34: Zev Weinstein - On Parenting, Boys & Generation Z
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Hello, it's Eric with a few thoughts for this week. I want to talk about a topic that is surprisingly dangerous, taste. Now, taste doesn't sound like a dangerous topic, at least to my ears. When I hear the word, I think about an ineffable quality that famously does not lend itself to discussion. As the Latin saying goes, de gustibus non est disputandum, indicating a belief that in matters of taste, unlike matters of fact, there can be no productive disputation.

How marvelous, a quality then that is highly individualistic and cannot be argued because no one's taste is better than anyone else's. However, I don't quite see it like that. Instead, I have a deep feeling of dread that beneath all this mechanistic talk about rights and rules and laws, there's ultimately an issue of taste at the bottom of it all. To make matters even worse, I believe that if there is a type of taste essential to making society work, it is likely not our individual taste, but the coherence of our group taste.

In this picture, we lost a concept of group taste, where many members of the leadership of a social group could roughly agree on what was desirable on behalf of society and act upon that accordingly. When that sense of shared group taste was lost, people increasingly turned to rules, rights, and laws to govern how they should get along in the absence of shared cultural expectations.

If I hear someone screaming obscenities into a cell phone at a supermarket, for example, my first inclination is to alert the person as they likely don't realize that they are swearing in front of family shopping. That is, I would be making an appeal to shared taste. But what if that person were to say to me in return, what business is it of yours or anyone else's what I yell and how loud I yell it? If you don't want children to hear this, leave them at home.

Well, that would alert me to the idea that we do not share a sense of taste. The immediate next question would become, what are the laws or rules governing the situation, and is there anyone here with the ability or authority to enforce them? That is a fairly serious change in orientation. One second, I think I am helping someone not to humiliate him or herself. The next, I am looking for a security guard armed with a nightstick or firearm.

Well, this is what I am seeing more each day. We are losing a sense that our central tastes are shared, and so we are looking to control each other through the appeal to rights, rules, and laws. The hunter and the vegan may have a shared appreciation of nature, for example, that is much greater than that of the general population. But while one analogizes man to a noble apex predator like the eagle, the other analogizes our prey to other humans.

Whether we choose to buy into one, both, or neither of these analogies is an issue largely of taste which will generally determine our perspective in these matters. Well, increasingly, I am trying to avoid all conversations that involve our hypothetical hunter and vegan talking together. I am more interested in a conversation between two hunters or one taking place between two vegans.

At least when people agree on a basic framework built on shared taste, the conversation isn't guaranteed to stagnate year after year into sloganeering that accomplishes nothing. Somehow, when we share our tastes with another, our conversations become symphonic within that framework. When we agree on taste, we get to play intellectual chess with each other, whereas when we disagree, we end up in infinite drawn games of tic-tac-toe.

So why do we see the internet turning civil society into an infinite sea of pointless drawn tic-tac-toe style disputes? Well, I would say the following. We have weirdly become fearful of anyone accomplishing anything, it seems. The goal of many concerned with issues of oppression and justice is to open up any discussion to the veto of the very people who would want it shut down.

An atheist sees every move towards religiosity in a discussion between priests as a step towards the madness of the Crusades, while a priest might view every conversation between progressive atheists as bringing us closer to the atrocities of communism.

For some reason, a concept of taste that values moderation in both our belief and skepticism has been lost even though it allows us to coexist and make progress with each other. Instead, we are now left with a shouting match, as if every recitation of the Lord's Prayer leads inexorably to the Inquisition, and every questioning of God's existence must lead to Stalinist show trials.

So this is my concern. When we insist on tearing each other to shreds, or look to shackle our interlocutors with rules about what they can and cannot say or do, we are really looking to re-establish some concept of shared taste in a much bigger world. We want to be able to communicate that of course Pushkin and Tagore were much more important writers than Ogden Nash, or that Stephen Hawking was not nearly as important to physics as Dirac, without much of an argument.

We are so tempted to want to communicate that between J.S. Bach and Weird Al Yankovic, only one of them is of timeless importance. Yet we have all learned exactly what will ensue in any open forum that is sufficiently large and diverse. You can likely hear the voice already. Just who are you and what gives you the right to make such sweeping generalizations?

A world that cannot distinguish via taste whether a word is being said hatefully with contempt or being used clinically incorrectly in a scholarly context needs the childlike concept of the N-word to make sure that taste never enters into the discussion of George Carlin, Richard Pryor, Gilbert and Sullivan, or Mark Twain. And so, this is my final thought for you for this week. Don't be fooled into thinking that our new internet-enabled world can be sorted out with mere rules.

Don't waste your lives trying to come up with laws and protocols to make everyone behave properly towards each other. At the bottom of all this is really an issue we don't talk about because we have become afraid to slight anyone who might be listening. And that issue is taste. The people who are fighting against compelled pronouns, for example, may want to use those same pronouns to make someone struggling with their sexual identity in one context feel comfortable.

Likewise, the people fighting for prohibitions on so-called deadnaming might really be fighting against targeted bullying and have no real difficulty when discussing Bruce Jenner's Olympic decathlon victory in 1976. If there is a way forward, it has to do with communicating taste. It is important for me that we learn again to discuss and transmit issues of taste in public.

The following are all statements of taste that will offend those of you who find all such public discussions insufferable, but I think it's important that we again try to remember that taste is one of the most important things we can transmit. So here are ten issues: 1. Algebraic geometry is far more rich and beautiful than combinatorics. 2. The importance of Bach's music and Shakespeare's prose is unequaled by any of the composers and writers working today. 3.

The Eighth Day of Creation by Horace Judson about the birth of molecular biology is an amazing book you should both know and own. 4. The American-developed Tommy Atkins mango variety that dominates the U.S. market is in fact terrible and is wildly inferior to Western India's Alfonso mango, which ripens each May. 5. Turkish is a much more beautiful language than Indonesian, but Indonesian is in fact much easier to learn and much more satisfying to learn than Turkish.

6. Biology and music theory are far more accomplished fields than ecology and sociology, and would generally be better to major in if you are already college-bound. 7. Tom Lehrer is an off-color and obscene national treasure, and he should still probably be played for small children. 8. Parmigiano-Reggiano is a far more important cheese than Emmentaler. It's not even close. 9. The worm and model organism C. elegans deserves your attention no matter who you are or what you do for a living.

10. The simple system of a weight on a spring is unexpectedly the key to all of physics. Study that much more than you would study any other system and you will be richly rewarded. So, you may ask, why engage in such non-political statements of taste at all? Well, because I believe that daring to transmit the gift of taste is one of the most important acts of trust in which we can engage. When you share your well-chosen tastes with others and they take hold, it allows your group to progress beyond basic conversations.

It allows you to stop engaging in framing wars and to start listening to each other. But, perhaps most importantly, if the taste is well chosen, it allows the recipient not to waste time chasing meaning and truth down all of the blind alleys which radiate out from every direction in a young life. And so I thought I would experiment by leaving you with a small number of value-laden statements representing my tastes in areas in which I think many of you may disagree.

Unlike the ones above, I would expect these statements to engender a fair amount of pushback. Yet I have roughly the same level of conviction about them, so I thought I would try to share them at scale to see what happens when you ask people to rely on shared taste and reasonability rather than rules and rights. Here are five points of taste which I think are all on fairly solid ground, but I think may be upsetting to some people. A.

Don't waste too much of your time trying to solve old problems like free will versus determinism, or pro-life versus pro-choice, or the existence versus the non-existence of God. If you want to think about these things, think about them as entertainment and compute their considerable opportunity costs as part of your entertainment budget. If you want to be more productive, however, instead ask why these well-worn positions so regularly fight to reliable stalemates and start from that perspective instead.

The reason that a 74-year-old has never run against a 77-year-old for the presidency of the United States is that every previous generation knew that this is preposterous given how demanding the job is. The fact that this is not leading to a protest movement demanding better, younger, and more technically adept candidates is indicative of just how far we may be slipping in the United States towards being a failed state.

There is simply something both mysterious and wrong with just how little the silent and baby boomer generations in general are focused on the well-being of their own children and grandchildren, as well as the world that they will leave after they are gone. And there is not time to study, understand, explain, or fix this problem. Thus, they should not be mined repeatedly for leadership from their established pools of wealthy and powerful figures. C.

Modern social justice has become an insane movement seeking to end-run logic, science, due process, and rule of law. That said, it does have some merit to it, and thus its objectives cannot and should not be ignored. However, it does not have enough merit to want to undo all of our sense-making abilities.

D. You should engage in activities that are unforgiving, like rock climbing, violin playing, stand-up comedy and improvisation, jiu-jitsu, STEM subjects, etc., where feedback and reward can usually be measured without recourse to expert opinion. This will train you to see the world as it really is and how far the world of institutions and experts has deviated from reality itself. And lastly, E. Stop trying to constrain each other by insisting on your rights.

Taste is more important than laws in the affairs of men. There are many issues of taste that don't need to end up as a hard rule requiring brutal enforcement. If you are in any of the countries with the largest audiences for our podcast, you are far better served by working to return your country to a working and mid-sized modern moderate government built on strong national identity with modest immigration than you are by fantasizing about some new utopian concept that will never really work in reality.

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Today's episode is a first for the portal. It is the first episode to be recorded and released entirely from quarantine. And that means that any guest had to be from my immediate family. Now there are a trio of topics that are family related and that I get asked about with some frequency. The first of them is what it is like to be part of a family with profound inherited learning differences, but a family that has been somewhat aggressive and creative in trying to overcome them. The second question is whether I have any surprising parenting advice.

And lastly, I get asked about what it is like to raise a boy in the current era without a positive agreed-upon version of masculinity. I had wanted to begin discussing all of these topics, but had somehow never gotten around to focusing on them.

Well, a little over a year and a half ago and before the portal was launched, I recorded a very brief 15-minute discussion with my then 13-year-old son, Zev. I didn't think much of it at the time, but when I posted the video, it drew a fair amount of interest and has now registered over 80,000 views.

So with those previous questions in mind, I decided to ask Zev back with the idea of recording through the stroke of midnight on his actual birthday, so that he would go from being 14 years old to 15 years old while the episode was in fact in progress. As for what it is like to deal with learning differences like Zev's, it has been mostly fantastic.

Zev has been great intellectual company for me since he was about three years of age. The tricky part is fully believing in your child rather than institutional assessment, which somehow reliably manages to always value compliance over anything generative or creative.

You may ask why I say this, but if a child with an interesting learning difference teaches us anything about the problem of schooling, it is this. Compliance is what makes teachers look good rather than what makes a student truly interesting. And thus, compliance always trades at a premium to intellect, which persistently trades at the deepest of discounts. A simple example from Zev's preschool years will illustrate.

One day I bought Zev a lemonade when he was perhaps three or four years old. He asked, "Is lemonade an object?" It didn't make sense to me at first why he would call a liquid an object, so I said, "Why do you ask?" And he replied, "Well, I wanted to know if it was electrically charged." Now honestly that didn't make sense to me, but something told me that he was doing more than picking up the physics lingo in the house and playing with it, so I asked him to explain. "Well," he said,

If it is an object, then it would be an object resting in my glass. But Newton says an object at rest would remain at rest unless there were a force pulling it up my straw. And there are only four forces. So, it can't be gravity or the weak force doing it because they are too weak. And it can't be the strong force because this isn't nuclear. So it has to be electromagnetism. But I can't understand how that can be if lemonade isn't electrically charged.

Suddenly, I could see his whole line of thinking except for how to actually answer this wonderful question. Now you can just imagine how that would play at nursery school. I'm sure that the answers would be, "No, lemonade isn't an object, it's a liquid," or "No, it isn't about electromagnetism, and don't worry about your lemonade having electricity in it," with no discussion of intermolecular forces, capillary action, or anything else of relevance to his question.

And in fact, these frustrating interactions with teachers would happen several times every week in Zev's preschool, leaving his teachers frazzled and poor Zev bewildered as to what he had done wrong. He would regularly tell me that his teachers were not making sense or were giving him wrong information or that they weren't focused on education. And year after year, Zev would continue to grow as an intellect and as a self-teacher in such a way as to always be in the blind spot of the formal educational system.

So if you've ever been curious as to what I was like as a child or what my brother Brett Weinstein from episode 19 was like, I would say that Zev's learning profile is intermediate between the two of ours. If you lack a picture of what educators call learning disabilities, this episode might be helpful. As for what parenting tips I have, I would recommend the following. Start listening very carefully to your children between the ages of 2 and 4 to see if they are operating on an advanced abstract level.

If you take this advice, it may lead you to feeling quite isolated and even a bit insane because it is hard to believe what you may be hearing. Quite honestly, I couldn't quite get myself to believe the conversation Zev was trying to have with the world. He wasn't a prodigy at anything, but the quality of his abstract thinking was nearly adult in nature and was lost on almost everyone because no one was expecting most of the crazy sounding things a little kid says to actually make sense.

To be heard by even one person at home makes it possible for a child to relax and not get quite as frustrated when he or she is not able to make him or herself understood at school. And as for the question of masculinity and how we are raising boys in the current time, I am sad to say that I don't have an answer. I personally think that masculinity with some mild updating is due for a renaissance.

I could be wrong in this, but I have observed the pressure put on young boys to contend with the weight of so-called toxic masculinity with no analog of toxic femininity being co-taught in schools, and it strikes me as perfectly misguided. Simply taking seriously the old rules for being a gentleman and a mensch takes care of almost everything valid we hear under the rubric of toxic masculinity, and it does so without gutting the essential experience of coming of age for young boys and men.

Many of these brilliant young women that we are so eager to create are going to have to find their impressive male counterparts when they want to start families.

And it is better that those young men were aspirationally raised to be respectful and masculine gentlemen than to be expected to be non-toxic and nondescript so as to allay our fears of the excesses of one gender at the expense of missing everything wonderful about raising young men. After a few brief words from our sponsors, I'll be back with my uninterrupted conversation on parenting in the age of COVID with my son, Zev Weinstein. We're always happy to see returning sponsor Skillshare because they're a great fit for our audience of autodidactics.

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Hello, you found the portal. I'm your host, Eric Weinstein, and I'm here today with my own son, Zev Weinstein. We are socially isolating in quarantine. Zev, welcome to the portal. Happy to be here. So I've had you on my channel once before, before I even started the portal.

And you were 13 at the time. And today is, in fact, the last moment we have to look back on you being 14, as tomorrow is your birthday. Well, I'll have my whole life to look back on being 14, but it's the last day during which I'm actually in it. Fair enough. So I wanted to just sort of talk a little bit about parenting, about what it's like to be a kid at the current moment, and what you see as...

some of the highlights of life to this point generation z and how you guys are all going through this very strange uh corona epidemic so let me just start off by saying how would you talk about the last year um in terms of your own life well i think the last year has been anomalous for all of us and the interesting thing i think i was talking to you about this earlier um

is that usually younger generations can look back to older generations for very strange, very powerful, sometimes very devastating times. So if we were in the mid-1940s and we were going through World War II and it seemed like a novelty, we would have past generations to tell us about World War I, and even though

casualties were certainly much higher during World War II, we would have some sense of what a devastating crisis like this looked like to older generations and what they were going through. With this pandemic in particular, this is so novel and so specific to our time. But I think the interesting thing is I feel like I know very little about it, but there's also no one who really knows that much about it, or so we assume at least. So I think...

I have something that I can bring to the table and that I belong to a different generation. I can offer a youthful view. But really, I think some of the things we're going through right now generationally look quite similar.

So here's a strange question. Is there a way in which it is disturbing to see adults not seemingly knowing how to cope with something, that they're encountering something novel and they don't seem to be able to come to any kind of strong conclusions about what should be done?

You know, it's an interesting question. There's a way in which it's jarring knowing that no one really knows better. There's no one adequate whom we can look to for guidance. On the other hand, there's something sort of satisfying about always feeling like we didn't really have proof that older generations understood the world that much better.

And now is one of the only times when that can really be confirmed. I know you frequently look at the problems with the boomers and how their weird economic placement created all of these corrupt incentive structures. And they were looked to as those who knew what they were doing when really they were benefiting off of a strange economic time.

I think now is one of the few times when we can really say, okay, the boomers don't know what they're doing. They never experienced this. And it's very apparent that they don't have the wisdom that they're always assumed to have simply because of their position and their age. So I think there's something satisfying about that, despite how shocking it is. It is shocking. You know, I should say that in our own family structure, we actually...

are skipping the boomers and the millennials. So in other words, your grandparents are the silent generation. Then came the boomers. We don't have any, you're both, your parents are in generation X, then the millennials, we don't have any. And then we get to you in generation Z. So somehow our family is, uh, sort of off by, uh, off by one in terms of the main boomer millennial story. But I do, I do think that the,

The silent generation, which is still around, I think Joe Biden would be a part of that. You have to ask yourself the question, do they really have any particular leg up? And I would say that they don't. I mean, it might be that the very old people like Jimmy Carter, you know, who was born in the 20s, might have more of a memory of people talking about the 1918 pandemic. But it's really humbling from a generational perspective that

Nobody knows what's going on. And the two generations above us, at least above my generation, the silence and the boomers, I don't get the sense that they really want to think about this in terms that make sense. I can't follow what they're doing. Well, I think you have an interesting belief about a very long era where nothing much happened before.

and everything happened at the same time, and it was a bright time for science, and little was screwing up, and everyone was immune to everything. I'm not sure I always agree with some of the characteristics that you ascribe to this era, but I do agree with you, usually, about some of the demons that I think it's produced, and unfortunately, a lot of those people are in positions of power now. You're super interested in history. How do you see it differently than you think...

I would imagine that many of my, many in my audience would have an idea about my perspective. How might you see it in an adjusted fashion? Well, firstly, do you want to give a brief outline of the era to which we're both referring? So I know that we're talking about the same sorts of things. Yeah, I would say that just a quick recap would be that 1945 ushered in this miraculous post-war economy. It,

grew at an incredible rate, was fairly broadly distributed in terms of the spoils up until the early 1970s. There's a very short, mysterious period where everything changes. And then there's a very long period of gimmickry in order to make things look like they're growing for a small number of people, but you're sort of selling off the future and you're cutting your obligations to your fellow countrymen. And so that picture is

is one which I see being characterized by scientific and technological slowdowns outside of a few areas, as well as a period of kind of nonsensical accounting that if you were, quote, lucky enough to engage in it, you could sort of do things with abstractions that transferred wealth into your pocket, but at the expense of either the future or somebody else or national security, let's say. So...

I think in many ways we can agree about this time. I do think, though, that usually your depiction of the era between 1945 and mid-70s is that everyone felt immune to the dangers of the world. Oh, no, no, no. I wouldn't say that. Okay.

I would say that there were these storm clouds that were constantly on the horizon. Cold War? Yeah. And, you know, I mean, look, obviously the Great Leap Forward was an enormous catastrophe inside of China. Yeah.

There were, you know, the Cuban missile crisis was a very close call. There's no shortage of super serious things that happened in the point. And maybe that's a good opportunity for me to sort of be, be more clear, which is that it was a very tense period because of the amount of potential energy in the system. But I think most of that wasn't realized the cold war remained cold. It just was terrifying. So I agree with you that there was a lot of potential energy. Um,

I guess to use an analogous term, there would also be a lot of kinetic energy within the states. And I think you and I talk a lot about the 60s, but sometimes I feel like you look past it in this analysis. I think that was a similar time to where we are right now because of how divided the world was, because of how much upheaval there was at the time. I also, I think that

even though you and i could probably agree that in biology for example like what 1950 i'll say 1950 to maybe 1965 like nothing like it it was insane the number of there was what there was the discovery of dna there was the discovery of the alpha helix that's 53 51. um

what was it? Chargoff's experiment. When was that? Chargoff's experiment has to be before 1953 with the equimolar relation. I think it was like 52 then. And then Marshall Nirenberg comes up with the code, the genetic code in like 63. I don't know when Hershey and Chase was, there was all this interesting, interesting things with,

stuff with hemoglobin and myoglobin, even in the course of five years, we went from literally not having the structure of a single biological micromolecule to having all of this really advanced stuff about genetics. I don't think a time like that has been seen since. But if you look at, for example, the Human Genome Project, that was what, 1990 to like 2003? Something like that. I don't know exactly. I think it was around then. Yeah.

that seems to me like a really huge leap forward. And I think sometimes you sort of have dual views of the stagnation that we're seeing now. I think sometimes your view on the matter is that there's a tremendous amount of stagnation and not very much is getting done in many areas of science. And I think sometimes you feel that there's a tremendous amount of progress

and it isn't recognizable in the same way. The culture doesn't feel how powerful each one of these discoveries is. I remember you said this in your live episode with Peter when you were talking about the compilation of data that resembled a picture of the black hole. I think your general contention was that this was some incredible thing that had happened in science

And people felt it for like 10 minutes and then moved on. Yeah, it was a very strange thing. So I think sometimes you believe that you're, you believe in stagnation during the moment, a lot of scientific stagnation. And I think sometimes you believe that there isn't so much stagnation as a failure to recognize progress. And I'm not trying to call you out in any way. I don't mind. This is interesting.

I think in some sense, I know all of your insights are real, but I don't know how to interpret them because sometimes they resemble to me this like Schrodinger's position on stagnation. And I think that's very central to any analysis you would have of this time and how it differs from a time previous. Well, I think it probably is less interesting than Schrodinger's pessimist, um,

Probably what it is is that I'm sketching things rather than stating them clearly. So I would say that there's no shortage of new scientific discoveries. You could ask a different question, which is how many of them are foundational. So, you know, the first imaging of a black hole or the discovery of like gravity waves and being able to see black hole collisions. Hasn't really had its subsequent discoveries. Well,

There's an issue about how well is that going to translate into something concrete like a technology. I'm not sure that that actually matters, but that's one level of stagnation. So sometimes you, for example, would learn about genes, but you wouldn't be able to develop enough gene therapy. And so there's a question about, is it the technological translation? Is it the depths of the insights? Do these things cause us to change our picture or do they merely sort of

get higher resolution on a picture we already had. So I think that you're quite correct that there are a number of refinements to really get at what's stagnating and what's progressing. It's certainly not a simple story of global stagnation everywhere. But a key question would be, what is the significance? How do these insights cash out as culture? Do they build? Do they give us technologies? Do they clarify our position in the cosmos?

You know, it's interesting to me that these are the things with which you're concerned because I think as a mathematician, you're sort of the scientist whose job it is to care least about the practical applications of their work. So...

I think very often math and technology have been linked, but I think also if some incredible mathematical discovery was made, that would be very interesting to a mathematician and hopefully to the rest of the world on its own terms. So it's surprising to me that these are the sort of issues that are making this more complicated for you. So I think that there's a way in which what I care about

at the level, let's say, of a mathematician talking about new insights that might not translate, is different than what I care about in terms of the world economy that's going to support all of it. And I probably don't get enough of an opportunity to break out the difference in those two conversations. You know, Dad, I think that's true. And I will say, I know you talk to me sometimes about math, and I have no...

I have a lot of faith in you as a mathematician, but I think by nature, you're not so much a mathematician as you are a thinker. And I think we've all been forced into these positions because we

I think culture has destroyed the polymath. And I think this is one of the things with which you and I both agree on. And I know I'm not the first person to make this point. And I know this is something you've talked about extensively. But I think that's really why you are in the unique position that you're in. You have a podcast, you're a mathematician. I think you're supposed to be a thinker more so than simply a mathematician. And that pushes us into all of these weird, uncomfortable positions.

You want to take over this podcast? Do you see yourself in sort of, do you think a polymath would be like a good role model for you in terms of charting your path? Well, yes and no. So a lot of the people up to whom I look would be polymaths, but from a bygone era. So unfortunately, I don't think those are the people that I should look towards for

inspiration, even though they're the people I care about, because I don't think the future, or at least the present supports polymaths or thinkers in that simple of a capacity. So like, I really, I look up to a lot of old Renaissance figures and philosophers. And, you know, for a long time, philosophers were the mathematicians and the scientists and,

They were also thinkers, were also the painters, etc. And I really, I wish we had more of those people in these times, but I don't think they're a good inspiration because the world won't support them anymore. Well, that's very troubling to me that at the tender age of 14 going on 15, you are

don't feel that even if that is your natural inclination, that that is something that's supported because one would like to think that that would give you the ability to connect many disparate things. So let me, let me sort of turn this to you. How do you see the future and your place in it? Do you have the sense that this Corona virus is a turning point? Do you think I have too much faith that this is actually going to change things? I mean, it's pretty dramatic change in your life from the beginning of the year.

That's true. I'm not sure how much it would convince me of a career path if that was a facet of the question. Do you see the old order crumbling? Yes. Do you see it crumbling quickly? Yes. Okay. Do you have a sense of what way in which the old order will crumble or what characterized the old order? And how does a 14 year old take a look at it and see what's next?

Really pulling out the number 14 just because it's right before my birthday, aren't you? Well, I don't... I'm actually on the fence as to whether I should use 14 or 15. Depends how long this podcast runs for. It's late right now. But yes, I think the world is... I don't mean to diminish you. Should I say that you're 15? I'm just thinking we're retrospectively looking at it as you're looking back on 14. All right. Yes, I see the world crumbling and I'm not sure exactly how to...

interact with it. But I'm wondering if parts of the new world will resemble the best of the old world, particularly the parts of the old world, which I feel have been destroyed, which we've referenced just previously. But honestly, I think that makes right now the hardest time to examine something like my future or a career, because not only was whatever this

era is, which is falling confusing in that sense. And not only did that era make it difficult to think about the future, but now we're in an even weirder period, which is a transition from a confusing era to something which is uncertain and

which is the future, right? So I think now might be the worst time to ask that question, unfortunately. Well, okay, but so you made, just to throw it out there and play with it, you made the comparison to the 60s. And I would say that the 60s gave way around 1971 through 73 to something very different.

So is it possible that... 1971 to 70... That that would be the transitional period where you start to see all sorts of breaks in the economic data. You can clearly see that the structure of the economy changes radically and very dramatically. Do you think that has anything to do with major cultural events? Uh...

I think that it had to do with the Arab oil embargo. It had to do with the gold standard and going towards fiat currency. It had to do with cultural events, the Vietnam War, the entrance of women, the effects of the 1965 Immigration Act. I think a lot of it had to do with scientific exhaustion as per the science since Babylon theory of Derek DeSola Price that we were on an exponential curve that couldn't be continued.

I think that all of those things are probably downstream from an idea that I've called Umwelt hacking, that we learned a lot inside of the 20th century just by being able to see all sorts of things that had been invisible. And whatever we could see by slowing something down or blowing it up and shrinking it, whatever,

we learned things, and a lot of those things we could put to use, and then a lot of those things actually remained beyond usefulness because we couldn't figure out how to harness them. Do you think the past hundred years were sort of a golden age? Well, I mean, I think that's a really interesting question. In some ways, it's a golden age from the point of view of knowledge, but it was also a hellish age. I mean, like, the 20th century, in so many ways, was a terrible time. And, you know, it's unclear to me whether we should remember it

One way or the other, as Dickens said, it was the best of times, it was the worst of times. And I think that in many ways that really fit the 20th century to a T. Well, sort of. I actually, I do feel like it taught us a lot of good lessons. My guess is before World War I, there was a lot of very disturbing things about, you know, nationalism, for example, unifying Europe under some nationalist government system.

World War two obviously there were some very dangerous ideologies at play the Cold War and I'm not a huge believer in social Darwinism between between countries and how it's implemented, but I do feel like after watching the Germans defeated twice the first time with this

nationalist perspective which was very uncomfortable in the second time obviously with fascism and the Nazi movement and then later we got to see the Soviet Union crumble I can understand why it was certainly a time full of unrest but I do feel like the best positions and the best values sort of overcame whatever their rivals were for one thing we also saw a

colonialism stamped out. Like the world before the 20th century was so different and there were so many dangerous ideologies. Like the 1800s, we had slavery on top of all of that. I do feel like this was a time when in many ways the good overcame the evil. It's an interesting perspective. So if I understand you correctly,

You would have almost have expected that there would have to be a tremendous amount of violence given the amount of change and how rapid it was for the better. I do think that's a more than adequate summary of my perspective. It's funny because I don't know that I've ever thought about this in those terms. You got anything else? So just to examine that, could you have imagined...

a less bloody transition. So I think about the end of the Cold War, and it was sort of remarkable how the Soviet Union just kind of came apart without the expected descent into total chaos. I mean, you know, the situation in South Africa wasn't great when apartheid ended, but people expected a level of massacre there that would have been without peril. I don't know that that happened.

So is there a way in which you're really suggesting that as bloody as World War II was and as bad as partition might have been in India, that it would be almost inconceivable to unwind this with less bloodshed? Or maybe that's too strong of a statement. You know, it's an interesting question. I think, as you mentioned earlier, the Cold War remained cold. That could have been the case with tensions in World War I. That could have been the

it's an, it's an interesting question, but that could have been the case with tensions in world war two. But I think usually the ideologies, which we call flawed are immoral to us because they're unfit. And I'll, I'll explain what I mean by that. I don't think morality is really subjective. I think morality is a proxy for the fitness of this, of a society. Um,

If you look at morals throughout different religions and cultures, there's usually a pretty general set of commands like don't steal, don't murder, etc. And those are accepted as morals because it's very hard to have a successful civilization that believes in... I don't know if you've ever watched The Purge. The Purge, I haven't watched it either, but I understand the premise. It's not reasonable...

to accept that a society that lives without social commandments will be successful. So I think those social commandments, which are proxies for fitness, become accepted as morals. And therefore, I think usually immoral, or states at least, with immoral ideologies, collapse. And so I think that's always inevitable. I think that's actually, that's sort of

an optimistic view of the world because that means that good sort of has to overpower evil because because by definition good is the thing that allows societies to succeed although if you look to nature i would have to say that all sorts of strategies seem to be evolutionarily stable

We might point to a virus that's too aggressive and therefore dies out because it does too much damage to its host. But certainly there are plenty of dangerous viruses and parasites and things that have existed for long enough that you would have to say that there's... It's very tough to make an argument through natural selection for good winning overall. I do agree with you that morals play an important part in

in figuring out what outcompetes what. Well, I think it's good that you were apprehensive to use nature as inspiration for how we should run civilizations. I think appeal to nature is commonly accepted as a logical fallacy. So I think that means we don't really have to take that too seriously. Okay. But I guess one of the things I'm very concerned about at the moment is that

China is not being made to pay the price for its authoritarian ways because it's able to borrow the the benefits and the spills of freedom and democracy so that the idea is that they let us deal with all the chaos of a free society and When we produce things that they would find it very challenging to produce like new insights because that might challenge an orthodoxy They're then able to implement

those new changes in perspective at a mechanical level without having to pay the price of having a society that's unruly. I think that's a good point. I think very often successful companies and enterprises in China sort of resemble parasites. This might not be a good thing for you to say at whatever age it is that you are, given that you might be working for a Chinese company one day. He's kidding. I revoke my previous statement. That's all right.

That said, you're right. It's a very uncomfortable position. So what are you excited about in terms of your own time and your own era? What are you seeing in your layer of kids, you know, on the verge of becoming adults? Can you see a difference between them and people 10 years ahead? I know that history is something that you're very interested in, so you've probably studied different generations at the same age. What are you seeing as kind of

definitional for Generation Z in particular, in reference to where we're checking in since last you and I appeared on video two years ago? I guess, unfortunately, then, in some sense, a lot of my perspectives are similar. I think my generation will face the consequences of being raised in a transitional period. I wonder what it was like to be my age during the 60s. Well, so what would you think?

I don't know. You're off by about 10 years, so it's hard to look to you for insights on this. But if you were born in 1953 or something, then you would be approximately your age around the Summer of Love, the time right before Woodstock. I'll tell you what my guess is about youth during that time, and then I'll try to say how I think it's similar to youth during this time.

I think it's very easy to get pulled into that which is novel, that which disrupts an older way of living, an older narrative. I think it's very common at this time to be opposed to tradition and history because it feels like something which is constraining you. And if you're growing up at a time like the 60s, for example...

There's an entire world out there which is telling you rebel against your parents, the institutions. Don't you try it. Okay. Where do you think this is all going? No, but now I'll say how I think growing up in this time is similar. I see a lot of people my age falling into some very new push against religion.

older ways of living, older ways of thinking. A lot of this is like social justice based. It's actually interesting the way I see that. I think a lot of the girls my age are much more into social justice than a lot of the boys my age. And I think that might tell us something about what kind of chaos this division between all of us will create. But I think it's very

It's very appealing for certain reasons to get pulled into all of these counter-movements. And unfortunately, I think particular institutions are sort of backing these things because as you point out, they're the shells that have been inhabited by something newer, by something younger. And it's frustrating to me because if you look at a lot of the destruction that was caused by counterculture in the 60s, you wonder about what the future will hold for us. That said,

So many of my, so many of the people that I find aspirational from that time period were completely part of that counterculture. You know, it's like, I think I have a Doors poster and a Jimi Hendrix poster in my room. And those were, those were the really interesting people at the time. You know, I'm like, I'm a huge fan of the Beach Boys and Brian Wilson and the Beatles and just

I guess a lot of the people whom I see as intellectuals during the time were probably in music, probably in, I don't know, maybe in the film industry. And they were very much a part of this counterculture. So I'm held in sort of a strange position where I see a lot of the chaos that was created by countercultures in the 60s

And a lot of the figures that belonged to whatever those countercultures were, were the bright shining stars and the intellectuals whom I find very inspirational. And I know you and I were having a recent conversation about the 60s.

I think it's hard to say whether the institutional demons were better or worse than the chaos of this counterculture. And I don't think that's an easy question to answer. I think sort of the consensus that we came to in our last conversation about the 60s was that both the institutional

part of the world and the counterculture saw both their highest achievements and their failure modes at a very similar time. So we'll call them the hippies. The hippies had Woodstock, which was like this incredible work of culture and music and so many bright, important things. And then we also had

the Manson murders, which was taking the same thing too far, and that was its failure mode. And we landed on the moon. So those were the extremes of the sort of counterculture spectrum, and then you're going to contrast that with the sort of central spectrum. Well, if that's what you want to call it, I don't know. I don't think anyone has good terminology. But I think Vietnam was the great...

failure mode of whatever this institutional thing was. And I think the moon landing was its summit. And all of these things were happening during the same time period. The moon landing and Woodstock both happened in the summer of 69. Right. Vietnam, of course, is a longstanding train wreck. So I think that, and Manson murders was 71. I'm not sure about that. 70, 71.

Okay around then. Um, I think The vietnam war was probably the biggest complication In this narrative. I think the first president that ever sent our men to vietnam was Truman and truman left office in 53 so

We were really there for quite some time before the 60s and whatever that time period was. So our capacity changed over time. That's true. When we got into it, we were helping the French try to take back their colonies, which was weird given our values as the United States. But yeah, I think it was quite some time before the 60s that we were involved in Vietnam. That said, Gulf of Tonkin was what, 64? Yeah.

I'll have our researchers check that out. Okay. So it was something around that time, and that's really when a lot of this amped up. So in some sense, those were very good. Okay, so is all this mining of the historical record actually helpful to you in trying to locate where you and your generation might be? Well, I've just tried to contrast something older with something which we're living through. But as I said...

I don't think there's anything to which we can really look for good answers. So looking to history is like this really poor attempt to resolve some of the complications we're seeing during this time. I wish there were wiser people. I wish that there was some time closer to our own

previous to this time. You brought up the pandemic of 1918. That was very different, and yet it's sort of the closest we've seen to this. I know that had more to do with World War I, etc.,

Well, weirdly, maybe the idea is that we've been looking back, for examples, almost religiously, and we haven't thought that we should be thinking, well, what are the new paradigms? We keep thinking that there's nothing new under the sun. To your point, that we've never been through something like this particular response to the coronavirus. Yeah.

Is it possible that the really exciting thing is, is that maybe it's time to finally stop comparing everything to 1968 or 1945 or 1918? Maybe we're just somewhere new. What do you think? That might be the best way to look at this. But I think if that was the only way to look at this or that was the decided perspective, you and I could not have this conversation. There would be nothing to discuss. You would say, I don't know what we're dealing with. And I would say, agreed. And that would be the end of the conversation.

So let me, let me touch on something else. You were decrying the problem that it seemed like we're in a wisdom drought. And looking to history is a kludgy solution. Well, it is always a kludgy solution because you're looking for things that rhyme and then you're trying to stitch them together to, to come up with analogs. Question about parenting. Do you feel like there are ways in which there was wisdom that you needed imparted to you that you,

Because of our generational difference, I wasn't able to communicate to you. Maybe I didn't have the wisdom or maybe just the translation layer between these two experiences is too vast. What do you think about that? Well... Keep in mind. If you want to eat tomorrow, get it right. All right. No, no, no. You should actually answer the question, honestly. Yeah. Honestly, I think... Honestly, but nicely. I think it's actually...

unbelievably important to have someone like a father or in a member of an older time to give very old life lessons to you I think one of the things that we see in most eras but this era particularly is that certain parts of speech become censored they become inappropriate right so you know during this time right

There are a lot of things that probably need to be said, but they've become very uncomfortable to say, so you can't say them publicly, right?

And I think that's why it's very important to have someone who remembers an older time to tell you, listen, this isn't necessarily a good thing to say. Maybe this is a flawed and old way of looking at the world, but this is a lesson which I need to impart to you. Well, sometimes the vehicle can be inappropriate. So, for example, we've talked before about canned humor.

So your grandfather, my father, loves to tell old jokes with punchlines, which is an old style that almost nobody does engages in anymore. And it turns out that a lot of those jokes weren't even really about humor. They were about teaching life lessons that you might have learned if you were studying Talmud or something like that. So one question is what happens when the old wisdom is lost?

adulterated with things in the vehicle that make it seem inappropriate to our age.

You'd have to actually change the nature of the lesson in order to get the payload, but the vehicle is too tied to something that we've outgrown. Honestly, I feel like it's my responsibility to look past the vehicle by which he's conveying whatever the wisdom is in this joke. Perhaps the joke is canned and outdated and possibly insensitive, but because I'm the one who's grounded in these times...

And he does not have the option to make the lesson easier for me in the same sense that I do. So I think that's why the burden sort of has to fall on the shoulders of whoever's newer in this world. Do you see new art forms, new wisdom? What are you attracted to in terms of your education? Obviously, you're stuck with me for a father, so you're getting a certain amount of...

A very extreme and unusual, offbeat perspective. I mean, one question I could ask is, do you feel like a desire to rebel? Does it feel inappropriate as a perspective, and you feel like, well, my parents just don't get it? The reason which I don't think I've ever been particularly rebellious, at least against your authority and the things for which you stand, is...

I think that you're usually very open to the fact that I may oppose your views. I don't feel like... I think that's, in some sense, the point of this conversation. We believe... I think we belong to a similar idiom because I've grown up in this household, but we have slightly different beliefs on myriad issues. And I think the reason which I've never felt a strong desire to rebel is that you will accept me questioning...

the things which you hold as truth. And we're able to have these discussions and to look at them logically and rationally. And I think therefore you and I can both come closer to what we believe is true. I think this is sort of a very Socratic relationship and that prevents me from. Do you see it as an unusual? I mean, just in terms of I get asked lots of questions about parenting. Do you feel that the parenting that you've been subjected to is normal or not normal from me? Let's leave your mom out of it.

Yeah, I think it's unusual. I think, quite honestly, you have very high expectations of me. And sometimes... So far, so good? Well, you know, maybe it would be nice sometimes to run into my room and slam my door and I say, I hate you, you don't understand me. But... No, instead you just come to me and say, Dad, you're not being logical or reasonable. I would have thought better of you.

I think that's because we both hold each other to very high expectations. And in some sense, that's a lot of pressure. I noticed. Yeah. So, okay. What would you have done differently? Like, are you thinking about, geez, when I'm raising my kid here, the things that I would never do that you did? You know, honestly, dad, if I have kids, I would look forward to,

to allowing them the same freedoms and privileges that you've allowed me in this relationship. That's something that I would really enjoy. And I would enjoy telling them that this is something which came from my father. Wow. I really appreciate that. What sort of things, like what are the edgier things that you think that I've done parenting you that have worked out? Well, for one thing, you bought me a Tom Lehrer CD when I was about five years old or something, right? Yeah.

And that made a profound difference in my life. Isn't that weird? It's like 10 years ago. I know, but it just... Obviously, I was recapitulating what my own mom had done for me, which is that she introduced me to this guy, and I learned all sorts of terrible... I mean, he was singing about prostitution and dope peddlers and who knows what. World War III, severed limbs, sadomasochism. There was... I think I always struggled...

There were like children's books and things which would be read to me. And they would have these very simple messages about, and that's why it's important to be generous and to love one another. And I never disagreed with those messages. It's just something about it always felt much too simple to be the only truth. There had to be some nuance to it.

And I feel like I was constantly begging for nuance and trying to disprove these children's books. I mean, you were at a very early age, two or three. You weren't satisfied with any simple explanations that were wrong. And you were a great detective. You could usually tell when I remember the time when you were trying to figure out how the Large Hadron Collider worked.

You asked the physicist David Kaplan, why do they call it the Large Hadron Collider? So he talked about protons being accelerated. And you said, well, yes, but then why not call it the Large Proton Collider? Why not say neutrons? And he said, oh, because neutrons, you can't accelerate because they don't feel the electromagnetic force. And then you came back with, okay, then why don't you accelerate them using the strong force because they're hadrons? And we went through this whole thing together.

And I recall that we had somehow given you the wrong definition

leptons and that it had discounted the fact that we had leptons of being things that didn't feel the strong force, but not mentioning the difference between bosons and fermions. And so you deduce that the photon should be a lepton in the description given to you, which it, which it isn't. And we had to go back and sort of say, no, the rule was incorrect. This was like when you were three or four years old.

And well, the point was that your brain was very precise and it caught all sorts. Every shortcut that I took to define something for you came back to bite me because you would usually find the edge case that revealed the failure in what I had said. So, I mean, just as a challenge, you can imagine, you know, the famous story about you distinguishing between the empty set and zero, which many people don't distinguish because they have a sense of nothing.

And your point was that you knew that zero wasn't nothing. It was itself a thing. And, you know, I think about the number of times that if I have, if I didn't happen to know the answers to a lot of your questions and a lot of them, I didn't, and some of them I did, but in a normal house, you would have been treated as a guy who is just wacko. And in fact, what you were doing was you were deducing the world at an incredible rate from comparing what we told you over here versus what you told you over there and

And I think about the number of times when in my own childhood, there was no one there to intuit what it was that I was struggling with. Because if I had to tell all the stories of you when you were three, no one would ever believe them. It just, it, there was like, it was like an adult mind in an infant, almost an infant's body. And it was a very strange thing to be in dialogue with.

with somebody who's capable of making these distinctions, but not often capable of making them understandable to almost anyone. No, Dad, I appreciate that, and I think that's why it's been... I think things could have been a lot simpler for us if we were much more normal. Maybe we'd play catch every Sunday and have an idealized... We'll get there. All right, I'm not very coordinated. But I don't think I would have had an easy time having anyone else as a father, because I think I would...

I probably would have gone all this time believing I was completely insane for doubting everything that was taught to me at a simple level. Anyway, I think that's sort of why Tom Lehrer was important, which is that I was being taught very simplistic lessons and I was positive that there was more out there. And then suddenly here we're like,

The craziest, most gruesome, most like it's not necessarily that it was realistic, but it was it was some part of the world that was unsung to me previously. And I I felt I think then first that I was beginning to see the real world and to see something that wasn't reduced reality.

artificially to some sweet thing. Well, transgression has been very important to our family and the responsibility for transgressing appropriately, not just celebrating transgression for the purpose of breaking rules, which obviously we're not huge fans of. But I would say that, you know, if you recall when you were driving the family sedan at age 11 on deserted roads,

It's very important that mom does not watch this podcast. We're kidding people. That was an important moment for you. And it was an important moment for me because I really wanted to know that in an emergency, you had some hope of being able to drive a car. And with the experience of kids on farms, you're aware of what...

can do. And it's just, I wanted you to have the experience where you felt like, okay, I'd driven a car by the time I was 11 in a fairly serious capacity and not have the sense of, okay, well I have to wait until magical ages decreed by the state for me to have the sense that I'm actually capable.

You know, I appreciate that, Dad, but I really don't want to give our audience an oversimplified, too perfect picture of myself when I was younger. I think there were ways in which I was completely incompetent. I think we were talking about music. You were completely incompetent. Completely. I think when I was young, like five or something, you sat down a few times, tried to teach me

you know, basic chords. Notes. You couldn't remember a note. I don't think I could resemble a single chord because they were like, you know, if you think about a triad, I'd have to remember three different things at the same time. And then at some point when I was older, I decided I was going to teach myself music and I found some amount of success with that, which made me very pleased. I think also part of that has to do with the fact that

I'm stubborn and unable to learn from people as much as I should. You were stubborn earlier. And for whatever reason, something in your brain wouldn't let you teach yourself music. I mean, you taught yourself things like ripstick, which nobody was in the position to teach you because nobody knew how to do it. So I can definitely point to things where you were able to self teach at an early age and,

The fact that you couldn't learn, I don't think at age 10 or 11, you would have been able to teach yourself music. And then miraculously at age 12. Oh, more like 13.

Okay, the end of 12 was your explosion. It was like the last two months of your being 12, the last six weeks. That said, Dad, I think if I had never decided to teach myself music and you had sat down with me at this age and tried to teach me music, perhaps I wouldn't have been as purely incompetent, but I don't think I would have been successful. I think one of my deep flaws is that I have a very hard time

learning from people for the reasons we just discussed. It's like, you might have to give me some bad definition to get past some very simple thing in the beginning. And then I wouldn't be able to understand any concept that relied on a flawed definition and I would be completely screwed over. I think it's just, I've always been an exceedingly technical person and that gets me into its own sort of trouble.

Well, do you see that as a deficit? I mean, first of all, do you see yourself as learning disabled? Do those terms fit or not? I think in a classic sense they do. You know, I think we've tested me and I have dyslexia and ADHD and whatever, all the fun stuff. Useless. Yeah, absolutely. I'm sorry, there is an aspect of it which is just funny to me, but go on. I think I'm...

I think my ability to be compatible with some systemic form of education is in many ways disabled. And that does not mean that I think I am at a net disadvantage with the way my mind works. So I think I'm incompatible in some sense with institutional education and traditional forms of learning.

But I don't view that as a net disability at all. You know, like maybe I should be stupid. Well, I mean, look, this is setting up the same problem for you to some extent as it did for me and for your uncle, Brett. How do you deal with the fact that you probably don't come across as 14 or 15? I mean, when we recorded you at 13, clearly nobody thought you sounded like a 13 year old. To have to call you learning disabled does seem...

I mean, perversely funny, psychotically sad and tragic because of the amount of effort wasted on conflicts with standard systems. But it's very funny. I can't figure out how I could call you learning disabled when you're able to teach yourself so many different things. But yet when things come through these very standard formats, it doesn't always work. No, Dad, I think the great misfortune there is that I've...

in that absorbed a tremendous amount of responsibility. I want to be a learned person, and I aspire to be a learned person, and I'm somewhere in that journey, but it's much more difficult for me because it means I have to teach myself certain things because as we've previously established, there are ways in which I'm stubborn and incompetent and unable to learn from traditional methods. Hang on one second.

Ivy league universities. He's kidding. Go on. In some sense, I feel like, you know, you break it, you bought it. I'm incompatible. So I have to do a lot of extra work to be able to be knowledgeable about the world. In some sense, I feel like you, you broke it and I bought it. So I inherited your fucked up jeans and who knows. Um, so I guess in some sense, I blame you for that. Thanks. Um, well, okay. Well,

Here's another aspect of parenting. So we have, in general, always let you taste alcohol when it's served. And while I don't think you've ever been inebriated, we tried to decrease the mystery of alcohol in your life. Was that a positive, negative? Does that put you out of step? Other families practice something similar? I think that was a part of our culture going... I think it's like...

I guess Ashkenazi Jewish culture, it's sort of a very common thing. You know, I'm very happy you've done that, Dad. I feel like because this is always something with which you've trusted me and it's been sort of a symbol of trust in our relationship, it's kept me away from doing things that are probably unwise external to our relationship. I guess I feel like because you've trusted me with these things, it would be...

I would, I would feel a normal, enormously guilty, um, making unwise decisions elsewhere. So I'm, I'm happy that you've, you've raised me in this way. It's sort of like, you know, in some ways it's similar to the, to the Tom Lehrer CD. It's like, well, it's like inoculating you so that you get an early exposure to something and it doesn't become, you're not lying to me that this stuff isn't out there. No people, people get mutilated in, in real life. And

I think you're keeping me from that by giving me things which show me that it's out there. Yeah, you know, again, it's a similar argument with first-person shooters and video games. There's a level at which if you don't expose kids, it becomes forbidden fruit. If you do expose them, sometimes they get a distorted sense of reality. So, you know, I don't know exactly how to do the balancing act. We've tried our best. I don't think any parent does.

Let me give it another or take another line of questioning. Where do you think parenting, where do you think we are with respect to masculinity as a virtue that exists?

You're born a boy. I want you to be a strong masculine man. But we have a tremendous fear of all things masculine somehow in the culture. I think that's a very new thing. And a desire to redefine masculinity in order to deal with that fear. Do you feel that, one, that's a really tough pressure on you? Do you think that your parents have...

negotiated the responsibility of that training? Or do you think it's up for grabs and nobody knows where we are? You know, it's a good question. I feel like in some sense, traditional gender roles have been called into question in recent times. And even if they're jeopardized now, my guess is they will be

rediscovered because there's something very important. You know, if you look at the fact that, for example, like if you take homosexual relationships, right, with lesbians, you have like the whole concept of butch and maybe in gay relationships, there are men that are more effeminate and usually it's sort of a

you see the same sorts of gender roles recapitulated. Even in same-sex relationships. Even in same-sex relationships. And I think that should be proof to us that traditional masculinity and femininity, while they both have their failures, are designed evolutionarily to fit together like puzzle pieces. I think that should be proof to us that traditional gender roles, while flawed, are designed to work together like puzzle pieces.

And so even in a time when these are being called into question conceptually, I think we can make very accurate predictions about the fact that they will be rediscovered and reinvented. And that's why I think I would be

probably a few steps ahead of a very ambiguous time to keep my faith to some extent in whatever these flawed gender roles are. So do you identify strongly with sort of a masculine perspective, or do you identify as somebody who wants to renegotiate what it means to be masculine or somewhere in between? How do you view this on the cusp of being 15? I think...

As I said, I certainly believe that masculinity and femininity need to exist in many ways the way that they have always existed. That said, I think gender roles have been distorted. We still have a lot of very vestigial roles.

aspects of traditional gender roles. And I think a lot of the reason that feminism is important is that to the extent to which a bad deal has been negotiated between two things which are supposed to be equally balanced in power somehow has gotten corrupt.

I can understand the need to renegotiate that. But I'm certainly not in favor of destroying masculinity at a conceptual level. I think if we choose to do that as a culture, which is something I already see happening, we will have a very chaotic time and then we will see it reinvented in a very similar way.

Well, one thing I find, which I don't know how to talk about is that I think that there's a very strong demand for masculinity in women seeking to found families and that

This desire is somehow at odds with the commentariat that wants to upend the rules more than I see most men and women wanting to upend the rules. If I think about, you know, viewer counts on Instagram, it's very clear that heteronormative beauty norms are still very much what often generates enormous following. So the biology doesn't seem to have moved nearly as much as the think pieces would suggest that it has. So do you think that in part,

could this be in part having to do with the way in which we're talking and thinking about these changes as opposed to the level of change that's actually going on? Or do you see conflicting directives as you're growing up? Obviously you're, you're in a formative stage. Do you feel that there are strange pressures on you that are probably different than that have been on a young man of your age in previous times?

Well, I do, but as I said, I feel like I have some insight into this and therefore I feel it would be unwise to abandon masculinity just because it's coming under attack culturally. But yes, I think it's hard to win with a lot of these issues now. You think it's a no-win situation? Yes and no. I'd like to think that I'm winning.

Okay. But that's sort of a common mistake. But I think if we want to think about how masculinity and femininity should change, we have to create a very complex analysis of exactly what the puzzle pieces look like. You know, what are the ways? I mean, I sort of think of gender roles as being fictions that are designed to

And I'm not opposed to them simply because they're fiction. I feel like a lot of culture now is very excited that it's seen that these gender roles are somewhat fictional and maybe they have less to do with sex than we previously imagined. By sex, you mean like biological sex? Biological sex. Like at birth? And I think that should be the first...

in a set of insights. I think maybe the first insight is, okay, this is fiction. It's a lie. And maybe the second level deep is relying upon the fiction, but not realizing that it's a fiction. And then I think the third level would be understanding that these are fictions, which we fall to

But the fictions are there for a reason. And it's very important that we maintain them in some sense. So I think if we want them to change in any way, we have to create a very complex analysis of exactly what these fictions are, how they've become unbalanced. It's important that we do our homework before we throw the world into chaos. So this is super interesting. Let me just see if I have this.

So your point is you're open to the idea that there are flaws that have been found in the gender roles and gender expectations in our society. But your point would be that simply naively insisting that the flaws be made to go away is not the way to cure the problem.

I think the flaws should go away, but I think it has to be done with a lot of very complex thought and understanding of what these fictions are that allow us to maintain healthy relationships, to build strong families. I mean, I think families are built on fictions around gender roles. The same can be said of relationships. And I think...

by saying, Eureka, this is bullshit, this is fiction, and not actually solving the problem, we're going to create a tremendous amount of chaos and upheaval only to watch gender roles reemerge naturally. So this is, for example, like you and I have talked about the problem with third-person singular pronouns being inflected for gender, right?

in English, and that using they for he or she has a different problem, which is that you can't inflect for number if your third-person singular pronoun is the same as your third-person plural. They is supposed to be third-person plural. And I think you and I are both in agreement that the best solution to this would simply be to create a gender-neutral format

Third person singular pronoun. And yet if you mention this, it's like, wow, you hate non-binary people or something like this. And then you can't even make the point that it's probably fairly important for an error correcting code inside of a language to be able to distinguish singular versus plural in the third person because...

Those are the situations in which the person being discussed is not present. This is the thing. I think we should all be opposed to ambiguity of language where it's unnecessary, and we should all be opposed to the ways in which language can discriminate against all different sorts of people, which is something that we've seen particularly in the English language since probably William of Normandy conquered England, right? You blame William of Normandy? Bastard.

But I think there's a solution which allows us to maintain both of these constraints. And yet I feel like there are all of these very chaotic solutions being proposed about like everyone generates their own pronoun and this and that. And it seems like there's a very simple solution right in front of us. And it's very hard to figure out why we can't get there. Do you have a...

strong sense of whether some of the social justice things that you've seen percolate down from the millennials are having a different reception inside of your generation or is it pretty much seamless from one to the next? I think they usually make a lot of the boys my age very angry because I think the world for which a lot of social justice now is advocating for

Would be a world that would be a very bad bargain for masculinity in the sense that we were talking about. And I actually don't think either gender ends up happy when you destroy a gender role. Or when you give it what everything that it wants. Right. Like, in other words, part of what each gender wants is frustrated by the other. And that frustration causes people to have to work and to pair. Right.

That's probably fairly. I think that's always been the case evolutionarily as well. Right. Um, so I think there's a lot of anger and there's a lot of resentment because the implications of whatever this new deal, um, can potentially be very hurtful. What do you think about, obviously, you know, when you're around the age that you are, there's sort of, uh,

There is a sexual awakening and a romantic awakening. You have situations where your schools force you to take classes to inform you of all of the terrible things that can go wrong. Do you have a sense that in addition to all of the social changes that the COVID epidemic is going to have an interesting impact? Is it going to possibly push courtship backwards towards a more antiquated model? Do you have any theory as to what might be happening?

I see. You think you can bring me in here and get me to discuss my romantic life during COVID? It was worth a shot. Sadly mistaken. Okay, seriously. I think that all depends on whether or not COVID is, or situations like this pandemic are recurring, which like many things is something we have yet to understand.

I mean, I would say that when I got to college, herpes and HIV were the two big stories in the early 1980s. There was a way in which disease played a role in social norms and the expectations of the era. And so I'll be curious to see whether it's true for COVID. What are you looking at artistically? What's exciting to you? And is it of your era or is it of other eras? Well...

As we've discussed, a lot of the music, which I find very interesting, is much older than I am. I think, objectively, we could probably agree that most popular music lacks the complexity that it had during the 60s. I think you were the one that got me to look at the chords for Strawberry Fields, for example, which is like...

It's unbelievable to me that that was the level of complexity found in a pop song. I think the same could be said of God Only Knows, for example. By the Beach Boys. Beach Boys. And I think Paul McCartney said that that was the greatest song ever written, which is like a very... It's a very strange piece of commentary. I certainly didn't expect that. But I think really what we have circulating now are...

many different impressions of four-chord songs. So, I mean, that's really all pop music is right now, if you disregard rap. Well, rap is a pretty vibrant area. It has a very different structure. A producer, J.W. Lucas, was just making the point to me that...

He said, Eric, you know, don't make the mistake of expecting the complexity in the loop because the real issue is the lyrics and the complexity of their structure and their delivery.

And so from his perspective, he said, you know, a lot of what you would think of as the music we would think of as the canvas. And if the canvas is too interesting, it distracts from what's painted on it. So I think we can pull apart music and see where is something interesting, um,

in a number of places. Obviously we have melody, harmony, and rhythm. So we can pull those apart and see if something is complex musically on any one of those fronts. And we also have lyrics available to us, right? And I think good music

should always be on the efficient frontier somewhere with regards to those four evaluations. Obviously, I think you have very powerful lyrics that aren't necessarily accompanied by music at all. I'm certainly not opposed to poetry. I've taken quite an interest in poetry. But that means that it has to be so exceptional and complex

If you're going to give up a lot on music, you better make it up on the lyrics. Exactly. And that's why it has to... Weirdly, poetry is then somewhere on that efficient frontier. But... What's some poetry that really speaks to you in terms of just really evidencing the power of the spoken word in the absence of other structure? Well, I think the poem which...

It was probably the first poem I found interesting was actually a poem that you found for me, which is The Boys I Mean Are Not Refined by E.E. Cummings. I had previously regarded poetry as probably somewhat pretentious, like poets were speaking in ways that they didn't need to speak to

complicate simpler messages and then I think the amount of foul language and foul imagery and profanity in that poem contrasted with the fact that it was still so beautiful and it's so clearly represented an archetype with which we still interact proved to me that

that poetry was not as pretentious as I imagined it to be. So I think that that was sort of my introduction into this world. That's interesting. If you take that poem, it's very unusual in that it's called the Holograph Poem because it was written out longhand, and you actually just sort of have a picture of Cummings' own writing. And it takes the form almost of a schoolyard recitation,

It rhymes. It's in very regular meter. Do you remember the opening of it? The boys I mean are not refined. They go with girls who buck and bite. They do not give a fuck for luck. They hump them 13 times a night. So that gives an idea of being kind of a schoolyard poem, but this idea that you've got some bad guys out there who are just not subscribed to the same rules as everyone else. And do you remember actually the

The final stanza? Yeah. They speak whatever's on their minds. They do whatever's in their pants. The boys I mean are not refined. They shake the mountains when they dance. I think that last line to me, how do you hear it? I think that defines to you what the entire poem was about. You don't understand until that point, but he's describing the fact that these are the people who changed the world. Yeah. These are the people very often in tremendous positions of power.

I think about that a lot when I think about some of the very, like, you know, Elon, for example, is not very easy for a lot of people to digest at the moment. You know, he's sort of almost trolling on Twitter at this time with respect to the COVID epidemic. And I think about that line and, you know, it's frustrating to me because not enough people, there aren't enough people who know that poem and you want to quote the line, they shake the mountains when they dance.

Do you think that the profanity and the violent and sexual imagery is necessary in that poem, or do you think it is gratuitous? I think very often imagery and sensory content is very important in poetry. So I don't think that it's gratuitous per se. But I think it does something more in that poem, which I described, which is that it shows the power of

The power that we have with language without necessarily using it in this very old very, you know Pretentious sounding sense. So I think it's importance there was twofold Do you have other poems that really mean a lot to you or was it just a pretty great one? But I think that's the one for which I can make it was a gateway for you Yeah, that was that was the gateway poem for me. So Here's another question I have

You started recording videos when we did this last two years ago or something. And there was a lot of interest in having you share your thoughts. I think you're coming from a very interesting perspective. It's not exactly mine. It's clearly of your own making. Are you interested in kind of sharing your thoughts on your generation and your situation as you come up? No, Dad, I'm very interested in interacting with this world. But...

As I've mentioned, I feel very lost when looking at this time because it's so confusing and there's so little which I understand. And I think to the extent where I'm interacting with the public, I will have to be very open about the fact that I'm very clueless. And I don't think I'm, I don't think it's a foolish sort of cluelessness. I don't

I don't think that there are good answers available. So I think I'm, you know, there's something uncomfortable even about,

making yourself open to the world and calling attention to the fact that you're trying to think, but you're clueless, you're starved for information. You don't know how to interact with a time as confusing as ours. And I think that's difficult for me. I like to feel like I'm knowledgeable. Like I understand what to do. Like I have plans and I don't know how to plan in this time. Well, I don't either. And part of what I'm trying to do is to

stay open with my audience. You know, in part, there's an arrogance about deciding that you're going to say something and making it available and imagining that anybody's going to care. And so, you know, why should anyone want to listen in on me talking to my son? Because we both happen to be incarcerated together. I don't know. A lot of people ask me about parenting and they ask me for tips and what it was like. And I always think,

It's really irresponsible for me to give my version of it if you're not here to validate what worked and didn't work. I personally think that one of the things that people get out of my program is the fact that I don't know and that I am confused and I'm willing to trust them. And I guess one of my thoughts for you and your audience is what if you were just to trust your audience that this is such a confusing time, but that you're actually open to the idea that

It can't be made sense of, and that's part of the frustration. I think that that's completely authentic to your perspective. That's true. And you mentioned this arrogance, which you sort of have to have when assuming that you have something to offer. I would love to be arrogant, right? Don't say it that way because you're going to get scolded, but I understand exactly what you mean. No, I think...

I'm actually, I'll stick to that because I think we would all love to be arrogant, but with where I am right now and with what I understand of our current situation in this world.

I am in no position to hold that arrogance. And that is frustrating to me, but I have to be open about that. That's, that's part of what it means to be authentic in some sense. Yeah. I don't think that you mean arrogance. I think you mean like extremes, self-confidence, like really out there levels of self-confidence so that you can hold a position in a world in which everything is up for grabs. And I very much appreciate that. I've never seen anything like this. And yeah,

I've never felt so dumb in my entire life. And I don't know whether or not that means anything to you, but it's certainly the case that I feel like we're watching not only the nonsense fall apart, but a lot of the things that we did right are no longer valued, you know, and that we're very much sort of in that famous Yeats poem where everything, all the interstitial things

All the connective tissue is somehow coming apart. We can't quite figure out why. Center cannot hold. It doesn't feel like the Falcon and the Falcon are having much of a conversation. Yeah. And I don't know what we do about that because people have to care enough. And the whole, the whole idea behind like the intellectual dark web was just at least let's hang on to the enlightenment of

And then the idea is that, well, the Enlightenment, you know, the Constitution, if anything, is a product of a patriarchy. There really were founding fathers and not founding mothers who signed the documents. And so then it became like, okay, can we hold on to anything? Or is everything now to be re-evaluated from the perspective of all previous generations were bad, oppressive generations, and the world begins now with the Enlightenment that

has superseded what we've called the Enlightenment. I don't even know how to think in these terms because every age has had good and bad in it, and this one is no exception. Well, we've discussed my love of history. Right. I think that has a lot to do with the fact that I'm not yet ready to throw out all we've learned. I think that would be...

quite colossal mistake but you're you are willing to take on the sort of burden of trying to figure out how do you interpret it in the modern era without saying that everything was okay from from history and I think that's a bigger burden if we do this carefully if we do it okay so you know I really like what you said it before about changing the notions of male and female which is that you somehow like if you think about pairs dancing rules and

If you wanted to change how pairs dancing occurs, you would have to change both the male and female role at the same time for the puzzle pieces to remain interlocking. Exactly. It wouldn't just say these roles no longer exist, now dance. Or this piece says, I got to be me, and I'm going to change in some way that doesn't take into account you. We're looking at chaos. We're looking at chaos. Well, let me just say this. What time is it?

It is now your birthday. You are now 15. The reason I was hitting 14 was that I thought if we could push it over the midnight mark, then you could in fact become 15 on the podcast. So happy birthday, son. Thank you. What I wanted to know is, do you have anything else that you'd like to bring up other than grievances? Um, I know we touched on this, but it's been very important to me that

This was my household, and it was a very unconventional household, admittedly. But I don't think I could have confidence that I was not completely insane in a household that was unlike this. So I think it's a good thing to record this and put it out in the world and give them some insight into what this was like, because I think this is...

I'm very happy that you're my father. That's all. Well, let me say, I just, I can't tell you how much I appreciate that really means a lot to me, but let me also turn it around. I think you wildly underestimate the power and importance of your voice at a time when everybody's lost. And in fact, there is something calming about hearing somebody very smart, very well-spoken say, I can't make sense of this. We're heading towards chaos.

And I think it is absolutely essential to me that you try and then you find out whether people want to hear what you have to say or not. But I really hope that

You'll go back to recording more of your thoughts, putting them out either in written form. I love the way you write and I love what you have to say. And so if we can be at all helpful in boosting your channel, you have a YouTube channel for Zev Weinstein. I think it's Generation Z. Generation Z. Z for Zev, Z for your cohort. You're on Twitter. I am. As? Zev Weinstein. Zev Weinstein. And...

Zev, I would actually love to figure out how to do some sort of regular gig with the two of us talking about current events or different topics as they come up. And any way in which I can help launch your voice to a larger world, I think it would be good for them. Whether or not it'd be good for you, I can't say. Thanks for having me on the portal. Well, thanks for coming. So you've been through the portal with my son, Zev Weinstein, who just turned 15 moments ago.

And make sure to subscribe to us on Apple, Stitcher, Spotify, wherever you listen to podcasts, as well as going over to YouTube, where we have our main YouTube channel. And not only click subscribe, but also the bell icon to be notified whenever the next video episode drops. Everybody stay safe, and we will see you soon on a future episode. Be well. ♪

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