Difference between revisions of "19: Bret Weinstein - The Prediction and the DISC/lang-it"

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== Transcript ==
== Transcript ==


'''Eric:''' Hello. This is Eric Weinstein. I'm going to be recording a short introduction to this episode because I think it's probably the most important episode of The Portal to date. That said, under normal circumstances, I probably would have either edited this heavily or not released it at all. It starts off quite slow and it gets quite awkward before finding its pace. Now what's going on is that the interview subject is none other than my brother Bret Weinstein. In Bret's case, you probably know him if you know him at all as the heroic professor who stood up against what can only be described—I swear I'm not making this up—as an Maoist insurrection at an American college in the Pacific Northwest, the [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evergreen_State_College Evergreen State College]. It was a very strange situation because somehow the national media that we would normally have thought would have covered such a story—for example, the media that covered the [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willard_Straight_Hall#1969_building_takeover takeover of Straight Hall at Cornell] in the 60s—that media was almost absent completely. At least, they were absent for a very long time before they entered late in the game. And why is that? Because the story ran counter-narrative—that is, the students at the Evergreen State College who were behaving in a racist fashion were actually students of color, and this was an exactly counter-narrative story. And Bret, who stood up to this racist insurrection, was in fact somebody with a history of standing up against racism. He had, in fact, been a student at the University of Pennsylvania, my Alma mater, an Ivy league school, and had to leave because of death threats when he stood up for women of color who were being abused for the amusement and the sexual amusement of white fraternity students. So Bret was supposed to be familiar to many of you from that, from an old national news story, and he was also the hero of a book called [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/476218.The_Tapir_s_Morning_Bath The Tapir’s Morning Bath].
'''Eric:''' Ciao. Sono Eric Weinstein. Sto registrando una piccola introduzione a questo episodio perché penso sia ad oggi il più importante episodio de “Il Portale”. Detto questo, sotto normali circostanze, avrei probabilmente apportato pesanti modifiche o non lo avrei pubblicato affatto. Inizia molto lentamente e prima di prendere il ritmo diventa leggermente sconfortante. Ora, quello che è successo è che il protagonista di questa intervista non è ben che meno mio fratello Bret Weinstein. Nel caso di Bret, se lo conosceste, lo ricordereste come l’eroico professore che sfidò quello che può essere solamente descritto come – sono sincero, non me lo sto inventando – l’insurrezione Maoista in un college americano del Nord-Ovest Pacifico, il college statale Evergreen. È stata una situazione molto strana perché in qualche modo i media nazionali che penseremmo avrebbero riportato una storia di questo tipo – quei media, per esempio, che riportarono l’assedio della Straight Hall della Cornell negli anni sessanta – sono quasi del tutto scomparsi. O perlomeno si sono mantenuti assenti molto a lungo prima di prendere parte a questo gioco. E qual è la ragione di ciò? Perché la storia seguiva una traiettoria totalmente opposta allo standard: gli studenti del college statale Evergreen che si stavano comportando in maniera razzista erano in realtà studenti di colore, per l’appunto una narrativa totalmente opposta. E Bret, che si oppose a questa insurrezione razzista, aveva già allora un record per aver preso posizione contro il razzismo. Lui, infatti, era stato uno studente della Università della Pennsylvania, la mia alma mater, una Ivy League, che ha dovuto lasciare a causa di minacce di morte quando si mise dalla parte delle donne di colore che venivano molestate per il divertimento e vizio sessuale degli studenti bianchi delle fraternite. Per questo dovreste essere familiari del nome di Bret, da una vecchia storia nazionale, lui che fu inoltre l’eroe di un libro chiamato “Il bagno mattutino del Tapiro”.


But somehow, the news media, who chose not to report on the Evergreen story, was not very interested either in figuring out who Bret was, because the stories showed that there was a contradictory problem with the main narrative. In some sense, that's going to be recapitulated in this episode. There is an official narrative about what happened in the scientific episode, and there is a narrative which I think is much closer to the truth, which I happened to be one of a very small number of witnesses to this alternate story. Now the key question is whether to tell the story or not, and you're going to see that both of us have a certain amount of trepidation and energy around the question of whether or not to break a longstanding public silence. When Bret found himself as professor in exile along with his wife, [http://heatherheying.com/ Heather Heying], I had thought that the American biology establishment would realize that one of their own had been thrown overboard as jetsam, and that he would have been invited to many universities to give seminars in biology.  
Ma per qualche ragione, i mezzi di informazione, che decisero di non riportare la storia Evergreen, non erano neanche interessati a scoprire chi fosse Bret poiché le notizie dimostravano l’esistenza di una contraddizione con la narrativa principale. In qualche senso, questo verrà ripreso in questo episodio. C’è anche una narrativa ufficiale per quanto riguarda l’episodio scientifico, e c’è una narrativa che è molto più vicina alla verità, della quale io sono uno dei pochi testimoni. Ora la domanda chiave è se raccontare la storia o meno, e voi noterete che entrambi [Bret ed Io] abbiamo una certa trepidazione e energia attorno a questa questione: se rompere o meno questo lungo silenzio pubblico. Quando Bret ha capito di essere un professore in esilio a fianco di sua moglie, Heather Heying, avrei pensato che l’establishment americano per la biologia avrebbe realizzato che uno dei loro era stato gettato in mare come una zavorra, e che lo avrebbero quindi invitato a dare seminari di biologia.


It took awhile for me to understand that, because he was found at Evergreen State College, the people who taught at highly ranked research universities thought that Bret was something more like a teacher rather than a researcher. In fact, he had been the top student of one of the most important evolutionary theorists in the United States, [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_D._Alexander Richard Alexander] at the University of Michigan, as well as a student of [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Trivers Bob Trivers], formerly of Harvard, arguably one of the greatest living evolutionary theorists, I think presently at Rutgers. Bret was somebody who had actually done really interesting work in his thesis, and for some reason, the system found it very disturbing to consider the full implications of his work.  
It took awhile for me to understand that, because he was found at Evergreen State College, the people who taught at highly ranked research universities thought that Bret was something more like a teacher rather than a researcher. In fact, he had been the top student of one of the most important evolutionary theorists in the United States, [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_D._Alexander Richard Alexander] at the University of Michigan, as well as a student of [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Trivers Bob Trivers], formerly of Harvard, arguably one of the greatest living evolutionary theorists, I think presently at Rutgers. Bret was somebody who had actually done really interesting work in his thesis, and for some reason, the system found it very disturbing to consider the full implications of his work.  
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