Unlearn16: Class is in Session - November 07, 2023


The One Where Dean Blundell and I Compare Hair and Fix Politics.

Topics
cancel culture bias in textbooks change
The One Where I Become a Vampire The One Where I Finally Ask 'What Do You Need'？

Episode Stats


Length

1 hour and 16 minutes

Words per minute

174.42

Word count

13,367

Sentence count

573

Harmful content

Misogyny

6

sentences flagged

Toxicity

67

sentences flagged

Hate speech

21

sentences flagged


Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
00:00:00.000 class is in session buddy welcome to unlearn 16 classes in session um today guys i have dean
00:00:11.440 blendell and for those who don't know who didn't catch it we just spent an hour and 15 minutes
00:00:16.880 on his podcast right before this he dropped it on monday i dropped mine on tuesday
00:00:22.480 so if you haven't let's pause me right now for the love of god go back and listen to his and
00:00:28.960 then come back and listen to this second half of this uh let's be honest very enthusiastic
00:00:35.980 interesting and a slightly controversial podcast topic how you doing dean and i'm gonna let dean
00:00:43.380 tell you where you can find them and where you can get all that information otherwise i'll mess
00:00:46.580 it up well i don't know if you will uh yeah no for for everybody i'm great thank you for asking
00:00:51.360 um we're on hour two as you pointed out dean blundell show you can get that anywhere you
00:00:55.660 get your fine podcast. YouTube as well, Cryer Media on YouTube. You can also get us at Cryer
00:01:00.580 Media, which is at Cryer.co or Cryer.ca. That's our ecosystem. We've got about 140 podcasts in
00:01:07.500 our network. We've got lots of people doing daily content, accountable content, fun content,
00:01:12.160 which infotainment, but appealing to people that have the ability to reason. That's kind of where
00:01:17.520 we put it. Having said all of that, I find it a little rude you haven't offered me or invited me
00:01:21.880 to be a part of your 140 podcasts on crier entertainment i mean i haven't gotten to the
00:01:28.400 end of your podcast yet where i was going to hit you with it i i totally have it written down here
00:01:32.120 right as invite invite joe to join the crier media network do it right at the end and i'm
00:01:38.780 not even kidding you that's what it says listen guys we we've spent it i'm not going to go i'm
00:01:44.900 not going to recount anything we've just talked about but i'm going to jump right into subjects
00:01:50.060 that I love, all the stuff that we already talked about was all education and a lot of my TikToks
00:01:56.540 and stuff like that. But Dean, you have been active in media since the 90s, originally on
00:02:04.920 radio, a couple of different radio stations in different capacities. And then with your podcast
00:02:10.300 and all your social media stuff, but you've been labeled, I don't know if it's a self-label or you
00:02:15.780 labeled yourself, uh, a shock jock, which by the way, I don't know why I hate those two words
00:02:21.080 together. I hate saying it. I don't know why. Very, very much in the, in the element of what's
00:02:26.240 his face. Um, what, what's his name? The other shock jock. Oh my God. That's it. I'm never going
00:02:32.840 on his show. Am I? No, uh, no. I, uh, Howard Stern. I think this is what you're talking about.
00:02:37.540 Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Howard Stern. Um, would that be your lane? No, no, no. You know,
00:02:44.140 it's no and i'm glad you asked um it's interesting because i did radio for about 15 years um and keep
00:02:50.740 in mind you know back in 1997 really came to toronto in 2001 2001 to 2014 15 um you know that
00:03:04.780 was 15 years really at two radio stations one where i think the content that we did you could
00:03:10.440 consider it shocking i think by and large uh keep in mind this is yeah yeah keep it it was when i
00:03:15.800 was at the edge so i came back to so it just i'll take you through my story graduate from the
00:03:21.920 university of calgary absolutely zero desire to do anything uh that required work uh got a job
00:03:28.740 offer to go do a morning show in fort mcmurray alberta canada i know totally was like i'm in
00:03:36.000 went up there, did a morning show out of the gate, really enjoyed the theater of it, how you could
00:03:41.560 interact. And I put a ton of work in it, became a student of radio and ended up loving it. And so
00:03:46.920 six months into that, I get a job offer in Detroit. I go to Detroit for three years. And then three
00:03:52.200 years after that, I find myself in Toronto doing a morning show at a very serious radio station
00:03:57.180 called The Edge. And back then, it's like the biggest radio station in Canada. It was the only
00:04:01.500 prog alt rock station in canada it was like a market leader had a worldwide reputation and so
00:04:07.580 you know when you're in our industry i don't know what it's like in teaching you know the zenith or
00:04:12.040 the pinnacle of that industry was doing mornings in toronto right so you know at 28 uh uh you know
00:04:19.160 coming from western canada i had this morning show in toronto i did that for about 14 years
00:04:24.220 uh got fired for talking about something i'm sure we're going to talk about and yeah absolutely
00:04:31.260 And then went and did sports radio for two years, absolutely was unhealthy, mentally in a bad place, and have not done radio since because two reasons.
00:04:42.900 One is, you know, it just doesn't apply to me.
00:04:45.360 I don't understand it.
00:04:46.260 I'm not here to deliver someone else's messaging.
00:04:48.320 I'm just not.
00:04:49.500 And my convictions have changed, and I've changed.
00:04:51.740 And how I feel about what's important and my responsibility in communicating has changed.
00:04:55.740 And so we started Cryer Media a couple of years ago.
00:04:58.880 I had a blog originally when I left radio, it was just DeanBlundell.com.
00:05:02.880 That morphed into a bigger opportunity because we started to actually bring different people
00:05:06.760 into podcasts and everybody wanted to kind of, you know, use what we were doing.
00:05:10.940 And so we grew to this podcast network of three different companies, about 140 podcasts
00:05:15.880 and a bit of an agency in there as well.
00:05:18.340 So yeah, I mean, you know, along the way, was I a shock jock?
00:05:21.180 I guess.
00:05:22.200 I mean, you know, but did I feel like that was my intention?
00:05:25.200 know we were just doing radio that they paid us a lot of money to do so did they control your
00:05:30.840 content yes and no they tried well the question is and let's talk about like you know because i
00:05:38.960 go through your wikipedia page and and sort of look at you know some of the things you got in
00:05:43.920 trouble with you got trouble making derogatory comments about women violence you get you you
00:05:49.260 appeared to support violence against like this is what wikipedia says right read it yeah read it
00:05:54.560 What does it say?
00:05:55.300 Let's get to it.
00:05:56.320 No fear.
00:05:56.680 He's included complaints about sexually explicit discussion, vulgar terminology.
00:06:02.500 What did you say? 0.98
00:06:03.040 The word penis? 1.00
00:06:03.660 What did you do? 0.99
00:06:04.760 Used in a comment on the sexuality of Justin Bieber.
00:06:07.920 How dare you?
00:06:08.640 It's going to tear you a new one.
00:06:10.500 I know.
00:06:10.760 Derogatory comments about women, comments that appeared to support violence against women. 0.99
00:06:15.640 You got a one-day suspension because you appeared with the jackass cast and peed on the floor. 0.99
00:06:21.460 That's nice. 0.99
00:06:21.700 I didn't pee on the floor.
00:06:22.800 Steve-O peed on the floor.
00:06:24.040 Of course he did.
00:06:24.560 Well, isn't that what he does when he goes places?
00:06:27.160 Oh, duct taped around somebody's private parts.
00:06:29.860 That's interesting, that's got a hurt coming off. 1.00
00:06:31.880 You were sued for defamation by Linda Jackson,
00:06:34.680 the mayor of a Toronto, I don't know who, oh Vaughn,
00:06:37.640 because you called her a fraudster, 1.00
00:06:40.400 and you called her a fat pig. 1.00
00:06:42.140 Dean! 0.99
00:06:42.960 Yeah, I did, I was mean.
00:06:43.880 The first one's fine.
00:06:45.720 Shirley Phelps in exchange for the Westboro,
00:06:48.100 oh, so you're yelling at the Westboro Baptist Church.
00:06:50.780 I'm not even gonna talk about that
00:06:52.340 because go ahead and yell.
00:06:54.560 you mocked the death of a hockey player
00:06:58.000 because you see and this is what i want to talk about
00:07:05.540 listen i gotta tell you i have no fear from any of this stuff so please deliver because it's
00:07:11.780 because listen it's gonna go in line with are we allowed to be funny how funny we're allowed to be
00:07:18.760 what is comedy what isn't comedy what hard lines are we supposed to draw um because you said
00:07:25.700 something to the effect of him not being around anymore was preferable to actually living in
00:07:30.120 edmonton yeah was yeah i don't know um lots of complaints from this from the uh the council
00:07:38.700 the canadian canadian record holder for cbsc canadian record holder um a sexualist oh you
00:07:47.520 got in trouble oh you got in trouble for messing with the jury so jury tampering because you talked 0.82
00:07:54.000 about a case at a bathhouse and you're criticized for being homophobic yeah causing a mistrial
00:08:02.500 because you discussed uh jury deliberations correct that's a lot that's it is and then i
00:08:10.800 get to your subsequent career but that's a lot of things let's let's talk about a why you got fired
00:08:16.760 you want me to you want me to tell you why i got hired or fired or why i really got fired
00:08:22.440 from the edge right you're talking about that yeah because there's always the perception and
00:08:27.600 the truth yes yeah um and and the perception uh is deadly right and i i'm a big fan of yeah
00:08:34.460 absolutely it's uh and and you know it's funny because when you and i started to get to know
00:08:38.120 each other on twitter twitter's kind of a funny community you've got some influencers and people
00:08:41.680 push content and you can see their content aligning and you and i started interacting
00:08:47.280 on twitter do you remember that it was about four five six months ago maybe and we're interacting 0.94
00:08:51.680 and all of a sudden people started peppering you with replies going he hates gay people stay away
00:08:56.240 from him yeah yeah yeah yeah and i'm like seems like he doesn't but okay yeah did he make a
00:09:03.040 homophobic comment 1997. listen i made a homophobic comment in 1997. so i don't know what 0.96
00:09:10.800 But the standards we hold people to are asinine. 0.99
00:09:15.220 And mostly in the 90s, when we were all being idiots and still sort of perpetrating and 1.00
00:09:21.400 utilizing all of this language that is 100% not acceptable in 2023, guess what? 0.99
00:09:26.420 The rest of us weren't on the radio.
00:09:28.300 I was just sitting in class talking to my friend or whatever.
00:09:31.640 And when you get this sort of documentation, because you are in media at the time, I think
00:09:39.920 it's fascinating what we hold people to account for today, because after spending an hour and a
00:09:45.400 half with you just a second ago, and obviously looking at all your tweets, you go a little
00:09:49.480 harder in the paint than I do when it comes to insulting people. Yeah, big fan. You do it
00:09:54.440 differently, right? You do it differently. But outside of that, I would probably argue that
00:09:58.600 90% of who we are very much align, and very much align in the sense that we also believe that we're
00:10:06.180 not, you know, we're, we're not at the end of our learning. Meaning every single day we try to learn
00:10:13.260 something new and try to get better. And as long as I'm trying to do that, what else are you
00:10:18.360 expecting from anybody? I don't understand. Well, and that's, that's the definition portion of
00:10:23.600 how I live my life today. You know, you ask why I got fired from the edge and, and it was,
00:10:29.280 it's very, very simple. Um, you know, I was allowed to do whatever I wanted for an extended
00:10:35.540 period of time because we were incredibly successful just to kind of understand how
00:10:39.380 radio ratings work right is when you are a uh high performer on the radio back when on-demand
00:10:47.640 content didn't exist this is like you know pre-iphone pre-podcast pre-on-demand pre-twitter
00:10:53.400 i don't even know what they barely barely running water and toilet toilets had just appeared and i
00:11:01.540 was on the radio no but but it was it was a real thing like we got sideswiped by social media but
00:11:06.100 i'll get to that later maybe who cares if we do or not my point is is that when i was on the radio
00:11:11.860 in 2001 what you were asked to do was to be of a certain culture you were asked to deliver certain
00:11:19.560 content for a specific audience and that audience loved aggressive hard rock male dominated the goal
00:11:27.020 was to of the company was to corner or as they said when i worked at chorus we had two radio
00:11:32.340 stations the edge and q build a wall of men so that if you had to advertise something on the
00:11:38.580 radio that's where you came you had to buy it from one of two stations and we own both
00:11:42.800 derringer did the morning show on q i did the morning show on edge collectively we had about
00:11:47.500 80 percent of the city listening to both of those shows if you were a man you listen to either
00:11:51.400 myself or john right so um what came with that what came with that was this devil may care
00:12:00.220 advocacy for every group but it also we also thought that that advocacy earned us the right
00:12:07.080 to take the strip off of or feed into stereotypes when it comes to that content right whereas you
00:12:13.940 know and i'll give you an example we had two recurring co-hosts at the edge one whose name
00:12:18.980 was gay jeff it's just easy gage while his name was jeff but we went with gay jeff and the other
00:12:25.320 one was lou who's now a tattoo artist lovely lady named lesbian lou lesbian lou pariselli yeah 0.62
00:12:32.620 wait wait wait wait wait wait do you know she's your tat artist isn't she she's one of my best
00:12:37.340 friends louis louis is one of my best friends i've known her for 10 years did she not tell you that 0.98
00:12:43.320 she was on our show did she do all that ink on you oh i knew she was lesbian lou by the way that's
00:12:48.340 was that's her that's how she got famous i didn't know it was with you on your i had no idea because
00:12:55.080 i didn't listen to her back then yeah oh my god we got that's so funny okay there's the connection
00:13:01.060 i mean just us talking we're like okay like two degrees over there you know and so lou is still
00:13:07.600 to this day one of my very good friends oh as is as is lou's wife stacy yeah lovely people yeah
00:13:12.960 and they're they're cute little boy i mean they they're just one of the coolest families in the
00:13:17.140 world she's like a world famous tattoo artist now yeah um and she's booked for years did you see her
00:13:22.620 cookbook she did yeah she published a cookbook we're gonna have her on the show to talk about
00:13:26.080 it as a matter of fact so maybe we'll bring her into that too yeah yeah yeah yeah um so we always
00:13:31.280 stood up for you know gay rights in every capacity keep in mind this is pre you know alphabet army
00:13:37.160 this is pre yeah yeah yeah yeah it was like hey dude we're open we're accepting but because of
00:13:43.140 that we thought hey we get the right to the jokes too we get the right to the stereotypes too we get
00:13:48.160 to have fun and we get to be a little saucy and a little creepy and we get to feed into those
00:13:53.860 stereotypes because if you understand if you're of my age you understand that that was comedy back
00:13:58.720 then if you advocated for the people that you advocated for if you meant it you also got to
00:14:03.740 have some fun you sarcasm and all that other shit right absolutely and there are lots of comedians 0.86
00:14:08.440 today that still believe that, right? You look at Ricky Gervais or Dave Chappelle, they would still 0.98
00:14:13.540 say, well, Ricky Gervais hasn't changed a thing, but some people would say, I don't want to change
00:14:20.620 what I do because that's still funny. That stuff's still funny. Talking about stereotype is funny
00:14:27.620 because it's stereotype, not because I necessarily stand behind it and want it to be like that
00:14:33.600 forever it's right correct correct no so um so that was just the tenor of who we were and very
00:14:39.760 successful did it for years uh we were super supportive of gay pride we're super supportive
00:14:44.980 of pride week we went to the events and we celebrated with the community we were truly
00:14:49.640 inclusive people so fast forward uh i don't know what year it is maybe 2013 2014 can't remember
00:14:55.700 our producer derrick welsman is asked to be on a jury trial he's asked and he becomes the jury
00:15:01.020 foreman of the said trial and in this trial um a man was being charged and the trial was about him
00:15:08.780 uh drugging sorry for the language um four other men in a bathhouse over the course of a weekend
00:15:16.460 they had him charged he exposed them to aids as well and this is all documented uh over the course
00:15:23.740 of the weekend and the trial was very sensational and we weren't allowed to talk about it while
00:15:28.240 Derek was a jury foreman. So we didn't do anything. You know, we lost our producer for
00:15:31.780 like two, three weeks. Um, and when he came back, we asked our management at the time
00:15:37.780 station management. We're like, Hey, can we talk about this? Cause the trial's over guy
00:15:41.540 was found guilty five years. He was sent to jail. Yeah. Can we talk about it? And they're
00:15:46.400 like, yeah, for sure you can. And we're like, okay. So we go on the air that morning, Derek's
00:15:51.700 back everybody how's being on a jury trial and so he explained in gory detail what the trial was
00:15:59.780 about and to this gentleman who four people against their will over the course of the weekend
00:16:06.880 which was proven in a court of law um we said and i said it sounds like you've sentenced him to five
00:16:13.440 of the greatest years of his life now keep in mind i'm a fan of street justice right um big fan and
00:16:19.140 And if anybody had ever told somebody and were found guilty of it and they got sent to jail, I applauded that for years.
00:16:26.140 Well, I guess, you know, turnabout's good play, fella.
00:16:28.480 You're going to be someone's pocket for a long period of time.
00:16:30.720 That's just how I am.
00:16:32.680 So, three months go by.
00:16:36.360 And all of a sudden, we get called into our boss's office.
00:16:39.560 He said, listen, we've got a problem.
00:16:42.100 And I said, what's the problem? 0.97
00:16:42.940 And he said, you guys are homophobic. 0.91
00:16:45.340 And I said, excuse me. 0.98
00:16:46.540 Wow, you are.
00:16:47.120 Sure.
00:16:47.620 Yeah.
00:16:47.880 I said, what do you mean?
00:16:48.520 Like, keep in mind, we didn't hear a word about that break.
00:16:51.000 No one talked about it.
00:16:52.200 No one.
00:16:52.560 It was just for three months, like just in and out like any other break.
00:16:56.980 He said, well, we got a letter from the lawyer who lost that trial.
00:17:00.080 And she's alleging that Derek was predisposed to homophobia, which is why he talked about the trial.
00:17:06.180 And they have they have taken this.
00:17:08.940 She took this to her friends at the Toronto Star, Jesse Bruiser, Jesse McClain, David Bruiser.
00:17:14.540 uh and they're now writing articles and they are chasing us down to ask why you guys are homophobic
00:17:21.380 and i go what are you talking about homophobic well because you you're you're alleging that
00:17:25.760 there you go yeah exactly so that actually worked they did an appeal absolutely yeah they made an 0.61
00:17:35.500 appeal uh said based on the fact that the producer is homophobic keep in mind derek's blind
00:17:40.540 and one of the nicest people you'll ever meet
00:17:42.900 and one of the most inclusive people you'll ever meet.
00:17:45.200 And he didn't see anything.
00:17:46.500 You were the one who made the comment, by the way. 0.99
00:17:47.640 Correct.
00:17:48.120 I was the person that made the comment.
00:17:49.760 You made the, yeah, okay.
00:17:51.040 Correct, yeah.
00:17:51.820 The made the comment about
00:17:52.620 sounds like you've sentenced
00:17:53.480 to five of the greatest years of his life.
00:17:56.200 And that got turned into and parlayed into
00:17:59.560 a series of other things that I had said on the radio
00:18:03.640 over a 15-year career where they just,
00:18:06.480 let's bring it all in.
00:18:07.660 And then our company hired Chorus Entertainment, which was the edge back then, hired this group called Navigator. Navigator is hired. They're a risk and damage mitigation company. They are hired to do things like paint over, you know, write articles to basically assuage a personality or to spin something and to destroy somebody.
00:18:28.660 So they paid Navigator hundreds of thousands of dollars. They went to work writing articles about how I was homophobic because the edge knew that I was probably and I had already had other job offers after I got fired.
00:18:40.700 Like the day I got fired, I had two job offers. They the goal was let's just try and destroy his reputation over a course of period of time.
00:18:47.800 And they did. They effectively did. They turned me into being a homophobic person who, and I'll tell you something, you know, I don't talk about the effect that that had on me, but boy, oh boy.
00:18:59.720 I mean, you know, five years later, no, not even, I would say three years later, I was diagnosed with alcoholism, extreme PTSD, first anxiety, depression, and severe anxiety.
00:19:13.640 And it was all in relation to the public outcry, the loss of the foundational reputation, what I thought I was.
00:19:22.640 And that gets into wellness and a whole bunch of other stuff.
00:19:24.800 But Cole's notes, it's why I got fired.
00:19:27.320 Wow.
00:19:28.620 Did the mistrial, did they do a retrial then?
00:19:32.400 No, they just declared a mistrial.
00:19:34.440 So he got off altogether?
00:19:36.800 Well, I think he did sometime in jail.
00:19:38.960 I think the appeal took a bit.
00:19:41.060 But yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:19:43.640 Yeah.
00:19:44.400 That's like, I mean, your story and that injustice and that spin and all of those things.
00:19:52.940 And then the fact that that changed the legal outcome of somebody going to prison for four different people is insane.
00:20:06.260 And that's all sin.
00:20:07.240 It's all sin.
00:20:08.360 And that's never, and that, by the way, that's never talked about, right?
00:20:11.200 Yeah, of course.
00:20:11.800 You know, the idea that a rat walks free because they were able to hide under some kind of cultural lie, right, or reputationally damage somebody so that you could derive some kind of legal result for legitimately a convicted.
00:20:26.380 Yeah.
00:20:27.080 And now when people take that article, you know, when I advocate for the LGBT community or whenever I talk about anything of substance, someone will take that article, a hater, a bot, a troll, someone who doesn't like it, literally just post, post, post.
00:20:40.840 Sure. 0.98
00:20:41.080 And those articles are full of legitimate bullshit. Like, you know, they were they were paid for by my company at that time. They were paid for paid to a guy named Jamie Watt at Navigator to create those articles. So, yeah, I mean, being canceled in front of a country isn't fun. It has some mental implications. 0.99
00:20:59.380 that's yeah of course it does of course and especially canceled for something you know
00:21:05.000 they're canceled for something you believe in is one thing like you're you're actually like well
00:21:09.960 yeah i i stand firmly opposed to the the lgbtq community blah blah blah but to do it and and to
00:21:17.580 have it in that capacity about sort of manipulation and context and all of those things i can't imagine 0.94
00:21:25.120 at having anything but like just a life-changing moment like i can't yeah it was you know and it
00:21:32.640 and it's interesting because you can do two things right i think when and fair or unfair
00:21:38.080 like i earned a lot of those stripes right you know i was not perfect broadcaster to say the
00:21:44.720 least oh listen and i think that's important to talk about too sure what is acceptable what was
00:21:49.920 cheered on what was what was the greatness of the time and on late 90s early 2000s television radio
00:21:57.920 all of those things what we encouraged and what we gave accolades to and then when that flipped
00:22:06.640 when that changed when all of a sudden we became more intelligent more aware more responsible and
00:22:13.040 all of a sudden we get to apply this morality to then i don't to me that has never been fair it is 0.92
00:22:20.480 fair to say holy crap back then and i talk about me being in high school holy crap back then i was 0.88
00:22:26.240 uneducated i was unaware look at how easy i slid into that look at how easy i spoke about things 0.59
00:22:33.440 like that that's a good conversation that's a great conversation actually um but to hold us to
00:22:40.400 the same standards, it's mind boggling that we do this to anybody. I remember watching, I think,
00:22:48.200 Teen Wolf not too long ago with Michael J. Brooks. And the amount of times they use the,
00:22:54.680 and I won't say it, but the F-A-G word, it's their thing that they just constantly drive and drive 0.94
00:22:59.900 and drive and drive. And it's still one of these movies is like, oh, it's the best movie ever. I'm 1.00
00:23:04.120 like, you should play a drinking game to how many homophobic slurs was allowed in that movie.
00:23:09.580 But then you start watching all of the movies in the late 80s and early 90s and you go, oh, and we're expecting everybody in that culture to not speak a certain way or to not have a certain perception and not be bigoted and stereotypical in a certain way.
00:23:26.420 Meanwhile, the entirety of our media is. That doesn't make any sense. You can own it. You can say, shoot, I really was like blinders on, no idea, no awareness. Yeah, we can talk about that. But, you know, nobody's canceling Michael J. Fox for reading those lines.
00:23:47.200 no but we've seen it happen right like we've seen people get canceled for things they've said and
00:23:53.260 done 20 30 years ago you know it was all the rage about two three four years ago right you know john
00:23:59.080 wayne got taken to the carpet for a bunch of racist tropes that he espoused back in the 40s
00:24:05.500 and 50s and everybody was trying to cancel john wayne uh eddie murphy's delirious they tried to
00:24:11.060 cancel that dave chappelle generally gets canceled for things that he says generally speaking today
00:24:16.520 but in the past canceled no some people haven't talks about cancel culture as though dave dave
00:24:24.120 chappelle has never been canceled i mean people come at him yes um but like these people have
00:24:32.160 never ever been canceled even when and i'm not going to talk about it too much because i don't
00:24:37.760 want to give him the uh the attention but bill cosby gets convicted convicted and they're still
00:24:44.880 talking about when he gets out and it gets overturned he's going to go back on the road
00:24:48.960 and those shows would still be sold out totally who the who's getting canceled over here for stuff
00:24:55.360 you know this this idea about this big uh big cancel culture i don't i just i there's a lot
00:25:01.640 of bluster about it and then it kind of goes away especially when the bottom line is how much money
00:25:09.980 are you making? And I would argue this, being that back in that time when they decided
00:25:14.960 that you were going to go, this was the caveat. This was the reason. This was the thing they
00:25:20.640 could manipulate in that time, in that context, in that culture. Why? Well, because you used to
00:25:26.180 make this much money and maybe now you're making this much money and we want to get rid of him
00:25:29.680 because he costs us a lot of money and now this is the way to do it. 100%. Yeah. You couldn't be
00:25:36.580 more right it was a big ticket i made a lot of money and it was like a 13 14 year round where
00:25:41.100 they're like yes we can pay him any more money um that's part of it i think you know the history
00:25:46.000 is part listen when something like that happens to anybody right where you know your reputation
00:25:52.340 um the idea of yourself gets taken away from you whether you did it or not yeah you don't if you're
00:26:00.400 not in a, if you're not in a mind frame, if you don't have that educational mindset of, okay,
00:26:07.520 this happened, I need to figure out why, right? Why? That's the first thing. The second thing is,
00:26:16.580 and if you don't ask yourself this question, and I truly believe this to be true,
00:26:20.640 what was my role? And let's deal with that first, right? Let's, let's talk about my role
00:26:26.960 in my life. Let's talk about what I said or did that gave anybody an excuse to do X to me,
00:26:33.720 or let's talk about the accountability portion and why I am in this unhappy place where life
00:26:41.080 around me changed, right? It doesn't matter what it is. And this is highly applicable to everybody
00:26:45.640 out there, right? Whether someone takes advantage of your reputation at work, school, online,
00:26:50.640 it doesn't matter what it is. If you don't take the time to legitimately learn about your role
00:26:59.220 in your life, because these things don't just happen to people. Sometimes they do. And that's
00:27:05.360 a nightmare for people, right? People of great education, great reputation, whose life gets
00:27:10.740 taken away from them to no fault of their own. It rarely, rarely happens. Regardless of how my life
00:27:18.440 happened then i was still accountable for it and let me explain that to you real quick
00:27:23.880 i spent 13 to 14 years like a machine gun of anger and frustration and jokes at people's expenses
00:27:34.760 because i thought i was entitled to all of them now having said that i'm also very very proud
00:27:40.520 In the context of the time of the job we did, it wasn't a fire hose every day of hatred, anger, marginalizing people for jokes, taking advantage of stereotypes.
00:27:52.760 No, no, no, no, no, no, no.
00:27:54.480 But we absolutely hurt people who didn't deserve it. 0.99
00:27:59.520 And my light went on in a couple of different examples of where I thought, fuck, if I don't learn from this, Joanna, it's a lost cause. 0.98
00:28:07.380 The light went on after I left the edge. 0.90
00:28:11.120 And after I left radio completely in two circumstances, one was an article I read in Rolling Stone where they were interviewing David Letterman about his views of interviewing people that are of different sexual persuasions.
00:28:23.500 And one of the things he said is, I don't understand when there are individuals who are trying to figure out who they are and they're already on this journey that is so much more difficult than mine.
00:28:35.280 why we make jokes crack jokes and throw logs on their path in the journey of life like why do we
00:28:42.260 do that right and so i'm like oh my god that makes sense to me that for the first time in my life
00:28:47.540 made sense the second thing that happened is i watched george floyd die and i had to challenge
00:28:55.020 and when i heard something someone said something it was karima who i work with kareem asad who's
00:28:58.960 a videographer uh she said you know people don't understand their cognitive bias and i said
00:29:05.160 explain that to me. And I knew what she meant, but I wanted to hear her explain it. And she said,
00:29:10.220 we grow up in these environments where we develop these cognitive biases that literally affect us
00:29:18.000 in ways where we don't even know that they're affecting us, the ways that we think, the way
00:29:23.060 that we feel. And she put it to me this way. And she said, let me ask you a question. What would
00:29:28.280 happen if you were walking down the street by yourself and a group of five black men were
00:29:33.400 walking towards you what would you do and i went oh my god i get it i totally get it yeah i get it
00:29:41.500 i've got these preconceived notions that are so baked in yeah to who i am that i think that these
00:29:47.520 jokes are okay or some of these things that i say i'm entitled to say them because my right to hurt
00:29:53.060 people stands above which is cloaked in my right to do what i want free speech by the way that's
00:29:58.660 how they cloak it i can hurt anybody i want because it's my right to free speech well i don't
00:30:04.800 have the same convictions i had back then my convictions today are a result of conversations
00:30:11.460 that i've had leaning into what i think was unfair and ruthlessly figuring out my role in all of it
00:30:18.560 and how i can be better going forward regardless of how fair or unfair i think that event was that
00:30:25.280 drastically changed my life. I needed to respond to it in my best interest. And in that case,
00:30:32.000 it wasn't about getting angry. It wasn't about exacting revenge because the best way to be
00:30:37.700 better and the best way to win is to beat them, is to enjoy the process. It's to find out what
00:30:44.540 is right and what is wrong and ruthlessly do those things. And so over the past three, four years,
00:30:51.940 five years that's come out of my advocacy right in the the advocacy of inclusion uh not the crazy
00:30:58.720 stuff the ultra super open as they refer to it you know and i hate the fact that they do
00:31:03.620 ultra woke stuff i want it is in through that list i will put the woke on the side because
00:31:10.120 we'll come back to that yeah happy to but um that was my journey and so like and i believe that to
00:31:16.680 be the best way to live today and again we talked about it on my podcast earlier um as a as someone
00:31:23.380 who really values you know the the virtues and the values from stoicism and the philosophy of
00:31:28.260 stoicism um my job in this life gets run through one filter and that's to be of good character and
00:31:34.120 acts for the common good and listen you know mocking someone who's literally having an
00:31:39.760 existential sexual crisis mocking someone or joking about the skin color uh that belongs to
00:31:45.740 an individual who walks into a shopper's drug market gets followed into the hair care section
00:31:49.880 because of the color of their skin. Right. I, I challenged those things and those things to do
00:31:56.100 those things is not a good character and it is not for the common good to advocate for that
00:32:01.660 understanding and to challenge people's cognitive biases. That's what I'm here for now, because
00:32:05.380 that fits in to the values and the virtues that I live by. I think that's amazing. Are you
00:32:10.660 frustrated because as you're talking about this and explaining what q was in that time and explaining
00:32:16.900 how they curated it and and what it was you know how it was hyper masculinized and focused and
00:32:22.900 whatever because i'm sitting here and all i can think in my head is matt walsh jordan peterson uh
00:32:32.100 ben shapiro and the little what what's their media oh daily daily wire is that it thank you
00:32:39.700 all i think about is that little enclave of pseudo-academics using pseudo-academic language
00:32:49.620 to do exactly what you used to do under the pretense of actually having intellectual
00:32:58.900 discourse surrounding it instead of making the offhanded joke instead of using the language
00:33:04.900 we're not allowed to use anymore instead right what they've done on that channel is they figured
00:33:10.420 out how to say everything you pretty much got fired for saying and everybody else is getting
00:33:16.580 canceled for yet these men have figured out a way to rage farm masculinized hyper masculinized 0.99
00:33:25.540 culture along with andrew andrew tate somewhere in the background with his uh stupid cars they've 0.99
00:33:31.380 weaponized and exacerbated this toxic masculine culture, but they've done it in a way 0.99
00:33:40.380 as the pretense, we're not joking, guys. There's no joke here. We're doing it because
00:33:47.900 I have proven clinically that I'm right. I have proven academically that I am right. I've gone
00:33:56.240 out and done this big thing on what is a woman. Look it, nobody's been able to answer my question. 1.00
00:34:01.160 I've gone, you know, I have a PhD and I have all these academic accolades.
00:34:06.220 Obviously, I'm a lawyer.
00:34:07.840 I'm highly educated.
00:34:09.640 Yet, in my opinion, their channel is exclusively for doing exactly what you were told to do
00:34:18.900 and you were conditioned to do because it made that channel boatloads of freaking money
00:34:23.020 as it's making them boatloads of money right now to do the same thing but do it differently.
00:34:31.160 So you're leaning into something that I think about quite a bit. And that is, you know, when guys like Jordan Peterson, Ben Shapiro, Matt Walsh, just the dregs of the dregs, right?
00:34:45.640 just the the hateful colonial chauvinist hurtful um unempathetic uneducated return to 1.00
00:34:59.480 barefoot women gay people are an aberration kids should be seen and not heard bullshit 1.00
00:35:06.400 that is they they and we i go back to the conversation we had in our podcast like an 1.00
00:35:11.920 hour and a half ago, Joe, is for them, it's a couple of things. One is they know that they
00:35:19.660 cannot exist in a progressive society. So they have to do two things. They have to be overtly
00:35:26.620 outrageous and they have to pretend that they're the warriors for the things that their culture 0.93
00:35:34.020 is now being told are no mas, can't do it. You can't make fun of people. You can't use the R
00:35:40.180 word. You can't, uh, you can't mock someone's gender. You can't be mean or hurtful to somebody
00:35:46.260 who can't change who they are. They just don't care because to that point that you made on my
00:35:51.520 podcast, that life doesn't fit into the cast that they were brought up to believe is right.
00:35:56.060 And then include the fact that their Lord and savior also demands them to believe these things
00:36:02.720 because the afterlife legitimately depends on it. They have nowhere to go, but to get together
00:36:08.760 and to have all their subscribers give them $5 to $10 a month
00:36:13.100 because they are not brand safe.
00:36:16.420 The only economy that exists is the economy of that hatred.
00:36:20.440 And that actually has to get fed to a very specific group of people
00:36:24.880 who share those same very specific hateful values.
00:36:28.220 Now, in that, that is your case study for where we're at.
00:36:33.280 And let me explain that real quick, in my opinion.
00:36:35.780 where we're at is the idea that everybody should be able to share these same progressive values
00:36:42.120 right we can't and we can't for two reasons we can't because a certain segment of society
00:36:49.020 doesn't have the gray matter or the the the intestinal fortitude to understand why we need
00:36:59.380 to progress. And they're also afraid of it. And so that fear creates this circle of stupidity and
00:37:08.960 hatred where that actually serves a purpose for a certain culture. But that culture, if you think 1.00
00:37:15.420 about the hatred and the cruelty on the anger towards the LGBT community or the idea that a
00:37:21.460 woman should not be the head of any household, which is biblical in nature, if you think about
00:37:26.500 the exclusionary attitude of that group and the hate and the vitriol that they deliver that 1.00
00:37:33.460 messaging with it's unsustainable like you talked about the last gasps of the pushback for
00:37:40.320 progressivism oh this is the this is it yeah i mean you're seeing it you're seeing you're like
00:37:45.480 this is not lying to people about their existence yeah yelling fire in a movie theater when there
00:37:51.440 is none, over and over and over again, becomes old. But it also becomes tiring. It also becomes
00:37:59.520 disingenuous. And so the sustainability of being authentic, right? They're duplicitous.
00:38:06.120 The authenticity of being authentic in your progressivism, that's the future of content.
00:38:12.040 Can you have fun with it? For sure. Can you poke fun at different stereotypes?
00:38:16.480 Absolutely. I'm talking about the vitriolic hatred of certain individuals. Yeah. The intent of it.
00:38:24.300 Yeah, absolutely. The intent. And it's funny with the intent is that I, and that's, that's another,
00:38:30.900 it's the only difference with these men, I feel as though, again, it's their pseudo intellectual
00:38:35.720 sort of capacity. It's the way they've set up this idea of, well, we're coming at it from an
00:38:42.200 academic standpoint. Therefore, we're not joking. We're careful with our language. We're careful
00:38:50.020 with how we quickly demonize and create, you know, sort of inherent moral value and ethical
00:38:57.680 value to different things. And I think it gives the people, let's say, that either have chosen
00:39:08.780 not to become let's say higher educated or haven't had the opportunity to become uh in a higher
00:39:15.980 educated kind of mode and i don't mean that by just going to university by the way i mean that
00:39:20.300 but we we can access a lot of education they've given this language and the language of academia
00:39:28.380 for somebody who doesn't understand it gives it validity it doesn't deserve it's kind of like when
00:39:32.940 you see a guy come in with a three thousand dollar suit and all of a sudden you give him credit you
00:39:36.700 you give him credibility. There's nothing about the way that a person dresses that should either
00:39:43.400 grant or take away credibility of who they are and what they can do. But we do that with our bias
00:39:49.920 every single day instantaneously. And everybody can say, no, I don't. Of course you do.
00:39:56.040 But we're doing that with language and the language they happen to use and their ability
00:40:01.420 to formulate sort of decent arguments, but resting on faulty premise, is able to convince
00:40:09.800 a bunch of people, oh, I used to think that I was just a bigot, but these guys can't be bigots
00:40:15.320 because they're this educated and they have this much money and they have this-
00:40:19.500 And they go to this church.
00:40:21.060 Credibility, therefore, I'm not bigoted. I've been being told because of the other push,
00:40:27.880 the progressive push, that being a racist and a homophobe and a sexist hasn't been good for years, 0.90
00:40:33.240 now these guys are saying, no, no, no. It's bred into us. It is genetic. It is the natural order. 0.94
00:40:42.960 And we are going to prove it to you by using all of these terms that nobody really frigging
00:40:47.420 understands. And I think it's such a dangerous power. But you're right. It is losing force.
00:40:53.620 Jordan Peterson is about to self-implode.
00:40:56.020 I mean, he made a comment, and I'm not going to step into the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,
00:41:02.860 but he made a comment that was just gross, regardless of where you stand. 0.98
00:41:07.100 And he said, unleash hell or give them hell. 0.99
00:41:10.920 Netanyahu. 1.00
00:41:11.840 Yeah.
00:41:12.160 Yeah.
00:41:13.940 And now watch him walk that back.
00:41:18.760 He's been like, because he-
00:41:22.400 Touched his subscriber base.
00:41:23.820 It touched his bank account. 1.00
00:41:25.020 He lost a whole bunch of those Sharia law guys who love Jordan Peterson. 0.99
00:41:28.780 Yeah, yeah, yeah. 0.98
00:41:29.300 All the Muslim men that he has been talking to and talking about religion
00:41:32.480 and talking about their connectivity to and where they find commonality,
00:41:38.920 all of a sudden, I haven't seen him.
00:41:41.600 I mean, he didn't push back because he got,
00:41:44.520 when he started screaming about pronouns as though it matters and forced speech,
00:41:49.920 He never had to walk back that because there was nobody in there
00:41:53.700 that was ever going to listen to what he had to say.
00:41:56.020 Well, now he has to.
00:41:57.320 Isn't that amazing?
00:41:59.440 Now he's really up against it.
00:42:00.900 So I've seen interviews and stuff like that whereby he's like,
00:42:06.020 oh, okay, and I'm gradually going to just step back out of this.
00:42:09.200 Whereas a guy like Ben Shapiro doesn't have to
00:42:11.120 because he's firmly entrenched and he was never trying to forge alliances
00:42:14.340 outside of his particular background anyway, so he can comment.
00:42:18.240 So can I can I give you let me give you an example of something again, you're touching on something that is strategic for that culture, right? Russell Brand. You know, when Russell Brand four or five years ago, you know, not doing movies, not doing comedy, I'm going to want to do some content online.
00:42:36.780 Yeah. And he literally went to work like Jordan Peterson went to work and the Daily Caller went to work and Ben Shapiro and Matt Walsh and Jack Posobiec went to work, creating an audience, creating an army of people who also doubted everything.
00:42:56.820 right and also hated the government and also hated gay people and also wanted their wives to be at
00:43:06.120 home making stew uh as opposed to going out there and getting an education all that stuff that
00:43:12.060 really stood up for those traditional roles now it's it's fascinating because when you feed into
00:43:18.360 the conspiracy theory and and listen if you're going to militarize a group of people you need
00:43:22.680 to militarize a bunch of soft brains. Yeah. And a soft brain believes in things that do not exist,
00:43:28.300 which is by and large why you see the extreme right tagging into certain faiths, no matter
00:43:35.400 what your faith is. And so when it comes to Jordan Peterson screaming, BB, give them hell, 0.90
00:43:41.200 telling basically Israel to turn Gaza and the people in it, vaporize them, get rid of them. 0.98
00:43:47.240 What guys like Jordan Peterson don't understand is that any radicalized person from anything to do with his faith will listen to him because he has spent years developing that audience, radicalizing that audience into doing two things.
00:44:06.000 believing a he is the truth because he aligns with their value so he's literally it's like chum it's
00:44:12.400 like fishing with chum and then b he wants them to continue to pay him because he knows in the 0.91
00:44:18.400 real world he is a not brand safe and he is irresponsible and he holds angry shitty views
00:44:24.400 that you cannot monetize so they spent years creating this this perception this academic 0.81
00:44:31.680 perception that they might be onto something by going back in time or being hateful or being mean 1.00
00:44:37.720 or justifying that hateful mean bullshit. So they are literally protected from like Russell Brand 0.99
00:44:45.380 literally tried to protect himself from the consequences of being an asshole or a sexual 1.00
00:44:53.160 abuser or a hateful. Correct. Correct. Correct. Correct. And so use that in a real way. 1.00
00:45:01.680 Donald Trump. Yeah. Fake news. Damn it. Right. Yeah. And it's not, look, and an irrational
00:45:09.080 person says, it makes rational sense that news and that, that there, there is manipulation,
00:45:17.300 there is coercion, there is, um, level of censorship and propagandism, like all of that
00:45:23.700 exists but but to be able to say that and then and to claim what's fake and what's real because you 0.81
00:45:32.340 said so oh it works all the time though jail but damn it that was genius right did with that was 0.51
00:45:42.500 genius and that's why he can stand up and say those election results are are false they stole 0.86
00:45:50.740 the election it's all fake news and then flip when a news story suits them say oh see now they're
00:45:58.020 telling the truth yeah guys and people believe it sure yeah sure and and that is that is why you have
00:46:07.860 the daily caller that is why you have telegraph that is why you have fox that is why you have
00:46:13.140 newsmax that is why you have true north that is why you have rebel you know we live in a time
00:46:17.860 where citizen journalism can be considered journalism right and citizens are human beings
00:46:23.540 and they all have different values and perspectives and ideologies well someone on the right about 10
00:46:29.300 15 years ago was like let's just start the sun news network and call it news and let's espouse
00:46:37.460 the views of the political parties and the executive relationships that belong to the
00:46:41.060 the people at sun news network to drive a seriously conservative result let's do that
00:46:47.540 reading level at a group maybe if you're being generous joanna um let's make sure it's in crayon
00:46:54.720 we'll use lots of pictures and memes yeah and then we've seen the culturalization of news over the
00:47:02.760 past little while because certain cultures understand that illegitimacy needs to look 0.98
00:47:08.720 legitimate if you're going to radicalize stupid people therefore therefore that is considered 0.98
00:47:15.900 news in some circles rebel news is considered news true north is considered news fox news is 0.99
00:47:22.140 considered news they've been peddling the big why for the past three years like it is legitimately
00:47:29.060 we live in a in the most bizarre time and information and to the average human being
00:47:35.720 Joanna like you and me who's you know 40s in her 50s we used to sit down at six o'clock and go
00:47:41.900 that's the news right truth right no no no you got to go to four or five sources now to figure
00:47:47.900 out the news and when you can trigger someone emotionally no one's going to those other sources
00:47:53.720 well it's so it's kind of the perfect storm I think it's also funny when people think that
00:47:58.820 this is new it's really not new I mean I go back when I teach Hertz and Pulitzer and we talk about
00:48:04.420 yellow journalism, it was the same. Exaggeration and cessationalism sells papers. That's what
00:48:12.840 sells stories. And so when you now couple the news with making money, you're always going to get,
00:48:24.000 and I won't even say his name, but you're always going to get
00:48:28.460 sort of an economic slant or a making money slant on what you're going to put on your station.
00:48:38.260 I reference the newsroom all the time because I think it was one of the most brilliant TV shows
00:48:42.580 that was ever put on TV. I don't know if you ever watched it with William Hurt.
00:48:45.580 Jeff Daniels? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:48:46.740 I always confuse William Hurt and Jeff Daniels. Anyways, it was brilliant and it was brilliant.
00:48:53.040 My only caveat with it is you pretended as though it was a change in news when it wasn't. I don't think it was. I think the extremity of it, maybe. I think the reach of it, maybe. I think the ways in which people could quickly access and then gain some sort.
00:49:17.520 sure, but let's not pretend as though newspapers weren't always about making money.
00:49:24.020 News stations weren't always about making money. And when you put that in full swing,
00:49:29.720 you're going to get the Kardashians on CNN. And once you get the Kardashians on CNN,
00:49:37.020 now what are we doing? What are we doing here? What is news? What isn't news? And
00:49:42.120 And if people don't want to hear, and let's be honest, most of people don't want to hear the
00:49:50.180 truth. They want to hear something that's going to make them feel good or feel superior or feel
00:49:55.980 just and righteous in what they've been doing. They want to hear that. So if I can figure out
00:50:01.640 what that is, then I am going to gear my news program to that to make those people feel good.
00:50:07.520 so they tune in and my advertising goes up yeah yeah right uh you you've nailed it now you've
00:50:14.480 nailed it you know like um when we grew up news was about information right where i get my information
00:50:23.040 from right today news is about affirmation it's got nothing to do with information it's got to do
00:50:29.760 with the same the same mo that forces somebody instead of googling talk about vaccine efficacy
00:50:38.240 or tell me about this vaccine they google will i die if i take the vaccine that's what they're
00:50:45.140 gonna pull yeah correct correct and so those people i call them the facebook news crew um
00:50:52.520 live in this echo chamber of affirmation not information and news outlets executives of
00:51:00.680 certain you know stripes whether it be a religious stripe a political stripe and they go hand in hand
00:51:05.760 uh or really when it comes to commerce have understood that they understand that in in the
00:51:11.460 case of fox news crazy people believe crazy things and they're willing to do crazy things to keep
00:51:18.200 those crazy things in their lives. And so they know that Fox News people will watch that for
00:51:24.580 affirmation because deep down they know they're wrong. So every single day you're going, I got
00:51:31.020 to go back to the well just to make sure I'm right. I got to go back to the well, make sure
00:51:33.680 my community is saying the same thing. I got to go back to the well. And in that process,
00:51:37.160 you get the radicalization of certain people and how they look at things. And so they don't even
00:51:42.380 want to look at other stuff, specifically of the religious right. You know, secular text,
00:51:47.940 secular music, secular news, secular ideas are literally pushed out of the education process
00:51:57.300 in any educational performance area where, you know, it's faith-based. By and large,
00:52:03.280 the GOP is a faith-based party. By and large, in Canada, conservatives, another faith-based party.
00:52:09.460 And those faith-based parties will tell people and go,
00:52:13.180 and they will literally, like a guy like Pierre Polyef,
00:52:15.900 he'll only do interviews in Canada with the alt-right news outlets,
00:52:21.160 the cultural news outlets that are feeding people
00:52:24.020 that steady stream of radicalized affirmation.
00:52:27.280 So a guy like Pierre, he's not going to stand in front of CBC
00:52:29.900 because his goal is then to tell everybody you can't trust CBC.
00:52:33.880 Sure.
00:52:34.400 Because he wants people to not get their news there.
00:52:36.880 he wants to funnel them over to his friend's publications so they can make money. He can get
00:52:42.020 out that skewed messaging and it is legitimately considered news by some people, but it's only 1.00
00:52:46.960 considered news if you're dumb. I don't think, so going pre this, right? So, so when we're talking 0.99
00:52:54.740 about, let's say this shift in sort of entertainment news, right? That connection, let's, let me shift
00:53:03.200 from that for a second because when i think about pre-social media pre-internet i still don't know
00:53:11.000 if i'm buying that somehow we were informational because i think we were but i think the level of
00:53:19.320 bias that we carried was so significant that we weren't actually informational i'll give you an
00:53:25.780 example so i've been teaching for 20 years probably in the last let's say 10 or 12 the
00:53:31.960 The Canadian history textbook has included indigenous peoples and the actual partial
00:53:39.120 truths, not the full truth, but partial truths about residential schools, about treaty rights,
00:53:43.880 about all that stuff, right?
00:53:46.040 Now here's the caveat prior to 20 years ago, or when I started really, because the internet
00:53:52.780 really didn't become significant, let's say until 2005, 2006, right?
00:54:00.160 first few years the only viable source of information the only justifiable source was
00:54:07.600 that textbook i held in my hand and me well that's an awful lot of power for one textbook that we
00:54:16.480 know right now is horrifically biased and for a teacher who also grew up never learning about any
00:54:24.800 of the things i've just discussed i got my undergrad in political science and history we
00:54:29.280 We never talked about Indigenous people.
00:54:31.200 I got my master's at York University, arguably one of the most left-leaning institutions in all of Canada, never talked about it in York University.
00:54:40.060 And then I went on to be a teacher.
00:54:41.980 So without the internet, right, or I mean, I have a particular connection because I've had some personal experiences within the Indigenous community, which is why I taught it a lot earlier than some.
00:54:53.720 But assuming we don't have those connections, now we have an entire educational system and somewhat of a new system predicated on the information that they chose to give and the very narrow view of society that they would have had running those news stations. 0.71
00:55:15.380 They would have been all white, all Christian, predominantly all men back in the day.
00:55:21.760 Do we really think that was informational or do we think perhaps it was informational for all the information that they deemed, their producers deemed, their advertisers deemed valid, important and essential? 0.81
00:55:38.820 So I don't know.
00:55:40.420 Like now we have Fox News, Rebel News. 1.00
00:55:42.680 We have these idiots over there with Jordan Peterson. 0.99
00:55:44.740 we have all these different things however my students can get in their phone anytime they want 1.00
00:55:51.300 and find out something that contradicts everything that is the change so you can try to control do i
00:56:01.060 think there's fake news of course i think i think every single you think we've always had it yeah
00:56:06.500 yeah yeah i just think when we didn't oh and you know what and that's a that's a solid point that
00:56:13.300 doesn't get made like we we seem to think that we come from this nostalgic time when the news we got
00:56:17.460 was literally the truth right yes well listen i didn't know about residential schools until the
00:56:22.260 last five years i'm 50. that's what i'm saying and i didn't know about the horrificness until i talked
00:56:27.460 to the chief of the bear clan about his experience in a residential school in brampton i didn't i'm
00:56:32.660 sorry branford i did not know that the catholic church the anglican church the colonial christian
00:56:40.500 religious judeo-christian values that established canada brought smallpox blankets over here to
00:56:46.660 murder as many to try and wipe out an entire culture i didn't know about those things until
00:56:53.060 the internet told me that it was okay to ask those questions and then you know what i was 0.55
00:56:59.140 do you know what i was taught in elementary school pilgrims landed at plymouth rock sure we were
00:57:05.380 were welcomed by the natives had dinner some corn we had a dinner we taught them to read and write
00:57:10.660 do some farming and medicine they taught us how to hunt buffalo and everybody's happy everybody's so
00:57:17.480 and i grew up in alberta in a small town that was literally surrounded by reservations
00:57:21.640 and i'm like and i remember saying to my dad at one time we were golfing and there were
00:57:27.060 some indigenous gentlemen that were passed out on the golf course um and i said i remember saying
00:57:32.500 to my dad what's the deal and he's like oh you don't know indigenous people can't handle alcohol 1.00
00:57:39.640 right like they have no idea and and all they do is drink right they don't have a gene sure it says 1.00
00:57:44.980 you don't have to drink so like when you know they started drinking they couldn't stop and that's 0.95
00:57:48.820 all indigenous people right this is in 1980 sure maybe 81 and i'm going to tell you a story that
00:57:56.140 happen not too long ago of mine. Go ahead. No, no, no. But to your point, that was in our
00:58:03.020 textbooks too. That was in a book report I had to do. That was taught to me, my Mr. Hassan.
00:58:10.420 This is what I'm saying. So we cannot possibly assume. And again, the notion of fake news
00:58:20.560 is the cell, but the idea that it is always biased, it is always one-dimensional. I say to
00:58:27.640 my kids all the time, my very first lesson is always, I have the textbook that they have to
00:58:32.360 buy. I show it to them on the first day. And I'm usually teaching like a history course,
00:58:37.800 a society, you know what I mean? Very sort of all-encompassing courses. So my history textbook
00:58:42.420 from 1914 to 2000 is about 450 pages. So I put it down in front of them and I say,
00:58:48.980 so this is the history 10 textbook guys 450 pages i said it covers all of history in canada
00:58:58.540 from 1914 to 19 let's well let's say 95 and they go okay and they don't even question me
00:59:06.540 i say do you think this textbook's bias and the kids are smart enough to go yeah yeah it's bias
00:59:12.340 it probably has some stuff and i said okay i go that's not the scariest part of this textbook
00:59:17.160 and they're like, what do you mean? I go, because you guys are all going to sit. Well,
00:59:21.340 you're not going to sit in my class and do this, but for most of the part, every kid is going to
00:59:25.020 sit in a history classroom, study the textbook so they can get a 95 on the test and they can do well
00:59:30.980 and move on with their day. I said, the most dangerous part of this textbook isn't the bias
00:59:36.020 in it. It's the bias that has chosen to omit 95% of our history. That's the scary part.
00:59:45.420 The scary part in today's news isn't when I'm given a piece of news that I assume that not to be biased.
00:59:53.460 Of course, it's biased, but I can question that.
00:59:56.220 I can look up stuff very quickly and go, okay, was that right?
00:59:59.980 What's the other perspectives?
01:00:01.640 That doesn't scare me, and it sure as hell doesn't scare my kids because they're way smarter than most adults,
01:00:06.740 and they're sure as hell smarter than Fox News.
01:00:08.640 what scares me is what they don't choose to cover because we have no idea it happened we have no
01:00:16.640 idea to challenge it we have no idea to get educated on it it's the power of omission that
01:00:23.680 is the most significant form of manipulative bias that is in our society at all so parts of you know
01:00:33.760 And it's not to say you can know all history. It's not the point. But to know more is to know
01:00:40.300 more perspectives. I say to my kids, listen, you have 50 kids that go to a party. When I say kids,
01:00:46.420 by the way, I mean students. A lot of people are like, how many kids do you have? I say to my
01:00:51.360 students, 50 kids go to a party and you can ask all 50 kids to write you what happened at that
01:00:57.520 party. You will get 50 different perceptions of that party. You might get some overlaps.
01:01:03.760 You might get some overlaps, and you might consider those to be more factually based about what happened at the party, but that's not the case.
01:01:11.260 Sure, those are factually based, but I'm going to tell you, each of those 50 kids' perceptions are all truth for them.
01:01:19.960 And if you put the 50 together and you listen authentically to all different 50 perceptions, you are going to get not to the perfect truth, because we never can get there,
01:01:30.340 But you are going to get closest to the truth of what happened at that party. Now magnify it by millions of people and 200 countries in the world and thousands of years of human history. And you'll get a slight inkling of what I say all the time, which is very Socratic, which is, the more I learn, the more I know nothing at all.
01:01:51.520 right this idea that it's a never-ending push to get to some idea so when i advocate for diversity
01:01:59.360 and equity i'm not advocating we all hold hands around a campfire the way these right-wing
01:02:06.160 pundits like to to stipulate it i'm advocating for getting closer to the truth and the only way you
01:02:12.560 get closer to the truth is if you listen to more people at that table any table and will they have
01:02:18.320 bias yes we all do and will they have a particular subjective stance of course they will but the more
01:02:26.640 you listen to the closer you will get to an actual fundamental truth that you can actually do
01:02:33.840 something with and if you're working on a homogeneous culture and a homogeneous ethnic 0.96
01:02:39.440 and cultural religious linguistic background you are ignorant for it
01:02:48.320 You are, because all you've chosen to do is be surrounded by all the people, like some people call it an echo chamber, but because it makes you feel comfortable, it makes you feel safe, it makes you feel, and we all like to feel right. 0.97
01:03:02.240 But there's the flaw.
01:03:03.860 So when I advocate diversity, it's not to be nice, it's to be smart.
01:03:10.200 You know what, and that's, you see, and that's, I think you said something earlier about how we align 90% of that, throw that in the 90%.
01:03:17.140 the more you listen to people it doesn't mean you take on their views right it doesn't mean
01:03:22.040 but but but it means that you've educated yourself as to what those views are and then you can make
01:03:26.460 that informed decision as to whether or not you agree with any of it and to your point you don't
01:03:30.840 have to be nice like i can legitimately sit here david parker he's the head of take back alberta
01:03:35.660 uh they just did this agm in alberta we had him on the show last week he is uh the person we're
01:03:41.080 talking about he's highly religious he's highly militarized he wants to turn the clock back not
01:03:45.900 an hour like daylight savings he wants to go back to 1932 uh and he got exactly what he wanted he
01:03:50.540 and i are texting this morning terrifying year you just chose not well sorry 1929 1931 i don't
01:03:58.140 just pick a year pre-1940 um so uh he and i have very specifically different backgrounds different
01:04:05.260 understandings but we come from life from the same genesis which is you know evangelical faith
01:04:10.000 then you go out in the world and you go figure it out now he's gone a hard line i've gone completely
01:04:14.960 off the reservation. But my whole understanding of where I'm at today is from listening to people
01:04:20.960 and then formulating an opinion based on two things, reason, reason, and accountability.
01:04:28.180 Just those two things. What is the reasoning behind this? Does it make sense to me? So
01:04:33.860 from reason, I can say, I'm not going to believe in a sky daddy because I can't prove it. So there's
01:04:39.300 no reason for me to believe that. I'm going to believe in myself and what I'm capable of. I'm
01:04:43.780 believe in higher education i'm going to believe in psychological treatment i'm going to believe
01:04:47.860 in emotional and mental awareness and i'm going to do the work in those areas so i can be that person
01:04:52.740 right the other side of the equation doesn't believe in any of those things because those
01:04:58.260 are all science-based and those are all accountability based yeah and they're going
01:05:02.100 to take that ideology from a book that says here's what you believe here is your operating system for
01:05:09.540 life that's what people want yes and so they adopt an operating system based on 2 000 year
01:05:15.220 old scriptures it says here's what you have to believe as opposed to employing reason or critical
01:05:20.980 thought yeah to come up with your own operating system your own values and your own virtues and so
01:05:27.780 that's easy for me to disclude and not include someone seriously when they come to me and they
01:05:33.540 say something like well listen if you're a big fan of other people's ideologies you should be willing
01:05:39.060 to sit here to mind. Guaranteed, I probably have. And if I treat you with any kind of injustice,
01:05:44.420 it's because you're ridiculous and your ideology doesn't apply to me. You're correct. 0.99
01:05:50.300 Your ideology is there in order to create bigotry, hatred, and injustice. I'm not going to stand
01:05:56.520 beside that. And I say that often, right? A lot of people will say, oh, well, Joanne, if you're so,
01:06:01.740 you know, you love all religions and faiths and you don't ever want to be discriminatory,
01:06:05.920 Why don't you like this part of this? I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa. I think it's beautiful that
01:06:11.320 somebody has a personal belief in a higher power. I think it's a connectivity. I think there's some
01:06:16.540 beauty in there. Having said that, I believe in personal freedom. And as soon as anything
01:06:25.980 attempts to take away that freedom, then I'm going to question why they're taking it away
01:06:31.860 and what purpose it's serving.
01:06:34.280 And there are some freedoms we all give up
01:06:36.400 because people will be like,
01:06:37.840 oh, well, we can't be completely free.
01:06:39.680 I said, absolutely not.
01:06:40.780 As soon as my freedom interferes with somebody else's,
01:06:44.280 we need to then balance that equation.
01:06:47.120 I don't get to drive 160 kilometers on the road
01:06:49.900 because that puts other people's lives at risk.
01:06:52.700 That is reasonable.
01:06:54.540 Aren't you free to do it though?
01:06:56.400 Just in Germany.
01:06:58.480 On one road.
01:07:00.800 I've been on the Autobahn, by the way.
01:07:02.120 It is fun going 180 on a bus.
01:07:03.900 I was on a bus doing 180.
01:07:05.180 Yeah, yeah.
01:07:05.800 But I think that that's an interesting conversation.
01:07:08.760 And people will be, you know, when people talk to me about their conservative ideology
01:07:12.280 and they're like, well, you just don't like conservatives.
01:07:13.920 I'm like, I just don't get it.
01:07:16.120 I don't get why you would want to fundamentally want to conserve something.
01:07:22.200 Forget everything else.
01:07:24.040 The idea of conservatism is about conserving tradition.
01:07:27.900 I'm very skeptical of having a starting point that is to conserve tradition just because
01:07:37.360 it's always happened. When I look at history, there's not a lot of places I would like us to
01:07:44.180 stop at. So if that's true, then why would I harness myself to an ideology, forget political
01:07:55.300 parties, but to an ideology that is premised in conserving what was. The only reason you do that
01:08:01.540 is because it gives you the illusion, the pretense that you are safe and you're predictable and
01:08:07.360 everything is going to always turn out that way. And listen, Joe, and it goes against every law
01:08:15.260 of nature. To not progress, to not change, to not educate, to not get better. We go back to
01:08:25.060 this again. I think we talked about it in our podcast. Change is literally one of life's only
01:08:31.660 guarantees. Change and death. That's it. It's the only two things you got. And what? What'd you
01:08:38.760 say? I'm shopping. And are you a little bit of a shopper? You asked me earlier, what do I do on a
01:08:42.960 Sunday? I usually go shopping. I don't always, a lot of people always buy stuff. You a clothes
01:08:47.520 shopper? Are you a knickknack shopper? What do you do? Clothes. Clothes. You are a clothes horse.
01:08:52.320 i am it's i see that in your videos you're always so well dressed like you're wearing this really
01:08:57.380 cool red leather jacket this letterman jacket the other day in a video and i'm like oh i got
01:09:02.020 that in a vintage place and oh it is so cool one of my most favorite favorite yeah yeah i'm not
01:09:08.080 opposed to the whole nostalgia like it really does resonate with me my house is filled with
01:09:13.720 like claymation cartoon figures from the rudolph the red-nosed reindeer movie right like i have a
01:09:19.480 wall of toys that are all from my childhood because they make me feel a certain level of
01:09:25.920 safety and nostalgia and loveliness. But I'm not stupid enough to think that we should go back to 0.57
01:09:33.100 1982 because it was better then. There's a difference there. You can have both. You can 0.73
01:09:39.980 love nostalgia, but you can have to, you have to, have to, have to understand why it serves you
01:09:48.340 and how it can't overtake the fact that we still need to progress,
01:09:55.640 that we still need to change, that everything still needs to get better.
01:09:58.980 What happens when someone graduates from grade 9 in your school?
01:10:01.320 What happens next?
01:10:02.620 Grade 10.
01:10:03.580 They don't stay in grade 9?
01:10:05.300 Yeah, exactly.
01:10:06.580 What happens when they get to grade 10 and they graduate from grade 10?
01:10:08.840 That's when grade 9 touched on a very soft subject.
01:10:11.400 Grade 9s are problematic for me.
01:10:13.780 Oh, are they?
01:10:14.300 Well, forget them.
01:10:15.300 Let's go 10 to 11.
01:10:16.480 What happens when you graduate grade 10?
01:10:17.760 Where do you go?
01:10:18.340 They move on.
01:10:19.300 They get smarter, hopefully.
01:10:21.260 What about at the end of high school, Joanna?
01:10:23.420 What happens then?
01:10:24.120 You go to, hopefully, post-secondary, right?
01:10:26.400 You progress.
01:10:27.540 Right, right.
01:10:27.900 You progress.
01:10:28.380 You progress.
01:10:28.480 You're looking bigger, right?
01:10:30.080 Why do books exist?
01:10:31.480 Better.
01:10:32.640 Why do books exist?
01:10:33.100 I feel like when people get out of school, Dean, I think when people get out of school,
01:10:36.840 and this is the reality, we've thrown away all of the brilliant philosophers.
01:10:41.020 You're talking about philosophy earlier, and I think of philosophers like Confucius, right?
01:10:46.060 we're talking thousands and thousands of years old and the print main driving force of that
01:10:51.420 people call it a religion it's not it's a philosophy but the main driving force of that is
01:10:56.540 you are always a student if you're not always learning you're doing a disservice to yourself
01:11:02.700 and your community and i think in our culture we have said when you get out of university you're
01:11:08.700 good go do the same job you're going to do for the rest of your life you've already learned you've
01:11:12.940 already got and whether it's university but that's it that's what you're going to do it's amazing how
01:11:17.100 when you're like 18 to 22 depending on what you've accomplished academically you've arrived you don't 0.99
01:11:21.660 have to learn anymore there's a whole mo out there like that isn't it i was so so stupid at 23.
01:11:27.020 right we knew nothing no and i knew nothing anything i didn't as a kid i very much like 0.88
01:11:34.380 today i talk about to my students breaking the box and questioning me and challenging me and
01:11:38.940 don't ever think i know everything and don't ever think my ideas are the end of the world
01:11:43.660 but back then when i was in high school when i was in university i didn't
01:11:48.540 i didn't i didn't challenge i i learned how to whatever whatever i needed to do and whatever
01:11:53.340 course whatever teacher i had i learned what i needed to do i did it and i moved on with my day
01:11:58.540 i didn't think outside of the box i didn't critically think i wasn't any of the things
01:12:03.580 that i consider myself sort of more powerful today for doing i did none of that and partially
01:12:12.220 because you were very much i felt like back then especially very much restricted by the resources
01:12:16.940 you had by the whereas today it's it's so easily you have no excuse you have no excuse to not get
01:12:23.260 better in 2023 never you don't and let me and you know i'll i'll i don't know how much time you have
01:12:28.620 left but um we're gonna have to do it too oh we have to we have to because i enjoy this i enjoy
01:12:34.220 heavy conversations about things that matter um so about six years ago i needed to stop drinking
01:12:41.420 right it was it was an important moment in my life where i'm i could take a straight line from
01:12:47.660 alcohol and and and draw that straight line to every negative thing in my life i felt about
01:12:52.380 myself my mental health physical health emotional health family relationships all those things it
01:12:57.980 It was this coping mechanism where I could hide and numb and wouldn't have to get better at anything.
01:13:01.880 I could just sit there, right, and eventually blackout.
01:13:06.340 Long story short, I go to AA.
01:13:10.280 It's about six months in, and I'm militant about going to these meetings because it's like it's that or drink.
01:13:16.260 And I couldn't drink.
01:13:17.220 I needed to figure it out.
01:13:18.380 There's a whole bunch of other stuff in there, too.
01:13:20.440 Psychotherapy, getting a real diagnosis, you know, getting put on medication, which I'm no longer on.
01:13:25.900 Grateful, thankful for that.
01:13:27.980 all of those things. To get better, I knew I had to do one thing, one thing and one thing only.
01:13:35.020 Invest in that entire process. So six months into AA, I turned to the guy next to me and I'll never
01:13:43.160 forget it. We'll just say his name's John. And I go, so like, when are we better? Like, when do
01:13:51.020 we graduate? Right. What a great, yeah. And he looked at me and he goes, never, dude, this is
01:13:57.660 for the rest of your life like what are you talking about like at some point aren't we cured
01:14:02.360 like aren't we figured out aren't we smart enough at some point and he goes i hope you never ask
01:14:07.860 that question in another meeting again right right right and it and it it was like a light bulb went
01:14:13.920 off it's like oh that's all of life it's not just me trying to get on top of things or getting tools
01:14:20.620 to deal with things getting tools to deal with things in every capacity of your life is all of
01:14:26.460 life. And if you're not willing to do that, if you're not willing to be curious about what that
01:14:31.180 process is in your life, you will never get better. You will never learn anything, never be at
01:14:37.820 anything. So that I think is a great place to jump off for me because my chicken stock is literally
01:14:45.140 beeping at me. Can you hear it? Weird statement to make really sore. I'm really sorry. Talk is
01:14:51.020 done i've look i've been given a lot of excuses before dean never that my chicken stock is done
01:14:56.460 no it's not an excuse i can run and go and turn it off and i can come back or we can pick up another
01:15:01.220 time we got to do a part two we've been on here for probably almost three hours at this point
01:15:05.300 can you just tell everybody where to find your podcast and all of your social media before we
01:15:10.920 tap out here yeah absolutely um please go to crier.co crier media that is where we're at we've
01:15:16.140 got about 120 podcasts featuring very soon um unlearn 16 tweets school is in session that's
01:15:23.320 going to be coming and i'm going to talk to you about that tomorrow uh but you can find us at
01:15:27.280 crier media at it's dean blundell on twitter across all platforms go and watch all of our
01:15:31.380 podcasts including the one we did prior to this one with joe uh on youtube you can go to youtube
01:15:36.200 you can go to facebook dean blundell show on youtube crier media on youtube uh and i can't
01:15:40.620 thank you enough this was i've never you know and having said this i'm usually not at a loss for
01:15:45.260 words. But rarely have I done a podcast with somebody where I've never met them before.
01:15:50.780 Just mutual respect on social media for similar values. And it's almost like you brought friends
01:15:55.680 from one group to meet friends from another and you're just instantly friends. Don't let it ever
01:15:59.860 be said that people with similar values can't be friends regardless of where they're from or the
01:16:03.760 life they've led. I count you as one today and I really appreciate you having me. And I appreciate
01:16:08.380 you for coming on the show. I think you're an amazing human and I can't wait for us to have,
01:16:12.660 to be honest more conversations about more big issues um because i think it's going to be
01:16:17.960 fascinating and i really i really look forward to that and for everybody who's listening please
01:16:24.020 go check out his podcast right before mine listen to the whole thing block out i don't know half of
01:16:29.380 your evening for us that would be amazing and you guys know i will see you next tuesday same bat time
01:16:35.940 same bat channel dismissed