A little more light on the situation here.

Welcome to the March Q and a Glad to see you all here.

Thanks for tuning in.

So, uh, let's see if we can get somewhere reasonable today.

I guess I could update you a little bit if you'd be interested.

Tell you what has been going on.

Um, my wife, Tammy and I came back from Australia, New Zealand at the end of February.

We had a really good tour there.

I would say about a dozen places, maybe 15.

Hard to keep track because we went to a number of places more than once large crowds.

Some of the bigger venues Melbourne for examples.

5500 people.

So I think that was the biggest audience that I had spoken to independently of the, um, discussions with Sam Harris.

So that was very interesting to see that crowds of that magnitude would show up, Got to speak at the Sydney Opera House, which was extremely exciting, you know, it's such an iconic building, so that was a real honor.

It's been like that for lots of the theaters that I've seen in, You know, these old iconic buildings that so many people have performed in.

It's quite a privilege to be able to get backstage and take a look.

Um, we enjoyed Australia, New Zealand lot wth the company Take Dainty that hosted it, posted the tour, did an outstanding job, and, uh, the press even was reasonably welcoming, I would say, at least in Australia and New Zealand, it was a bit of a different story.

They seemed to be more polarized there, Uh, as recent events have clearly indicated so since I've been back, well, I haven't Bean particularly productive five mostly being sleeping, as it turns out.

So I guess a worn out after a year of touring.

But I'm hard at work on my next book, tentatively entitled Beyond Order or Beyond Mere Order.

12 More Rules for Life.

I'm up to Chapter nine, and I would say I'm pretty stuck on it at the moment time.

I'm having a hard time slogging through it.

Brain isn't as sharp as it could be and have to be sharp to at it.

So anyway, some set up some new offices.

This'd is this week to get my team together for the online education project, so that's exciting.

Boats.

Five of us that will be working together.

Um, it's, um, offices with a company called Post Media, who I'm also working with writing a journal newspaper articles.

So, uh, that's exciting.

And we're hoping for good things from the online education program, Um, no timelines or anything like that.

Still, it's a complicated system being working as well on the Patriot on replacement.

That's looking really good.

I would say I met with the developer this week.

Um, we're hoping, Well, we're hoping to have some of it functional by April 1st, and they'll be a little bit more information about that available act on April 1st.

Um, I have a talk in New York on April 17th at the Beacon Theater.

I think it's sold out.

I have a talk on April 19th at the Sony Center in Toronto with Slava Jack, who's probably the world's most famous Marxist philosopher, and so that should be interesting and challenging and hopefully productive.

And then, for those of you who might be watching from the UK or from somewhere reasonably accessible to the UK, I'm doing a 12 Rules for Life Lecture to her show May 8th in London, which is the same time that the paperback version of 12 Rules for Life is coming up.

So that's basically that for updates.

I guess maybe there's a bit more.

I've, um, videotaped a number of mine lectures in Australia, which is the first time I've done that professionally videotaped them.

I think I taped six, and so we'll be releasing them in some form yet to be determined, maybe on the new platform in the relatively new future.

And I have about 50 of, um, 55 of them, audiotaped and transcribed.

And so I've put together the transcriptions spot a 1,000,000 words, and I'm hoping that there's possibly books I can derive from that.

But if there's not folks, there's certainly podcasts and not sort of think so.

And I have a lot of, um, interviews coming up as well.

So that's what's happening on this end of the universe.

So let's take some questions to see how that goes, So I don't know why this question is so popular, but and it's completely ridiculous.

But, um, that's okay.

Steven Shutters, who obviously hasn't got anything better to do, wants to know what is my favorite soup.

And apparently 333 people are also interested in that particular topic.

And I would say it's actually irrelevant.

Unfortunately, because I don't eat soup, I'm on this crazy all meat diet that some of you know about and that doesn't go along very well with soup.

But if I had to pick a soup that I ate at one point, my favorite soup was a clam chowder that I used to make with corn.

And, uh, I was a dish I was particularly proud of.

I was actually not a bad cook.

I spent a lot of time cooking in restaurants and really enjoyed it and miss it a lot.

The diversity, you know, off cuisine.

And so it would have to be clam chowder.

So now you know what the most important thing about me that you could possibly know?

When will you be starting back up your Bible, Siris?

Well, that's a good question.

Um, and it looks like it'll be the fall now.

What's happening in October is that I'm going to Cambridge University in the UK for two months, and I'm going to be a visiting fellow there at the Divinity school, and that should give me an opportunity to talk to religious experts of all types for a couple of months as well as students.

And the plan at the moment is to do that at the same time that I start recording the lectures on Exodus.

So, um, I figured I could kill two birds with one stone.

That way I could start the biblical lectures again, which I'm really looking forward to on also update my biblical knowledge substantially as well as having the opportunity to spend some time in Cambridge, which I think would be really exciting.

I was there a little bit this summer, and it's known absolutely beautiful university.

And it's quite a thrill for someone who's academically minded to be to be their period, but also to be invited there, too, to sit in and participate for a couple of months.

And so anyways, maybe I could get 10 or so lectures out in that period of time.

Let's say if I did one a week, I'm not exactly sure how I'm going to do it.

If I'm gonna rent a public theater like I did in Toronto, I think that's probably the plan but anyways assume October November.

That's the That's the plan At the moment.

What I'm trying to concentrate on right now is finishing my new book, which has a relatively sudden or, you know, relatively.

It has a due date that's in the relatively recent future.

And so I like to stay on top of those things.

It's easy to get behind when you're writing a book and to rush it and to do it badly.

And so I'm trying to make sure that I've got my priorities straight.

So anyways, that's the situation with the biblical Siri's.

I'm really looking forward to it.

I think one of the most worthwhile things I've done in my academic career was that Siris on Genesis and I learned a tremendous amount.

And so I'm assuming the same thing will happen with the exodus stories, which I know better.

Uh, so that should be slightly easier on me from a rate of learning perspective and hopefully I'll be able to go deeper because they are really remarkable stories.

So I've also been struck by the, you know, the reception to those biblical stories.

I've received a subsistence surprising number, for example, off a surprising number, for example, of letters from Islamic viewers who've been watching them, and the letters have been very positive.

And so that's That's made me think very hard about the overall potential effect of delineating the meaning of all these old stories that I think that to the degree that we want to preserve Thea under structure of our culture, and I regard that as grounded in Judeo Christian tradition very, very firmly as well as other traditions.

Obviously, huh?

Think Greco Roman tradition, probably foremost among them.

The stories have to be brought alive again, and I don't think there's any more effective way of demonstrating their utility than to make them come alive.

Mirror what?

Your profession off belief and value isn't sufficient.

One thing you might guys might be interested in to it.

This is, ah, video or, ah, an audio.

I think I don't know if I videotaped this one or just audio recorded it.

I did a lecture in Australia on this question about belief in God and why I'm not very happy about the question and unwilling in some sense to answer it.

So I did a two hour snow 70 minute lecture on how that question why that question is problematic for me and what could be done about it.

What what the proper answer is to it?

I think so.

Hopefully you'll find something interesting in that when it's finally released.

I do not attend church.

How can I teach my Children the biblical stories in a productive way without the dogma or little and literal interpretation of organized religion?

Well, that's an unbelievably complicated problem, and I actually don't know the answer to it.

I'm not sure that I did a particularly good job of teaching my Children the biblical stories in a productive way, without the dogma or literal interpretation of organized religion.

And I think that you could start by just reading them the stories.

You know, there are decent, plain English translations of the biblical stories, and you might find that just reading the stories to them.

At least they're familiar with them that way.

And you'd have to pick and choose, obviously, because they're not going to be too thrilled by sitting through endless genealogies.

But there are also biblical translations available that put the story's out in prose form and do a pretty good job of editing out the geological material and the other things that might not be so what might not capture the imagination of Children particularly?

Well, I can't think of any better way of doing it than just reading the stories to them, and perhaps to the degree that it's possible to discuss them and see if that works.

Maybe it'll work.

Maybe it won't mean I didn't take my kids to church, you know, um, having stopped attending, really when I was 13 and I have my reasons for not attending.

Maybe they're good and maybe they're not.

I very back and forth with that.

Um, one of the downsides of that was that they didn't develop the same familiarity with the stories that I have developed when I was a kid, because I didn't go to church fairly regularly until I was 13.

And it's it's definitely a loss.

Um, my cynicism about church organization since cynicism, I don't know what it is exactly.

Well, I didn't do my Children's education on the biblical front any good.

So, um, I'm still at sixes and sevens.

Let's say about that and about exactly what to do about it.

But you could try reading them, reading the stories to them and see how that goes.

And there are Children's versions available as well.

You know what I suspect?

If you look carefully on Amazon, you could find ones that were well reviewed.

And so that might be another way of approaching it.

What question are you asked way to sell them.

Oh, well, that's pretty easy.

At least if if the question is, what question am I asked by journalists?

Way to sell them.

And the answer to that would be, um, Dr Peterson, what the hell is going on?

And what I mean by that is, Why are so many people coming to your lectures?

Let's say and why did your book strike such a court?

I think the 1st 1 is the most important one.

You know, generally, what happens with with journalists is that they're very cynical about what is happening at my lectures and also who's attending.

And it's really very pejorative, demeaning, um, thoughtless, prejudiced, and I would say cruel all at once, because the first assumption is that you know, I'm talking primarily to angry white young man, and there certainly isn't a lot of evidence for that, I would say the average age of the people in my audiences thirties, and that's not exactly young.

And then I would say, Well, it's a least 30% women and that's being increasing as the book has sold more.

And you know, the reason it was men primarily to begin with, I think, is because, well, there are many men starving for encouraging voice and also the fact that YouTube, which is where I picked up my primary audience to begin with, skews about 80 20 male to female in terms of its viewership, which really doesn't have anything to do with me, right?

That's just, uh, what do you call that?

That's a baseline phenomenon that has to be taken into phenomenon that has to be taken into account before you make any before you draw any conclusions about the nature of someone's audience.

But the presumption is, is that you know, I'm speaking politically and intended divisive way to the people who show up to my, um to my lectures into my talks, and that's just not true.

The lectures aren't political except peripherally.

I mean, do now and then, through a critical comment or two out a boat, the manner in which this strange alliance of postmodernism and and neo Marxism has been dominating the university.

But I think that's perfectly reasonable thing to point out.

Apart from that, the lecture is almost all concentrate on psychological self improvement, and it seems almost impossible for the media to be not cynical about that.

You know, I think it's partly because almost everything that the classic media covers has to be politicized.

And I was on a show, for example, called Q and A in Australian show, which was, It's their biggest political show.

It's modeled on one in the U.

K, which is also quite big, which are It was also on a while back, and every issue immediately becomes discussed among polarized political lines.

It's a Ziff.

Our discourse has degenerated to the point where the only possible response to a question about anything important has to be ideological, so left or right, and it has to be political.

And so I think part of the problem is perhaps that the phenomenon that constitutes the attendance at my lectures doesn't fit the standard news media narrative, which is driven by journalists.

I think who had political ambitions fundamentally or still have political ambitions of one sort or another, and who tend to view world lee through a political lens.

But for me, the experience of my lectures is actually on unbelievably positive one and not particularly stressful, like it's nowhere near a stressful as almost any interview I have with almost any journalist, because again things get politicized very rapidly.

What happens in the lectures is that, you know, 3000 people show up and they're happy to be there.

And so it's very welcoming atmosphere, and I get to talk to them for 70 minutes about some psychological problem, I would say often associated with one of the chapters in my book.

Like what it means to what?

What a human competence hierarchy might look like, say, if I was talking about Chapter one, because we do organize hierarchies, human beings, naturally organized hierarchies, like other animals do.