#1274 - Nicholas Christakis

Joe Rogan (0:00)

The gay folks took over the rainbow.

Four, three, two. Will it work today, Jamie? Yes, hello Nicholas.

Nicholas Christakis (0:13)

Hey Joe, how are you man?

Joe Rogan (0:14)

Great to meet you.

Nicholas Christakis (0:15)

It's really good to meet you too.

Joe Rogan (0:16)

I became aware of you like many people did with the infamous Halloween costume incident at Yale, where, explain that for people who don't know what happened.

Because it was kind of a crazy scene. It went national.

Nicholas Christakis (0:31)

Yes, it was a moment when, around the country, many students were struggling with how to balance conflicting sort of needs. Try to keep that little bit closer to your face. Conflicting needs.

How on the one hand to create an environment in schools where everyone sort of felt welcome. As we've democratized admissions to our American universities, as I think we should have, people from all walks of life have started moving into these institutions, claiming them for their own, which I think is appropriate. But at the same time, these institutions had wonderful heritages of commitment to free expression and open debate and reason as a principle for resolving our differences. And some of those values came into tension. And so around the country, there was a lot of heat about this. And I happened to walk into a propeller myself.

And wound up in some challenging circumstances. And it was not the worst thing that's ever happened to me, but it was in the top 10 challenging moments I've had in my life, let's say.

Joe Rogan (1:45)

Yeah, that's a very lawyer-like way of describing exactly what happened.

Nicholas Christakis (1:49)

Well, yes, I mean, the thing is, I struggle, I mean, you can tell the story if you want, and then I can correct things. But here's the thing, it's my job to be a teacher, and I have taken responsibility for teaching young people. And it is the case that many people lost their minds, I mean, lost their senses. And the faculty too, incidentally. I mean, it's one thing to talk about people in college age people, but then the faculty also didn't necessarily do what they should have done. But the thing is, is that my commitment, my commitment is to teaching more generally, and I don't want to be defined by that event. I don't want that to become the most important thing about me, you know, I have this book, this book that we're gonna talk about that is an important thing in my life, it instantiates my values, it talks about what I think is important about the world.

So, I'm trying to be balanced about it.

It's one thing that happened, I did my best, it's in the past.

Joe Rogan (2:49)

Well, let me help out here because you're being so nice about the whole thing.

So people know what we're talking about. There was an incident that was captured on someone's cell phone where you were standing there.

Nicholas Christakis (3:02)

Just many people, it was an hour of footage, five or six different angles, so a clip went viral. But I want to emphasize that there were many people filming that day and an hour or more of the two or three hours I was out there as available.

Joe Rogan (3:14)

Well, I'm glad that you had the courage to do that, though, to stand out there and talk to those kids. But some of them were clearly...

There's something that happens when people become extremely self-indulgent when they know that they have this platform and they have someone who is in a position of authority and they get to hamstring them in front of the public. And that's what I felt was going on. Just my understanding of human nature, I knew what she was doing.

What she was doing by shouting and screaming, this is our fucking home, we're supposed to be safe here. I was like, oh, I see what's going on. She's throwing up the flag of virtue for all of her friends to see how amazing she was so she's putting on a show. People do that, it's human nature. You handled it admirably. You stood there and you just listened to her and you never yelled back and you never raised your voice and you remained calm. But that sort of environment where the children, and I wanna say children, they're basically adults, but acting like children.

Nicholas Christakis (4:17)

But this is one of the ironies. People that age can fight in wars and lose their lives.

So I think it's a difficult challenge because on the one hand, it's right and appropriate to hold people responsible for their actions. Certainly if you're 20 years old, you're an adult. You're still growing, you're still changing, you're still learning. I'm not the same man I was when I was 20