Jordan Peterson

Dr. Jordan B. Peterson is a professor emeritus of psychology at the University of Toronto, a clinical psychologist and the author of the multi-million copy bestseller 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos, #1 for nonfiction in 2018 in the US, Canada, the UK, Australia, New Zealand, Sweden, the Netherlands, Brazil and Norway, and now slated for translation into 50 languages.

Raised and toughened in the frigid wastelands of Northern Alberta, Dr. Peterson has flown a hammer-head roll in a carbon-fiber stuntplane, piloted a mahogany racing sailboat around Alcatraz Island, explored an Arizona meteorite crater with a group of astronauts, built a Native American Long-House on the upper floor of his Toronto home, and been inducted into a Pacific Kwakwaka’wakw family (see charlesjoseph.ca). He’s been a dishwasher, gas jockey, bartender, short-order cook, beekeeper, oil derrick bit re-tipper, plywood mill laborer and railway line worker. He’s taught mythology to physicians, lawyers, and businessmen; worked with Jim Balsillie, former CEO of Blackberry’s Research in Motion, on Resilient People, Resilient Planet, the report of the UN Secretary General’s High Level Panel on Global Sustainability; helped his clinical clients manage the triumphs and catastrophes of life; served as an advisor to senior partners of major Canadian law firms; penned the forward for the 50th anniversary edition of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago; lectured to more than 250,000 people across North America, Europe and Australia in one of the most-well attended book tours ever mounted; and, for The Founder Institute, identified thousands of promising entrepreneurs, in 60 different countries.

With his students and colleagues, Dr. Peterson has published more than a hundred scientific papers, advancing the modern understanding of creativity, competence and personality, while his now-classic book, Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief (released in June 2018 as a now bestselling author-read audiobook) transformed the psychology of religion. He was nominated for five consecutive years as one of Ontario’s Best University Lecturers, and is one of only three profs rated as “life changing” in the U of T’s underground student handbook of course ratings.

In 2016, shortly before the publication of 12 Rules, several of Dr. Peterson’s online lectures, videos and interviews went viral, launching him into unprecedented international prominence as a public intellectual and educator. His work, public postings and discussions are featured at:

• Jordan Peterson Videos, on YouTube, features Dr. Peterson’s university and public lectures (including a highly-viewed 15-part biblical series on Genesis, slated to continue with the Exodus stories in 2019), responses to the polarizing political crises of today, and interviews with people such as Camille Paglia, Jonathan Haidt and Ayaan Hirsi Ali, has 1.8 million subscribers, with 90 million views; videos derived from his online content by others have been viewed more than half a billion times.
• The Jordan B Peterson Podcast, with some 60 episodes, has attracted close to a million listeners per episode, with 55,000,000 downloads (plans to expand this dramatically with professional development are underway). It is reliably #1 in the Higher Education category on iTunes (often occupying all ten of the top ten episode slots), and consistently in the top five in the general Education category;
• jordanbpeterson.com, his home website, contains his blog and influential recommended reading list, attracts 25,000 views a day, for a total of more than 14,000,000 page hits to date;
• selfauthoring.com and understandmyself.com, his online self-improvement and self-understanding systems, respectively, attract 25000 users per month and were the focus of two Dr. Oz TV episodes (here and here) and three podcasts (one here)
• His public lecture tour, The 12 Rules for Life Tour, has now covered more than 125 cities, drawing 250,000 ticketed attendees, with another 100,000 tickets purchased in 40 more cities in Australia, NZ and throughout Europe;
• jordan.b.peterson on Instagram, has 500,000 followers (growing 24,000/month);
• Dr. Jordan B. Peterson, on Facebook, has 450,000 followers and an equivalent number of likes (growing 20,000/month);
• @jordanbpeterson on Twitter, has 1.2 million followers (growing 30,000/month);
• r/JordanPeterson on Reddit has 115,000 followers;
• Jordan B Peterson on Quora has 25,000 followers and 6.6 million answer views;
• When active, originally, on the crowdfunding site Patreon, Dr. Peterson had 10000 active subscribers, and was the 2nd mostly highly funded creator on the site, the 6th most-subscribed for video providers, and the 10th most-widely-subscribed of all Patreon accounts. He left Patreon in January of 2019, citing emerging censorship on the platform (see Goodbye to Patreon) and has now established subscription and donation services which can be accessed here and which have attracted more than 5000 supporters.

Dr. Peterson’s classroom lectures on mythology and the psychology of religion, based on Maps of Meaning (2016 version here), were turned into a popular 13-part TV series on Canadian public television’s TVO. Malcolm Gladwell discussed psychology with him while researching his books; Norman Doidge, author of The Brain that Changes Itself, wrote the forward to 12 Rules; and bestselling thriller writer Gregg Hurwitz employed several of his “valuable things” as a plot feature in his #1 international bestseller, Orphan X.

With his colleagues, Dr. Daniel M. Higgins and Dr. Robert O. Pihl, Dr. Peterson has also produced two online programs to help people understand themselves better and to improve their psychological and practical functioning. The newest of these, UnderstandMyself, provides its users with detailed information about their personalities, based on work he published with his students here. Tens of thousands of people now know themselves better, as a consequence of completing this 15-minute program. His original self-analysis program, the Self Authoring Suite, (featured in O: The Oprah Magazine, CBC radio, and NPR’s national website), has helped over 200,000 people resolve the problems of their past, rectify their personality faults and enhance their virtues, and radically improve their future. Research documenting the program’s effectiveness can be found here and here.

Dr. Peterson has appeared on many popular podcasts and shows, including the Joe Rogan Experience (#877, #958, #1006), The Rubin Report (12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos, Free Speech, Psychology, Gender Pronouns), H3H3 (#37), and many more. He is currently working on a new book, tentatively titled 12 More Rules for Life: Beyond Mere Order, slated for publication in early 2020, and starting a company devoted to producing a universal online adaptive education system.