscow three months later what does not know anything in the intervening time all we have is

00:34:07.280 the account of his daughter. Her husband at the time is Russian. So it's not like totally random

00:34:13.280 that they end up in Russia. It's still not clear how they ended up at this particular clinic in

00:34:17.680 Russia. The only thing that Michaela Peterson has said about her thinking process at this time

00:34:23.600 is she says he almost died from what the medical system did to him in the West.

00:34:28.800 The doctors in Russia aren't influenced by the pharmaceutical companies, don't believe in

00:34:32.480 treating symptoms caused by medications by adding more medications and have the guts to medically

00:34:37.500 detox someone from benzodiazepines. Her narrative has always been that like Western medicine

00:34:43.240 couldn't fix it. And like they refused to get him off the benzodiazepines. Other people have said

00:34:49.920 it could be that they were asking for a rapid detox. They wanted him off the benzodiazepines

00:34:55.580 really quickly. And like that essentially isn't medically possible. The treatment protocol that

00:35:00.520 they find in this clinic in Russia is they use a general anesthetic to put him in a coma for eight

00:35:07.640 days while he goes through benzo withdrawals. So that he's not experiencing the physical

00:35:12.140 sensations of the withdrawals consciously. Exactly. That's the idea. Okay. So in what way

00:35:17.860 this is not Western medicine, I have no idea. But the reason that she goes to this clinic is

00:35:22.280 because they will do this protocol using propofol, which is actually a very common general anesthetic.

00:35:27.800 when you get a surgery they put you under they give you a big old dose and then they give you

00:35:32.040 like a trickle dose that like keeps you under right but it's quite dangerous in that you have 1.00

00:35:37.440 to monitor the patient the entire time this is the drug that killed michael jackson oh fuck his 0.97

00:35:42.280 doctor's in jail for four years now yeah when you put a patient under you have to monitor them that 0.99

00:35:47.600 their heart rate and their breathing don't just completely collapse you have to make sure that

00:35:51.120 you don't give them too much so it's like this is a fairly risky procedure i found literature on

00:35:56.340 this thing of putting people in a coma for opioid withdrawals i don't know how credible it is but

00:36:03.540 it's like something that has been tried but sure it seems like for benzo withdrawals it's like

00:36:07.980 completely off the books it doesn't seem like something that is like anyone is recommending

00:36:12.940 for benzo withdrawals because it's so dangerous to put people under and your your body and your

00:36:18.460 brain are like going through stuff when you're going through benzo withdrawals you're having 0.95

00:36:22.080 like seizures in your brain and shit oh no so apparently it's quite dangerous to have people 0.94

00:36:27.560 under because their nervous system is bouncing all over the place because they're going through 0.99

00:36:30.620 these withdrawals and you have to give them this drug to keep them stable somehow yeah this whole

00:36:35.020 thing feels uh gross and weird and takes us into the gross and weird territory of like who do we

00:36:41.440 believe about their own health stuff yeah you and i are both pretty staunchly in the camp of like

00:36:47.020 when people tell you their health stuff you should believe them and i think the challenge with all of

00:36:51.860 this stuff is like, okay, you have now been publicly selling a series of decisions that

00:36:58.960 you have made about your health. That's brought to bear here. So like there is actually like

00:37:04.020 similar to the Morgan Spurlock stuff, right? Like when you make your own body the site of

00:37:08.480 experimentation, then other things that are happening to your body become relevant, right?

00:37:14.540 And this feels like a relevant thing. I also think that this is a person who had every resource

00:37:21.080 to do the right thing, right? I think a lot of my sympathy for people who make risky or bad

00:37:28.000 medical decisions comes from the fact that they don't have the information, they don't have access

00:37:32.100 to the medical system, they don't have the resources that they need to make a better

00:37:35.800 decision. And I think it's unfair to criticize those people and hold them up to the same standard

00:37:39.500 as people who have more resources. But Jordan Peterson is someone with the most possible

00:37:45.040 resources, right? He's a licensed psychologist. I don't understand how somebody who is 57 years

00:37:52.200 old, who's been treating patients for decades, does not know that benzodiazepines are addictive,

00:37:58.600 that he shouldn't go off a benzodiazepine cold turkey. This is like the first thing you learn

00:38:03.040 when you Google Klonopin. It's like, make sure not to go off of it. His money and to some extent,

00:38:07.700 his fame gives him unfettered access to three countries' medical systems, right? He gets

00:38:13.660 treatment in america he gets treatment in canada and then he mentions offhand in his book that like

00:38:18.320 he he had some person arrange an urgent visa for him to go to russia to go to this clinic on short

00:38:24.260 notice yeah it's like this is someone with an unbelievable amount of privilege and like the

00:38:29.040 most imaginable access to the medical system and he makes these like objectively cockamamie

00:38:36.040 decisions yeah so on some level i do feel like it's unfair to criticize him for these like

00:38:41.120 personal medical decisions. On the other hand, I think that it's worth noting that like, it's not

00:38:45.360 necessarily a double standard to say that this is somebody who should have known better. I also do

00:38:51.000 think, God, I cannot like decide what I think about this for longer than five minutes at a time.

00:38:55.520 I'm acutely aware of the fact that if somebody I liked was going through all this, I would have

00:39:00.460 like a bottomless well of sympathy for them. And I kind of get the desperation too. Like I've had

00:39:06.820 medical stuff where I've been like furiously Googling and like ordering weird shit on Amazon

00:39:11.320 because I'm like so anxious and I'm like, oh my God, I'll give anything to make this go away.

00:39:16.560 Yeah, totally. Listen, if somebody that you love is going through something

00:39:20.160 painful and hard and scary, of course you will do like whatever the fuck it takes, 0.79

00:39:25.800 which is like part of how people end up in sort of the hinterlands of this kind of 0.94

00:39:30.400 questionable treatments or treatments that have never been tested or what have you, right? Like

00:39:35.080 that's how people get there and it feels really tricky to figure out how to critique the places

00:39:40.620 where people land versus the path that they take to get there because like the path they take to

00:39:45.200 get there is like a very human very understandable to me yeah so he's in a coma for eight days

00:39:51.640 he's completely lost his memory of these three months this is actually a relatively common

00:39:56.400 side effect of propofol but most people don't get doses of it like this yeah when he wakes up

00:40:02.400 he can't use his legs he ends up getting pneumonia but it's not clear if he got pneumonia like when

00:40:09.620 he got pneumonia or where and then he has to recover in some random house in moscow for like

00:40:16.400 three weeks to like get his legs back he can't speak at first he has to get his speech back

00:40:21.020 obviously his thinking is extremely cloudy it's like a really long recovery from this god this is

00:40:27.860 so i am feeling human empathy for jordan peterson a person who specifically does not feel human

00:40:35.060 empathy for trans people and i hate it i know someone who is like someone who he literally 0.97

00:40:40.160 has a youtube video called the problem with empathy oh fuck man what i mean he says throughout 0.99

00:40:46.100 his sub rachel hollis self-help book that addiction is a personal failing are you kidding me he says 0.98

00:40:52.940 before you help someone you should find out why that person is in trouble you shouldn't merely

00:40:57.820 assume that he or she is a noble victim of unjust circumstances it's the most unlikely explanation

00:41:03.420 not the most probable it is far more likely that a given individual has just decided to reject the

00:41:09.200 path upward because of its difficulty just what's happening here like my basically basically my own

00:41:15.260 principles prevent me from doing this with jordan peterson but his own principles are directing me

00:41:21.760 to call him a personal failure. That's what he has spent his entire public career saying that

00:41:28.240 we should not extend empathy to people in a situation like his. Yeah. Another very important

00:41:34.860 reason not to go under is that it doesn't work. Oh lordy. So after he's in Moscow for a couple

00:41:41.320 weeks, they fly to Florida to like recover fully, right? Like warm weather, it's nice. Like let's

00:41:46.220 get you away from everything. And it doesn't work. He starts getting benzo withdrawals. He says in

00:41:51.180 his book he says in florida i attempted to wean off the medication prescribed by the moscow clinic

00:41:57.700 but he doesn't specify if that's like a new benzo or like a completely different drug

00:42:04.100 it's probably not propofol because you're like not supposed to use that unless you're going to sleep

00:42:08.920 i it's not clear what that drug is but whatever he's taking that this clinic gave him it's not

00:42:15.100 working and he's also got benzo withdrawals still oh cripes so then mikayla finds a clinic in serbia

00:42:23.140 okay go to serbia and he goes into a coma again and it seems like they're using some other

00:42:29.540 experimental treatment she hasn't said exactly what it is but then it's may of 2020 now and so 0.97

00:42:36.600 everybody ends up getting covid this is like early in the oh my god so they all get fucking

00:42:41.800 covid and belgrade and then that's kind of like the end of them talking about it okay so in june

00:42:48.900 of 2020 jordan peterson essentially hasn't been seen in public for like almost two years now

00:42:53.840 he reappears on a podcast episode slash youtube video by michaela peterson where she's like

00:42:59.180 here's a family update and they tell this entire story they won't say what the treatment they got

00:43:04.460 in serbia was because they're like we don't know if it works yet so we don't really want to say

00:43:08.680 anything and he hasn't really talked about this since which is interesting that is interesting

00:43:12.940 he writes about it in his book but we still don't really know if this worked or if he's back on the

00:43:20.020 benzodiazepine or if he's not i mean it's fully none of my business and i don't really care

00:43:24.400 but it's it's interesting that we we have no real closure to this side of the story it's just like 0.89

00:43:30.600 uh i'm back now he comes back to north america and he's like back on his bullshit yeah i'm not

00:43:36.480 going to get into everything he's done since he returned to public life but in january of 2022

00:43:41.960 he put out an article called why i am no longer a tenured professor at the university of toronto

00:43:49.220 oh this is the one i saw yeah the op-ed that was like i'm getting canceled but it was like

00:43:55.300 i'm getting canceled by quitting my own job which in that case i've gotten canceled multiple times

00:44:01.580 guys. Yeah, I'm being canceled by quitting my modest middle class job for like being a millionaire

00:44:07.540 political pundit. Right, sort of getting canceled, sort of getting like implicitly promoted.

00:44:12.680 Yes, exactly. And the main reason that he cites for quitting his job, he says,

00:44:18.540 first, my qualified and supremely trained heterosexual white male graduate students

00:44:24.180 face a negligible chance of being offered university research positions,

00:44:28.980 despite stellar scientific dossiers.

00:44:32.080 These facts rendered my job morally untenable.

00:44:35.500 How can I accept prospective researchers

00:44:37.520 and train them in good conscience

00:44:39.520 knowing their employment prospects to be minimal?

00:44:42.360 So he's genuinely quitting in the name of, like,

00:44:45.960 quote-unquote reverse racism?

00:44:48.020 That's his argument?

00:44:48.900 Of literally, like, I'm defending, like, my white students.

00:44:51.960 White men? 1.00

00:44:52.680 Jesus fucking Christmas. 1.00

00:44:54.780 Things are hard out here. 1.00

00:44:55.560 And of course, the greatest enemy to any of Jordan Peterson's arguments is five minutes on fucking Google. 0.89

00:45:01.840 So it's like graduate students, demographics. 0.98

00:45:04.720 Two seconds later, you're at a page.

00:45:06.400 62% of graduate students are white.

00:45:09.700 I looked up the demographics for that age group, 18 to 24, and 54% are white people.

00:45:15.620 So 54% of the population and 62% of graduate students.

00:45:19.940 We're already significantly overrepresented in grad schools.

00:45:22.940 Exactly. 0.89

00:45:22.960 he also he he does a whole dumb thing about like wokeness is out of control it's always these like 0.93

00:45:28.040 low stakes nothing burger anecdotes he's like you can tell wokeness is so out of control diversity

00:45:33.580 has gone mad because this is a quote cbs has literally mandated that every writer's room be

00:45:40.940 at least 40 non-white in 2021 but then you google cbs mandate non-white or whatever and like first

00:45:51.140 link cbs set a goal of 40 black indigenous people of color a goal it's not binding right as a person

00:46:00.180 who worked at ngos for 11 years when you set a goal it does not mean you're going to reach it

00:46:04.860 yeah right setting a goal is a great way to get pr and like no one is going to follow up no one's

00:46:10.500 going to be like hey i know five years ago you set that long range goal how's that coming along

00:46:15.860 exactly people probably should but they don't so i'm including this to to show like the level

00:46:20.720 of punditry that jordan peterson is now doing like this is what he left his job to do sub ben

00:46:26.880 shapiro edgelord boring like wokeness is out of control op-eds these are like a dime a dozen

00:46:33.520 this i why i'm quitting my job it quotes it quotes vladimir putin at length like it's just not good

00:46:41.700 wow wow choices were made sir he's selling victimhood to white people yeah he's selling

00:46:49.140 victimhood to people who already have a lot of societal power and are in no danger of losing it

00:46:53.580 yes which is why he keeps resorting to this like chaos dragon myths from a thousand years ago

00:47:01.120 nonsense because if you actually have to substantiate any of the threats that you're

00:47:05.760 warning your audience about it's like yes cbs set a goal it feels so the whole thing feels so

00:47:11.400 disingenuous and so shitty and so whatever yeah like it's a mixture of i've never experienced

00:47:17.740 actual oppression in my life, nor have I been close to someone who has. Therefore, I don't have 0.90

00:47:23.940 any grounding in this topic. But I hear people talking about it all the time. And it seems like

00:47:29.820 when they talk about it, they get some kind of social currency, right? Like people listen.

00:47:35.500 Therefore, my way into the conversation and to assert my own relevance and calm my own insecurities

00:47:42.820 is to claim some level of oppression.

00:47:47.380 I really try to have content neutral principles that I apply to people like Jordan Peterson of

00:47:54.060 like, I'm okay with extending empathy toward people like Jordan Peterson for what's going

00:47:58.580 on in their personal lives. And it's always amazing to me that they go through these huge,

00:48:02.840 potentially life changing medical crises, and it produces no empathy whatsoever. It seems to

00:48:11.240 produce no genuine self-reflection it's like he's now peddling the same bootstraps like wokeness

00:48:18.520 whatever stuff that he was doing before yeah he also puts out a self another self-help book within

00:48:24.500 like a year of all this happening and it's like really dude like you're still you're still a

00:48:30.600 self-help guru after making i think pretty incontrovertibly bad decisions you're then

00:48:38.240 still giving life advice. That's the part that like, I struggle with the empathy. I'm like,

00:48:44.260 should you be given advice right now, Jordan?

00:48:46.320 Yeah, I mean, I also think this all gets really complicated, because I feel extremely strongly

00:48:54.200 that anyone's individual health is nobody's business, but their own. Yeah. And also,

00:49:00.120 there is a public story that's happening here that has been linked to, again, like promoting

00:49:05.800 a particular way of eating and being and all that kind of stuff.

00:49:09.540 It feels particularly endemic with like dudes in sort of like biohacking and biohacking light

00:49:15.880 worlds.

00:49:17.000 Well, the closest thing to a conclusion about all this I came to was that like,

00:49:21.720 the reasons why I dislike Jordan Peterson are all exactly the same.

00:49:25.860 Yeah.

00:49:26.080 I dislike him because of his public acts and what he writes in his books and what he says

00:49:30.580 in his lectures and what he does in public.

00:49:32.580 I don't need to dislike him for this.

00:49:35.800 I'm actually fine with all of this being like kind of human and kind of normal.

00:49:41.560 And it's a series of bad decisions, but I'm 100% sure that I have made worse decisions than this in my life with different consequences. 0.99

00:49:50.380 I'm fine with holding the duality of two things that like he's a huge piece of shit and his piece of shitness has nothing to do with his personal medical stuff. 1.00

00:50:00.480 Yeah. 1.00

00:50:00.800 Because it's not the reason why he was shitty in the first place. 0.81

00:50:03.340 Right. 0.99

00:50:03.580 It's just really easy to identify the ways that he's shitty. 0.99

00:50:06.640 That's right. 0.95

00:50:07.400 His health is not a referendum on his character or his morality or anything like that. 0.98

00:50:12.740 Because it's not that for fucking anybody. 0.98

00:50:14.740 Exactly. 0.99

00:50:15.200 Right?

00:50:15.600 Yeah.

00:50:16.060 But can I give us one last thing?

00:50:18.740 Are you about to make this a three-parter?

00:50:20.480 No.

00:50:21.080 No, no.

00:50:21.240 Okay.

00:50:21.580 Jesus Christ.

00:50:22.460 I was like, Michael.

00:50:25.240 I love how you're on edge for this.

00:50:26.920 You're like, not again.

00:50:27.980 I can't do this again.

00:50:29.000 No, Michael, I can't.

00:50:29.900 I don't have it in me.

00:50:30.820 No, this is a little beef blog.

00:50:33.580 about Michaela Peterson. Let's do it. I heard tale from like forums from these like benzo 0.91

00:50:39.960 addiction forums that I was reading and like the miserable Jordan Peterson subreddit that I spent

00:50:45.080 a really atrocious amount of time on. Oh, Michael. There were rumors that she stopped doing the

00:50:52.080 carnivore diet. And I was like, wait, this is huge, you guys, because she's still actively 0.80

00:50:59.160 promoting a beef only diet she sells consultations to help you eat beef and like change your life

00:51:06.540 with beef so i scrolled back through three years of her instagram posts and i found the one where

00:51:12.500 she admits that she's no longer on the diet okay do you want to guess how she does it right because

00:51:19.320 it's a dilemma you can't you can't be an influencer of a diet for years and then just like whoops i'm

00:51:25.200 not on this diet anymore. I would think that the way that you would want to talk about it is

00:51:30.360 this played an important role in my life. It led to a bunch of healing for me and it has served

00:51:35.840 its purpose. I still believe in it. And it was a time limited thing for me. Ding, ding, ding.

00:51:41.900 Is that what she says? Yes. Really? So I mean, what she does is she posts on Instagram,

00:51:46.380 three images. Each one is a diet. One is the super hardcore beef only diet, which she calls

00:51:52.280 the lion diet okay l-i-o-n one is the traditional carnivore diet and that's only animal products

00:51:59.100 so a lot of the bitcoin carnivores they're on this version so you can have cheese you can have

00:52:03.800 eggs you can have cream and yogurt i gotta say i haven't stopped being bummed out by the phrase

00:52:09.860 bitcoin carnivores you know and then the third image is keto carnivore which is like also a

00:52:21.080 bunch of animal products but then like avocados and like spinach and stuff you know there's like

00:52:25.160 a couple vegetables you can eat on keto sure extremely low carbohydrate yes fruits and

00:52:30.480 vegetables yeah so she basically says the lion diet worked so well that she can now tolerate

00:52:37.180 a wider range of foods i'm not doing the carnivore diet anymore because it's so effective that i don't

00:52:43.840 have to exactly it worked so well it works so beautifully i did i dislike her so much i've

00:52:50.200 listen to so many episodes of her podcast this was the only thing that i've seen her do where

00:52:54.820 i'm like yeah you nailed it michaela yeah like way to not do this deranged diet anymore but also

00:53:01.380 still promote the diet impressive this this happens with everybody that does this diet for

00:53:07.220 very obvious reasons physiologically psychologically eating only beef for the rest of your life is not

00:53:14.460 going to work for 99.9 of people so what you find with a lot of these carnivore influencers

00:53:19.320 they'll use these like carve outs they'll be like oh i started eating honey today because honey is

00:53:24.120 like an animal product so like they just redefine carnivore to include like a wider and wider range

00:53:30.240 of foods right so it's like oh it's keto carnivore now which honestly is fine it seems like it's good

00:53:35.460 for their health i'd rather have them promoting that diet than a beef only diet but it's like

00:53:40.140 yeah no one can maintain this and they all just like end up cheating and then calling their cheat

00:53:46.360 the carnivore diet. Can I tell you how I thought this episode was going to end? Genuinely? Oh,

00:53:51.460 yeah. We have gotten some emails as a follow up to our Rachel Hollis episode being like,

00:53:57.860 can you do a Dave Hollis follow up? He's dating this terrible blonde woman. Okay. And I absolutely 0.97

00:54:04.040 was like, are we going to find out that Dave Hollis is dating Michaela Peterson?

00:54:09.500 I 100% had a moment in my head where I was like, are we about to have our first crossover?

00:54:15.760 and like, no.

00:54:17.280 Well, he is dating

00:54:18.620 Bell Gibson.

00:54:19.800 So, that's a twist.

00:54:45.760 Thank you.

Maintenance Phase - March 15, 2022

Jordan Peterson Part 2： The Moscow Diaries

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