Maziar Ghaderi: To Truly Know Jordan Peterson

“Yeah, there’s not a lot of lying in Jordan. That’s part of what I was trying to say with the fact that he doesn’t do small talk. If he wants to talk to you, he’ll talk to you. And sometimes the first thing he’ll ask you is something kind of serious.”

The Rise of Jordan Peterson premiered in September of this year and tells the story of Dr. Jordan B. Peterson’s ascent from a well-respected but locally known professor in Toronto to the international figure he has now become. Praised for its impartiality in storytelling, The Rise of Jordan Peterson does not take a side in the controversy that has surrounded Dr. Peterson’s work and, instead, presents the views of both his admirers and detractors. In this interview, Maziar Ghaderi, the producer of the film, joins Merion West and Kambiz Tavana to discuss the process behind the film—and, more fundamentally, what it has been like to actually know and work with Jordan Peterson. This is part one of the interview.

You are the producer of the film, and your wife is the director. But, to ask you first, for someone who doesn’t know anything about Jordan Peterson—or about the media controversy that has surrounded him for the past couple of years—how would you best describe Jordan Peterson for someone who has never heard of him?

Jordan is a lifelong academic who is greatly influenced by Nietzsche and Carl Jung. Though his PhD dissertation was in alcoholism, a persistent, sometimes torturous curiosity drives him to understand why people to are destructive ideology. He’s always been very popular at the university. Students would line up after class to talk to him. He was seen as kind of a life-changing professor, and that’s partly because he’s a really good storyteller. He loves stories, and he’s able to bring in big ideas in a way that people relate to.