Fired for Honesty and Competence: One Genuine Teacher's Story | Warren Smith | EP 504

hello everybody I had the opportunity to sit down in person today with Warren Smith Warren was a teacher and he recorded himself having a discussion with the student about a rather contentious topic turned out to be JK Rowling's reactions to the propaganda Insanity that plagues our culture in 15 different ways do you still like her work despite her uh bigoted opinions so let's get specific though let's define bigoted opinions what opinions are bigoted she has had a history of being extremely transphobic I've heard hey you've heard so what can you give me an example in

2019 she said live your best life in peace and security but Force women out of their jobs for stating that sex is real so you find that bigoted what do you find about it was the video which was remarkable I would say for the good sense that Warren brought to it uh the calm demeanor the intelligent questioning of the student really the professional way that he handled the discussion which is now so rare among those who purport to be teachers that the mere fact of its professionalism was remarkable in and of itself enough so that

it went viral do you find that transf yourself uh I don't really have an opinion on it but I'm just going with what a lot of other people have said pause let's not go with what other people are saying let's try and learn how to critically think so let's analyze the Tweet ourselves so that statement do you see anything problematic was shared by Elon Musk among many other people and as you might imagine that produced an explosive effect on Warren's life so what happened yesterday I was fired from my full-time teaching position that was followed

up by a Pierce Morgan interview with I guess was the secondary explosion in the two explosions that rocked his life I am absolutely surprised by this completely I never expected this at all this came out accidentally just we have interactions like this on a daily basis this one just happened to be captured on camera which was also quite distressing as you might expect given his level of commitment to his teaching profession I have devoted four years of my life to this school and yesterday it was like being a character in a video game and just

being deleted I wanted to talk to Warren because I really liked the video that he made I I thought it was remarkable for its sanity especially given the time and I was very curious about everything that had happened to him in consequence of the viral explosion of what he had done as a teacher and so we sat down for an hour and a half to talk all that through the consequences of saying what you think when the situation is set up to reward you for maintaining your silence join us for that discussion hello Mr Smith

thank you for coming in today it's an honor thank you yeah no problem yeah I I probably came across you the way most people did and I I guess that was with the video that went viral that musk Shar eh um lots of people who are watching and listening won't know anything about you so why don't we start from the beginning what what was it that brought you to public attention and tell us the story about your teaching career well public attention it was that video that you're talking about but the beginning I mean I've

been thinking about this a lot because I've had time to reflect on it more after that video there was it was a strange experience because suddenly you have like one five minute video and suddenly you have this perceived value MH but I mean I was the exact same person as before that video now Ian it was not for me it was life-changing though something so I have people some people wanting to talk to me which was people that I have genuinely admired like I mean this is a bit kind of the Dave Rubin just just

opportunities that I never just never expected and so I've been reflecting on those conversations because I often I found myself kind of feeling like I was trying to live up to something from that video idea of what suddenly I was labeled this um kind of like this critical thinking Socratic method guy and it I wasn't intentionally doing that at all I have no background in Socratic method or critical thinking I was just doing what I thought was sensible in the moment you don't necessarily know who you are you know that's that's the thing and it's

it wasn't exactly ch that made the video go viral right you obviously touched on the nerve and in a in a manner that people admired tell the story of the video and and and talk about your work too you were working you were working as a high school teacher When You released that video tell tell people the story of the video and how it came to be and why it was recorded to begin with sure sure so I after graduate school I found myself as a public school teacher right up before covid the year leading

into covid just a teaching what I majored in and my plans are always to be a a college professor and I teach some courses but I'm not tenure track or anything and perhaps one day I but I found myself in this unlikely position and I enjoyed it teaching the same subject matter video technology what we're doing right here two high school kids high what was your now you had a MFA yes and what was the specialty video production in video production and and when did you graduate with a master's degree 19 2019 2019 and then

you were looking what kind of jobs were you looking for when you in education and you landed a job as a high school teacher High School teacher just by pure kind of just chance and I really enjoyed it co hits everything goes ape crazy school shuts down they make Cuts because of the teachers union all first year hires are gone so that kind of left a taste in my mouth about unions one of my first experiences with unions and so I started looking for another job and I found a school that's specialized in kids with

behavioral challenges and this is kind of what I was alluding to at the beginning there are things that I've not I've wanted to talk about in these kind of interviews that happen or someone wants to discuss this they want to discuss the video and I find myself you've spoken about when you feel your words making you not what you could be or weaker you can feel it I decided that I would start practicing not saying things that would make me weak and what happened was that I had to stop saying almost everything that I was

saying and that's how practiced with that have you to say that you had an impact on my life which is why this is surreal to say you had an impact on my life would be an understatement and we can get into that if like that was in graduate school okay but I I was feeling that in those conversations trying to live up to something in a way I mean trying it was you're kind of saying that what people want to hear not trying to sound intelligent but something along something like that and I never expected

to anything like this to happen but I did tell myself I if I ever by some miracle had the chance to speak to you I would allow myself permission to allow my words to have that vulnerability and to go to that place that I have not allowed myself to go to because I think there is value there but the reason I bring that because that is kind of I've never spoken about the reality of the school where I was teaching yeah okay okay well let's go down that path so these are kids with behavioral challenges

they could not other schools could not handle them so put them all together it's a last line of defense sort of so they're specialized it's funded through public school system so a student is so challenging it could be for any reason some are involved with gangs substance abuse challenges some are bullies some are the bullied for whatever reason that school can't they're just not equipped they pay I think it's $50,000 ahead something along those lines to send them to the school which which is governed by a board and an executive director and here I am

and you were hired at that school with Co going on did you have any experience at all dealing with behaviorally challenged kids no so why' they hire you I interviewed well let's I'm going to be I'm G to strive to be as honest as I can throughout this so I interviewed well yeah I think they saw potential they were I think they were looking for young teachers that could weather that kind of storm were they mostly boys in the school yes What proportion I would say 80% yeah well that's what you'd expect if you brought

behaviorally challenged kids together because they're much more they'd be much more likely to be boys how old high school age whether there are some Middle School it was interesting the way the building is divided to where a subset of Middle School specialized with one group but it because of it was divided up into pods because they were worried about cross-contamination of Co so there was 10 students approximately to one site and I was assigned to one site as the multimedia teacher teaching the same thing I've always taught and there was no crossover and then there

was three teachers assigned to one site to manage that those 10 students which ratio of teacher to student is quite High that's what that their needs necessitate how long did you teach at that school up until losing my job so four years four years okay so you stuck it out too well I I remember when the first in the first speech they give the the principal that hired me I really was I'm very fond of and the assistant principal they um are no longer there they were dismissed a year prior to me but they are

the ones that hired me so when you ask why they hire you he's the only person that could answer that I remember he I was in the interview the and this assistant principal walks in and he's like dressed there was really no dress code because he and he walks in and he's like blow my mind in 8 seconds and then I forget what I said and then he just walked out and didn't say a singular word and I left thinking I just blew that interview but I got the jump so anyways we're we're there on

the first day and he's like look guys if you're still teaching at this school in four years something's probably wrong with you or you have some sat masochistic or you just have some I think he was elud to there's some reason you have that like this is not an your typical pathway for educators he's trying to illustrate the reality that most times they get traditional Educators that realize where they are and it's too late at that point and then they just vanish and they're like I mean they last a week if that we've had teachers

come in and last a day one day and just get in their car and leave what happens to them they just they're like this is chaos this is I can't I can't survive this for a year we're walking around with walkie-talkies so that you can respond quickly we're trained in safety care so you can go Hands-On if needed I mean fights breaking out it's it's not juvie but it's one step away from juvie though you also have students that are not headed to juvie but they're the ones that get bullied or for whatever reason they

have an IEP plan that and what's that an individualized education plan yeah I have dyslexia though some students would have dyslexia to a degree where they need it was it was a special education school and it's designed with so that we can accommodate everything right so and so the students that are hyper aggressive are put in one so there's going to be flaws to this logically are put in one um like quadrant one site they were divided into sites one two three four whatnot so that there's no you can't put the bullies with the bullied

right but then you have hyper aggressive people Nails a lot of fights that's the site I was on in the beginning was the word Christ is a master at using short mysterious stories they change the listener who takes them seriously my experience with the biblical text is that they're inexhaustible sources of wisdom if I find something in them that is an obstacle it's because there's something in me that has yet to be transformed I just don't get it the person that you do not think could ever be virtuous oh let me show you this is

the person who is fulfilling the law and the prophets but seek first his kingdom and his righteousness and all these things shall be added to you as well I don't believe in that promise I'll just be honest on this point that has not been part of my experience this Parable I've been trying to understand forever why we were talking and while we were sitting there then it hit me I saw it may me one ideology that has supplanted Christianity that has done good for Humanity this Jew is very frightened of a post-christian society he was

the god man the model the example of what we ought to become and what we can become it's okay it's safe for you in all of your doubts and apprehensions to open up and to let these stories in he is the temple he is the Torah he is the Covenant he is prophecy fulfill if you're doing this and it isn't also the love of wisdom it's also an attempt at wisdom without love in both ways you're going radically wrong power of love it sounds so cliche what you say 60s I don't want to be in

a homewor card I tell you we've got our work cut out for us gentlemen this is one peculiar time and one peculiar text and I sure hope we're up to the task [Music] so let's just get this timeline exactly right so you got your master's degree in 200 at the end of 2019 177 19 and then you H you had a teaching job in a relatively ra just run-of-the-mill High School right and Co put an end to that and then as covid lifted you found a job in this school that was for behaviorally challenged kids

and it was a very mixed bag of behaviorally challenged kids which is also very interesting administrative decision I mean the idea that would put all the kids with all the problems in the same school is a strange idea it's not like problems constitutes a category it's not a category at all and then well you alluded to this as well it isn't the least bit evident from the evidence that putting aggressive kids together is anything but a really bad idea right there's H there's an immense clinical literature demonstrating exactly that and you said you ended up

with the aggressive kid okay but you also pointed out that you taught there for four years which so it changed it trans the landscape transformed okay those first two years were the most chaotic perhaps that had something to do with Co so because during so during I arrived during covid suddenly there's a kind of an outbreak at the school I remember driving into the parking lot one morning half the staff are coming out of the parking lot getting into their cars and they're like they're telling us to leave so I'm on site one for what

whatever reason all the teachers were sent home on site one except me now there was no students in the building though for three or four weeks this went on and so I was teaching remotely in my classroom on my computer and I kind of expanded the curriculum to like help they needed me to fill in with other things I remember that distinctly and so then we we get through that that might have happened it was like every few months there was an outbreak on this site and they're gone and you know and you can't walk

through these doors is for contamination and Co ends and over the course of the next two years it it it changed because originally multimedia I was able to I was able to De grow the program to where I was able to work with the entire building it was no longer just limited to one site which was remarkable because in upstairs they have students with severe physical challenges Down syndrome as and that reques aely differenty doubt and a different Ty of staff and professionalism even because you can't afford a mistake it's life or death is and

I began to work with those students as well and you're always going to have inner politics office Place politics and whatnot and certain clicks form and I mentioned this the principal and assistant principal both just got fired in the middle of the day same day and they put out a reason you know they're like oh they just they keep it vague and it was clearly um there was kind of a in the first year the school tried to unionize there was a movement to unionize and that principle that hired me was very against it and

I voted against it because my previous experience with unions I was starting to wake up to the reality the drawbacks and I understand the motivation behind unions but so there was my point is the interplace politics and it took them out um but I was able to uh this new principal arose who was a very nice guy there there was originally two assisted principles and one was the kind of the guy who in my mind almost positive kind of LED that formation of what caused them to leave and he ascended in power became uh the

only assistant principal and his good buddy who was 30 years old at the time became the principal which is pretty young to be a princi but he was a very nice guy though you and uh for whatever reason I got moved across the street into a separate building though which I actually liked because it gave me more U room to grow and so the students would when the teachers I had all the students would rotate the teachers would bring them across the street I had this great lab multimedia lab with a 3D printer we were

investing in new equipment camera technology Photoshop I had a I had like 11 IMAX running Premiere Pro and Photoshop and how are the kids responding to this well you you're you're describing a program it sounds to me like you're describing a program that was successful and that grew is that the case and and the kids were they responding well to what you were teaching I think that it was really interesting to notice the difference the the students downstairs the behavioral versus physical challenges the students upstairs were the ones that resonated the most with Photoshop video

editing there was an enthusiasm that so A student with autism something about some of these skills they just love you get them going on video editing it's very detail oriented they yeah and so I had I I just loved working with those students and I didn't get to do that until my last two years so but it was the first two years with those other students I still think I was making progress with them like bringing in digital I had as a teacher you're not supposed to have favorites but this the student that I was

probably the most fond of who ended up getting kicked out over something that um he was just a brilliant illustrator he could draw like just incredible and came from nothing and most of these kids was the the I think the core issue was just there was no parents the parents I mean we would have open house and no one would show up right so they were on their own yeah and that student in particular I found something that resonated with him we invested in like a critter drawing tablet and he accelerated with that but the

problem came in the form I noticed when they would say he he's drawing illustrations of samaris in combat what good is that going to do him we want him to do projects that are relevant to the school but then they would give me no criteria of or um set PL there was no curriculum in place I developed it all myself which I wasn't there's pros and cons to that there's a lot of freedom to that but the challenge is that it allows them to come in at their convenience if they and who was they leadership

uh which I never had an issue with I never had an issue until I published that video okay so well so let's talk about that tell everybody about what the what the video was we we'll clip it into this so that people can see it obviously but describe what why was it that you were posting videos and and and and how did this particular one come about so these guys want to talk about JK Rowling is that so what's going on with that what do you want to know uh she's she's had a pretty controversial

past I just want to know like what are your thoughts on it and like do you still like her work despite her uh bigoted opinions so let's get specific though let's what's define bigoted opinions she has had a history of being extremely transphobic I've heard you've heard so what can you give me an example so one of these tweets that she came up with in 2019 she said dress however you please call yourself whatever you like sleep with any consenting adult who will have you um live your best life in peace and security but Force

women out of their jobs for starting that for stating that sex is real so you find that bigoted I don't really have an opinion on it but I'm just going with what a lot of other people have said so let's pause it let's not go with what other people are saying let's try and learn how to critically think so let's analyze the Tweet ourselves so that statement do you see anything problematic Force women out of their jobs for stating that sex is real so when I hear that I'm interpreting that as meaning if a woman

says that you know saying that there's a difference between men and female and then being attacked as transphobic I think that's what she's saying by attacking someone for stating that sex is real that is exactly what she's saying is that transphobic to you so to me no so is there anything you disagree with in that tweet uh in that tweet I can't really see anything that I myself disagree with so now that we're looking at at it like oh there's not much difference between me or her do how why do you do you think it's

fair that there's a that she's being attacked by a large group of people and people are calling her like you said at the beginning of this conversation you said given the fact that JK Rowling is transphobic how do you feel about Harry Potter now retroactively looking at that statement do you think that that was the best way to phrase no I feel like an idiot now it's okay though but this is why we do this to learn to learn how to think I Ed 2017 a video of a professor lowquality video in this classroom that

looked like mine you standing from the classroom talking about archetypes of Harry Potter it was you and I was like that's cool and this is 20 17 that was the first video I saw of you then I went down the rabbit C and all that Classics but that and I said to my I'm going to try this because I was teaching students about film making and movies and and I was teaching a journalism class and I was like this is this ties in directly and I just I loved this style I Rec I was like

there teaching is a performance there's a performance art element to this because you have to be engaging to be able to stand in front of the classroom and get them engaged there's an artistic element to that that I'm not quite sure how to articulate that it might not be right you did it's a performance but that's what I saw in your video so I went in it was probably a few weeks later later and I we have all the cameras so and I was teaching a student how to use I said okay now you know

how to use the camera let's try and record this lecture I saw this thing on YouTube yeah and I essentially ran through archetypes in Harry Potter and they loved it and that video is on YouTube people can watch it no one watched it at the time but it's up there and that's years ago maybe five years ago that's how it started so I started and I was like this is a great I agree with you that YouTube is a Gutenberg Revolution that we cannot comprehend what means M it is massive potential and it's exciting so

I I fell in love with that aspect of it started to because there's teaching portfolios what better way what better thing to have in a teaching portfolio you're teaching than a recording of you actually teaching so they ask you to have artifacts provide artifacts of your teaching here's a video of me teaching beat that it's like so that was the thinking and I had been and also in multimedia we would do reviews of movies like the Queen's Gambit did you know it was just a way to get students to practice articulating themselves public speaking when

you don't have a room full of people for them to practice in front of a camera is not a bad substitute because it allows them to watch it back hear their voice which at first no one likes it makes causes you to cringe it's very interesting response right right but you can learn so much from watching and those repetitions and doing it again and again and and they loved it some of the students just really loved it so to bring us to that video they asked me to do a newscast they're like we want to

try a new idea um can you do a newscast for the school once a week which is what I was doing in that public school we would but that was a legit newscast that would go out live to the every classroom once a week on Friday they had all this technology to do it and they would upload everything to social media that's why I have a Twitter that was the only reason I even had a a Twitter account at the time the that was the original School the original school public I can even say that

it was the nooba Regional High School in Massachusetts so if you go to my Twitter feed the very F only first tweets they're all just nooba student broadcast because and the head of my department would ask me to just share them I thought that was just normal and there was no students loved it so how much recording of your teaching were you doing in your classes in the not much in the second school not too much I mean I would not I would it was more projects like the Queen's Gambit review I had a colleague

the music teacher had a passion for camera technology as well and he was my closest collaborator because we were voke teachers vocational teachers meaning we worked with the whole building we were the only ones that everyone else worked with just their sites there was like a a culinary teacher um landscaping and they were always experimenting with the vocations but music and multimedia always remained consistent how big a school only downstairs 50 students upstairs 50 about 50 students okay and how many teachers well the ratio you said it was 3 to one about a that's what

they strive for but they are constantly battling under Staffing because teachers just vanish often had you done a lot of videos in the buildup to the video that you that that got so much attention I have been posting little things um like just like what I was mentioning like reviews and things but no one was watching them and no one cared it wasn't you know um and working with the music teacher we would do like the mathematics of the Fibonacci sequence in music things which are still up there so if you're curious to dig in

that you can if anyone's watching this but but to answer your question about this video came about so they asked me to do a news broadcast we're not equipped to do that but we tried anyways and they're like we want this kid to to be the person on camera and just go through this is what happened in the school this week so we go in the room we go to set it up and he's uh getting stage fright camera shy he's just and I think it's very important in teaching to lead by example so let's

just treat let's just do a warm up I'll sit on camera you operate let's just have a conversation treat it like a podcast real quick let's do like a f minute warmup just ask me something that you want to that would interest you okay he hits record all right so how have your views on JK Rowling changed given her bigoted opinions or how have your views on Harry Potter changed given JK Rowling's bigoted opinions well first we need to address that and then we just walk through it and I thought that's interesting you know and

maybe I'll try something new with this YouTube thing and I just uploaded it I was like that's interesting enough to post I didn't think anyone watch it walk us through your response what do you know about you you mentioned watching the Harry Potter an analysis of Harry Potter I had done and let's walk through it so well first we need to address is she bigoted that's the glaring crease up right right right so that constitutes a loaded question right so what are you what are you basing that upon um well you know I've heard that

she has she's the tweets okay do you have any like I I can show you the tweets if you want sure let's take a look dig some tweets out we read the tweets okay so do you find that what is what about that is transphobic and I don't remember the exact tweet we clarify it and then he goes oh but she did apologize as well for this other thing there this other piece of evidence okay let's take a look same process then we so I point out okay so there's really no much different there's not

much difference between you and her you understand that she's she's stating that it's important to her her experience as a woman she has no issue with someone identifying how they want to identify but that's not going to change that shouldn't impact her experience and her the reality that she's a woman and what that means in reality no I agree with that okay so now looking back at the beginning of this conversation that claim you made when you say call her bigoted do you think that was a fair thing to say no now I feel stupid

that's okay that's why we do this and often I would have interesting conversations when they arose going back to the idea of and there was some blowback about that of why are you having conversation your job is to teach students how to set up cameras and shoot videos and do photo editing and 3D printing and using this technology but as we just pointed out there's extreme if the goal is to use this technology with students in the way that is going to most benefit them well that that should be use of the technology isn't independent

of the content especially if you're doing video recording and there's so much utility in you can teaching students how to think how to articulate themselves how to and often they have questions about things in the world I've had students ask me like what what what's a Republican versus a Democrat and you're like you're a senior in high school we need to let's talk about it and then we can kill two birds with one stone and then we'll have stuff to edit you know and it's things that interest you so if we're going to we need

footage to edit might as well make it interesting and if we can make it if we can talk about something that actually matters in the world and you can learn something from it well why not like what you can't learn to edit footage without having something interesting that you're interested in because there's nothing to edit and and you could just film music videos and things but I I I see more utility and if a student has wants to discuss something that like that I see know that was my reasoning behind it well that's especially relevant

with regards to editing because you want to clip and cut so that you get to the gist of the matter and that means there has to be something there to focus on so if you're watching a if a student is watch they shoot a music video and they're watching themselves playback dancing and they're editing that okay but when you watch yourself speaking debating or or just you're you're learning those oratory skills you're getting over public speaking fright there's more utility I believe than simply there's nothing wrong if a student wants to do like something like

a music video well you could do something creative too but even then it's got to have a point but why not encapsulate as much as possible if our objective is to use what we have to help students as best we can going online without expressvpn is like putting all your passwords and credit card numbers on a huge billboard for the whole world to see every time you connect to an encrypted Network in cafes hotels airports your online data is completely exposed and here's the scary part with just some basic Hardware anyone can gain access to

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the 12month plan or six extra months with the 24mon plan totally free that's expressvpn.com Jordan to get an extra four or even 6 months of expressvpn for [Music] free well obviously also the technique that you were using so to speak in so far as it's a technique is asking pertinent questions there isn't any difference between that and teaching people how to think because if you're thinking you're asking yourself pertinent questions and you're certainly not going to learn to do that without an example the whole point of being a teacher is to or at least one

of the main points of being a teacher is to teach people how to ask themselves pertinent questions and to model that so why do you think so it's in so it's interesting that it was the conversation about JK Rowling that went viral I she certainly caused uh an endless stream of political upset in the UK uh turned into a quite a stunning advocate for free speech and she has in fact focused on this trans issue which is likely the most bizarre issue that's ever dominated the political space as far as I can tell and I

guess one of the things that your video demonstrated was the pertinence of that issue to students who have questionable reasons for being concerned about it to begin with like why do you think that this particular student was possessed by the belief that was a thing to begin with because that's also a bastardization of words in in the most manipulative possible way to take a CL clinical terminology phobia and then to append it to objection to anything that the person who's objecting or what would you say I can object to something if someone's irritated about that

they're going to medicalize my objection and describe it as a pathology that's what happens when you use the term phobia it's unbelievably manipulative and I would say the radical leftists are stunningly good at that manipulation of language but now you have a student who is objecting to JK Rowling on the basis of transphobia and you're asking questions about it now is that part of what also got you in it's obviously one of the things that made this go viral but was it also one of the things that got you in trouble well there's no way

for me to know exactly I think that in it I think there's a as you know most things in life are far more complex than a singular explanation I think that a lot of it was the virality itself given that we're a school where there are some loose practices there's been things like the the two principles just being removed there was a tax of Scandal like a few years prior to my arrival because we have the way grades are assigned often it's the site sitting there it's like okay what's Jimmy going to get in your

class um give him like a 73 and there's no record there's no reasoning to it and that's literally how it occurs what so the why did they offer me $9,000 to shut up or why to sign this and like why do you need an NDA it's so it's there's so there was wor about potential public attention well you can understand I mean the school that you're operating in is insanely complex there's absolutely no way to run a school like that that isn't full of trouble obviously because the whole school's built on trouble and so I

can imagine that the people who are running the school would be nervous about that because I can't possibly see that there's any way that you could do it right right I mean that's a good point well you mentioned that teachers come for one day and they leave or they come for a week it's just it's it's designed it's a system designed to callate chaos and to try to produce some sort of order but it seems to me to be entirely impossible pretty much no matter what you do you're going to do something wrong how the

hell could you possibly avoid it every single one of those kids is a pitfall and I don't mean that in the in the what that's not a criticism it's just while the system's designed so that every single kid that comes there is trouble on stilts and so and then you're also going to have the case that many of the teachers who are going to apply are going to PE people who are applying to that school because it's a last ditch possibility and so I often yeah you out in u i I wondered that sometimes I'm

like why am I here I the health insurance is awful it's like pays not why why choose that's why people leave it's but but 's a lot of good people there that aren't it's not like this is the bottom of the barrel teachers that can't there are some of those it's like dude what are you doing right there'd be some of those yes but there are also many good people that are doing it because there's something fulfilling about it that I miss to be honest uhuh there's I miss it uhuh well I I think what

Drew my attention to your video and also what made me want to talk to you is because I think the reason that that video went viral and Drew the attention of the people whose attention it did draw was because you were obviously very sane and careful in an insane situation discussing something utterly preposterous and it was all that contrast that made it fascinating I mean the fact that that issue even arose in a school is ridiculous under anything approximating normal times and yet you handled it carefully and thoughtfully and you did it in a way

that was obviously of educational benefit to the students and that none of that should be surprising actually like the manner in which you addressed it but it's also the fact that that same response to that question is surprising in the education system that made it go viral and so because we're so ustom to seeing crazily woke ideologically possessed ranting narcissists acting as teachers ideologically adling children when they ask questions that they should have no concern about whatsoever Like It just strikes me as utterly preposterous that a 15-year-old kid would think that it was necessary for

him to accus JK rolling of transphobia 17 17 okay so that's that that's just an indication of the state of the school system in general I don't think he was even accusing her I think he was just repeating what he thought was reality of course of course of course exactly while you said that as you investigated with you know some relatively Elementary but also eminently sane questions that revealed itself very quickly he was just spouting the cliches of the moment right the radical cliches of the moment and was he doing that because he thought he

should like what what was your impression of the reasons for his questions he genuinely believed that that was what the truth was he thought that was reality he he articulates that he's I've heard many classmates State this so it must be true in the same way you hear this often with people I just made a critique video of Barry Weiss doing this I was a little hard on her on Joe Rogan when she's saying make it's the same pattern and she's applying this to tulsy gabard and and and he presses her on it slightly and

and you and it it dissolves and we all are capable of doing we all do do this in our lives I'm not above it but no one's above it no one's above it we radically seek we we seek to establish consensus rapidly and radically and if there's no challenge to the consensus that's good because it means that we're unified but it also means that we can build a False Consensus and that happens continually and I mean that's one of the dangers of soal populism is that it's it's a False Consensus right it's a consensus of

the moment it's got no staying power it can't iterate across time now the antidote to populist consensus is something like alignment with eternal tradition because it stops that proclivity for Rapid consensus from pathologizing I mean it's actually a good thing all things considered because if human beings couldn't reach agreement on most things rapidly all we would ever do is fight but the danger of course is a False Consensus and that's obviously what you were questioning and you know you did it you did it in an extremely thoughtful manner okay so you recorded that your students

edited it how did it how did it end up edited and and and also I there was one edit when he takes out his phone because he's like looking for the for the tweet for few maybe a minute and so I cut that out and uploaded it to yeah my YouTube channel that I was I had been uploading everything in the past right so this was just standard practice on your you have to be very careful about what you upload to Youtube as I found out in 2016 right because it's an unbelievably powerful technology and

you never know what's going to happen so as you as you also found out and so okay so you uploaded this and I presume you thought nothing of it okay what happened lay out the story it started getting a few views and then it got third 13,000 views the music teacher I was telling you about who had been on this journey with me in a way we were exploring this technology even making videos where there was no students on our free time like the Fibonacci sequence in music was just two of us uhuh he texts

me he says it's got 13,000 views oh that for me that's whoa and over what period of time maybe uh this is probably like a week two weeks okay okay right that afternoon I get a text from my brother and he says Elon Musk tweeted a video of you oh yeah I thought there's the kiss of death ha right and I didn't I I hadn't opened my Twitter account since that in a show by school so I couldn't log in I didn't have my password and figured it out and I was like let me any

oh whoa okay that was then two days later well then I go to school the next day don't say a word I'm like I'm just gonna not say anything maybe no one saw it you know I don't really comprehend what's going on with there when you're in it it doesn't principal calls me in his office yeah not talking about it is not going to work like everybody seen the video he was um he was on the fence of how to feel about it because he was obviously worried as anyone would be about his responsibilities and

getting in trouble with the higher ups is this against the policy we have he's had we have releases I have the releases where a stu there's no student on camera we have an audio release it's and you've been doing this anyways I've been doing this for a while like but is that what do we but this is different like and I think it's totally understandable to be to be a little shocked we're in new territory here yeah right Pierce Morgan's team reaches out would you like to come on Pierce Morgan tomorrow uhuh well I'm at

a Crossroads it's like do I do I run with this as far as there's two options let it pass over go back to my life or I recognize maybe maybe go back to your life or I recognize that this is a once- in A- lifetime potentially I don't know what it means where it could go if it's but it could be an opportunity there's only one way to find out and that's to run with it well if I say I Know This Much from my life and regret if I say no to this going on

Pierce Morgan which could go badly I might regret this but I know I will regret it forever if I how did you know that why did you clude that cuz I have regretted things in my life before I know that regret it's worse to try something and to fail in the pursuit of that I would rather try and run with this ball as far as I can take it as far as I can till I get tackled than to refuse to pick it up the world moves fast these days markets rise and fall policies change

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there there is there is clinical evidence for that if you ask people older people to look back on their life and to list their regrets it's much more common for them to have serious regrets about chances they didn't take than failures that they that they experienced thing about fail is a weird thing you know because my experience in life has been that nothing I ever actually did failed I didn't necessarily it didn't necessarily produce the result that I intended when I intended it but if it was a genuine effort and I followed through on it

there was some benefit that emerged in consequence of that that justified the effort and and sometimes that was quite a long time later and I think that kind of stands to reason in a sense too because the alternative explanation would be that you could you could try to do something difficult well and see it through and there'd be zero impact of that well that makes no sense you're going to learn something you're you're maybe what you learn is how you could have done it better or how you could do it better but you're going to

learn something okay so you you what kind of regrets had you had in the past asked if you don't mind maybe you can share some of those maybe not but what came to mind my original plan was movies I all I wanted to do growing up was make movies there was nothing more exciting than seeing people be able to alter time and space it's like they were using the fabric of reality to create worlds which are real when you're watching it you've explored this idea and like who what else The Logical course of action what

else would I want possibly want to do than that there was nothing more exciting and I was undergrad one of the top film schools in the country UNCC School the Arts and I excelled and I hit I was nailing these opportunities and I was like it had kind of got to my head I found short film after short film suddenly it's in a pattern that had not going to La like writing and producing a feature film right out of the gate using that momentum with this team of like the students that have come together and

become this like pirate band almost to that move from and we rais $225,000 to make this feature film and as we're going to camp out and everyone's going to work for free and film it on the farm where I grew up so we can get all the locations for free and it would cost at least like a half a million dollars in production value if you were to do a one in-one comparison because everyone's working for free yeah and it it it I feel like I blew it a lot I feel like I blew a

lot of opportunities and I'm trying to think of any specifics but in general I don't I did come to the realization that La is not somewhere La is not where I want to live Hollywood is not a game in which I want to participate for the long term so I knew I wanted to get out of that I didn't know what I would do I went freelance videography and eventually graduate school it took me to graduate school and I left la but those students the colleagues the friends making a movie is challenging there's a lot

of it it presses relationships and this is a it's a deeper idea of why that is because often I think there's some people are subconscious they just want it to be over because when you're making a movie it takes like a year and then you have the editor and he's editing for you know that's the part that takes a year the production itself a month or two or whatnot but then it like this has to be over and there's so much pressure and then that causes people to kind of dissolve under the pressure and it's

like this is a once in a-lifetime Opportunity we're never going to have all these people come together there and work for free okay so you saw the same thing beckoning there with the Pierce Morgan opportunity obviously that you and it is the case I mean and this is the case in life is that not now and then something many impossible things come together and a door opens and if you don't walk through it then the probability that those impossible things will come together again is zero and so okay so you decided to go on Pierce

mortgage so what happened it was just it was just me for a 15minute interview the end of a segment yeah this V so I'm in Massachusetts in this little town in the woods this I didn't know what to expect I was like is a crew coming like what's going on a guy in a van pulls up yeah you had to talk directly to the camera did you he's like her I'm going to mic you up uh I don't know what's going on no instructions he's like I jump in the back of a van right after

school so I'm at school talking to the music teacher I'm like dude they want me to go on Pierce Morgan like do you think I'll get in trouble if I do this he's like you got to do it I like I got to do it right right and I said the same thing I said to you and he said just don't it's better to ask for forgiveness than for permission just because I knew that if I were to ask for permission and they were to say no I'd be in a PR it now right I'm

not going to turn that down cuz I know what that feeling would be but well it's also not the least bit obvious that you're required to ask for permission besides that this is something that everybody who's watching and listening should understand the answer to if you go to an authority especially a bureaucratic Authority and you ask for permission why wouldn't they say no all there is in it for them is risk and perhaps jealousy and and fear so why would of course they're going to say no why wouldn't they say no and so then you

think well how do you deal with that the answer is well you're a free agent what what's the what's the indication that you're required to ask for permission know in fact if it's not illegal or if you're not violating your you know an explicit and really I mean explicit contract it's like don't ask it's hard enough to convince yourself that you should do it much less convince someone else who's also not going to benefit from it in in the least you know the other thing to understand too is that entrepreneurial motivation is relatively rare it's

only about one person in 50 who wants to start their own business I I really learned this when I started selling to corporations and dealing with middle management people the fundamental motivation of 95% % of people in middle management is never to do anything that makes them get noticed for any reason good or bad they want to do their job they want to do it in complete and utter invisibility and if an entrepreneurial opportunity comes along they say that's risky no and you might say yeah well you know there's an immense potential payoff rather low

probability immense potential payoff that's the entrepreneur game and their attitude is um I don't want to be the marked zebra that the Lions cut out of the herd you know that story so you know that you know the zebra story I'll just tell it for people who might not have heard it so zebras in principle are camouflaged but it's kind of a weird idea because they live on the velt and they're black and white striped and you can seriously see a zebra so the question is what's the camouflage and the answer seems to be that

it's against the herd camouflage because there's no single zebras there's herds of zebras and so when the zebras are Milling about together in a herd because the black and white stripes are edges if you look away and then you look again you can't tell what zebra you were looking at now the reason that's relevant is because Lions can't organize themselves to hunt a zebra unless they can identify one okay so you don't want to be an identifiable zebra so biologists discovered this because they were studying zebra and trying to figure out how to watch a

given zebra so they could figure out what it was up to but they lose track so they would either clip their ears with a plastic clip or put a dab of paint on their haunches and as soon as they did that the Lions killed them the Lions could Mark out the zebra and organize their hunt and then that was a dead zebra and you know you hear that in the natural world that Lions often call the herd and they take the weak and the unfit it's like no they take the identifiable zebra and the Instinct

of many many people is do not be the identifiable prey animal right and so if you're going to ask for permission even permission from yourself in an odd way the default answer is clearly no and so and obviously so and so you're going to have to step outside the herd now the question with human beings is is there advantages in stepping outside the herd and the advantage is while you get notice and that's not so good if there are predators around but it's also the pathway to extreme success which has massive potential payoffs now I'm

not saying that everybody should pursue that or that everybody should want it but that's the that's the landscape of risk so you decided you'd already learned enough in your life to know that you don't casually throw away spectacular opportunities yeah right the pain of regret is a a unique form of pain yes yeah well it's a kind of self- betrayal right cuz you had the chance you had the opportunity the door open that's what I was trying to put my finger on yeah earlier and it and I had no one to blame but myself on

how like serious turned out and that's what eats you yeah right definitely definitely well it's it's it's bad enough when someone else gets in your way but when you get in your way it's like well how do you far worse definitely definitely you know it's also useful to know too that I think this is extremely useful is that you have to deeply understand that no risk is first of all not desirable you actually don't want a risk- free life you want the risks you voluntarily take and maybe you want high stakes risks you voluntarily take

but but even more fundamentally there is no no risk pathway you're screwed no matter what you do and that's terrible but it's also freeing and so once you know that there's no safety well then you can take the most interesting risk and and and why not and then maybe you don't need safety okay so you decided to go on Pierce morg that ties directly into what happened on Pierce Morgan okay so 15 minutes and he asked the usual questions you would expect around how was he with you he was really nice he was he was

very charismatic likable kind and very well he's a funny guy you know he's he's kind of like Simon cowl he in a way you know you you can see in America's Got I mean they both worked on America's Got Talent and Britain's Got Talent you can see if Cowell likes somebody he's really on their side if he doesn't like them he's really not on their side and Morgan is like that and he's also the sort of guy who he'll give you the benefit of the doubt but if you start playing games then you're in serious

trouble so he obviously started by giving you the benefit of the doubt he was probably you know reasonably pleased with the video that he had seen and thought you know that he would be inviting to begin with so that worked out well okay so and he asked a question the last question was interesting is the one that stands out in my mind and he is and all your hair CU he watched the video who was producers someone went to the YouTube channel in the research knowes give me something to they found the me talking about

archetypes in Harry Potter ah that I got from you oh yes I see I see and he goes so he thought I was some Harry Potter scholar or something he goes so given all your Harry Potter studies what would the best piece of Life advice be and from all your Harry Potter says and I said voluntarily enter the unknown huh is what you're were just talking like it might be you know the the unknown beneath the surface of Hogwarts it might be facing the serpent that could turn you to Stone when you see it like

fear but you must do so voluntarily in order to save Jenny and and and and it's the voluntary aspect of that that is which is just classic everyone know Echoes that like okay yeah well it's a very good thing to know but it's true yeah well it's also it's also surprising because it it belies the what would you say the the merely objective sense of the real a situation is the same no matter how you encounter it that's an objectivist perspective it's no a situation is radically different depending on how you encounter it Kicking and

Screaming is very different than voluntarily even if the stressor is the same and there doesn't seem to be any particular limit to that which is why of course all the heroic Quest archetypal narratives are voluntary confrontation with truly Terrible Things otherwise the quest has no real deep significance okay so the Pierce Morgan interview that went well that was a success yeah what was the consequence of that the next day I go back into school they call me back into the principal's office and they say dude you went on Pierce Morgan like can you at least

check in with us before you do Pierce Morgan those the exact words that was pretty right at least check with us yeah but but you know that what you just articulated was masterful and that's the best logical read that you could provide on that situation I think when we think about wildly successful businesses we often focus on their great products cool branding and Brilliant marketing but there's an unsung hero in their success stories the business behind the business that makes selling simple for millions of entrepreneurs that business is Shopify Shopify is home to the number

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your business upgrade your business today and get the same checkout daily wire uses sign up for your $1 per month trial period at shopify.com sjbp all lowercase go to shopify.com jbp today to upgrade your selling that's shopify.com [Music] jbp all bureaucratic entities will always say no to anything question's obvious benefit to them there there's only risk right there's only downside of course they there yeah this is partly why I think research has been almost completely stifled in universities you cannot do risk-free research period it's not possible you can't just do the next safe thing it's

it's too obvious first of all and there's no excitement in the discovery it has to be a risk and the risk has to be real and you know we we don't want to be too cynical about this either you know it's not obviously the role of bureaucracies to take risks right it's the role of bureaucracies to set policies and strategies and to abide by the rules and move forward while you see that in Harry Potter too there because there's a weird dynamic constantly in the Harry Potter stories that rolling is she was great did this

because Harry's ban like they're academically oriented and they're upward striving but they're always rule Breakers right and the the grand wizard at the top of the ladder he put all the rules that govern the educational institution in place and knows what they are but is perfectly happy that Harry and his you know band of ethical miscreant break rules yeah and he knows about it almost they insinuate that he knows what they're doing right lets it go anyways yeah well that's that that's that constant Paradox it's really the Paradox of it's really the Paradox of something

like liberal versus conservative you know the conservatives fundamentally I hate to call the conservatives the bureaucrats because in our weird political world things have all got flipped around but generally speaking the conservative types are much more rule oriented and much less entrepreneurial and so but there's there's a there's a dance between those two that's absolutely necessary and there's no getting rid of the conflict because most of the time you should follow the rules but some of the time you definitely shouldn't and wisdom is the ability to and daring that's the ability to tell the difference

well so you went on Pierce Morgan and so I don't blame your administrator for neither do I objecting although you know what you would have hoped for is something like a little elbow saying you know you shouldn't have done that good work well there was oh good there was that well the assistant principal who ascended and led that whole coup and there was something different about his response but the principal the 30-year-old principal who was always very helpful to me in like yeah uh helping me to get or you know like Warren you should get

your license in phonetics and so you can have this new special ed license my first year he was kind of this he a guiding hand before he suddenly had this power and there was that at the end and he was like I would have done the same thing oh yeah good literally good good good that's the ND and the wink yeah yeah every institution that's going to function needs that right because you need the people who impose the rules and the structure but they need to always be able to say well yeah that there was

a reason for not following the procedure in that particular case and he said I got to I need to run this up the flag pole I'm going to need to call this is just getting I don't know how to respond to this Pierce I don't know what this this isn't in the Playbook this isn't right right so they arranged for a meeting with the executive director and her team of lawyers there's a board that runs this school she answers to them I guess she's not a president she used to kind of have her office over

and near mine but I hadn't seen her at all this that past year she just said and so she uh there was a meeting with her yeah there was I went into a room with that principal um the one who and it was a zoom call I think no it just audio and her lawyers were sitting next to her and they just said well technically you didn't break any rules so you're congratulations good luck to you I hope you don't make a mistake right I need to lose you and I thought fair enough I'll take

responsibility for anything I say and do and and me and that music teacher were like home free but that's it was it felt like that should be the response yeah well that was that's a pretty good response I mean it's not surprising that they looked into it yeah I mean one of the things too that's worth thinking about too is that when you're called to account for yourself when you break a rule for example and you upset the normal course of the routine it's not such a bad idea to present the people who are Now

cast into doubt and confusion with a plan so for example I had the same experience as you did essentially when I put up the First videos that brought me to public attention surrounding Bill c16 and it was just it was really the same sort of experiment that you ran i' been i' put up a lot of my lectures on YouTube and they'd got a moderate amount of attention and a reasonable amount for the time because I started putting them I think in 2013 on YouTube which was very early in YouTube development um but they hadn't

attracted anything like viral attention and then this idiot virtue signaling bill was put into law by Our Idiot virtue signaling prime minister and I made three videos objecting to that and some University policies that was purely experimental cuz I was still playing with the technology and wondering what use it was and seeing if I could lay out a structured argument as well I edited it quite a bit actually that one and uh and that went viral and then I was called into the principal's office so to speak at the University which kind of surprised me

to begin with but not exactly because they didn't know what to do with this and unsurprisingly I mean whether the dean for example had any right to have to say anything whatsoever with what I was doing with you in my home in my free time is a completely different issue but I suggested to them that the University of Toronto could do the daring thing and have a debate on free speech and so that was a concrete plan right and they were looking for something to do they didn't know what to do and and that is

what they did and um for better for worse and that was much better than many of the things that they could have done now it still worked out that it became impossible really for me to keep my position there although I did for about a year but um but it's also it is also the case to know that if you're going to step outside of the bounds of normal propriety doesn't hurt to have a plan especially for the people that you confuse because they also don't know what to do and they're going to hunker down

and they're going to dissociate themselves from you if you are deemed to be a risk especially a contamination risk and so and the topics you were discussing especially on the rolling side would have that element because of course to the degree that the propaganda surrounding the idea of transphobia is effective you can easily be and feathered and run out of town on a rail but but you weren't you weren't that that didn't exactly happen in the school so you said something interesting about and I agree that the university the dean has Nate in your own

home what you do with YouTube how does that correlate to the dean's business or the University's business what's interesting is that when you go into the handbook which after all this occurred I I went and kind of look poked into it's written that they have every involvement at this school into whatever a teacher says politically on social media if they say and there's no clear objective definition of what where that line of course of course so they just Reserve to themselves the right yeah the College of psychologists has basically done exactly the same thing in

in Canada what the people that I'm in trouble for in relationship to my license it's like yeah there are rules apparently about the way I can conduct myself but the only way you find out what those rules are is by being accused of breaking them it's not like they're written down because of course they can't be right and so that's also that's also a terrible thing because and this is something that's happening in our culture very rapidly ly and apparently is something that dville um prophesied back in the mid 1800s that if totalitarianism came to

democracies it would come in the form of essentially midlevel bureaucracies invisibly making everything daring illegal right and so and those open-ended policies are precisely the sort of thing that they're like they're like comprehensive traps so they could have actually gone after you oh yeah it was it's it was a unique contract to begin with and I remember signing that when I first agreed on to that school it said you could be fired for any any reason no reason at any time yeah and that's not a reality at your average high school so that stood out

to me I thought interesting okay well this is a new world this is an unusual world that I don't so yeah well you could see also though you could actually understand I would say the reasons for a contract like that at a school like that sure because so many possible things could go wrong that the rules arguably would have to be more comprehensive to cover any possible occurrence okay so what happens after Pierce Morgan things were different no one ever spoke to me about it again the video or I was continue to make YouTube videos

as what I should point out okay okay so you did continue to make and and post them did they also attract more attention after that now that I you know I I'm still doing the YouTube channel and it's it's grown it's not so it wasn't like it was now it's not huge but it it was decent and it was fun most importantly it was me and the music teacher we were like okay we have this opportunity he didn't want any part of it it was his personality type if you had offered him the chance to

swap places with me I I really think he would have declined it it's just too much too much comes with that un you're in the unknown and it's on you when you're entering this anyway but we we every Friday after school we set up a little studio in downstairs in my house and every Friday after school we would just sit down record something talk about whatever we wanted to talk about for an hour and then edit it in an hour and post it so that's the voice you hear in those early if you ever look

at those that's the voice you hear off camera and he didn't want to show his face which is understandable and all those perspectives in there are his genuine perspectives and he's very liberal so it was interesting it was interesting Dynamic it was like this classic it was so stereotypical people thought it was fake they were like this is a clearly staged which I take as a compliment it's like really you think the only way we could achieve this outcome would be to script it well that means we're doing something right so we we were making

the and things just at the school I noticed I stopped being invited to certain there was like a wedding I wasn't invited to like my whole site one team was and there was everyone goes out for drinks on Friday there's the bar nearby and the hero you know heroes in in classic stories often become contaminated by the unknown so even in the in the in the Lord of the Ring stories you know the fact that froo froto and Bilbo both know Gandalf makes them somewhat socially unpopular in the sh right even though they're Associated well

they're associated with magic power and you might think that's all status it's like it's not all status it it makes it makes the people who want to operate only within the confines of the Shire let's say very nervous and rightly so because that is a disruptive force and so even when Bilbo yeah comes back from his initial Adventure he's regarded with suspicion for the rest of his life admiration yes but also suspicion and from the more conservative forces you might say that's a good point yeah yeah yeah yeah well that's that's how it felt yeah

yeah well you can also understand that biologically if with the zebra analog in in a way it's like you don't want to be too close to the Target of the Predators you know and this is a deep biological Instinct you know that the reason that fish exist in schools and herbivores exist in herds is because if you're with a bunch of other animals of your type and a predator attacks the probability that it will be you is proportionate to how well you hide in the herd obviously so to the degree that you live life as

a prey animal then you're going to hide in the herd now the question you might ask yourself is do you want to live Life as a prey animal and human beings really have that choice because we're we're very strange creatures we're Predators but we're also prey animals and you can take either of those Pathways forward and it was it was interesting because this opportunity came along where I was presented with the decision do I leave the herd go into the unknown this journey and see where it takes me or do I go back to the

safety okay so you said now that there was some social consequence afterwards but that things more went back to normal what what happened with the students and then eventually your job at the school did disappear so walk us through walk us through the aftermath of this like flurry of attention the students I think that the staff went to Great Links to insulate the students that that student that was the voice and the video he loved it he was aware of it and I in that meeting with the lawyers I like look so and so I'd

be happy to talk to his like I think he's going to be fine with the like no one expected this but he's a good kid they're like no we don't want you anywhere near this like we'll talk to the parents and the parents were fine with it he already had the releases it was yeah that's good so you had dotted your eyes and crossed your teas with regards to student involvement so long story short I a few months later I had well I had another conversation with that student around communism we were continuously doing what

we had always been doing with the video production but I was feeling more and more like I gotta be careful and the music teacher was telling me he's like look man I you got you've got a lot of eyes on you and it made logical sense that they would they were that they were looking for any slip up anything that I I got the sense that they wanted to get rid it would have been easier to get rid of me when that video came out mhm video go but there was so much attention around it

that it would have put them at risk to do so right I don't know I'm not saying that there was a plan to wait and let that blow over and then be but I think they needed it good enough I thought they were just not going to renew my contract over the summer which is usually what they do it's very common and you thought that might happen I thought with 90% certainty that that's what would happen it just be it would make sense as you said it would be the logical sense thing to do it's

in their best interest there's no good to come up having one of your teachers out there with a a growing audience small but growing audience saying certain things that or examining could be Troublesome there's no benefit to that well yeah the the funny thing too is there's no benefit from a pure analysis of risk but you know your your what you did with those videos definitely in my estimation anyways um brought credit to the school so you know with more imagination what you accomplished could have been very useful to the school with more imagination that

would require them to go public though which they were not going to do they don't want that SP Spotlight that would require people to know what yeah well but that that that hearkens back to something that we that we discussed is that the default presumption for the vast majority of people is no amount of success justifies risk right and then people ask themselves well why am I not successful it's like well because your threshold for risk is zero and zero it zero isn't a threshold of risk that's associated with success so if your presumption is

I'll only be successful if I take no risks that's the bargain then you for on success and the thing about that that's perverse is that that's a risk because we actually don't know how much success we need in order to reconcile ourselves to life life is very difficult and so you might need a fair bit of actual success and opportunity to offset the difficulty otherwise it's bitterness and regret which is not a good pathway so you know you're I I I made excuses for the administrators at your school let's say for being taken back and

said that it was understandable of them to assume that you were going to merely abide in a predictable way by the rules but had they been more entrepreneurial and more open to the idea of opportunity then the school itself could have benefited dramatically from what you had accomplished but but that's also you know that also would mean at in the best of all possible worlds that you know you might have been able to present them with a plan to make that easy for them right so well I I did see huge potential in that suddenly

the students but there's a lot of down potential downside and risk to this too and the students suddenly have the ability to create content that can reach a large audience right I mean I haven't thought this out in a clear plan but it was an opportunity well it's an opportunity to have a much more realistic video editing program oh it's like well now we're going to make things that that people will watch if I had been at that if this had occurred at that first High School noova where we were already putting things on Twitter

yeah they would have I remember the head of my department we would have who knows what we could have done with this right so you think he would have run with it yeah yeah tell me what happened yeah I can put button on it yeah what happened with your job like you said you know you thought that the most likely consequence would be that they just wouldn't renew your contract and when did you come to that conclusion and how did you reconcile yourself to that um I need to run with this opportunity grow if I

can with this platform in case something happens it seems like that's a really bad logically that sounds like a really bad backup plan I'm going to make a YouTube channel but it is something and it's again I would have been a fool not to run with that ball as far as I could take it well especially with your broader Ambitions you know cuz you were interested in the broader sense in connecting with an audience filmmaker as well it's like suddenly I mean who knows what I could do with this right so but to put a

button on this what happened I uploaded I did the same thing I uploaded a video with a different student who hadn't seen that video and I thought cuz we it was just from another conversation but it was identical the pattern was so identical I thought this might be worth sharing yeah it's identical to the last one so what could go wrong yeah he was a new student so I was like we need to get permission from your parents if you want to have after it was done I was like look we could upload this it's

identical I need permission from your parents like written confirmation I need your permission because you're new so we don't have the releases and so I got that uploaded told the music teacher and he was like you know just cuz we'd been now we'd been going back and forth on what what to do with the channel cuz we knew people wanted that kind of you know that's what the audience wanted to see real students yeah right but I was and I had toyed with it I alluded to the Communist conversation with that other student and um

so I had posted that previously two weeks go by I in the middle of the day I get called into a meeting and they say we've decided to part ways because uh you uploaded a video to YouTube against policy uh we told you not to do that um I said you told me not to do that you congratulated me I was like how was it okay the first time and I I could tell though when I walked in the room their mind was already made up it didn't matter what I said so I didn't really

say much and I said are are you alluding to this student I spoke to the parents and as have you spoken to his parents yeah and they said um no we're happy to do an investigation reach out to him if that's what you'd like or you can just agree to leave now and they said could you check with his parents like it seems like a factor to take in they so I said for sure we'll just do the investigation you know they's like okay go home and and HR will be in touch in 3 days

but um I couldn't touch anything they took my computer everything and I was like escorted like a criminal out all right well look I think I'm going to end the YouTube side with that but I think what we'll do on the daily War side is delve into that in a little bit more detail sure it'd be interesting to continue the conversation about well why your school made that decision what possible role HR might have played and how these things could be managed in general because well people who are watching and listening are going to be

interested in well what strategy should you adopt if you dare to take risks within the confines of an organization and find yourself running a foul of the authorities and I want to know like exactly how you thought this through so for everybody who's watching and listening you can join us on the daily weite for the REM remainder of this conversation and for now Warren thank you very much for coming in today to talk about this yeah yeah so you know part of your story is what happens when you mess with an incredibly powerful technology right

because you're you're living your normal life and you're playing with YouTube that is the interes oh definitely it's like look the hell out because this is a Global Communication platform that you're publishing on and so how do you deal with that well no one knows no one knows hence the discussion so thank you very much for that and to everybody watching listening to film crew here in Manhattan today thank you guys very much for setting this up and ran very smoothly technically and that's always good and join us on the daily War side everyone for

the continuation of this discussion bye-bye [Music]