Topic
36 facts from 4 episodes, in date order. These are what speakers said on the shows, each linked to the moment it was said. They aren't independently verified.
1550-1980
Jordan Peterson argues that a countervailing commitment to truth made science work from roughly 1550 to 1980, and that this has happened only once.
“that force was powerful enough, let's say, from 1550 to 1980, so that science worked. But that's a short period of time, and it's only happened once”
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Jordan Peterson says the correlation between male sexual opportunity and relative masculine status is about 0.6, higher than that between intelligence and academic achievement.
“The correlation between male sexual opportunity and relative masculine status is about point six. That's higher than the correlation between intelligence and academic achievement.”
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Jordan Peterson says about 1 percent of criminals commit about 65 percent of crimes, and many persistent offenders stop in their late twenties.
“So imagine that so 1% of the criminals commit 65% of the crimes.”
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Jordan Peterson says he was seriously ill for about three years and experienced severe pain during that period.
“Well, as I said, I was very ill for about three years, and it was seriously brutal.”
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Jordan Peterson says his wife Tammy was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer that, as far as they know, had killed every other person who had it.
“She she was diagnosed with a form of cancer that, as far as we know, killed every single person who ever had it except her.”
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Jordan Peterson says Vikings used the Amanita muscaria mushroom and imitated predators to enter a rage state before battle.
“They would use Amanita Muscaria, and they imitated predators, right?”
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Jordan Peterson says a cat with nearly all of its brain removed except the hypothalamus can appear indistinguishable from a normal cat in a controlled environment.
“You can take a female cat and take out its whole brain except for the hypothalamus, so it's like 95% of its brain is gone, and in a relatively controlled environment, it's indistinguishable from a normal cat.”
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Jordan Peterson says he worked in Montreal with researcher Richard Tremblay, whose lab used about one third of Quebec's social science funding at one time.
“I worked with a man named Richard Trombley there, and Richard, I think Richard's lab used up one third of all social science funding for Quebec at one time.”
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Jordan Peterson says that in his Montreal lab's research about 5% of two-year-old boys kicked, stole, hit and bit, which they defined as early-onset antisocial behavior.
“So if you group two year olds together, 5% of the boys will kick, steal, hit, and bite, which was our definition of early onset antisocial behavior.”
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Jordan Peterson calls Mircea Eliade the greatest historian of religions and says he documented how polytheistic belief systems turned into monotheistic ones.
“greatest historian of religions who ever lived was Mircea Eliade, and he wrote a sequence of brilliant books.”
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Jordan Peterson describes male stickleback fish reacting aggressively to rivals' red belly dots, and even more strongly to an exaggerated red dot, an example of a super stimulus.
“And if you use a red dot that's a little bigger and a little brighter than the typical red dot, you get a super stimulus.”
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Jordan Peterson says neuroscientist Karl Friston told him that a dopamine kick comes from reducing entropy (uncertainty) in relation to a goal.
“He said that you get a dopamine kick when you reduce the entropy in relationship to a goal.”
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Jordan Peterson cites Unit 731, the Japanese military research unit active during the invasion of China, as an example of science without a protective value structure.
“So there were scientists in Unit 731 when the Japanese invaded China, and you cannot read about what they did without without traumatizing yourself permanently for the rest of your life, right?”
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Jordan Peterson says Elon Musk resolved a teenage existential crisis by concluding that the quest is the source of meaning.
“and he resolved that by recognizing that the quest is the source of meaning.”
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Jordan Peterson says the biblical prophet Elijah was the first to identify the divine with conscience through the phrase "the still small voice."
“Elijah is the first person in human history who identifies the divine with conscience. That's his contribution.”
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Jordan Peterson says ancient Egyptians had Seth as a god of the degenerate state, with Horus's open eye as the antidote, and that the name Seth became Satan through the Coptic Christians.
“they had a god of the pathological state, that was Seth. The god, Seth, the name Seth became Satan through the Coptic, through the Coptic Christians.”
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Jordan Peterson credits neuroscientist Jaak Panksepp with showing that rats organize their social hierarchies through play, and says Panksepp deserved a Nobel Prize.
“Rats organize their social hierarchy through play, not through force, right? That's a big discovery.”
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Jordan Peterson says Joe Rogan's interview with Donald Trump showed the power shift away from legacy media toward podcasts.
“that became stark, starkly obvious when Rogan interviewed Trump. That was the death knell of the legacy media.”
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Jordan Peterson says Peterson Academy removed three users out of about 40,000 and put one on probation.
“We threw four people off the platform out of 40,000. Well, three, cause we put one guy on probation cause he said he'd improve.”
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Jordan Peterson says his opposition to Canada's Bill C-16 under the Trudeau government led to him being accused of being a right-wing Nazi, and that his earlier YouTube lectures helped refute the accusations.
“when I opposed the Trudeau government's attempt to compel my speech in the form of Bill C sixteen, I was immediately pilloried as a, you know, right-wing Nazi”
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Jordan Peterson says his disputes with the College of Psychologists of Ontario have cost hundreds of thousands of dollars and run for about ten years.
“The battles I've had with the College of Psychologists in Ontario, those are no joke. It's very, very stressful and unconscionable, so expensive, hundreds of thousands of dollars, years, it's been ten years of legal battles.”
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Jordan Peterson says he has known his wife Tammy for 52 years and considers her his best friend.
“I really have a great relationship with my wife and like, I've known her for 52 years, it's a very long time”
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Jordan Peterson says that when controversy erupted around him he had three sources of income, which he describes as deliberate.
“Now, when things blew up around me, I had three sources of income. That wasn't accidental.”
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Jordan Peterson says that for ten years his clinical practice worked with high-achieving employees of consulting and law firms.
“I worked for ten years with a strata of the highest achieving women likely in Canada. I had, as part of my clinical practice, a offering that we made to consulting firms and law firms”
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Jordan Peterson states that in the West about half of women aged 30 and younger do not have a child.
“we know now that at the present time in the West, half of women 30 and younger don't have a child.”
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Jordan Peterson says one in three couples at age 30 have trouble conceiving, defined as a year of trying without success.
“one in three couples at 30 already have trouble conceiving. And that definition of trouble is one year of attempt with no success.”
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Jordan Peterson says personality studies describe men oriented toward short-term relationships as Machiavellian, narcissistic, psychopathic and sadistic.
“they're Machiavellian, which means they use their language to manipulate, they're narcissistic, which means they want unearned social status, they're psychopathic, which makes them predatory parasites, and they're sadistic.”
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Jordan Peterson says couples who live together before marriage are more likely to divorce.
“we know that couples who live together are more likely to get divorced rather than less.”
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Jordan Peterson says he and Tammy, who had been childhood friends, married when he was about 27 or 28.
“and we didn't get married till I think we were about 27, something like that, 28.”
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Jordan Peterson says roughly 25% of internet traffic involved pornography and that the desire to exchange it was a large part of why the internet was created.
“What? 25% of internet traffic, something like that, that desire to exchange pornography, was that what created the net? Yeah, was a huge part of it.”
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Jordan Peterson made a course on the Sermon on the Mount for Peterson Academy, which he describes as the longest record of Christ's direct utterances.
“I did a course for Peterson Academy called It's on the Sermon on the Mount, and the Sermon on the Mount is the longest record we have of Christ's direct utterances”
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Jordan Peterson says Elon Musk told him he had an existential crisis around age thirteen and resolved it by pursuing truth and understanding.
“He had a terrible existential crisis when he was, like, thirteen, you know, and he reconciled that essentially with a quest.”
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Jordan Peterson says his wife's father, his father and his mother all died in the same year.
“Her father also died, so we lost her father and my father and my mother this year.”
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Jordan Peterson says that during a period of severe pain he walked about twelve miles a day for months because he could not sit.
“I was walking like twelve miles a day, cause I couldn't sit. I did that for months, winter, rain”
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Jordan Peterson says he knew his mother for sixty-two years and has no negative memory of her.
“I don't have a single negative memory of my mother. It's really quite something to know someone for sixty two years”
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Bill Thompson says he searched YouTube for chaos theory to impress his future wife, found a Jordan Peterson video instead, and then began reading Carl Jung.
“I actually saw a Jordan Peterson video, but it was not about chaos theory, it was about order”
Episodes