It's almost like she helped him get his point across, it was clearly an "Us vs Them" debate for her, she pushed it hard, and Peterson defused her with his argumentation and composture.
It's kinda sad how things have gotten to this football team filosophy where you defend your side no matter what. I'm glad Peterson is having all this reach, even though I don't agree 100% with all he says.
Not with what he said in the interview, I wasn't clear about that, it's more about some of the concepts that he goes about in his biblical series and in some interviews, can't find a link right now.
For example, the concept that truth can be anectodal instead of empirical (as derived from grand narratives and the reason why religious stories hold so much weight in western civilization) is still something that twists my brain. I believe there is a greater truth behind these stories, and what we tell each other are abstractions and pieces of those underlying truths. To understand and explain these narratives is to mine for what actually valuable for us, and telling them is a way of "triggering" our minds into going through the process in which those truths manifest themselves... but maybe that's the only way we can achieve a protocol of sharing primitive truths with our communication.
I think that's a part of it. Funny enough I found Jordan Peterson through HN a while back when someone linked his Maps of Meaning lectures in a thread about what books or articles changed their lives. Now we're here talking about his philosophies.
And it would have looked unseemly to just shout him down or throw him out of the studio.
So Ms. Newman used rhetorical landmines. But he's had practice dealing with those devices because he lectures smart alecky kids almost daily.