Luke Ford

I’m realizing that my Youtube show (preparation, delivery and aftermath) is about 50% of my life, and deleting a show is like deleting a part of myself. When the shows goes badly, I feel bad. When the show goes well, I feel well.

My therapist years ago said I was inflexible, that I have a problem dealing with frustration, and that I cut people out of my life too easily rather than negotiate with them.

I’m getting feedback that I get way too wounded from conflict on the show.

I have more empathy today for hosts who routinely cut people out of their life publicly and putting them in his black book if he feels they are deliberately sabotaging his show or trying to hurt him (as opposed to disagreeing or criticizing).

It’s exhausting rounding up people for a show, getting their sound and video levels right, and keeping up an interesting discussion within Youtube’s increasingly narrow terms of service.

Usually cutting people out of your life is self-destructive. I would like to think I no longer cut people out of my life, that I may pause or reduce the relationship instead, and I try to remember that time heals all wounds.

I’ve put a great deal of effort into getting the technical aspects of my show right, but the number one factor deciding how many people will watch is the guests. The care and maintenance of guests and panelists determines the success of shows like mine. When the content of a show is a vigorous discussion, it is easy to fall out with people. Also, most people who have the time and inclination to go on a Youtube show are anti-social.

To the extent that I’ve succeeded in this regard, I owe it to:

* Living up to my word (includes punctuality).
* Finding topics of mutual interest.
* Being a generous host. Not trying to hog the mic. Not being afraid of allowing others to shine and allowing myself to fade into the background at times.
* Getting clarity on my values so I can make the tough decisions.
* Staying out of feuds. I don’t trash people.
* When I passionately disagree, I try to focus my disagreement on specific words and deeds rather than the totality of a person.
* My code of conduct.
* If the show makes money, after the first $200 a month for my expenses, I share it 50-50 with my guests.
* Courtesy and empathy

Regulars on my show have felt betrayed when I have:

* Changed my mind on key issues.
* Decided to take the show in a new direction.
* Decided to part ways.
* Have not listened carefully and not bothered to respond to their points.
* Allowed conversations and shows to get off track and lose coherence.
* When I have interrupted them for stupid reasons.
* Lack of courtesy and empathy
* When my comments violate their sense of decency
* Made them look bad, left them feeling sand-bagged

When I am operating the show, much of my mind is taken up by the mechanics of the show and I have much less space for developing thoughts and listening to my guests. I love going on Joseph Cotto’s show as a guest because I can concentrate solely on ideas.

I notice that when I’m running a show and talking to guests, I tend to lose my own thoughts if I listen carefully, and if I compose my own thoughts en media res, I don’t listen carefully. I notice on many of my shows, we all tend to prioritize the development of our own thoughts over listening to each other.

I notice that the most easy going guests tend to be the least reliable and that the most reliable people are the least easy going.

Every person you add to a show is potentially explosive. It is not uncommon that adding one new person drives away other regulars. So often I am thinking that I am adding to my show by bringing on someone new but in the end, what has been added does not add up to what was lost. It is very easy to lose something good and very hard to recapture it. Also, as you bring on new people, you not only add viewers, you also lose viewers.

I need to bring about five times my normal amount of conversational energy to a show or it falls flat.

When you bring a friend on the show, there’s a good chance you’ll blow up the friendship.

There are rarely permanent friends or allies on a show, only shifting alliances.

I’ve heard that a marriage needs at least a 4-1 ratio of positive interactions to negative to stay on track. It’s similar for hosting a regular panel. Once that ratio drops below 4:1, you’re in trouble.

The more important a panelist is for my show, the more tempting it is to squelch myself to get along but this lack of courage on my part eats away at the foundations of the show.

The best conversations are one on one. The more people you add to a conversation, the more shallow it gets.

“Dangerous content is the best content,” says a friend.

The more I hype the importance of what I am discussing, the more excitement I generate, the more engagement I get, just like football announcers hyping a game that’s 30-3 in the second quarter. The more intense my emotions, the more engagement, but this bad for me as a host and bad for you as a viewer. I get more money, fame and viewership the more I go in an anti-social directions. You want to tune into a show where the host says the story they are discussing is the most important event in your lifetime but 99% of the time, this is bad for you. 

Never try to pull someone out of hiding. What do wounded animals do when you try that? They bite you. It’s not their fault. It’s just their instinct.

Be not afraid is my motto. There’s no idea or book or fact or theory I am not willing to confront and analyze (though some I don’t think are productive uses of my time). I have no sacred cows. To borrow a perspective from AA, there’s no place we can’t go if we have a good reason for going there.

I’ve read Mein Kampf three times. My happiness and sanity was not in the least affected. There were nights I let the audio version play for eight hours as I drifted in and out of sleep. I was always struck by Adolf’s childish desire for a magic key to unlock how the world works.

I’ve read The Communist Manifesto and The Prince and other dangerous books. I was not scathed.

Chaim: “Luke, just food for thought about responsibility when it comes to others behavior. What about ‘Lifnay Iver Lo titen michshole’ Leviticus 19: 14. “Do not curse the deaf or put a stumbling block in front of the blind, but fear your God. I am the Lord.” Should we consider the blindness (maturity) discernability/wisdom/ propensity for bad behavior by our intended audience before introducing material to them?”

It’s a beautiful admonition. We should be heedful of our affect on other people, but we should not cross over to believing that we are responsible for their choices. We can’t control anyone but ourselves. The first thing I learned about in therapy was boundaries. Lack of them has been a lifelong problem. I instinctively want to take responsibility for stuff that is not my responsibility and shirk responsibility for stuff that is my responsibility. I’m still learning where I end and others begin, and I still feel the old tug to feel guilty and involved in stuff that is not mine.

I’ve long found it easier to get all wrapped up in the lives of others instead of taking charges of my own. I still have vestigial tugs of this dysfunction, an inner voice that keeps popping up, saying you should feel guilty over what you suggested to XYZ and how that didn’t work out for him, and my pre-frontal cortex bats that voice back down and says let go.

Pete: “What if the audience is a minor?”

If the audience is a minor, you still can’t control them. Parents can’t fully control a 2yo. Minors have less agency than adults in general (some smart 11yos have more agency than some low IQ adults will ever have) so we need to be more careful with them. If a 12yo decides to kill himself, that’s not usually the primary responsibility of his parents or his friends.

Chaim: “But the biblical injunction would find ethical fault with someone for let’s say inviting out a former alchoholic for a beer.”

There’s a world of difference between “ethical fault” and responsibility. If you knowingly invite an alcoholic for a drink, you don’t have responsibility for him. You have however exhibited an ethical fault.

Pete: “One question I do have for Luke: now that you’ve seen how someone with a PhD could respond to Mein Kampf, do you have any reservations about suggesting others study MK? Because it seems like there is empirical evidence that it is equivalent to suggesting someone try meth.”

No. Anyone who loses his mind after reading Mein Kampf has a pathology that the book becomes an excuse to exhibit. Without the Kampf, the pathology would simply exhibit itself in other ways.

Former Orthodox rabbi David Gruber told me in 2008: “A year and a half into my three year contract, I’d always been very liberal and skeptical. I’d always asked questions that other people didn’t ask and troubled by stuff that maybe didn’t trouble other people. I was pretty comfortable knocking those square pegs into round holes from time to time.

“Then something clicked. It was The Limits of Orthodox Theology by Dr. Marc Shapiro. He’d probably be devastated but what are you going to do?

[Marc Shapiro replies to my inquiry: “One never knows how people will be affected by what you write. But I would think that the book would show him that you can still be Torah observant and not have to be so strongly bound to dogma.”]

John: “The first wave of Norwegians to leave for America in any numbers were nonconformist Protestants. This because in the early 19th century it was illegal for a Norwegian to be anything but the Church of Norway. So all nonconformist Protestants were essentially bullied to leave. I still don’t think Melchy is an extremist. I just think Melchy is an eccentric, and like R. Spencer he thinks aloud on livestream. Which is a mistake if you work in academia. I don’t have any problems with people talking about in and out groups. Every age has its own dogmas though. The only man who participated in Charlottesville who I’ve gained respect for afterwards is Jason Kessler. I still don’t know how Jason Kessler’s legal battles is gonna go, but he at least made the effort.”

Chaim: “There is a list of banned books that I made some headway into. But they are all novels written in English like Ulysses, Lady Chatterly’s Lover, Jude The Obscure. I read Who Wrote the Bible? by Richard Elliot Friedman at age 20, and realized I was not orthodox, or modern orthodox, not just lapsed but I’d say the book changed me in a profound way. I don’t know if this ‘redpilling’ was socially beneficial at the time. I was never the same again, but appreciated the bible in a new way, perhaps even appreciated its genius more as the work of men. I wanted to read it and feel confident I could expose myself to its questions. So I disagree there Luke.”

Do you think anyone who wanted to stay frum would have gone off the derech after reading that? I don’t.

Chaim: “Torah u’madah can’t survive critical theory of the bible, and the mocking of the Wellhausen model from then on seemed to be that of an ignoramus.”

Orthodox Judaism is the most powerful social model for Jewish life. Every other form of Jewish identity pales in comparison.

Pete: “The media bears responsibility too though. There is shared responsibility. People go there whole lives with repressed pathologies. Why help bring them it to the surface? I mean… who is inciting all these blacks to violence? Who is pushing false narratives of black victimhood on tv? Does Mein Kampf have a lesson for us here? Are there parallels?”

Nobody is rioting whose morals would preclude it. The only looters are those who want to loot and the media gives them blessing.

Chaim: “The enzyme metaphor is useful. It speeds up but does not cause a chemical reaction.”

“What if you gave an STD to someone?”

You harmed someone but the party that chooses to participate in sex with you bears some responsibility for their choice. If you give your wife an STD, that’s terrible and that’s on you, but it is also the price she paid for staying married to you despite your dysfunction and thus she chose to expose herself to a man who makes poor choices. If she had it all together, she would not have been with this man in the first place. Like attracts like. Yes, he gave her an STD, but this did not occur in a vacuum.