In this eye-opening discussion, U.S. Presidential Candidate Vivek Ramaswamy and cultural critic James Lindsay delve into the tactics and strategies used by the left in the ongoing culture war. They discuss the challenges within the current political landscape, the rise of the ESG movement, and the strategic maneuvers used to demoralize and exhaust creative problem-solving. Together, they expose the hidden playbook of their opponents and emphasize the need to address the root causes of cultural and political issues. The conversation provides valuable insights into the long-term strategies employed by activist groups to infiltrate and subvert institutions.

In this episode, Vivek Ramaswamy and Jennifer Sey engage in a thought-provoking conversation about the definition and potential dangers of "woke" culture, particularly in relation to free speech and corporate America. Jennifer Sey, a former executive who left her job after expressing an unpopular opinion on school closures, shares her personal experiences navigating the world of wokeness. They discuss the impact of wokeness on various aspects of society, including the creation of hostile work environments, censorship, and the importance of maintaining apolitical spaces in a diverse democracy.

Dr. Jordan B. Peterson and 2024 presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy discuss his ongoing campaign, the long-growing hunger for depth in political discussion, the dire need for a renewed American vision, and how Vivek plans to strip the Washington administrative agencies of their unconstitutional powers. Vivek Ramaswamy is an entrepreneur, author, and political activist. Vivek has been making headlines since announcing his candidacy for the 2024 presidential election, running on a platform in part to dismantle the expansive and corrupt bureaucracy that has seeped into nearly all facets of American government. Prior to this, Ramaswamy was the founder and CEO of the biopharmaceutical company Roivant Sciences. Leaving in 2021, he published “Woke, Inc.: Inside Corporate America's Social Justice Scam.” In 2022, he co-founded Strive Asset Management with Anson Frericks, which focuses on an alternative to the now-pushed ESG investment framework. That same year Ramaswamy published “Nation of Victims: Identity Politics, the Death of Merit, and the Path Back to Excellence.” and has since been deemed one of the “Intellectual Godfathers of the anti-woke movement.”

Dr. Jordan B. Peterson and Jonathan Pageau discuss the depth of narrative found in the classic fairy tales, the loss of positively impactful narratives in the wake of woke culture, the potential utility of Ai as a means to prod new insights from historic and biblical texts, the cynicism of postmodernism, and the overall necessity to preserve foundational storytelling. Jonathan Pageau is a French-Canadian liturgical artist and icon carver, known for his work featured in museums across the world. He carves Eastern Orthodox and other traditional images, and teaches an online carving class. He also runs a YouTube channel dedicated to the exploration of symbolism across history and religion.

Dr. Jordan B. Peterson and Vivek Ramaswamy discuss ESG investing, the culture wars, the upcoming US presidential election, and Vivek’s recently announced candidacy. 

Vivek is an American business leader and New York Times bestselling author of “Woke, Inc.: Inside Corporate America’s Social Justice Scam,” along with his second book, “Nation of Victims: Identity Politics, the Death of Merit, and the Path Back to Excellence.” 

Born and raised in Cincinnati, Ohio, he often recounts the sage advice from his father: “If you’re going to stand out, then you might as well be outstanding.” This set the course for his life: a nationally ranked tennis player, and the valedictorian of his high school, St. Xavier. He went on to graduate summa cum laude in Biology from Harvard and received his J.D. from Yale Law School while working at a hedge fund, then started a biotech company, Roivant Sciences, where he oversaw the development of five drugs that went on to become FDA-approved. 

In 2022, he founded Strive, an Ohio-based asset management firm that directly competes with asset managers like BlackRock, State Street, Vanguard, and others, who use the money of everyday citizens to advance environmental and social agendas that many citizens and capital owners disagree with.

This is the dumbest and most hilarious story of the day. Kay LeClaire, a white woman, now identifies as a Native American two-spirit. Kay is now being accused of being a "pretendian", a term Natives call those who pretend to have Indigenous heritage.

With his many varied interests in technology, politics, and culture, Peter Thiel has often been described as a Renaissance man. So perhaps it was only fitting that we traveled to Florence, Italy—where the Renaissance originated and thrived for hundreds of years—to speak with him. In this wide-ranging interview, we cover several topics, including his support for candidates across the country who are running as outsiders, why technology has not fulfilled many of its early promises, and why California is still America’s incubator for ideas and growth.

Bari Weiss began her career as a mainstream media prodigy, landing coveted positions at the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times in her early twenties. In 2020, she famously resigned from the Times when conditions there became intolerable for her, famously writing in a public resignation letter that “Twitter is not on the masthead of The New York Times. But Twitter has become its ultimate editor.” Now Weiss is the publisher of Common Sense, her wildly popular Substack newsletter, and the host of the Honestly with Bari Weiss podcast. Her ambition is nothing short of becoming a 21st-century one-woman media company, and based on what she reveals in this interview, she is well on her way to achieving that goal.

The Hoover Institution Library & Archives presents the Fanning the Flames Speaker Series. This eleventh session is moderated by Alice Tseng, professor of Japanese Art and Architecture at Boston University and presented by Shaoqian Zhang, associate professor, East Asian Art History at Oklahoma State University. The “Tradition Repurposed: New Year’s Pictures, Cartoons and Political Posters around the Second Sino-Japanese War” virtual event is on Thursday, May 19, 2022 at 12:00 pm PDT | 3:00 pm EDT (60 minutes). 

Historically, Sino-Japanese cultural exchanges were dominated by a China-oriented mentality. This relationship shifted abruptly in the late nineteenth century with Japan’s rapid westernization and industrialization, which coincided with the cultural and political implosion of the Qing Dynasty, and was further inverted as Japan became a world power and China struggled to reassemble itself. It was thus with a sense of justification that the Japanese advertised themselves as the legitimate protector of East Asian culture, and key Chinese cities under their occupation became a battleground for what Japan called the New Order in East Asia. 

The influence of Japanese aesthetics on Chinese art had also become increasingly noticeable by the end of the Nineteenth century.  However, not until around the Second Sino-Japanese War did the Chinese political and military agencies start paying attention to the effectiveness of Japanese visual propaganda strategies in China, especially to the exceptional Japanese skill at adopting traditional Chinese folk motifs. This lecture examines the subsequent war of propaganda prints between the Guomindang and the Japanese militarists during the 1930s and 1940s. 

To learn more about the accompanying book (edited by Kay Ueda, curator of the Japanese Diaspora Collection at Hoover) and to see past events, videos, and highlights, please visit our interactive online exhibition website, Fanning the Flames: Propaganda in Modern Japan. Please also visit our exhibition, now open in Hoover Tower at Stanford University.  For complete details please visit our exhibition web page.

In this episode, Douglas Murray and I discuss the current assault on the West, slavery, gratitude, racist mathematics, whiteness, (non-Western) accomplishments, and individual sovereignty. 

Douglas Murray is the associate editor of The Spectator and the bestselling author of seven books, including The Strange Death of Europe: Immigration, Identity, Islam; The Madness of Crowds, and The War on the West.