0:05 - Welcome to Friday Night Live
0:24 - Politics and Geopolitics
1:53 - Exploring Persian Culture
3:54 - Origins of Dysfunction in Iran
5:40 - Child Abuse in Iran
7:39 - Israel and Iran Conflict
10:21 - Diplomatic Relations and War
12:59 - The Role of Major Powers
14:28 - The Impact of Consanguinity
19:05 - The Nature of War and Involvement
20:10 - Predictions on Escalation
21:59 - Cultural Perspectives on Warfare
25:04 - The Brain Drain in Iran
30:28 - Environmental Movements and Energy
32:35 - Building Connections in Unstable Times
36:35 - The Influence of Music on Identity
40:26 - Brian Wilson's Life and Struggles
46:41 - Family Dynamics and Abuse
49:37 - Mental Health and Substance Abuse
54:10 - The Complexity of Musical Genius
1:05:05 - Dissecting Musical Innovation
1:11:53 - Trust in Thought Leaders
1:13:17 - Urban Living and Future Safety
1:18:16 - The Future of Currency and Technology
This livestream presented a vibrant mix of personal reflections, historical context, and current geopolitical discussions, primarily centered on tensions involving Iran and Israel. The host opened the show with a playful nod to the superstitions surrounding Friday the 13th but quickly shifted the tone to acknowledge ongoing political instability, especially in America. Inviting listener questions and engagement, the host prepared to dive into politics and morality, including a philosophical inquiry contrasting moral philosophy with online sex work, which emerged from a listener’s question.
As the discussion progressed, the host shared insights from a day filled with creative work and physical activity, including progress on their novel and an invigorating hike. This was followed by a deeper dive into the specifics of contemporary geopolitical issues, particularly considering the historical roots of the Iranian conflict. The host expressed a personal connection to Iranian culture and history, recalling experiences from their youth that amplified their interest and empathy for the region.
Diving into serious subjects, the show examined alarming statistics about child abuse and neglect in Iran, noting significant prevalence across various forms of abuse, including emotional and sexual. These statistics painted a troubling picture of societal dysfunction, indicating a potential link between these issues and broader geopolitical instability. The host pointed out that the high rates of consanguinity in Iranian marriages may contribute to various social problems, including lower average IQ levels, which could complicate the country's political and military dynamics.
Tension escalated with reports of recent military confrontations between Israel and Iran, highlighting Israel's preemptive strikes aiming to hinder Iran's nuclear capabilities. The host discussed the strategic rationale behind these actions, contextualizing them within a long history of Iranian nuclear threats and the perception of existential danger felt by Israel. Several analyses provided probabilities regarding the escalation of conflict in the region, suggesting low to moderate risks of further international warfare despite the precarious situation.
Throughout the show, the host reflected on America’s historical engagement in Middle Eastern conflicts, illustrating a shift in public sentiment away from interventionism and towards wariness. This self-reflection included critiques of past military strategies that, while tactically justified at times, resulted in long-term adverse consequences for both the U.S. and the occupied regions. By tying current events back to historical lessons, the conversation illuminated the complexities of foreign involvement, especially in cultures significantly different from the American experience.
The discussion then meandered into philosophical territory, contemplating the ethics of supplying weapons to conflicted regions and the implications of such actions. The host expressed a strong anti-war sentiment unless facing imminent invasion and urged listeners to think critically about the consequences of military engagement and foreign intervention.
Later, the tone shifted more personal and reflective with a poignant tribute to Brian Wilson, the Beach Boys’ founding member, following his recent passing. The host candidly detailed Wilson's struggles with mental health, addiction, and the troubled dynamics of his childhood, particularly the abuse suffered at the hands of his father. This segment intertwined music history with personal stories, revealing the complexities of Wilson's genius and the toll of personal demons that shaped his life and work.
The latter part of the show opened listeners to a mix of existential questions and discussions on culture, community, and authenticity in relationships, hinting at the challenges people face in connecting sincerely within fragmented societal frameworks. The host offered advice on forming genuine connections, emphasizing the importance of authenticity while acknowledging the difficulties arising from the current socio-political climate.
Concluding the show, the host highlighted the overarching need for thoughtful discourse on the implications of international conflicts and their societal impacts. Reflecting on the interconnectedness of personal and political struggles, the host invited continued engagement from listeners, encouraging them to ask questions and share their thoughts, maintaining an open dialogue on topics both light and heavy.
Overall, this session was a rich blend of personal anecdotes, rigorous analysis of foreign policy, a cultural tribute, and deep philosophical musings, leaving listeners with both a sense of intimacy and a call for critical reflection on the current state of the world.
[0:00] Good evening, good evening. Oh my god, it's Friday, the 13th of June, 2025.
[0:06] Oh, the Knights Templar, 12th century. That's where it all comes from, apparently. So welcome to your Friday night live! And, yes, the only fan noises should be coming from you, the lovely audience. Ah, it's beginning to get quieter. Excellent. All right.
[0:24] So i hope you're having an interesting week an interesting week is certainly being happening to everyone particularly those of our friends in america so how can i how can i help you i suppose given the um direness of the situation it is probably worth me breaking a rule or two and being willing to talk politics, if you like, or geopolitics, or war, or anything like that.
[1:01] I can certainly help, if you like. And if you have questions, or comments, or anything you want to talk about, I am all ears, I am all yours. I did a show today. Gosh, what a day of work. So um i went this morning to work on my uh novel which i uh finished a uh chapter chapter 11 about 45 000 words it's going to be a long one though i'll tell you that and then i went for a uh hour almost two hour hike about hour half hour 40 hike where i answered a challenging question from a listener about how moral philosophy is different from online sex work. Not something I was sure I was going to have to do in my life as a whole, but I guess some people have questions.
[1:53] I came back, spent some time with the old fam, did some research in case you all wanted to talk about, oh, I don't know, what is there going on in the world that might be interesting for you to, to listen to or know about. Is it anything to do with, say, I don't know, an attack on Iran by Israel? So...
[2:20] Let's look at what may be going on. Full disclosure, one of my favorite families when I was a teenager was headed by a Persian man. Of course, he was from Iran, but he insisted that it be referred to, which I understand, as Persia, which I sympathize with. A woman I dated in my 20s whose family was from Mumbai also was Persian, and she was fairly light-skinned. She was almost Italian-looking, actually pretty much Italian-looking. So I do have some history with regards to sympathy with understanding of the Persians, historical Persians. I have a great admiration for a lot of aspects of the Persian culture, and that, of course, was taken over in 79 with the Iranian fundamentalist Islamic takeover where the leaders were replaced with mullahs and the women went into their beekeeper outfits and the world of the persians kind of sank into a semi middle-aged kind of perspective which was not of course ideal to put it mildly oh yes thank you for your tip joseph freedomain.com slash donate.
[3:44] Somebody says, I am from Iran. Oh, so, yeah, I am from Iran and also like to be called Persian. Yes, yes, that's right. And that's right.
[3:54] So let's talk about the origins of dysfunction and war in society on the Iranian side. So let's look at the prevalence of physical abuse, emotional abuse and neglect in both genders is quite something.
[4:21] The prevalence of physical abuse, emotional abuse, and neglect in both genders differed from 9.7% to 67.5%, 17.9% to 91.1% and 23.6% to 80.18% respectively. The pooled estimate of the prevalence of child physical abuse in both genders was 53.59%, which is really, really high. The pooled estimate of prevalence of child emotional abuse was almost 65%. Percent child neglect was a 41 percent almost and that's not great now Iran has a population of more than 75 million some places I've read 90 million some places I've read average IQ of 85 sometimes I've read higher so 31 percent of the population is younger than 19, years of age. And a study conducted in Tehran, the capital city of Iran, revealed the prevalence of 17.5% for physical abuse and prevalence of 36.4% and 49.46% for neglect and emotional abuse. Another study showed that the prevalence of emotional abuse, physical abuse, and neglect was 78, 56, and 39% in Zanjan, respectively.
[5:40] The prevalence of childhood sexual abuse is estimated as high as 32.5% one out of three children. So that's not ideal. Existing laws do not specifically address child sexual abuse. Child abuse in Iran increased 12.5% in one year alone, 2019. Child abuse in Iran has risen during the coronavirus pandemic due to rising social ills like poverty and mental health problems. Violence against children has increased five-fold before the coronavirus crisis, the cases involve physical violence against children and even rape. The difference today is that the beating of children by their parents is constantly being repeated. Another issue in Iran, of course, which we know affects IQ, Iran has an almost 40% consanguinity marriage. Consanguinity is cousin marriage and other closely related marriages. It's very high. Russia is 0.1%. Iran is almost 40%. So...
[6:52] And Mike Cernovich posted, I could not get confirmation of it, but he posted that Iran had a policy of letting high IQ people leave the country. I don't know that that's true. Maybe he's got some contacts, of course, in the Persian community, I think based on marriage. So maybe that's true. I couldn't get any particular confirmation of it. But whether you accept that it is official or just unofficial, there has been a massive brain drain, of course, from Iran or the Persian region since the late 70s. So that is a a very big issue and it just means that it is.
[7:39] You've got a relatively low iq population in general in battle against the israelis who are some of the smartest uh and uh most defensively aggressive people on the planet i don't know that it's going to be much of a conflict i mean i don't know that it's going to be much of an equal fight over time you sort of think of the pager thing and uh what happened uh was it yesterday where they had 200 israeli fighters scouring the skies over iran and decapitating military personnel nuclear personnel that they're sort of heads of these things and it's funny of course it's just a coincidence, but I wrote about this almost 20 years ago in my book, Practical Anarchy, and I also wrote about it in my novel, The Future, which was, I guess, four or so years ago, that the way that you wage war most intelligently is to target the leaders of.
[8:41] Your enemies. Don't target the ground troops, target the leaders, and this, of course, seems to have happened. And again, I'm not saying this is anything to do with me, but it is an interesting coincidence about this. So there are some estimates. The odds of the Israel-Aran conflict spreading into a broader regional and global war involving multiple states or sustained multi-front fighting are low to moderate with a rough probability range of 15 to 30%. So low likelihood, 15 to 20%, the conflict remains limited to Israel and Iran. With missiles slash drone exchanges fizzling out due to depleted stocks, diplomatic pressure, or Iran's weakened capacity. Regional and global powers stay out and proxies play a minimal role.
[9:29] Moderate likelihood 20 to 30 percent escalation occurs due to a miscalculation a significant iranian attack on u.s basis israeli strikes causing mass civilian casualties or covert russian slash chinese arm support this could draw in limited proxy or regional involvement but stops short of a full-scale war high likelihood is less than 10 percent a full-blown full-blown regional war involving major powers u.s russia china or multiple states is highly unlikely due to strange strategic constraints, economic stakes, and historical restraint. Iran in its sort of current Mueller-ruled form is largely isolated from allies as a whole, and is viewed as a rogue state or a dangerous nation, even by the sort of the local powers that be. And please understand, I'm far from an expert in the Middle East, so I just wanted to sort of mention that.
[10:21] As a whole. Let me just get to your comments here. Now, with regards to Israel and Iran, I mean, I obviously don't have any back channels, but, of course, Israel has struck because, according to Israeli intelligence, however much you accept or don't accept that, I can't tell you anything because I don't have any answers that way, but they said that Iran was within weeks of... Uh getting uh a nuclear weapon and now i mean i've been hearing about this since the early 90s it seems like every year or two it's like they're going to have a nuclear weapon within five years three years six years six months whatever but the uh the story from israel is that iran was, imminently about to get a nuclear weapon and uh given the hostility of the iranian regime who funds Hezbollah quite a bit towards the Israeli state, a preemptive strike. It's something that they would justify according to that. Again, whether you believe it or not, I couldn't possibly tell you, but that is the official story.
[11:33] Now, as far as I understand it, Trump was opposed to the strike. He said, you know, let me work on the diplomatic side and let's go that way. And he did not want the strike to occur. And the strike did occur. What that's going to do to American-Israeli relations remains to be seen. But it is pretty wild to see the change from when I was younger about the general, components of the Middle East. Of course, when I was younger, there was the first Gulf War, And then, of course, the invasion of Iraq and so on. And people were pretty gung-ho for that kind of stuff in America. Of course, after 9-11, people were pretty gung-ho because they had basically been led to believe that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and had somehow been involved in 9-11, which I don't particularly think he was. 9-11 came out of the Mujahideen in Afghanistan, and they of course had been funded and trained by the CIA to fight against Russia in Afghanistan in the 80s, and then they turned on America for the ostensible reason that America had troops stationed in Saudi Arabia, which was considered holy land, to the Mujahideen, and so there was that. So...
[12:53] Yeah, so I mean, gold is up, Bitcoin is down, but Bitcoin bounced back after the last sort of threat.
[13:00] And so where does this go? I mean, Russia is probably not going to do much. They're barked down in Ukraine. China has never had a history of directly engaging militarily in the Middle East. So they may offer Iran covert support by arming them or some sort of diplomatic support. But the idea that they would go in directly is quite unlikely.
[13:29] So I think that they got some advance warning in America and have decided to work as best as they can, or at least this is what they say. They've decided to work as best as they can to sit this one out, whether that means indirect support, probably.
[13:49] But the, yeah, so Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, and Jordan have never really wanted Iran to get nukes. And they've cooperated with Israel. They intercepted Iranian drones in April 2024 to prevent this from happening.
[14:16] Turkey and Pakistan, I mean, they support the Muslim causes, but neither of them have signaled any intent to intervene militarily. And, of course, Pakistan's got its own internal challenges, and Turkey has NATO ties.
[14:29] So that makes involvement kind of improbable. Now of course there was a again we don't know for sure but according to israel they decapitated the, leadership both militarily and from a nuclear standpoint because they said they were enriching the uranium far beyond what they need for civilian purposes right so they were in like five percent enrichment for you for um purposes that are civilian based and power based and they were 50 to 90 percent which means that it was aiming towards the idea of getting nuclear weapons rather than just having nuclear power and then of course as is the case in war the enemy gets a vote there was some strike back i think about 100 rockets were sent towards israel and uh.
[15:21] Apparently only five to seven got through because of the Iron Dome and so on, or other ways that they have to counter these kinds of things. So, of course, the hope is that it is limited, that they have gotten their wish or their way, which is to prevent Iran from having these nuclear weapons and things go and quiet down and so on. But, yeah, it is pretty wild to see how different the reaction is now as opposed to the past. There does seem, I mean, the weariness in the U.S. Regarding Iraq and regarding Afghanistan is something that is very new and it's fairly unprecedented, really. It's fairly unprecedented for the American population to be this weary of Middle Eastern entanglements. But the humbling, I won't say the humiliation, because, I mean, America achieved its military objectives. It's just that the relative freedoms that were hoped for were unable to be sustained for a variety of religious and population reasons that the Middle East is not exactly the most fertile Ukrainian-style black soil ground for the emergence of a Jeffersonian-style republic.
[16:39] But given the failures and you've probably seen this bitter meme that you know if you ever feel useless in your job just remember it took the american military you know 20 years and trillions of dollars to replace the taliban with the taliban and so this idea that it's like, there's a bunch of seagulls eating some food you run at them they scatter and then when you run past they just come back right so there's this idea that it looks like you're doing something everyone's gone. And then for reasons that we've talked about before, they generally tend to coalesce back into their previous shape. And it is, of course, my massive hope and goal that any thoughts towards something like colonialism is scrubbed from the Western mindset. This white man's burden has just been an absolute complete and total fracking catastrophe for the West as a whole. And of course, if the seagulls scatter, so to speak, and I'm sorry to be talking about human beings as seagulls, it's just an analogy. But if the seagulls scatter when you're there, and then the moment you leave, they just come back, then really, what's the point? I mean, you're not even really slowing things down that much.
[17:48] So there is a funny sort of sideswipe that happens in modern politics, which is the idea that if you're only supplying weapons or training, that you're somehow not involved. Now, of course, this is how things started out in the early 60s with Vietnam. It was just training, right? That's all that JFK was doing, just some training. But to me, just sort of my amateur, non-military opinion, is that if you are...
[18:22] If you supply weapons to someone and you know that they're going to use it in an unjust fashion or they're going to use it in a violent fashion or, of course, weapons would be used as a violent fashion, then you are part of it. Like, if there are two cartels fighting and you supply weapons to one of the cartels engaged in a turf battle with the other cartel, would that not be being an accessory to a crime? So supplying weapons to a combatant's army is getting involved.
[18:56] And that's just a bad idea as a whole. I mean, I'm against war, unless it's a purely defensive war based upon immediate imminent invasion.
[19:06] I'm against war, of course. I mean, that doesn't really take much to say or take any particular intelligence to put forward. But this idea that you're not involved if you're only supplying weaponry and training it's like you kind of are at least legally you would be uh in in the eyes of most sort of western common law practices so but people sort of think that it's a little asterisk it's like no no no we're not right so personally personally my particular prediction is that this is uh going to fade out, i don't know that it's an accident other than of course if iran was about to get these nukes and that's why Israel did what it did.
[19:45] It probably is not an accident that it occurred under a Republican president, because under a Republican president, those on the right are more likely to agree and approve of military action as opposed to on the left. Each team likes their own military leaders. I mean, as you know, I did a whole presentation on Barack Obama back in the day. He was dropping bombs every 20 minutes throughout his entire presidency.
[20:10] It was 100,000 plus bombs and I mean just crazy stuff and of course people on the right were pointing out how bad that was people on the left didn't mind it in fact they approved of it in some ways and in the same way if there is going to be military action in the Middle East it seems to me more likely that it's going to happen under Trump than under a democrat because people have a loyalty to Trump that might surmount any skepticism or hostility they might have towards getting involved in the Middle East.
[20:43] So personally, I mean, I guess I'm not beyond recruitment age in somewhere like Ukraine, and I'm obviously not in America. So I would say that if you are a young man in America.
[21:00] I wouldn't worry. I don't think it's going to escalate. I don't think the U.S. Is going to get dragged in. And I think this was a particular decap strike to prevent the possible imminent formulation of a nuclear weapon. And I think now that that is done, or that seems to be done, there'll be some, obviously, some blowback from Iran. Iran has had all of these, oh, they're going to suffer terrible ends. It's just a usual bunch of chest-thumping and posturing that occurs in these kinds of situations. But I would say that don't fret. And, you know, obviously keep your eye on it. I mean, I'm keeping my eye on it for sure. Don't fret. I don't, sorry, don't fret. Don't fret, not much threat. Don't fret, not much threat. And I think it will calm down. And I don't think there's going to be any particular escalation. I mean, China has a whole, like, we'll sit back and wait to win, right? China is just sit back and wait to win.
[22:00] They are patient from the 500-year plans, I guess like mine, turning Japanese. I think I'm turning Japanese. I really think so. So I would not get too worried. And what's worrying going to do anyway, right?
[22:16] Worrying is based on the fantasy that you can control these things and you really can't. All right. So it says, very nice to have you. Missed you while you were gone. To explain why we like to be called Persian. Quite simple, actually. We don't like the correlation between Iranians and modern-day Iran. And so much of our culture is based on Zoroastrian theology, which has nothing to do with Muslim culture that Iran has adopted. I don't know that it was adopted. Adoption seems to be more voluntary. She says, and Iranians marry their cousins because it is considered an honor within the culture to keep the bloodline going. It is why mental health problems are so high. Oh, yeah. I mean, I talked about this years ago about some of the issues with the expat Pakistanis in the West and the issues around mental health. All right.
[23:06] I heard Israel, says someone, just wants more attention slash power since the Gaza thing sizzled out. I don't believe that's true. Doesn't Israel have nuclear weapons, though, and assured mutual destruction mitigates large-scale conflict? Hmm. Well... If you recall, in the Second World War, there were some, how can I put this as nicely as possible for once? There were some Japanese pilots, particularly in the Pacific conflict, not overly concerned with their own longevity. Yes, I think that's probably the best way to put it. They were not necessarily over-concerned with their own longevity. And so it may not be that, I mean, there are suicide bombers, right? So it may not be that mutually assured destruction works the same in all cultures, if that makes sense.
[24:06] So I just had a couple other notes. Let me just see if there's anything else of juicy note and import. But yeah, the child abuse, the consanguinity issues, these are not going to be great. Ah yes um iran has experienced substantial emigration of its educated elite a 2000 imf report noted that between 150 000 and 180 000 specialists left annually costing iran an estimated 50 billion dollars equivalent to a significant portion of its oil revenue the 1979 cultural revolution which closed universities and purged non-islamic influences drove many academics abroad. Economic stagnation, high unemployment, with only 75,000 of the 270,000 annual university graduates finding jobs, political crackdowns, such as those following the 2009 election protests further fueled this exodus.
[25:04] By 2019, 3.1 million Iranians, or 3.8% of the population, had emigrated. So, you know, the government, of course, has made some efforts to retain talent. There was the Iran National Science Foundation in 2003. These have had limited success.
[25:26] So the brain drain is a real thing. And of course, we know the Pareto principle that the square root of any, in a relative meritocracy, the square root of all participants in an endeavor produce half the value, right? So if you've got 10,000 people in a company, 100 of them are producing half the value and 10 of them are producing half of that value. So you've got 10 out of 10,000 producing fully one quarter of the value of the entire organization of 10,000 people, which is why the high producers get paid so much and why people get paid so crazy high. So that is, of course the case with regards to the brain drain you are you know every person who's smart could be a hundred to a thousand times more productive than the average person so it is uh.
[26:23] Yeah, I mean, so with regards to Iran is on the verge of developing nuclear weapons, 1992, Benjamin Netanyahu, who was prime minister back then, began publicly stating Iran was close to achieving nuclear weapons capability, a timeline of a few years. 1995, it was said Iran was three to five years away. 2002, there was a discovery of Iran's secret nuclear facilities. Israel intensified warnings. Officials claiming Iran could have a bomb within a few years. 2009, Netanyahu told the UN General Assembly Iran's nuclear program was advancing rapidly. 2012, there was a fairly infamous UN speech from Netanyahu with a cartoon bomb diagram. It claimed that Iran was months away from enough enriched uranium for a nuclear weapon. That's uh 13 years ago 2018 uh 2019 2024 and then 2025 leading up to the june 13th strike israel's leadership including netanyahu and idf chief elzamer stated iran was on the threshold of a nuclear breakthrough with enough enriched uranium for nine bombs and advanced weaponization steps. So.
[27:37] The International Atomic Energy Agency has reported that Iran's uranium enrichment progress, such as 60% purity stockpiles by 2025, enough for theoretical weapons if further enriched to 90%. The IAEA and U.S. Intelligence have consistently estimated that building an actual deliverable nuclear weapon would take Iran 6 to 18 months, even with sufficient material.
[28:03] So, of course I have no particular way of interpreting the reality or factuality of any of these things.
[28:17] Look into this. It's very interesting. You want to look into the, um, it's really important to look, well, I think it's very helpful to look into why the Tiananmen Square protests happened. As someone says, even before Netanyahu, the Israeli press was claiming Iran was months away from having nukes all the way back in the mid 80s, right? Right, right. I mean, All of this in general is the result of the environmental movement. We've talked about this before, so I can keep this brief. I mean, fairly primitive cultures and so on don't produce a lot of economic value for reasons that are pretty clear to those who've listened for a while.
[29:10] But because the environmental movement, which is to some degree... Funded by Middle Eastern countries that want to retain a monopoly on the production and sale of oil. The environmental movement has prevented nuclear power, which would diminish America and the West's reliance upon foreign oil. And of course, it's diminished domestic drilling and production for oil, right? The sort of famous Sarah Palin drill, baby drill stuff. A little over-sexualized, but we can live with it. So if you want to reduce the power of fairly primitive regimes in the Middle East, you have to have domestic production of oil. And so everyone who was saying, well, domestic production of oil is bad, they're simply taking the money from a relatively civilized economy and moving it to a relatively, I mean, uncivilized economy. It's just an IQ test. That's all, right? It's just, I don't want to see, I don't want to see smokestacks, Three Mile Island, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, Chernobyl. And so.
[30:24] Out of sight, out of mind is simply, it goes to worse places.
[30:28] So, I just wanted to mention that. And of course, if you have questions, comments, support for the show would be greatly humbly and deeply appreciated. But I wouldn't worry about this one as a whole.
[30:44] You may have a certain amount of concern, given what happened in Ukraine versus the Russians, I guess relatively recently, where they had 100-plus drones that struck the Russian airfield thousands of miles inside of Russia because they snuck them in under the roofs of these pretend buildings on wheels.
[31:04] China has brought up a whole bunch of land around American military installations, which, well, I don't know. What are you going to do? It's so funny. So yeah, I wouldn't worry about it. I'm obviously, I could be completely talking about an armpit here, but I would not. I would not worry about it. And I think also, the idea that Western intervention produces significantly better countries is no longer things that people believe in. And when that kind of belief goes puff the dragon ways, it's really hard politically to move that kind of thing forward. So I would not worry about it too much. And in fact, it could be that people are beginning to learn that you can't just transplant your culture to another country and make them just like you, right? I mean, this has been going on for half a millennia in the West. Well, we'll go to country, Albania, we'll go to Albania. We'll give them our institutions. And they'll be just like us.
[32:20] Still have a bit of leftover. Sorry. Still have a bit of leftover. Something in my teeth. My apologies. Let's see if I can just ski that out with a little coffee.
[32:35] All dead and gone all right Stef how do I make female friends as a woman when all the women are going insane due to unstable world conditions and a lack of solid principles like what advice do you give Izzy I mean be yourself and see who likes you I mean honestly that I wish I could give you some big, deep philosophical voodoo that you can do, some real philosophical. You just, in life, you just be yourself no matter what they say. You just have to be who you are and see who likes it. Again, I wish I had some magical formula. How to be liked. I don't know that I'm really good at the how to be liked thing. I mean, I know how to do it, but I just, I don't want the cost of it. I don't like the cost of it.
[33:36] You can't also import people and have them adopt your ways. Look at all the Mexico flags during the protests. Yeah. Yeah, because Mexico was in charge of California for about 20 years and did absolutely nothing with it. Apparently, it's still Mexican.
[33:55] You know, that meme of like the Mexican guy saying, ah, Mexico, viva Mexico. Mexico is the greatest. It's like we're sending you back there. Oh, no, my life is over. Well uh you can't get free stuff as easily in mexico and uh mexico has in its constitution that it you can't change mexico's demographics, it's just kind of funny nobody gets mad at that but god forbid right all right and of course people forget that uh you know that the legal structure whatever you transplant from the west doesn't matter, in particular, if that's not founded in the beliefs of people. And people's beliefs don't change according to reason and evidence. I mean, I think I can fairly robustly say that, with the exception of we few, we happy few, and so on. So, the Russian Constitution was fantastic. The Haitian Constitution is great on paper, right? But on paper, it's sort of irrelevant. What matters is, you know, I mean, theoretically, the president is supposed to be the head of the military. Turns out there are like 700 judges who were higher than the president when it comes to the military. Thank you, Dylan. I appreciate that. All right. Any other questions, comments? I certainly have. I've been doing a lot of reading.
[35:18] This very... Uh day or two i've been doing, some a reading huh ah what do you mean let me let me get in there let me get in here hang on a second, oh i was born by the river, in a little tent no that's not it.
[35:48] All right sorry um because i was quite fascinated by i've never been a huge beach boys fan although i did actually see them many many years ago in toronto i went with some friends and we got back road seats and i um danced the sidewalk clean i remember just dancing, to it all night. And it was a lot of fun. Now, Brian Wilson died a day or two ago. He was 82, and he was an absolute child of the 60s. So just before I get into that, someone says, yeah, I guess the problem is the female friend question that I don't care about lying to be liked. Like being nice, that's exactly why women ostracize me.
[36:35] As a woman, it's tough because my physiology kind of demands emotional connection with others, but I hate compromising so I don't hurt other people's feelings. So monk mode it is.
[36:47] So one of the things you can do is, I'm sure you've thought of this, I'm just putting this out as a general thought, but one of the things you can do is you can try and find groups or hobbies or activities that are more likely to be, populated by people with a similar mindset right so i mean if you're conservative, you don't go to the quiche convention you go to the gun show or something like that or you go to a more fundamentalist church or something like that right so i i would say that it's important to pre-filter for people uh like yourself right so i think that's probably a good idea again i'm sure you've thought of that but i don't just say well i've just got a random scattershot find people or just be completely alone. That's filtering mechanisms that you can do ahead of time. So my friends, let me ask you this. Give me a minus 10 to plus 10. Now, you know, zero to 10. Zero to 10, how much do you know about Brian Wilson of sort of founder, lead singer, falsetto dude of the Beach Boys? What do you know? Because I don't want to, I want to sort of gauge how much people know about this guy. Zero to 10, zero, Brian who? to 10, I was explained throughout most of the 70s. What have we got here in terms of knowledge of Brian Wilson?
[38:11] Uh minus 10 zero we got a four a zero minus 10 okay so uh not not much not much okay well i appreciate that thank you thank you thank you i'm lying in bed just like brian wilson did yeah there was a song gosh was that from the first album from the bare naked ladies who i also saw when i was a business exec i was in uh i was in new york giving a speech at a convention and i saw the bare naked ladies because they just had nothing to do that night and they were actually a lot of fun yeah he was a shot in for a while and uh he spent spent a year in bed they marked this in a quasi monty python show called the ruttles which was a sort of takeoff on the.
[38:55] And so he wrote i think a couple of years ago i think he had two sets of memoirs but he wrote I Am Brian Wilson, a memoir. He wrote this a couple of years ago, shortly before he died. And yes, Brian Wilson had really significant mental health issues over the course of his life. Like, really, really significant mental health issues. Question. Une question. S'il vous plaît, pour favor, une question. uh from a minus 10 to a plus 10 what do you think his childhood was like, mental health issues which we'll get into really bad really bad mental like almost unbearable mental health issues minus 10 to a plus 10 what do you think his childhood was like 100 you are off the scale. Ecoute, écoute, please do listen. Please do listen. Minus five, zero. His childhood was probably horrible, probably a lot of neglect and verbal abuse. Minus 10, minus eight, minus 10.
[40:10] So, I mean, obviously it's kind of hard to gauge these things, but I will say that his childhood was probably a minus seven, and it went to like a minus 10 because of his drug use.
[40:27] Drugs are so dangerous, especially the hallucinogenic drugs. So...
[40:41] He says uh he wrote i also hear my dad in my head his voice is louder than the others what's the matter buddy you got any guts this is all about you why so many musicians rock and roll there's two guitars a bass and drums any more than that is just about ego so when he says i also hear my dad in my head that's not an analogy that's not i kind of have this inner parent that's like his there are yelling voices in his head which he had to live with for like 60 years, yelling, screaming, cursing, audible hallucination, voices in his head. Not like I'm feeling kind of down and you trace it back and it's a negative thing that your dad said 20 years ago, like voices in his ear. He says there are other voices too, along with Chuck Berry and Phil Spector and my dad. The other voices are worse. They're saying horrible things about my music. Your music is no damn good, Brian. Get to work, Brian. You're falling behind, Brian. Sometimes they just skip the music and go right for me. We're coming for you, Brian. This is the end, Brian. We are going to kill you, Brian.
[41:48] And he could only quiet the voices to some degree, like satanic tinnitus. He could only silence the voices to some degree by playing music, recording music, or being on stage, which he also kind of hated. He went through panic attacks, first and starting in the early, oh, mid-60s when they became famous. He was on a flight to Houston and completely had a, like, complete meltdown panic attack. He said with regards to the voices, I've heard them many days, and when I haven't heard them, I've worried about hearing them. And... He, uh...
[42:33] And he would spend days just sitting on his chair or his couch, which he says, it's been covered and recovered because I have a habit of picking at the upholstery. And what does he think about? He says, usually it's that I really miss my brothers. Both of them are gone. Carl's for almost 20 years. Dennis for more than 30. Carl died of lung cancer from being a chain smoker from his teens. And Dennis, if I remember rightly, drank like a fish and then was at a beach somewhere in the tropics, and he'd thrown some stuff into the ocean a year before and he decided when he was blind drunk to go in and look for it or try and get whatever he'd thrown in the ocean back and then he drowned. I mean, it's not quite, well, it's a little more than Bee Gees kind of mortality.
[43:27] He was addicted to cigarettes. he was addicted to alcohol. I think he was addicted to drugs, and he actually got up to over 300 pounds at one point. And then he went down to the low 200s, then went back up to 311 pounds. He said, the worst of them, the years, 1978, was one of the worst years of my life. I went into a mental hospital in San Diego and then called Marilyn, that's his second wife, and I asked for a divorce. I couldn't control my thoughts, and I couldn't control my body. It wasn't the first time I had felt like that, but in some ways it was the worst because of what I did to deal with it. I drank Bally High. God, I always think of that. Bally High, you'll find me. Sam Cook does a great version of that. I drank Bally High wine, he says, and did cocaine and smoked cigarettes and my weight went higher than ever. At one point I bit the scales at 311 pounds. And then he got caught up with this really sinister doctor. Dr. Landy. dr landy tell me i'm not just a pedagogue oh that's where that line comes from from bare naked ladies.
[44:33] Oof oof so when dr landy um dr landy was charging him i think over a hundred thousand in sort of twenty twenty four dollars over a hundred thousand dollars a month to treat him and got you know screamed at him to make music so the albums together he tried to do an album together with, brian wilson and he says the first time though dr landy had succeeded a little bit his method was never perfect but it gave me relief the second time though there was no relief relief would have been a kind of freedom and he didn't believe in freedom he gave me more and more pills and called them vitamins he sent girls to keep me company he played games with me where he put his hand on my leg to see if i had feelings for anyone he had barbecues at my house but instead of inviting my friends or family he invited his family and other doctors he made big plans like going back to Hawaii and then to London, but the plans disappeared without explanation. He let me have a margarita every once in a while. He screamed so loud. It made me cry.
[45:30] He got married at 22 and his first bride was 16 16, um he had two brothers so he had one house three kids two parents my father murray m-u-r-r-y who was actually um he he sold um industrial machinery lathes i think it was and also was big into music and wrote songs one of his songs ended up being played by the lawrence welk orchestra and recorded by a couple of people. And so his father, Murray, his mother, Audrey, my mother was gentle, kind, and loving. Oh God, to die and have learned so little about your life. See, the father was a violent brute, but the mother was gentle, kind, and loving. Then why did she marry and allow her children to be abused by a violent brute? He said, mom didn't discipline us much except to warn us that her dad might, if we were doing something bad, she would stand back a little bit and put up a finger. You better watch out, she'd say, or your dad is going to get you, which means she would tell the dad and the dad would be violent towards the children. He said, there were days with my dad that I wish never happened, and not just a few of them.
[46:42] They added up to months or even years, and they had a big effect on almost everything.
[46:52] At one point with his second wife, I think it was. He said, I told her that I was going to leave, not just the house, but her, the whole thing. I wasn't really serious, but I wanted to see how much it bothered her. She started to cry, which almost never happened. I tried to make her feel better, but I still felt bad. Oof. Now, I've heard sort of two stories on Brian Wilson. His right ear was dead. There had been i think the eighth one of the eighth nerves or something had been severed and there were some reports that had happened because his father hit him on the head with a two by four brian wilson says that it happened because there was a well we'll get to that was a bully so he had functionally no ear the the doctor said it was like 95 to 98 percent dead so he basically had to turn his head all the time couldn't figure out where sounds were coming from and so on and his father he said he He smoked a pipe and usually wore his glasses, partly because when he was younger, he had worked at Goodyear and there was an accident and he lost his left eye. Isn't that wild? Father loses the left eye, kid loses the right ear. He said he was rough. His father was rough with all of us, me and my brothers. He grabbed us by the arms and shoved us and hit us with hands that were sometimes open and sometimes even close, straight up punching his children.
[48:14] He's talking about his grandfather, Buddy, his father's father. There was a story that once my dad did something that made his dad angry, and Buddy swung a lead pipe at the side of my dad's head. His ear was hanging off. They rushed him to the doctor, and eventually it was okay again. Now this is how he says he lost his hearing a kid hit me in the head with a lead pipe his name was Seymour I think either his first or his last the feeling was just shock at first but the next day I realized I couldn't hear as well out of my right ear I told my mom and she took me to the doctor who examined me and said that the eighth nerve in my head was severed I'd I say that my right ear is completely deaf the doctors are more specific some say 98 percent some say 95 percent.
[48:55] So now why wouldn't you believe necessarily uh brian wilson about how he lost his hearing, because he says that he makes things up he doesn't like talking about his dad he likes shifting blame and uh certainly the the memoir is a a work that was written of course by him and in songs he constantly changed details and and all of that so it's hard to know i've heard reports that it was his father hit him, but two before he says, a kid hit me on the head with a lead pipe. So who knows, right? He says, the way my dad treated me was tough and it made me tougher. Yeah, that's, that's something that people say, right? That's something that people say.
[49:38] Not true. I mean, he was not, he was a very fragile guy throughout the course of most of his life. He said, my dad had lots of mood shifts. He was a cancer born in July. Cancers have lots of mood shifts. So again, putting it to the placement of the stars when his father was born, all of this kind of nonsense. He said, maybe the worst thing about my dad...
[49:59] Was how he dealt with my fear. He couldn't deal with it. Whenever I got ahead, he would yell at me or slap me or call me a pussy. Lots of the grabbing and shoving started because something made me nervous and I didn't know what to do. He couldn't stand to see me that way and he did everything wrong to get me feeling differently.
[50:20] He said, once when I was a teenager, my dad and I were sitting in the kitchen. My next door neighbor, Michael, came by. Hey, Brian, he said. I put up a hand. Michael, say that again, my dad said I did. And he slapped me so hard across the face and said, don't ever yell at anybody. I was crying, not just because it hurt so much, but because it was so surprising. It happened again and again and again. At some point, it wasn't surprising. When he did put his hands on us, he tried to scare us. Sorry, when he didn't put his hands on us, he tried to scare us in other ways. He would take out his glass eye and make us look into the space where the eye used to be. Oh, God. Oh, my gosh.
[51:04] He would take out his glass eye and make us look into the space where the eye used to be. The identity, the personality, the eye as in just the letter I. The hollow in the head where the eye was torn out. He also said uh brian wilson said sometimes i provoked my dad once i took a shit on a plate and brought it to my dad here's your lunch i said he was sitting down with his pipe in his mouth he didn't even stand up get in the bathroom he said then he came in there and whipped the hell out of me that one i may have deserved but i was bringing the plate to him because of the times i didn't deserve it anyway it um reading about his childhood i mean it's like joe jackson vibes right joe jackson vibes and um uh the the anxiety the the depression the susceptibility to exploitation i mean his doctor he finally had to get a restraining order against dr landy because dr landy had changed Brian Wilson's will to the point where Dr. Landy was going to go to all of his money when he died. So yeah, it was just wild stuff. And Dr. Landy ended up losing his license for a variety of reasons, which I think took far too long, but what the hell do I know?
[52:27] And the funny thing of course is that brian wilson grew up very close to the beach never went to the beach he hated the beach because he was very pale he'd go there in jeans so the sun wouldn't get him and he barely went there he never surfed and he had all this uh surfing music and and and peppy music right uh good i'm picking up good vibrations or you know the absolute classic uh with the uh hammond organ intro uh i wish they all could not california girls uh in my room, uh in my room i think was paul mccartney's favorite song the favorite song not just of the beach boys but of everyone and yeah it was just wild i mean quite a storied life a lot of anxiety get kicked kicked out of the band on a regular basis because he was just unable to perform and uh, oof it is um it's a rough life man it's a rough life and he said uh brian wilson said when he took drugs that's when the voices started and this is why i mean this is the really horrible thing drugs are probably less dangerous to people without traumatic childhoods but if you didn't have a traumatic childhood you're much less likely to try drugs because, you don't need to self-medicate based upon that kind of those kinds of problems.
[53:45] So he said like if there's one thing that i could go back and do differently i wouldn't done drugs, which I guess is the Sid Barrett thing, or Sid Barrett completely blew his mind out with drugs to the point where he got bald and obese and didn't know where he was really and ended up living with his mother, I think, for the rest of his life. And so, yeah, stay off drugs, man. But if you've had a traumatic childhood, you don't open up that portal.
[54:10] Don't open that, but you don't know what's going to come through. So, according to Brian Wilson, what happened was he...
[54:20] Had this traumatic childhood he found success very stressful i mean in one year they recorded like material for three albums and did a hundred shows like this mental it was absolutely mental i mean completely and of course the uh the the uh all of the lovely and and humane record executives were like watch watch right uh more and more and more money money money they just work them work and whip them like horses i mean there's a reason why prince changed like it had The symbol for slave tattooed on his forehead, and George Michael stopped working, I think it was, with Sony after some lawsuits. I mean, it's brutal in the entertainment industry and incredibly predatory. Just go watch that documentary with Alanis Morissette. What was it, 30 years ago that Jagged Little Pill came out? What an album. Holy crap.
[55:06] But, yeah, she was preyed on as a teenager in the most appalling, monstrous ways. Um just like jennifer lopez right i mean warning everyone about how dangerous trump is never quite got around telling people about any danger that might be emanating from one p diddy and his infinite squishy waterfall of druggie oils so so he didn't have the voices in his head although he certainly had people screaming at him his father in particular screaming at him in his mind and then he took the drugs and the portal like it opened up the back rooms the the trauma it opened up and he lost the filter you know like if you have had a bad parent and i can't remember the last time i dreamt about my mother i can't remember maybe i think i maybe dreamt about my brother for the first time in a year or two the other night but probably some stupid anniversary that I'm not aware of consciously. The brain keeps metronome time. So.
[56:15] Normally you have this sort of thoughts in your head that show up in dreams or you'll get the feeling but without the actual you have to sort of drill down to get the language but it seems like and i think brian wilson was saying this he said it fairly explicitly you know it after the drugs the voices were like auditory hallucinations and it took his second wife you know to tell him look these voices have been saying they're going to kill you for like decades and they haven't done it yet right so um he said it was a close to daily occurrence that he would just have these voices that would interrupt any piece he might be able to get a hold of so this is why he became a sort of compulsive workaholic with music and of course if you're a workaholic with music it's tough to be productive wilson is the greatest composer of pop music a genius surpassing any other any others by orders of magnitude do you think do you think.
[57:12] I mean certainly his 60s over was fantastic i mean as far as pop goes since i wouldn't classify the rolling stones as pop or late early led zeppelin um as far as pop goes, um probably only behind the beatles i mean it was tough to get ahead in the 60s with the Beatles around. But again, all I know is there are 15 greatest hits. So I couldn't classify his. And I don't know what... I mean, he wasn't involved in Kokomo, I think, which was the Beach Boys after he was gone. Kokomo, Aruba, Jamaica, ooh, I want to take it. So yeah, it's really terrible sorry people are just finding ways to connect good good good our staff really wasn't kidding in rtr when he said taking the book to heart would remove like 99 of relationships from your life i mean sorry to be pedantic oh so pedantic but uh it doesn't remove them it just exposes them as not real relationships can can you have a real relationship if you're not honest no Yeah.
[58:33] All right people talking to each other yeah if you guys could do that off would queen count as pop i would not say so i would not say so, um i wouldn't say as a queen doesn't do much pop queen started off i mean it's funny because they did some ragtime i'm thinking um seaside rendezvous a good old-fashioned lover boy but earlier than that they did rock and some lovely ballads uh the night comes down and uh doing all right just lovely ballads off their first album uh queen two was just a real pastiche of wide variety go listen to march of the black queen i mean it's a joyful bounce around of schizo pinball ricochets just in terms of the um and um nevermore it's lovely just nevermore beautiful bit off the end of of that forget your sing-alongs and your lullabies surrender to the city of the fireflies dance with the devil beat with the band to hell with all of you hand in hand now it's time to be gone it's really clever funky not funky it's clever uh half ragtime half vaudeville.
[59:48] Lovely falsetto in the middle it is just it's unclassifiable and and really cool it's really the only song that i particularly liked off queen 2 and then of course you've got um sheer heart attack which has a love of john deacon's first song misfire which i find kind of cute and fun so i wouldn't say that they were rock for sure and then they went into folk with 39 uh they did some fairly funky stuff with uh another one rides the bus another one bites the desk so i wouldn't say particularly classifiable but i wouldn't put them in the pop category at all uh it's not uh it's not airy, frivolous and breathly enough for a pop.
[1:00:33] All right similar to robin williams and matthew perry brian wilson had the pleasing make others happy exterior with very deep pain behind it yeah and i think i think it was early enough i think it was early enough that people didn't really get how much it affects you your childhood. Like, I just don't think, you know, I don't think people got it really as much at all. Forget your sing. All right, let's see here. What have I got here? Oh my gosh, that is the wrong, that is the wrong library. No, I won't do that. So, all right, freedomain.com slash donate to help out the show would be very deeply and humbly and gratefully.
[1:01:27] Appreciated in each and every soul lies a man very soon you'll receive and discover, yes that's a lovely little bit and no mortal man can sing Freddie Mercury's falsetto just go listen to the song cool cat on the much maligned first side suck second side is great hot space album yeah it is a it's a great song and i don't know if it was drugs but that the uh i mean a queen and in particular freddie mercury is like adhd musical shuffleboard musical chairs musical slate of hand he's like a wizard oh you like this bit it's gone oh this bit's cool it's changed and uh it's sort of like uh scenes from an italian restaurant or um fool's overture from Supertramp where they basically had a bunch of different songs lying around and rather than make them into a song they just jammed together all of these scraps and had them in a bizarre way kind of work together.
[1:02:27] In terms of innovation in harmonics and the complexity of compositions, while at the same time sounding simple and catchy, Wilson has no peer. I've certainly heard musicians over the years say you listen to a beach bar song and you think, oh, that's kind of cool and simple, and then you start to dig into it. And he was into some of the doo-wop groups from the 50s, the Four Horsemen in particular, and the complexity of the arrangements. Because he only had one ear. He's got to jam his ear right up next to the speakers. Speakers his father taught him taught him a lot about harmonics and he just was able to unpack, these harmonics in a way that that was just amazing and if you've ever really unpacked like i'm i do this with arguments like i i just did this show today on the ethics of sex workers online and where they fit in upb and i can i see like the skeletal structure the the sinews and the tendons of an argument i see the argument and it explodes in my mind you know like they have, these exploded diagrams. I'm sure they still do. Here's the engine. Exploded out, you know, it looks like this. Not actually exploded, but sort of separated conceptually. So when I look at an argument, it disassembles in my mind.
[1:03:36] And that's because I've been immensely self-critical over the years. I don't do to anyone else's arguments anything different from what I do to my own arguments. I mean, I have a lot of arguments that come to mind, and I abandon them because, because they're invalid. They don't work. They self-contradict, right? So I ended up doing this for years. I used to have like massive debates with myself about good or bad arguments. So I see an argument and I can just pull it apart because I see all of the basic premises. I see all the way from the metaphysics, the epistemology, the ethics, the politics, and so on. And I often will see the psychological motivations behind the arguments so with regards to looking at you know whether it's deductive or inductive reasoning the syllogisms they just and i used to be able to do this with computer code back in the day like you need something done i would just be able to break it into start here call this do that and just explode it it would all just disassemble in my mind i could see all of the source components and see what worked and what doesn't i suppose if you're really good at mechanics you can listen to a car and know what the problem is right or you know that old myth i think it's a myth that you know the the indigenous population could put their ears on the train tracks and hear the train coming from miles and miles away so yeah i i think that um brian wilson certainly was without a doubt a musical genius i mean there's no question in my mind that he was a musical genius.
[1:05:06] I wish he'd had a bit more sustainability but again given the mental health issues and so on he just didn't and maybe he did but i'm just not aware of his later work but even the fact that I'm pretty into music and not aware of his later work, is somewhat telling.
[1:05:23] And I listen to music for the singers. I'm a slave to the singer. And Brian Wilson's voice was, to me, kind of thin and not particularly rich or flexible. I mean, he had a lovely falsetto, of course. But yeah, a very complex writer. And there's nothing more powerful in a way than the seemingly simplistic things that turn out to be massively complex when you disassemble them. And uh that is upb and i think um the equivalent would be what someone like brian wilson was doing in particular with harmonics do you like ronnie james dio no idea i mean no i don't like him or dislike him i don't have uh the first clue what that is man i do not know, just like brian wilson did all right let me see can i get to the story of the kitten.
[1:06:30] All right so let's see here can i log on.
[1:06:39] All right if you have any other questions or comments or issues or challenges i am thrilled, to hear about them, looking at my old um boy looking at my old what have i got here the moral case of fossil fuels from alex epstein who i interviewed like way ago who killed the american family phyllis schlafly Treasure Island, Pride and Prejudice, Myths About Ayn Rand, Mugged, Goddess of the Market, Ayn Rand, and the American Right, Fifty Shades of Grey for a review. Oh yeah, Anonymous Conservative, The Evolutionary Psychology Behind Politics, Ayn Rand and the something-something. Aesop's Fables, I did that with my daughter. Paul Craig Roberts, The Failure of Laissez-faire Capitalism. Wow. Blacklisted by history. M Staunton Evans. Wow. Dinesh D'Souza, The Big Lie, Adios America. Freud, The Making of an Illusion. Yeah, that was for my Freud presentation that I never got around to. Human Accomplishments by Charles Murray, The Red Thread by the great Diana West, who I also interviewed. Anyway, you don't need to know all of this, but I still just got a neat. And this is an old account I haven't used in forever. All right, let's get back, see if you have any other questions or issues.
[1:08:03] So james says i've had that similar experience as well in software i'd be able to move in and out of the architecture to the detail and understand the universe yeah yeah wilson's magnum opus the album smile oh that's with the lowercase i the album smile that he abandoned in 1967 and completed in 2004 is a must hear all right thank you Stefan i haven't heard you speak about thomas soul that much what is your impression of him and do you appreciate his work um yeah i um i like dr soul i think i mean i hate to say it but you know it's to me it's like libertarianism 101 it's kind of basic and um i think he rejects the iq arguments without really addressing the science behind them so uh you know i don't mean to be overly fussy but when i know something quite detailed about a topic and somebody else dismisses it out of hand i become suspicious of everything right i mean obviously i'm not perfect love to be corrected and all of that so if there's anything i'm saying ever that's incorrect please please let me know but when i'm fairly deeply knowledgeable and of course i interviewed 17 world experts on the field of iq so when i'm deeply knowledgeable about a topic and somebody else blithely dismisses it without any good argument, then I have concerns about everything else that I'm not an expert on. Do you know what I mean?
[1:09:28] So if I know something about IQ and then somebody dismisses IQ arguments with no real understanding or basis based on, I guess, just some sort of tribalism.
[1:09:44] Then they lose their luster for me because it means that I can't really trust them on the things I'm not an expert on, if that makes sense. And look, I'm not a big expert on IQ, but I know fairly well about it. And if you don't understand IQ, you just can't understand the world. I mean, to me, everybody who just avoids that whole topic, it's like, okay, you may have some interesting things to say, but you can't really explain much about the world. So I like him. I've read some of his books, the one about the southern rednecks and they're sort of back to the British culture and so on. Interesting stuff. I like, of course, the argument that I think he made the argument. I'm not sure if it was just him, but he very, in a very emphatic way, you know, there are no solutions. There are only trade-offs. So, I mean, I like his stuff. I think it's interesting, but again, and look, it's not that people have to be perfect. Lord knows I'd be the last person to say that people have to be perfect, but can they be corrected, right? Or can they be corrected, right? So like hundreds of billions of dollars have been poured into trying to close the gap in IQ.
[1:11:06] At some point, I mean, do people talk about this? Anyways, I know some people are, and it's becoming a bit more of a topic, But so I, it takes a lot for me to trust a thinker, you know, it takes, it takes a lot for me to trust a thinker because you have to rely upon the thinkers base integrity and willingness to think the unthinkable and self-correct their most foundational propositions and so on. Like you really, really have to, for me, it's very hard because I've gone through this process. I can't even tell you how many times it's so sad. It's so sad. And it speaks to my optimism, if not necessarily my skepticism, which I should probably have more of. But I'm very eager to be positive about things and people, right?
[1:11:53] And so I've just gone through this a number of times where I will elevate someone to a position or situation of trust, high trust. And then I just happen to know something about a particular topic that's fairly deep. I go to this person and then they say something completely wrong. I don't know, should I get into details? Probably doesn't matter. I think we've all gone through this process. You hold someone in high esteem.
[1:12:28] And they just get something ridiculously wrong and don't correct, right? Don't correct. And I know some people think that that was me with COVID. I get that people think that was me with COVID, but I sure as heck never took that vaccine. And I sure as heck said that the government should not get involved in restricting people's liberties. And I sure as heck said, just as the lockdowns were starting, that they were going to cause far more harm than good. Now, of course, I was also worried and alarmed that what I perceived to be a bioweapon had come out, that it was going to have some pretty sinister effects. And the alpha strain was pretty rough. It was pretty rough, man. Some people got really sick from that. And then, of course, it went to omega and began to sort of calm down a little bit. But yeah, so I know that some people, I think that I, you know, hindsight is 20-20.
[1:13:17] Blah blah blah right i was i was concerned and i i really i really did and this was again part partly my optimism i i really did think that uh borders would be closed because of the pandemic and that was just my optimism so i suppose i got that somewhat wrong i mean i knew that the democrats wanted to keep the borders open but uh yeah it was something else.
[1:13:40] All right um Stef do you still think people should get out of the cities Escalating riots and war tensions seem to suggest it's still a good idea. Well, so smart people generally, like smart people congregated in the cities until the 1960s, and then smart people have just been sort of pushed out of the cities. Welfare state and crime and single motherhood and all of the attendant emotional and criminal problems that kind of come pouring out of that. So generally, smart people just have to move further and further out. I mean, intelligence is concentrated in the cities in a young republic, and then intelligence gets further and further out for reasons of safety and peace and quiet as you get older. So I don't think that cities are particularly ideal. You might want to be beyond the bus and subway route at some point.
[1:14:34] It is just a mathematical fact that the government's going to run out of money. And what happens when the government runs out of money? Well, the single moms send out all their feral sons into the streets to get the pre-built brick pallets of rioting. And it's just going to be wild. And it's going to be wild because there won't be an immediate solution other than violence, right? So, I mean, it won't be like you can just, oh, we'll, you know, go home and we'll up your welfare. Like there will be no money, right? So I do think that cities are not going to be where the most peaceful future is, particularly the inner cities.
[1:15:15] Oh, yeah, Hans Hoppe talking about spanking. And then was it Tom Woods and Jeffrey Tucker who just kind of smiled and said nothing? That was not great. Jordan Peterson was not solid against corporate punishment. He also doesn't really talk about IQ. So, you know, there's like just things that cities are a mecca for degenerate behavior. Oh, not in their founding. No, in their founding, they are an escape from the degenerate behavior of the countryside. So all right yeah somebody says i was a huge fan of jordan peterson but after watching jordan versus atheists this is not the same person the complexity oh i should then auto focus the complexity of language is there but the depths of truth are gone he's not the same person he was nine years ago in the channel for interview i mean look we've all been beaten up and down the playground over the last 10 years right uh it's is there really any functional free speech in the west no not really not really not really tucker was there but not words oh thank you i appreciate that who else was there though i think there were three people there i'd appreciate that thank you for the correction.
[1:16:33] Last live stream you brought up the evolution of the music industry saying people just want access to the music, i.e. streaming, and are fine with not owning the music. You then said you think Bitcoin will follow the same evolution. Can you elaborate on the Bitcoin point?
[1:16:47] I can. I certainly can. Kinsella. And two, I don't recognize. Thank you. And I apologize for Tom Woods for mentioning him. This is from years ago, and I guess I just have clusters of people in my head. So it was Stefan Kinsella and Jeffrey Tucker. Is that right? And I mean, they didn't have to get into a big fight they can just say you know i respectfully disagree i don't think that corporal punishment is good i think it's a violation of the non-aggression principle but i understand it's a challenging topic so i just wanted to mention that you can do it in a way that's not being confrontational but because you know they want people to have a lot of courage in order to build a free society and uh if you can't mention what you believe in to hans hoppy i'm not sure that you're displaying the kind of courage that would be really inspiring to others all right and again we all have our fumbles and our failures but whatever right so with regards to uh bitcoin, it's simply a matter that the existing paradigm people fight to keep it until, the um the market bypasses it right so people were fighting to keep you know cds and and dvds and all this kind of stuff until there were torrents and napster and so on and the pirate Bay back in the day and so on. And then people are just like, we'll fight to keep it, we'll fight to keep it. And then there's just a whoosh when people say, we're just gonna have to embrace a new thing.
[1:18:11] I mean this happens in science right science is the old saying goes advises one funeral at a time.
[1:18:17] So the the people are we've got to have fiat currency we've got to have fiat currency and fiat currency is like it's like a drug and bitcoin is the rehab right bitcoin is the reality check the cold water to the nads reality check because it is non-politicized currency and all politicized currency destroys civilization like and there's no i don't even want to have a tiny little bit of a reservation about that.
[1:18:47] Politicized money destroys civilizations, and we have too much technology for it to be safe in that way, right? All right, any other last questions, comments, issues, challenges, problems? Yeah the luddites during the industrial revolution tried that of course for sure and uh the cavalry tried that uh even the um the knights tried that when they could be unseated by arrows and so on so yeah i mean i somebody's uh saying i watched an anime called, frieren recently i i can't really i mean i guess i could watch it at some point although i'm pretty busy with my novel and the show and and all the parenting and all that kind of stuff uh but yeah if you're enthusiastic about a thing i can't really talk about it in the show because i haven't watched it so and the odds of me watching it over the next little while are pretty low pretty low so i appreciate your enthusiasm but um i can't really do much i do much with it, all right a bit of a low donation yeah we got one donation at free domain so a bit of a low bit of a low donation situation uh if you're listening to this later and you could help out i would really appreciate it if you find any of my comfort giving regarding the attack on.
[1:20:16] Iran um to be helpful i would appreciate you dropping a tip at freedomain.com slash donate i really really would appreciate it he says i know i asked before but timing was a bit off hard to watch much with all that i with all that i understand yeah i i honestly don't maybe when i'm finished my novel which i don't even know how long it's going to be but it's uh i i love these characters too much to let them go i just do i'm going to stay with them as long as humanly possible all right well uh thank you bronx trader i appreciate that thank you everyone so much freedomain.com slash donate to help out the show don't forget to check out the documentaries They're all great. And freedomain.com books for all the free books. You can share them as you see fit. You're donating next week. Thank you, Joe. I appreciate that. And lots of love from up here, my friends. Take care. I'll talk to you soon. Bye.
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