The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
526. Trump, Musk, Kennedy: the Dawn of Transparency | Michael Shellenberger
03 Mar 2025
Jordan Peterson sits down with journalist, bestselling author, and founder of Public.News, Michael Shellenberger. They discuss the key moments that ushered in rapid transparency for the U.S., from the Twitter Files to Donald Trump taking the white house. They also explore how new generations can take political responsibility for the future of the West, the need to rebuild trust in public institutions, and how to make every desert bloom. Michael Shellenberger is the founder of Public, the C.B.R. Chair of Politics, Censorship, and Free Speech at the University of Austin, and the bestselling author of San Fransicko: Why Progressives Ruin Cities (HarperCollins 2021) and Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All (HarperCollins 2020). He is a Time Magazine "Hero of the Environment," Green Book Award winner, Dao Journalism Prize-winner, and Founder of Civilization Works. Michael has broken major stories, including on the Twitter Files, for which he won the 2023 Dao Award for journalism; the Censorship Industrial Complex; San Francisco’s cash incentives for homelessness; the “Amazon Forest are the lungs of the world” myth; climate pseudoscience; climate anxiety; the U.S. government support for fracking; and forest management, climate change, and California’s fires. This episode was filmed on January 14th, 2025 | Links | For Michael Shellenberger: On X https://x.com/shellenberger?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor Public.News on Substack https://www.public.news/ Michael On Substack https://substack.com/@shellenberger Preorder Michael’s upcoming book “Pathocracy” https://www.buffalostreetbooks.com/book/9780063421578 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Full Episode
If you don't shoulder your political obligation, then the tyrants will take the right to do so out of your hands and use it against you.
I think the last 12 years, we should think of it as a woke reign of terror. I mean, really, it starts with Black Lives Matter, ends with the election of President Trump. We discover, thanks to the Twitter files, the existence of this elaborate censorship industrial complex complete with government-run disinformation efforts. How much of government spending is wasted? You know, it's classic Elon.
It was chaos. It was contradictory. The only natural resource is trust. You know, Jordan, I'm filled with a lot of optimism.
You need to get married. You need to have some children. Your family has to be an integrated part of your community. You have to serve your state and your nation. If everyone can cooperate and compete, then every desert can bloom. Hi, everybody.
I had the opportunity to speak today to Michael Schellenberger, who's well, he was a Democrat at one point, like so many people, and has turned more to the Well, I wouldn't say conservative side exactly. He's turned to whatever this new emergent side is that's signified by the union, let's say, of Trump and Musk and J.D.
Vance and Mehmet Oz and Robert Kennedy and Tulsi Gabbard, et cetera, et cetera, whatever that is. And I've had Michael on as a guest a couple of times on the show. He's a journalist. He broke the Twitter files. Elon Musk gave him access to the... the Twitter backend to delineate what had been occurring before Musk purchased the platform.
And Michael was also instrumental in breaking the WPATH files. And WPATH is, well, you could call it an organization, but it's more like a cabal of perversion and incompetence, I would say. And WPATH put themselves forward as
a scientific consultation group that established gender-affirming care as the standard of care, a standard that was immediately adopted by the lackeys and bootlickers at the American Medical Association and the American Psychiatric Association and the American Psychological Association, et cetera, ad nauseum forever.
And so Michael's a pretty useful journalist, and he's been assessing Elon Musk's work at Doge, deconstructing USAID, for example. And I wanted to talk to Michael about his views on Musk's efforts, on Musk himself, let's say, on this strange collaboration between Musk and Trump and the other people that we mentioned, and about, I suppose, his position
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