Clay Travis chats with Dave Rubin

We're kind of intersecting the world of sports, media, politics, and business and telling stories about how people ended up where they did, the wins and losses along the way for the process of their lives. And this week's guest is Dave Reuben. He's at Reuben Report on Twitter. He's a man of many talents. Uh and you guys may have watched us together on YouTube on his show before. We've had a lot of great conversations. We've met. Couple of years ago during the fallout of my my comments

on CNN. Would you have ever known about me if you hadn't seen that clip? Did you? Had you been cognizant of me existing before that? I think I had come across your name a couple of times, and I don't think I was following you yet. When I saw that moment with you and Baldwin, I was kind of like,

whatever is going on here? And as you know, I am a sports guy, but just because my life has gotten so busy and the politics thing has just kind of taken over, like I just don't have as much time for that any right, But I was like, whatever

this guy is up to? That moment was so exactly everything that I'm talking about all the time, related to free speech, related to outreach culture, related to the mob, related to the lunacy of the media and the crantastic programming of CNN, yes, and all of those things that I was like, I've got to talk to this guy.

And then what was interesting was then when I had you on the show, which was just within a couple of weeks of that, um quickly I was like, whoa, it's not just that he gets it, but we do both occupy what I think is coming a really increasing space of people that are desperately trying to find some sanity here and not trying to ransack everything that is

so good about this country. So uh so, yeah, I don't think I really knew who you were before then, but but since then it's been incredibly beneficial for my career. Uh And a lot of people listening right now may have initially discovered me then. Obviously, It's not like I hadn't been in the public arena before. But it's so hard to cut through, you know, in general, and make a name good or bad for yourself in such a complicated and competitive culture. I wasn't planning on that happening,

but I definitely leaned into it. Also, the way that they booked those shows. It's also an impossibly difficult thing to figure out. So for example, I just told you so, you so, we're in my studio right now, and we just tape my show, and I totally I'm doing Tucker Tonight ones and I go on Fox Now probably once or twice a week. I'm not paid or anything. I'm not a contributor. But I always find that they let me say whatever I want. Tucker puts me on live,

we don't we don't do a pre interview anymore. There's none of that. They trust me. I can say whatever I want, I can agree with him, disagree with him. The rest of it but then people will say, we, well, real, but you don't go on CNN, you don't go on MSNBC, And it's like they don't invite any right, you want me to just I literally took a picture when I was in New York last week. I don't know if

you saw this on Twitter. Yeah, I tweeted a picture of a selfie sitting downstairs at the time Warner Center, which is where CNN is upstairs that Whole Foods. Take a picture of myself. I said, hey, I'm here, I'm happy to come on. Yeah, you know, but they but they don't want to. Yeah, And really that does get to so many things that we talked about about which way tolerance is sort of veering these things and it's not the side that you think or that you've been

trained to think that it's going in. All right, So I want to get into your background because one of the things we love to do on this show is figure out how someone ends up where they are. So kind of a set the scene for people listening. Right now. We're sitting in your studio and you're a Los Angeles abode here, which is phenomenal. You do a couple of different really popular shows on YouTube, you distribute them. You've had a tremendous amount of success. You're working on a

book now, You've got a lot of opportunities. You just mentioned you're going on Tucker Carlson. You've got a ton of different media opportunities all happening at the same time, right, Which is a good place to be on the last time I saw you, we were in uh, Washington, d C. And you and I and kandas Owens all went out for dinner together Trump or the Trump Hotel whatever steakhout the Trump Hotel steakhouse there. We had an incredible conversation.

Was an awesome time. Um, And so I want to circle back to you grew up a where like the very beginning, you grew up in New York is right. I'm a true New Yorker. When people say they're New Yorkers, there's very few actual New Yorkers. But I was born in Brooklyn before it was cool, ipster Brooklyn still crappy Brooklyn,

where my dad and my grandparents were from. UH. When I was three years old, we moved out to Long Island, which was that was the dream for if you were a city, New York City or Brooklyn or Queen's person. The dream was you could move to Long Island, maybe to Westchester or from suburban part of Jersey. My folks moved this out to little town called Sayasset, which is basically smacked dead in the middle of Long Island, Exit forty three on the l I A and uh So.

I grew up in Long Island. I went to college in upstate New York, Sunny Binghamton. My dad was very clear when I was applying for colleges. I wanted to go to Syracuse because I wanted to be a sports bro ester. I wanted to be on ESPN, and Marv Albert went there, and Bob Costa went there too, and all those guys went there. And my dad said, if you go to a Sunny school meeting an in state state University of New York school, we'll pay for it

because it's about nine grand women a year. And he said, if you go to a private school or at a state it's on you. I think maybe he was going to make up the differences. You know, he would have taken care of the nine and then I would have had pay over. And Syracuse at the time was about twenty five grand it's probably something like sixty girls. And I remember thinking, I was like, I would love to go there. I want to be on Sports Center. It

was the heyday of Sports Center. Kilbourne was was new and fresh and funny before crazy before, but yeah, he was great him and damn pack. That thing was amazing. I loved every moment of it because it was funny, it was edgy, it was rever ir reverend. But basically I was like, well, I can either go to college for free and hopefully figure out a path if I was even thinking about it that much at seventeen years old, or I can go to this place but then have

a hundred thousand dollars worth of debt. If I had only known now that the Democrats, you know, pay off my debt, maybe I would have done it. But and then I lived after that. I lived in Manhattan pretty much right out of college after a year back with my with my folks. Lived in Manhattan for about fifteen years and that's when I started doing stand up and all that, and lived there until February when I moved

to l A. And this is like Hotel California. You can get in, but you can never get out, alright, so that is a that's an awesome run through. Now at Sunni Bingam, what did you major in and how would you describe your academic performance while there? Yeah, I majored in political science. So I like to say that Ben Shapiro and I are basically the only two POLYCIGN

majors that actually use their degree outside degree um. But I remember that most of my political science classes, everything that we were taught, it was like, but none of this works, right. We really was like that, like very yeah, like they but they'd be saying these things. They would be saying these things about this is how the government's supposed to work, in separation of powers and all the things.

But but they would always veer at the end towards but none of it really works this way, you know. And but I I didn't have you know, a lot of people I think have sort of or younger kids now, Like when I go to colleges now, I meet these kids and even younger high school kids who are so passionate,

so driven. When I think that that a college kid is coming up to me and going, WHOA, you know, I just read Jordan Peterson's book watching your Show, and I listened to Sam Harris talk about atheism and Joe Rogan and that, and that they're putting so much investment in their in their intellectual worth. It's incredible. I mean, I truly I spent four years of college. I was smoking pot. I was pot. I was smoking pot, playing video was playing basketball top video games. Well, I was

playing all the e A sports games right then. So it was like NBA Live and NHL nineties, So we are close to the same, like basically the college like the video game that the sports like. So you love basketball? Basketball is my real sports. So yeah, basketball in your in your office here, so you would you play intermiroal basketball and everything else. I played every league that you

could possibly play. And my one regret, you know, I really don't have regrets in life because most because I'm in a good place now and I view the mistakes or whatever as things that ultimately ended up getting here. My one regret is that I didn't pick up basketball earlier, because because I was really good for for a while. I'm about five eleven, relatively fit, or at least in my hate it really was, and I had a great

three point shots, finger roll. I really could play, But I really never picked up a ball until about eight or ninth grade. Yeah, so if I could have started.

Yeah when when when I really was good in high school, I was already a senior and I tried out for the team with the high school team, and the coach of the Sea of the high school basketball team was my years before, had been my elementary school coach, elementary school gym teacher, And I remember him coming up to me, Mr Myers, and saying, you know, he's like, he's like, David, you know when you were a kid, you were this little scrawny nothing. He's like, you've got skills now, but

you're too old. He like. It was completely honest with me, and I sort of appreciated the honesty, but so I really it was. It was more of a recreational thing my whole life. Yeah, but I love basketball more than anything else. If that would be I should be in the w n b A. That's as for our earlier maybe you could if that plan, if this all the whole thing, you can be Joanna Man. Now let's go to Uh did you live at home for a year like a lot of people do after school? Do you

have any idea what you're gonna do? Polly Side degree and in that year, well, I was a video game guys. So if you love video games, what do you do? I started working at Electronics boutique, which you may know as game Stop. My age Basic Lisa Electronics Cutique, which most of the people listening to this became working at the game Stop. So I was in the Broadway Mall and Nixville, Long Island, and I was assistant manager. And

I moved more Pokemon gold than anybody. Um so I did that, and you know, you quickly find out I don't even know what the hell I was thinking. I just needed a job, you know, I needed a job. But I remember thinking, oh, I love video games, like I'll be a video game sales but like that seemed like a sensible thing. But then you quickly realized, I mean,

it's just a real retail job. And like most things, and I'm sure you feel this way a little bit about sports, that the more that you get in on it, the more that you see that that dirty underside of it has nothing to do with the things that you love about it. So like selling video games has nothing to do with telling people why you love playing Googles and ghosts. For Mario brothers. You know. So, Uh. What I started doing though, was literally the last thing that

I did in college. Senior year, I had my finals were over already, my bags were packed, I was heading on. I had to finish, to finish out my required courses, I take a public speaking class. And all I had to do was give a ten minute talk on whatever whatever it is that I want to talk about. And I gave a ten minute talk um about what it was like to be in college, and I did it. You remember Bill Cosby himself. It was his great HBO special from did you ever see That's Chocolate Cake? And

the Dentist and all that? And I remember seeing that as a seven year old. I remember seeing that in my parents house in the in the living room, and I remember being buckled over as a seven year old in laughter. I could not it was the funniest thing I've ever seen. The pain in my stomach. So basically I decided to do, basically do a stand up routine for ten minutes, and I sat just like Bill Cosby,

sitting that entire routine. Uh. And I told him what it was like to be in college, and I talked about hooking up and I talked about drugs, and I talked about law of class and blah blah blah, and half the class was laughing, and half the class was looking at me like I was crazy. The professor completely thought I was nuts um. But from there I was like, whoa that that feeling of making people laugh, There's nothing

better than that. And a week later I was at my first comedy club that I had never even been to a stand up club. They said, you know, I called this place in New York comedy club. They said, if you can bring five paying customers, will throw you on stage. And that's what I did, and I was hooked. I was beyond hooked. I mean like a like a drug in the best sense of it hooked. So how often would you be doing stand up comedy? So the first couple of years, I mean, this is very similar

to most of how comedy went back then. So comedy obviously, like most industries, has had its up since its stands and everything. Most people when they think of like the golden years of comedy, you really think of like sort of the late seventies, eighties into the very early part of the nineties, where every comic basically from Louis Anderson and Tim Allen and Ellen DeGeneres and Jerry Seinfeld and Richard Lewis. Basically, you could get on the Tonight Show.

You could work the clubs for a certain amount of years, you could perfect a five minute set, and then if you got on the Tonight Show and Johnny liked you, if Johnny Carson liked you, called you over the chair. I mean everyone knows this. And he called you over the chair, and then you were golden. You get a sitcom and you were good to go. I mean, this

happened with Rosanne. We could do the list. This happened with everybody when I started, so I was out of college in eight So I started in June of ninety eight, So it's twenty one years basically this month, um that,

but that bubble had burst, I mean majorly. They they always looked back the night that they say the comedy bubble versus when Andrew Dice Clay sold out Madison Square Garden and basically everyone was announcing his jokes with him, you know, Jack and Joe went up to who and then everyone tells the rest of the joke, you know, and and that that was sort of symbolic of how the whole thing crumbled, and then comedy clubs started closing

all over the place because also television made it more ubiquitous, so you didn't have to go to clubs anymore. And you know, it's just like anything else we're we're in industries right now that are massively changing. So um so what happened was to go to comedy clubs or to perform a comedy clubs. For a while, it was bringer shows. So if you just brought a certain amount of bodies, and right out of college of someone that grew up

in New York, I had bodies. So the first two years I could just get people a couple of times a week to just show up. But eventually you run out of steam on that, and then uh so that lasted let's say two years of a couple of nights a week and you're working anything else or yeah, so I was working as so I did the video game thing for a while. I interned at the Daily Show. Also a year a year after college, I forged a

letter from Binghamton University. I faked their letterhead and I said that I was a professor in the communications department or something, and I recommended myself to get to get an internship at the Daily Show. So I'm interning at the Daily Show during the day, which was a really interesting time to be there because John had just taken over from Kilbourne and I loved the Daily Show from

Kilbourne because I like Kilbourne. But it was a really bizarre time because try to picture two public people with different personas than those two guys. Killboard is the most smug, you know, into himself whatever. John is the most self deprecating personever. So the staff was in upheaval and rights are getting fired left and right and all that um. But then over the years of new and stand up, I mean, I did every odd job you can think.

I mean, well, first off, I cleaned up comedy clubs and clean bathrooms and literally the lowest kind of level jobs. I would have done anything to get on stage. And I did do anything. I mean I I bartended, I I worked a catering companies. I used to hand out merchandise for promotion companies on the streets, just anything I could do to make a buck to go by. For one year, I had an office job at a PR company in New York. I've literally no idea what business

they because my head wasn't there. Somehow I got the job and I showed up, and I guess I faked it enough to be able to keep a job. Yeah, but I have no idea what it's a hand amount existence at the time to write you're making like I mean, I was making nothing. I remember what your rent was, like, how many roommates did you have? Like so when I

finally so then I left my parents house. And then when I had that office job, so I had, you know, maybe I was making forty five grand or something like that. I had a couple of roommates on on an apartment on ninety and first, so pretty far up on the fur East Side, um, which was a really interesting place. Ninety and first, because try to think about New York City for a second. So if New York's an the

subway up there is eighty six and Lex. It was basically ninetieth that York, which is one more east than first. So it was basically as far as you could get from a subway in New York City. Because eighty six, that means I had to ninety Then I had to go les third, second, First York, which it's a long walk for for a New Yorker, especially when you're working at a job you don't want to be at and the rest of it. Um. But anyway, then, uh, and I just did all sorts of just any gi like

name a job, like I pretty much did it. But then what I had to do to get on stage once the sort of age out of the bringer thing, your friends are like, yeah, I've heard all those jokes. You know, I don't want to come to shows anymore. And there's nothing to do with whether you're good or not. It's just like it just is. The other way you get on stage is your bark. You hand your hand out tickets and uh, you hand out tickets, usually in Times Squares where most of it went down. And I'm

sure you've been harassed. So you did that, You would stand in Times Square. And I did that for like eight or ten years, six six nights a week, sometimes twice a night, two hours a night, and often in the early years of that you didn't get paid either. So you're dragging people into these clubs just with the

hope of getting you know, seven minutes of stage. Then and I did that for a couple of years, and then this was the first moment that my my business sense that I think has led me here now kicked in. I realized that I was out here with all these other comics, some of them whom were pretty good. Um, most of the guys from my crew have all disappeared.

And it's just a sad thing about comedy that often the best guys just they can't hack it anymore, like the true artists and the ones that are truly doing something amazing get to a point where it just breaks them. So out of my crew, um, we had some really really talented people. The only one who really broke through I guess I had now. But the only other one Melissa Routs, who you probably know is that on a

Big Bang Theory m. She was at my crew. I remember seeing her the first night and I said to her, you were going to be the star because she could do voices and she was just a great talent and she's a great girl. Um, but basically just bark being handed out these tickets. And then finally I was like, why am I doing this so that somebody else can be taken all the cash here? So me and a couple of other comics, um, we found a failing restaurant.

It was called Joe Franklin's Memory Lane, and Joe Franklin was an old school New York sort of like a Larry King type of, like a local local guy. Any of this restaurant that just every night, and they had a back room about eight seats, and we started a six night a week to show a night comedy club there. It became so successful that we ended up taking over the entire restaurant, and then we had two shows going.

And then that became so successful that there's a t g I Fridays on fifty and seventh, which is the world's largest t Yeah, I know exactly, and it's right probably yeah, yeah, you've probably get there right what your audience may know it as is the building next to it is now Barkley's Building, which was Lehman Brothers before the crash and everything. It's a really iconic. It's glowing and crazy lights and everything. But anyway, there was a

room down there about a hundred fifty seats. So we left our B list comics that Joe Franklin's Comedy Club. We took our best guys went there six nights a week, two shows a night, so I was basically running two clubs. I was making real money. We were splitting the first time you actually started to make real money. First time I started making real money, I was. We were splitting money between the comics, So comics started making money. We had no management, so I was doing twenty five minutes

sets when most guys were doing six minutes set. We did. We did great stuff, and we actually became so successful that the reason it ended was because of our success. Because then the big clubs realized, whoa, these comics, they're just dragging people in off the street. You know, We're literally just pulling people in, you know. And then the it was the Laugh Factory. We were on fifty and seventh.

The Laugh Factory opened up a couple of blocks south, and then Broadway Comedy Club I think, opened a couple of blocks more. And then they just had more money behind them and had more an army of people that could hand out tickets, so they just nipped us off. And then the whole thing crumbled, and then I moved on to some others off. But I look back on it with like tremendous fondness now, like those are the

good old days. Be sure to catch live editions about Kick the coverage with Clay Travis week days at six am Eastern three am Pacific. We're talking to Dave Reuben at Reuben Show on Twitter. This is the Wins and Losses Podcast. I'm Clay Travis. Do you remember having a moment where you're like, I don't know if I'm going to continue as a comedian? Like, was there any kind of epiphany moment where you were like this and maybe what age? Like, how how does that happen? How do

you end up where you are now? Because you obviously, in order to be a comedian, you have to really put your heart and soul into it, right into performing for years. You have to give it everything you've got. And you know, it's funny because most of your audience listen to this. If they know me, they probably don't know me from comedy. It's actually only in the last year now that I'm getting back into comedy and I'm selling out clubs across the country. And I'm telling you, truly, Clay,

you gotta come sometime. I'll bring you on statie. Yeah. Usually what I usually do now, because i'm selling out these clubs, I do about an hour solo and I'm really just messing with the crowd, and I do a ton of likely incorrect stuff and and and talk about all social justice and all this nonsence, and then usually I bring on a friend at the end. So I've

brought on Jordan Peterson. I brought on the Weinstein brothers and Ben Shapiro and a bunch of people, and I just get people to to see us in a in a different way. We'll do it. So we'll do it. Do it because I need to. I need to get back to Nashville. That that picture, by the way in

my bathroom, that's from the Yeah. So I remember right around when these two clubs opened on both sides of us, and suddenly our numbers were dropping and we were going from a hundred fifty people at the show, then it was eighty, then it was for me then and then suddenly it was like seven and the money was gone and it was depressing and all that. I remember thinking one day like, could it be possible that I've given everything I have into this and I'm good at it?

And I'm good I was at one time. I was like they told me, I'm I don't know if this is totally true, but I was the youngest comic ever passed that the comedy Seller, which was the Comedy Siller down on Bleaker Street, is like, that's like the premoke, that's like the really the one that matters in the city. That's like the hip cool club. And I was right out of college got past their immediately. If anything, I got past too early, because you should have him a lot more years I do to really do it at

that level. Um. But I remember thinking, could I give something everything I have got, be good at it, have done everything, and be doing something different and real and all of those things, and then have it not work? Could that be what reality is? And when I started coming in, when you start, I think everyone has some moment like that in their life, when that thing that you've believed in comes into conflict with reality. And I remember there was this other comic. His name is Brian Bombly.

He he was a decent comic, not great decent. I've seen him a couple of times over the last couple of years, and he's he's just a normal guy. Now, he's got a regular job and a family, lives in Jerseys. Happy. Um. But one of those nights, as that was kind of all crumbling around us, he said to me, and he almost had a tear in his eye. He said, Dave, this wasn't supposed to happen to you. And I was like, oh, Like he kind of was looking around like yeah, some

of these guys are good. I'm okay. He's like, Dad, you're good, Like this wasn't supposed to happen. And I remember like like I felt a pain, like in my heart, like holy shit, it's and you'r how old at this point, this is probably like late late twenties. It might have been even the early thirties at this point, it was

probably early thirty. I mean, you're grinding a way for a decade at this Like I gave it everything I had and then and then from that point then I started realizing, Okay, there's got to be a different way to do this. And this is where I think it makes sense sort of how I ended up here, because then I started realizing, you know, none of these guys

are getting on the Tonight Show anymore. You're like, when you know, when Leno took over the Tonight Show, there's no stories of Leno putting the comment next to him and the guy getting the show. Maybe that's a fault of Leno. Maybe it's just the way the business was changing, the way the economics of people getting less sitcoms because they were more reality shows. I mean, whatever it is.

But I started thinking, this doesn't make sense. You've got guys in comedy clubs all trying to perfect this five minute set so that they can get on a show that doesn't put them on, so that they can get a sitcom that doesn't even exist anymore, you know. And from that, I was like, there's gotta be another way to do this. And also the way I had always

done stand up. People used to say to me, like, do you have a tight five, And be like, I don't have a type five, but I have a freaking great half hour, a messy half hour that will be like nothing you've ever seen before. And and I never had any stage fright er. I can get up in front of thousand people and just whatever popped into my head, I could just kind of figure out something. It's just the way I've always done it, and everyone, you know,

everyone does it different. There's a do you re see the Uh the Seinfeldt documentary comedian and he put it out out there when he UH finished the sitcom there's a great moment with him and Gary Shandling and they're drive into a gig and Jerry's got his notepad and it's like, you know, like Hitler would have been proud of the decision, you know, and Gary and Jerry turns to Gary and he's like, what do you have it?

Gary pulls out like this crumbled piece of paper and pockets like I think I was gonna do this, you know, And like so I was much more that version of it. And it just depends what you like and what your creative process and all that. But then it was at the beginnings of when my Space was starting, and I heard this word podcast and a few other things, and then I just started just being a little more active

in that world. I thought, if I could just get a couple of followers in this world now Twitter starting, if I could get a couple of people to start following me. Well, you go to a comedy club, it's like, no matter how funny you are, they're gonna go, ah, you know that guy who went on fifth out of the eight, you know, you had brown hair. He was kind of funny, but they're not gonna remember your You could could you could do a carl and Masque perfect Yeah,

and they just won't remember you are. It's just how it is. So I started thinking, you know, if I could start getting some followers on some of these things, and then people then then tweet out a little silly thing here and there that actually starts having more worth than than doing the clubs every night. So I started

moving in that direction. Eventually I started doing a podcast, um, and then some of those things started leading ultimately to what got me t l A, which was doing a show with the Young Turks, which now really feels like a whole lifetime ago, and that's only six and a half years ago. So as part of that process, you start, let's go back up personally. So, uh, you're gay. I

don't think that's a massive secret. When did you by far the most bored, But when did you like sort of come out for lack of better term, asister during college? Was before college? Like, um, well, it's funny, you know, I'm you know, I'm writing my book, right, it's not that personal in my book, but I am actually relating. One of the things that I'm really trying to do is relate being in the closet about sexuality related to a political classic that I think so many people are

in right now. Sure a huge amount of your listeners are in that where they're going. I have a couple of thoughts that are outside of wolkedom, and you're calling me, I don't saint Donald Trump is hitler, And it's like you maybe you think that, but you're like, I'm do not say that at work because you think about that, Think think how what that does to the average person

when you can't say something that you think right. So that's what I'm really trying to do with a good portion of the book is is relate these two things.

Because you're a gay comedian, and most people when they hear gay comedian, they think like, oh, that guy's got to be like the locust person on the planet, right, And you're probably surrounded by But I bet when you saw even from the comedy sphere is a lot of those comedians also have thoughts that are similar to yours, but they might not be comfortable saying right with that

entertainment universe. Well, it's funny because when you asked me about my comedy life, like to me, the gay part doesn't even come up because A because I never addressed it, I was still, I was closet and mess, I was struggling. My own is that I truly feel like I feel more comfortable here talking to you like this than if I was doing like a gay podcast that right, I would personally much rather talk about sports and politics or video games or whatever. Then I don't care about the

Housewives of bel Air or those things. That a great show, by the way, it's close to that name. But my wife is a huge fan of all the housewife so I see them all well. When I had that's Andy Cohen's universe, right, And a lot of people be like, oh, Andy Cohen is a gay comedian. Oh he's incredibly woke or whatever the personality might be. But it's actually I mean, and the reason why I bring it up is because I just find it fascinating because it cuts across so

many different arenas. Right. Oh yeah, and like, so were you conscious? You said you're a polyci major, So I didn't even you didn't even answer, like, so did when did you officially? Yeah? Well, so first off, she was quickly on Andy Cohen, um, so I had him on my show. So my podcast was doing pretty well, and then it got picked up by Sirius XM. Yeah, and we were doing it was sort of well, it was on the out que channel, the gay channel. You know,

gay people should have a separate yeah, right, separate. We should have a separate channel, you know. And I always wanted to be on the political channels, but they put us there. But I had Andy Cohen on a couple of times, and I've never cared about any of that BRABO. Yeah, but the one thing that I did like about him, even though I don't care about any of the stuff that he's doing, when I've interviewed him, I think twice, both times in person, and I thought, this guy, he

really cares about what he's doing. I don't care about it, but I don't have to. He has to do. He really does. And I thought, all right, I can accept he does a great job that show. But he is also is great on stern Um. But it is interesting how, you know, like the Ellen degenerous is of the world sort of you almost think if you're a gay comedian that everybody thinks in that same way. Right. Yeah, Well,

there's there's a couple of pieces of that. So, first off, Um, especially at the time and even now when gay people are on television, you're either like this a sexual neuter nothing so like Anderson Cooper. Yes, you know what I mean, you have no idea really what he thinks about anything. He would never you know, on New Year's he's allowed to have a drink and then he has a for a split second, right right, right right. But there's just like this, he's the voice of God and in like

his sexuality has almost no impact at all. And now I look, I'm not saying you're he's the newscaster, so I'm not saying his sexuality should. But there's a certain thing that he sort of is, is this very a sexual neither here nor there anything um, And that's sort of what they like. So you can either be an over the top gay. So so in comedy especially, it was like you could be Mario Cantone and singing show

tunes and this, and there's many versions of that. You could be Paul in sort of a for our time. You could be this over the top gay thing. Otherwise there was no space. So I remember when I when I came out professionally, and the only reason I did was because I couldn't live with myself. And I mean I just genuinely. It's not that I was doing a lot of jokes about dating chicks or anything, but sometimes I did, and I started just hating myself. You know.

I was also also in a good, normal relationship, and so my life track, which had always been behind my career track, well, then, as I told you, the career thing started to stall because the clubs were closing, and then my life was getting good. And when my life started getting better than my career, I had no idea how to function because it had always been the other way,

with my career instead of my life. So um, but when I came out, I remember going to the mainstream clubs and then it was like Reubens gay, and it was very clear they had no use for me because whatever it was that I whatever it is that I am this version of gay, which, by the way, there are many people like me out there. Um, they like their you know, beer, beer, Homer Simpson says, Marge, I like my beer called to my homosexuals, flaming and like

that's kind of what they want. They want this minstrel show, not a real human to talk about those things. Um, And so that really tripped up my career as well. But then I was able to take that mess turn it into this podcast, which got me on the gay channel on Serious x M. I begged and begged the executives put me on any of the political channels. I don't care. Put me on the left channel, put me on the right channel, so this is the nonpartist channel,

put me on there. Anything. But they were basically like, you're gay, get do your gay thing over there. And uh So the reason and the reason I ended that show actually series wanted us to stay the re and I ended it was because I used to get more fan mail from people saying, I love your show. I've never heard anything like this before. You're my kind of gay, you know, blah blah blah. But they would say, I can't share your show because I'm I'm closeted, and I

started looking this is how messed up. This is the people that I'm I'm nothing special, I'm just someone doing what I what I'm doing. But the people that I'm helping most actually are harming me in a certain way because they won't share my stuff. And I really but but that's also related to the political Yeah, I got it, I'll show it to you. I gotta to our peep box. A fan sent me this awesome Simpsons poster. He does

original Simpson's artwork. It's the coolest. It's a map of Springfield, but done by like the way you'd see like an old school um real estate map, just like blocks of property and where everything. It's so cool, it's original. Blabbla. He writes me this beautiful note. He's a huge fan. I've helped him wake up politically all that stuff. And he says, my only word, West is that you don't tag me on Twitter and put a picture of this because I don't want the mob to come after me.

And so I sent him a personal email. But like, think, how so that's why this this chapter that I'm working on right now. Between the closet related you can be in the closet related to anything. You could be in the closet related to sexuality. You can be in the closet related to political positions. You can be in the closet related to a medical condition that you have, or or just anything that you are hiding from yourself, which

becomes just sort of an insidious, destructive force. Uh. And I can tell you this that the the pain of those things or the residual effect of those things. They don't you know, they don't just disappear the second you kind of start getting better. They stay with you for

your whole life in many ways, I think. So the reason I want to bring that up is you are considered all right, right, we haven't even mentioned so far right like, but and I am by some people as well, and I think a lot of people listening to us right now we'll find that a little bit ludicrous. But I wanted to bring it up because you are gay, you are married, right, you are pro choice. I believe

I'm strugg I'm really struggling with that one. Um. But the more the Democrats go crazy with the late term stuff, it's becoming I'm starting to see an ethical dilemma that I didn't fully see before. I'm also writing about it. And once you start, as you know, you started sporing, now you start really going, well, what do I really think about these things? But but yes, I do consider myself a pro choice up into up into a point. Yeah, and look, I'm so you were very similar in that

rights right, So I'm pro pro gay marriage. I am uh, you know, pro choice. Although I do think it's interesting the way it's getting, you know, even more policy I than it already was. It feels like I don't know where you are on the death penalty. But I mean, so these are all things that traditionally would be like right, and yet I think both of us have had this sort of you know, it's colloquially, I guess the red pill moment right from the reference to to the matrix

back in the day. When did you start to have sort of your red pill moment? Was it gradual? You know, you're in the comedy scene, you are in the entertainment universe, you moved to Hollywood. Uh, you know you talk about there's a lot of people I think in the entertainment industry who are in the closet not about their sexuality but about their politics. Um so when did this start to happen for you? Well? I always describe it as

if you were looking at my baseball card. You'd have my picture on the front, and then you look at the back, and the back you'd see the stats and you'd go, wait a minute, game married, pro choice against the death penalty, pro legalizing leading for performing, the prison system, of all those things, and all those things we agree with, right, although those things, so you go, this makes no sense. But because I would say under my neigme would say, Dave Rubin, all right on the front and the stats,

and you go, wait, this makes no sense. And that's what I have always said about the people who attack me to that that it's just ludicrous. But but that's why. But that's why I think, like when I found someone like you, where I found someone like Handi's Owens or a couple of other people that I really identify with, regardless of whether we agree on everything or not, I'm like, there's something beautifu full happening here, and we have to

figure out how to nurture it. Because we come from you know what I mean, on my lifelong New York or you're from Nashville, you're one of the sports world, blah blah blah, straight gay, all those nonsensical markers. But it's like, intellectually, we can't and and and that thing there's it's not a coincidence that we're both thriving right now in crazy times. That's not a coincidence. It's actually

evidence that we're doing something right. But but to answer your questions, there were a couple of moments that really broke me out of And now I come from a family of New York liberals, but but not woke liberals. They were liberals in the best sense of it. They were liberals. My parents now are liberals in the JFK sense of liberalism. That's not what your country can do for you, as where you can do for your country. They loved Mayor Ed Cootch, who was a good old

fashioned liberal. They loved Daniel Patrick moynihan, m real liberals that liberals meaning live and let live, but the government has some use utility to do certain things. Right. Um. I think what happened to me was when I moved out here and I was still was a liberal and

the lefty and the whole thing. It was when gay marriage was really hot, so before it got past and I started working at the Young Turks and they were pretty far left progressive network, but they were so slamming their fists down about gay marriage in such a passionate way. That was for something that was so personal to me that I thought, these these are liberals on steroids and

it was good. It struck me as good. It's like maybe maybe liberals just needed balls, and that's what these people had and all that it crumbled very quickly, because there there's a couple of moments that it really crumbled. So um, I'll just blow past two, and then i'll give you the third one because I've told these stories many times. But the first one was when I'm sure you've seen this probably was when Sam Harris was on Real Time with Bill Maher and he got into that

fight with Ben Affleck. They were talking about radical Islam,

and Affleck turns to Bill Maher and Sam Harris. I didn't know who Sam Harris was at the time, had no idea, but I see this mild mannered neuroscience discussing atheism and Bill Maher, who had been one of my comic heroes and and the standard bearer of the left ever, and they talk about radical Islam, making a point don't be bigoted towards people Muslims, but you can talk about a set of bad ideas the way you criticize Christianity or Judaism, or or the Republican platform or anyway else.

An athlete turned to them and said, you know, you're gross and racist, and then and then it was it just sort of derailed from there, and what I saw happen after that was that the next couple of weeks, the entire lefty media, HuffPo, media, buzz Feed, everybody was saying Bill Maher is racist. Sam Harris is racist. And I watch it live. I mean, I've always loved that show.

I watch it live and I thought, I don't know who the hell this guy is, but he's not racist, right, And I certainly know that Bill mar is not racist. And but watching that feeding frenzy and then even my guys on my network started doing it too, and that so then it really woke up because I was just like, this makes no sense. We have to be able to

criticize ideas without being bigoted towards people. But even more it was that once someone says the racist thing, everyone else on the left basically uses it and it excuse to do scorched earth everything. So there was there was that moment. Then there was I'm actually not totally sure of the order of these two because they were pretty close. Charlie Hebdo was a few months after that, and I was on air at The Young Turks and one of the hosts was screaming about how you can't make cartoons.

You're inciting people, and that the people who don't remember that that was like, there's a cartoon making fun of the prophet Mohammed and uh and in France and in France, yes, And they stormed the house and tried to execute everybody. They murdered several cartoonists, they slaughtered some other people. Um and this idea though that if you if you do something that a certain set of people don't want you to do or that are against their religious pieces, that

you're the bad guy. And there seemed to be more sympathy towards them than there were the dead bodies. And if you remember during Charlie, there were a couple of days where they hadn't found them, and for those couple of days, it was like those bodies were still were still warm and were and these guys could. They ended up killing more people, went to a Kasher supermarket and killed some people there, and it's like the sympathy seemed to be with them, or or at least with people

that might be thought of as something like them. And I thought this is completely out of whack. One of the one of the co hosts on the show started screaming something about how the Charlie had there the issues were against Islam, and I said to him, I was like, I don't know what the percentages, but I guarantee you it is not. And it's something like this, I'm gonna

slightly butcher the numbers. It's something like out of four hundred plus covers, it was three about there were far more about the pope, far more about orthodox choose and by the way they ridiculed everything that was like, that's the entire purposes, like there's no sacred cow, so to speak, like everything is a target. That was the point that in the best sense of what The Simpsons did in its heyday, where you could literally make fun of everybody, the best sense of what Don Rickles would do in

a comedy club. Oh there's an Irish guy there, there's a black guy there, there's a South Park still south Park basically still does. Yeah. So then there was that one and the one that really sort of was the final culmination of everything. Do you know a guy by the name of David Webb who's serious x M guy. He's a he's a conservative, he's on the right leaning channel there And when I was a big lefty on the gay channel at sex m, but I really wanted to do politics. I met him and we disagreed on

basically everything. But he was like, come on, Edi well and and I used to go on his radio show all the time. He's a black conservative, super nice guy. Used to get drunk after and and have whiskey and have a good time. And we disagreed on everything. It was fine. Well, one day I was on the on Turks and they were playing a clip and he I think Webb was guest hosting for Sean Hannity that way, and they're playing the clip of Webb and I don't

even remember what he was saying. But then suddenly all my co hosts were saying, what an uncle Tom, that guy is, what a sellout? What you know that personally? All of the awful things you could say right about a concern about a black conservative. And and then that was the moment that it fully crystallized, because I was like, these people who scream about tolerance all day long, now see a black man who does not think the way they believe a black man should think, which is prejudice

because prejudge the fact that he is black. They believe that that means he should prescribe to a certain set of beliefs and they're doing it in the name of tolerance. And I thought, I know, David, I know this guy. I've debated all of these issues with him, and I should have said it on air. I didn't. I was I was actually so dumb struck that it was happening in real time that it like couldn't calibrate properly in

my brain. But that was it. I was like, Holy cow, these people, these are these are the new racist And I really believe that now. And I hate to It's like I don't want to become the thing that we're always railing and this um, but I think it's important to identify that, as you just said to me on my show, does the KK exists, there's some racists, there's some homo folks, all those things. Yes, they have no institutional power, they're routinely mocked by everybody. They're not on television,

they don't have political power. They should be marginalized or ignore. I would basically say ignore them. But but when they show up to do something evil or or whatever, you you can counter protests and the rest of it. Um, But racists exist. It just is. But The new racism is what's coming out of the left these days. The new racism is that we are going to judge you by these things. You may have seen this story in

the last couple of days. There was this Detroit rap festival and they were going to charge people more than black people. And one of the black young woman rappers, young female rappers, she was like, I'm not gonna do this. My one of my grandmother's is white. And it's like, well, you said this a couple of times in our hour. This idea that this thing will it has to just crush itself because it's so antithetical to logic that there's so many competing things happening that it will eat itself.

And it's just like what the question really is, what will it take down in the process of in this disruptive and in sports is an interesting microcosm of this because we've talked about it like if you have someone and Caitlyn Jenner now is a good example because I wrote about this in the book Bruce Jenner in the nineties seventies, if he had decided to become Caitlyn Jenner and tried to Pete in the Olympics, he was the best male athlete in the world, and what he does

did he would be like I mean it, not even any in the same stratosphere for the women if he had decided to flip and you avoid asking those questions, right like his sports as an ultimate meritocracy, but the meritocracy is divided as men or women right now. If you want to say, okay, we won't have a line between men's and women's sports, then women won't play sports.

But they won't make any of the high school teams most of the time in soccer or basketball, certainly not in football, volleyball, whatever you want to play, because men are bigger, stronger, and faster than women. And that's not If you want to argue biology as sexist, you can have with it. But like that is that, That's the universe that we live in, and I wonder when it's going to blow up on itself because the logic falls

apart as you follow it down its course. And that is what I started to see happening in the world of sports. And I say, my, you know, sort of red pill moment was the University of Missouri protests, which were based in totally lies, and everybody he covered them, and the football team doesn't play and everything else, and when you actually examine all the factual underpinnings, it's a

house of cards. There's nothing there. Well, that's the thing, And that's why the red pill analogy really works, because Morpheus is giving Neo the choice, do you want to go back and sleep and have some level of comfort in the world and in your existence, or do you want to see the world as it is, not as you want it to be, but as it is, and then figure out how to function in that world. And obviously we know what Neo does. He takes the red pill. And I think for most of the people that probably

like what we do. I think what we're doing at the moment is this is another thing I'm writing about, is we're giving There's there's a major bravery deficit in the world right now. I don't know exactly why it is.

It has something to do with an amorphous mob that will come and destroy People are terrified of losing their jobs over a Facebook post, Twitter post, and then it's like, so guys like us come around and I don't know what it is, Like maybe we could do we could get a whole crew of like twenty of us and do like a mass therapy session. We'll find out that. You know, when we were all seven years old, the bully came around and you guys didn't let him bully

like like some something who writes what it is. But I think that that people are sort of outsourcing their bravery these days, which which is a weird thing. Again, I don't think, um anyone special other than I'm just doing what I think I should do. So I think all of these things lead to a weird place where people from the sports world and the political world, and now I see it. I have a friend I lived upstairs from me in New York City. His whole life lefty, lefty, lefty, crazy,

progressively his whole life. He's get this, You'll love this. He's about fifty two years old. He is a straight male choreographer on Broadway. UM, I probably even shouldn't have said that because there's so few. I'm probably not, but he was, and he's done major stuff and major stuff on TV, and he was in effect told in the last year or so start looking for a new line of work, because why would anyone ever hire a straight

male choreograph, straight white male choreographer. Now, ironically, if you care about diversity, that's the first because they're all gay. They're all gay, and most of them are not white anymore, and all that nobody cares. Nobody cares about you you care. I mean, that's the thing. They've tricked everyone into thinking

that we all care about these things. And you know, it's like I just traveled the world for a year with Jordan Peterson and I'm supposed supposedly he's all right, and we're you know, speaking of angry racist and it's like all it was a LoveFest, like you could not believe. Every single night, every single night, Fox Sports Radio has the best sports talk lineup in the nation. Catch all of our shows at Fox Sports Radio dot com and within the I Heart Radio app search f s R

to listen live. You talked about the way that the Bill Mars story was covered by like the Huffington Post and all these different places. You regularly get attacked in the media. I regularly get attacked in the media. Why do you think that happens? Well, I think that that because we just went through and said, like all of the things, like if you put our political beliefs on

a baseball card on the back. You would be like, I'm curious why that is, because I think both of us are very middle of the road, right, but in a weird way, we're the biggest threat to them. And that's an interesting point, right, So if you're middle of the road now, and especially so, the one, the one identity politics thing that I have over you is the

is the gay thing, right, so they have none. By the way, was a straight white guy, I'm like that on the victim victimization pyramid, I'm nowhere near the tip, so they can pin you a little bit more easily than you know what I mean, like that, that's a

little bit more easy. The reason that that I get as much hate as I do, and I'm even seeing it from some of the good liberals now where they're turning on me a little bit, because it's something that you referenced earlier on my show is they will always try to throw something else under the bus to extend their life, their shelf life basically, and that's what they're always doing. Now what they I don't know if they know it or not, but ultimately you're just pulling the

pins out from underneath your own your own foundation. Let's say, um, I think basically what's happening here is that for me, it's like they look at the baseball car, gay guy, blah blah blah, all these liberal beliefs. But I survived. I talk about their nonsense, and I survived, and not only the survive, I thrived. So they really have to extract the high cost on me. So when when they're throwing down hate on me, it's not really that they're

trying to destroy me anymore. I do think in some ways, I've I want to knock on wood when I say this, but I sort of feel like I've I've crossed the threshold. You survive, I'll where I'll be okay, right, and I know how to deal with it. What they're really trying to do is signal to everybody else you see what we're gonna do to you if you try. And that's why they hate on Candice is so out of control. All Candice is doing. Look, I don't agree with everything

she said. She sent out a tweet about, um, if you burn the flag, you know you've got like a year to like give up your citizen over the top and nuts and by the way, I'm having dinner there in a couple of weeks and I'll bring it up. You know. It's like people were like, you better condemn her, publicly condemn her. I don't want better publicly condemned my friends. You know. It's like I can defer everything that they disagree with. It's like it's so stupid, but but like

we disagreed when we went out to dinner. I don't think she like they had the Guardians of the Galaxy guy had lost his remember that Disney Yeah, and I was like, I think they gave it back to him. And my thing is like, I don't want to set the precedent of going through every single word that everybody's ever said. The guy's a good director, right, I loved Guardians of the Galaxy one and Guardians of the Galaxy to same thing. Kevin Hard I think is a pretty

good comedian. I think he should have been able to host the Oscar. Of course he was standing what he said ten years ago on Twitter, right, So he makes some gay jokes ten years ago on Twitter, and then I mean, this is this is how perverse and twisted this thing is. He then goes on Ellen de Generous, America's favorite lesbian, goes on her show, she says, you're good, I understand, and then what do they do? They try to destroy her for accepting his apology, and it's like,

what what do you people want? You people mock religious people all the time, and yet religious people have a redemption narrative, you have some forgiveness matters all of these things. You guys have become far worse than those things. But the hell was the question there? Uh? I was? We were tying in, like talking about the the why the targets. Oh so, so I think partly it's that so I've escaped Candice's messages. Black people don't have to be democrats.

Any sane person would think that's a totally reasonable message. But but they have to extract a high cost on her. You can't just be a black girl saying what you think and just walk out there and right. So they so they say that modern liberalism has actually caused more problems, you know, I mean, like, yeah, trust me. And it's not fun for me to say that, you know, And I I say this all the time. I would love

to be proven wrong here. If the ending of my story and my success is that the left somehow reconstitutes itself brings brings the roots of liberalism back, and I my choice was, which is what I say all the time. Now, I see so much more opportunity on the right to talk to the never trumpers as well as the MAGA people, as well as the conservatives and the libertarians and the and caps. There's such an interesting fight of ideas happening there.

And I get invited to all of these things. I get standing ovations despite telling them five policies that I disagree with them on. I can't get one invite the other one. Oh, it's fascinating. But if I if I get proven wrong at the end of this, if liberalism returns and I'm wrong because it is returned being reconstituted from the left, I will have a mea culpa. I will retire and disappear. You'll never hear from me again. And I promise you I'd be thrilled. I'll be in

the NBA W n uh. So, how did you meet Jordan Peterson and how did that tour come about? And what was the experience like on your life? And for people out there who might not know Jordan Peterson because they're listening to us right now, who is he? And and it kind of how did how did he climb?

In relevant? So, Jordan's is a Canadian psychologist who had a clinical practice and as well as he was teaching at University of Toronto, but he had taught at Harvard before and had a great academic career for like thirty years. But a normal, brilliant guy, but a normal dude otherwise, a normal academic career, like was not somebody chasing fame

or any of those things. Then a couple of years ago, there was this bill trying to be passed in Canada, Bill C seventeen, which would have criminalized either by financial penalty or potentially even jail, if you mis gendered someone. Literally if you walked up down and you were walking down the street and you said hi, mam, and it turned out to be a guy, that would have been a crime. And all he said was, I have no

problem with trans people. I'm a clinical psychologist. I've dealt with these issues, but I do not want the government to uh to be able to impose speech, and certainly I don't want the governments be able to punish you for it. That then became an incredibly controversial thing. Everyone says he's a transphobe, he's a homophobe, blah blah blah.

And then what happened was, I'm sure it's the way it is for for you to when you start finding out about people, you start seeing something bubbling up on Twitter, and people kept saying, Ruby, you gotta talk to this Peterson guy. This was in um November of sixteen, so like days before the wasted Yeah, and we had just moved into this house on November one, so my studio was being built and I didn't have a studio yet, so I did a Google hang out with him. I

had never met him in person. First time we ever said hello. We had a crappy internet connection here. It's popping in and out the whole time. It's it's pixelated our audios. Off, I do an hour talk with this guy, talking about psychology and gender projects and all these things. He tells a story about which he tells off and now this story about the story of Pinocchio and that you have to wish upon a star and what lying can do all these things, and he's crying. He's literally

crying as he's doing it. And we finished the interview and I turned to David, who was my husband and producer, and I said that guy is either an absolute genius or completely insane. There's no middle ground perfect I don't know which it is. Subsequently, over the last couple of years, I've I've interviewed him many times, we did a couple of public speaking things together, and then he wrote this book.

It's right there. It's called Clover Rules for Life, which is basically it's it's the under title or the secondary title is an antidote to chaos, And basically he's trying to tell people just get you know, everyone wants to fix the world first. Everyone wants to just I can fix everything. I know all the policies that can fix everything. How do you fix yourself first? How don't you make sure you wearing a shirt that fits? How about you have a haircut that that is right? You know what

I mean? How about you brush your teeth like some some seriously basic thing, but that somehow, especially for young men. But it's not just young man. I mean the media tries to portray it that he's just talking to angry young men, and because it's just not true. But he has given something to people that I've now seen all

over the world. I've seen we've performing in front of hundreds of thousands of people who desperately needed this message of personal responsibility and taking pride in yourself and and that the individual is the the essence of Western society and all of those things. The way we ended up on tour together was I had him in here one day with Ben Shapiro, is the three of us talking. This is uh last January, so about a year and a half ago, and he was doing his first test

show at the Orpheum downtown. It's a great theater down about three thousand seats. He was doing it that night, and as he was walking out the door and we really just knew each other a little bit. At that point, I said, Hey, you know, if you want me to come down tonight, I'll warm up the crowd. I'll make some lobster jokes. Because he doesn't lobster and now this or some metaphors, I said, I'll make you. I'll make some jokes and then I'll get out of your way.

And he was, without even hesitating, he was like, absolutely, calm on down. I went down there. I just crushed it. I knew all the right references to make with his crowd and the whole thing, and all his agents from CIA were there and they came up to me after and they were like, you know who you with? What do you do when I was with W M. E. But I was like, all right, let's move and I went with them. And then the tour started and as I said, a hundred some odd stops and sold out

all over the Old Country. And he went over to England. Like we went to England, We went to Denmark, we went to Ireland. We went to Sweden, Copenhagen, Helsinki, um, we went to Australia. I couldn't go to New Zealand cause I had some other commitments. I mean, all over the world. And to see this is the cool thing.

So when when we talk about how you come from a sports perspective and say I come from a political perspective, when you see something else, when you see that some guy I was buying a cap one day, I was going a hat at H and V in Sweden. I just needed a hat that day it was windy. I was like, Harris Brandon, we're getting the at. I go into HM to buy hat. There's one guy in line and I hear him talking and he's telling the cash here, he goes, I'm buying this. He goes, this is my

first suit I've ever bought. I'm going to see Jordan Peterson tonight. And the cashier goes, I'm going to see Jordan Peterson tonight. And then I just walked up behind them. The cash here is looking at me because I'm standing by the other guy, Dave Reuben, and I was like, I'm going to see exactly what I said, and I'm going to see Jordan peters in tonight too. And that's when I started realizing, because this this thing kept happening

all over the place. Where there was the time we boarded a plane and we're sitting in the front row and uh, this young black guy, probably like years old, who was working at the airline you had one of the you know, like white vests on. He was working on the bridge or whatever. They were trying to close the door, and he ran up to Jordan said, he said, they could fire me for this, but I've got to tell you you changed my life. I got this job

because you you saved my life. I started caring about myself and all these things, and I saw that relentlessly happened forever and Uh, it was. It was incredibly changed my life. You can't if you're around something that that, that's that good and real and honest for that long and it doesn't change your life, You've got no hope. You know, I will close out here because I know you've got a ton of stud things going on. I gotta get and do my my television show, which is

a good problem to have to write. Yeah, I say it all the time. You gotta get onto your television shows. I gotta go do my television shows. Um, you mentioned those guys, Shapiro, Peterson, yourself, myself, actually a lot of differences of opinion. Yeah, Yet you can have a sit and have a rational conversation, and I think that's what appeals to people so much. Why do you think rational conversation has suddenly become the province of what would people say,

the Republican Party? It would have been the exact opposite twenty years ago. So these things have been flow, which is why I would tell people not to become too attached to a party. Rights a party. If you're attached to a party, you're just attached to a platform, which is really just attached to a person. Yes, and so you shouldn't be attached to that way you should be attached to would be a Bay six set of ideals.

So in my case, I believe that the ideas that I talked about about classical liberalism, I believe are the right set of ideals. Um, we would be a whole other show to really dive into into all that stuff. But Shapiro, for example, so Shapiro is Orthodox jew He is a religious belief that is against gay marriage. Now there are Christian Conservatives that have that belief, in eventel and you're not offended by that opinion, right like you can have that is the very opinion that society for

thousands of years held. Now I could run around and think that everyone that existed before me was an evil bigoted, homophobia and a big racist, that all these things or and and this is really what I believe. So one of the nights um that Jordan and I were doing a different show in l A, I said to Ben,

I said, why don't you come on stage tonight? And we've had this running thing where Ben and I in this very studio which is in my home where I look with my husband, where I know Ben disagrees with me from his own personal religious perspective, but by the way, he takes the libertarian approach when it comes to policy, so he's he wants religion out of it. So I'm okay with that. Right. We got through under twenty million people in this country. They're allowed to believe, but they

want they can't legislate my life. But we've had this running joke about that Ben won't bake me a gay wedding cake. So I said, Ben, why don't you come on stage tonight. You'll do your I'll bring you on, you'll do your thing. And I said, why don't you bring me a cake on stage? So I go up there, do my thing for ten minutes, crowds going nuts um, and then I said, we got a surprise guest bench where he walks out with the cupcake. People are going bananas, I mean bananas. He then he says a couple of

things about giving me this cake. Then he does a Jordan Peterson impression. He walks off, crowd goes nuts, and I'm in a room now three thousand people celebrating the fact that these two people have have a different view online but can break bread or cupcakes with each other. I then look on too. You know, we tweet the video out and a couple of pictures of it, and

you know it good. But because I get so many tweets, there's hundreds of tweets from tolerant progressive saying there's the self hating gay in the home of Phobe and who is more pathetic or some version of or just you know, all the other words that they can say about us. And this is the flip that I think most people have to understand about tolerance. So why has it become so rare? It's because the this woke thing has become a secular religion. As my friend Peter Bogosian calls it.

There is no redemption narrative, and none of those things exists. They want there's a reason they want to destroy history. There's a reason they want to redefine words like owner when it comes to NBA owners. There's a reason that they want to take down monuments. There's a reason that they want to I mean, isis what does isis do it goes into Syria and it blows apart things that

have existed for thousands of years. Wait until they come for Mount Rushmore, because they will the Obama Library, which is being built now when the radical woke radicals, if if they win, they will take that now because he

was against gay marriage. You mentioned the one which I think is the one for the next generation when they find out that we ate meat, we used to kill cattle who are putting methane out into the CEO two and they will look at us the way you might look at your grandparents and think, oh, they didn't know asbestos was was killing them, or like some version of all of those things. So that's what we have to fight. And and and by the way, I do think that

most people are pretty freaking decent. I think that most people want to live in a society with other people. I would much rather talk to people I disagree with um. As a rule, when I go to colleges, I do a talk for like an hour, and I always, every single time, without exception, I say, if you disagree with me, you come up first to ask a question. And it's like I keep getting invited by conservatives, but I can't get any of these tolerant lefties or liberals to invite me.

Maybe maybe they will one day. The last question for you. We're in l A. We had a couple of earthquakes. Uh were in your studio and looks so like so far that they are. But what do you think you said you were a big NBA fan or grew up a big basketball fan. What do you think about Kauai and Paul George to the Flippers and now Lebron and Anthony Davis the Lakers? Will you go to games this year? So I'll give you one just quick NBA thing. I

think I told her the last time. So my my hero in life it was Clyde Drexler, who was on the Blazers for years and lost in the finals a couple of times, then lost in the Western Conference finals, and when he was thought of as much older, he was traded to the Rockets and won the championship that year. And that, um, that story always stuck with me, that this guy who I loved, who was who was amazing, but but because he was in Portland, was sort of

ignored by the media and he wasn't Jordan's. He just wasn't Jordan's. So he played the same position it wasn't Jordan's, but and he kept getting close, kept getting closed, but then finally got there. It became ingrained in me that if I kept doing something, I would get there. And this is in contrast to They're one of my best friends who was a comic by the name of Mike Singer. And you've never heard of Mike Singer, not because he wasn't a great comic, but he was from Chicago and

his whole life he was a huge Cubs fan. And this is before they won the chance, you know, the World Series. In the last couple of years. Mike's story, the story he had been telling himself his whole life, was based around the Cubs. You're you're never gonna win. You're never gonna win, and he eventually gave up. And I think there's a connection there my story that I told myself. Stories have value, and the athlete who I

loved the most. It took him a long as time, and people said he was washed up at that point and he had you know, blah blah blah, but he got there and that really got ingrained in me. Um So. As for the As for the Lakers, now, I mean Kauai, the fact that he's you know, bounced around from the Spurs and then just did this with Toronto. You know, can the Clippers ever really be good? Can the Clippers actually make a Western Conference finals, and I would love

to go to some games this year. I just haven't had freaking time, you know. I also, you know I'm doing all right on YouTube, but that kind of money, you know, I'm not like that. Clay Travis cl Over, Hey, look, I could disappear in a heartbeat, and I think you will be when the new book comes out. But we need to talk again. We need to go to movie, go to an NBA game, and also when you're in Nashville, we need to hang out. I'm gonna do some stand up there with all those nice people, and I'll bring

you on stage and that'll be awesome. You can follow him if you're not familiar with him. Dave Reuben at Reuben Report. The new book will be out in May. It's coming out in May, and it'll be up on Amazon and everywhere else soon. You'll share the links. I can tell you the name. We're like two weeks off. I can't wait to check it out. Seriously, appreciate the time. I hope people enjoyed our version with you as well. But this is awesome. It's been great to get to

know you. It's nice to do something else in my studio. Yeah, yeah, you've been sitting there. I know you can hill. You don't have to worry. I'll being on camera. H this has been wins and losses. I'm Clay Travis, He's Dave Reuben. Thanks for listening. I hope you enjoy it. Let me know what you think. As always, we'll be back next week. Thanks for listening. Be sure to catch live editions about kick the Coverage with Clay Travis week days at six am Eastern three am Pacific